With that good news under our belts, we left so Sangrida would trigger the alarm that would bring the police. The security, her special security, had turned off the alarm system the instant it went off, benefiting from the five-minute lag built into the system that most of the board of directors definitely didn't know about. There were a lot of old things in the place and not all of them were known to be completely "inactive," so to speak. There was checking to be done before the authorities showed up. With that now accomplished, Sangrida was ready to play the distressed curator. Well, with Sangrida's backbone, the mildly concerned curator.
When Niko and I finally got back to our apartment on St. Mark's Place, I was wishing I had that iron rod running bolted to her spine because I was teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Something to hold me up would've been nice. I yawned heavily. "You think what we saw in the park could be Sawney?"
Niko was stripping off his weapons onto the kitchen table. "I think we don't know enough to make suppositions. There are many creatures that could do what we saw. Perhaps even one not so powerful as to be responsible for the deaths of over a thousand people." He dropped his last blade onto the surface. "But to reintegrate from ash and bone, that would take enormous energy, enormous sustenance. And he wouldn't have had time to take the bodies with him, not when he was on the run."
"In other words, who the hell knows?"
"In other words," he confirmed with a quirk of his lips.
"It'd be nice if there was only one mass murderer to worry about. Hope springing eternal and all that shit. I'm grabbing a shower, then bed. I'm tired of smelling like a leaky keg."
"Convenient. I'm tired of smelling a leaky keg." He headed for his own bedroom, adding casually, "The bathroom is taken care of."
He never forgot, but he usually told me anyway, and it was always said as if it were perfectly natural to secure the bathroom like an enemy encampment. As if I didn't have one helluva weird phobia—even if it were a slowly resolving one.
When I went in, the bathroom mirror was covered with a towel just as he'd assured me. I knew Darkling was gone. He wasn't coming through any mirror ever again, but the fact that I could have a mirror in the apartment, even a covered one, was an accomplishment. The Auphe had stolen my body and tried to steal my mind. Darkling had possessed me and gobbled up my soul. Temporarily, thanks to some help from Niko and Robin, but it wasn't an experience you forgot. Or got over, not completely.
I knocked the glass through the towel and muttered, "Rot in hell, you bastard."
After the shower, I slept for about five hours and then staggered up. Niko and I had already discussed what our next move was. Or, rather, who it was. And at noon we hit Robin's place in Chelsea just as he was rolling out of bed.
He answered the door wearing silk pajama bottoms, an untied matching silk robe, and a shitload of morning cranky. Blinking in sleepy ill humor over a steaming cup of coffee, he mumbled, "Who…what…" Giving up, he snared a hand in his tangled curls and took a drink. Green eyes clearing with the addition of life-giving caffeine, he managed to get out an entire sentence. "Why? Why are you wretched creatures here at this hour even Apollo himself would spit upon?"
"We're here to pick your brain." I immediately flopped on his couch, an affair so massive that it could host an orgy. Hell, this was Robin we were talking about. Just go ahead, give the benefit of the doubt, and say it had hosted an orgy. "And by the way, Bob the doorman said the condo association shot down your idea of a condom machine on every floor."
"Puritan bastards," he muttered. "Even I, on occasion, run out." I wasn't sure why he used them to begin with. He couldn't get anyone pregnant. Pucks don't reproduce that way. In fact, I didn't know how they reproduced, and quite frankly, that was fine by me. As for the condom's other use … I wouldn't have thought Goodfellow would be too vulnerable to STDs … at least not the human kind. That train of thought led me to places my mind had no desire to go … vampire gonorrhea, glowing pixie herpes, who knew what the fuck else. As I hastily mentally kicked those thoughts to the curb, Robin closed the door behind Niko and waved a careless arm at the kitchen. "Coffee. Tea. There." With that eloquent invitation, he collapsed on the couch next to me and immediately dozed off. Miraculously, the coffee cup remained firmly upright and balanced.
I shook my head and flicked his earlobe. "Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty."
"Talk about your worst lay ever," he murmured, and then swatted at my hand, leaving me with fiercely stinging fingers. "And I've yet to hear why you are ruining a perfectly good morning of postcoital lazing about."
"Sawney Beane," Niko announced as he leaned against the marble countertop that separated the kitchen from the living area. With arms folded, he ignored the burbling cappuccino machine and focused on Robin. "He may be back."
If we were expecting a big reaction, we were disappointed. Sighing, Goodfellow opened his eyelids to half-mast, grunted, and drank more coffee. "So," I said, relieved, "not such a bad thing, huh? Totally overrated, right? No way the son of a bitch ate a thousand people."
"A thousand?" he snorted. "Hardly. Six hundred most likely. Seven hundred tops."
Ah, shit.
I was about to drop my head in my hands when there was a rattle at the door—a very prolonged rat-tie. One that said "here I come" as clearly as if the person had shouted it through the door.
"Ah, my housekeeper," Robin said with amusement, rocketing to complete alertness in a heartbeat— the kind of alertness that seemed to spring straight from the son of a bitch's crotch. "Seraglio is reluctant to be a spectator to some of my more exotic entertainments. She doesn't seem to approve of nudity either, certainly not mine anyway." He put the coffee mug on the slab of rock crystal masquerading as a table and stood. "Considering her name means harem, that's rather curious, but to each her own. If one cannot appreciate the muse-inspired work of art that is my body…" He held his arms out to indicate the glory of it all. "Then I must respect their mental pathology and get on with my life."
He tied up his robe and flashed Seraglio a brilliant smile as she came through the door. It bounced off her impenetrable façade without effect. "You're looking…professional as always, ma'am. Why, the very air sparkles with your unmatched efficiency." He gave Niko and me a wink. "Seraglio has always made it very clear that compliments of a personal nature are not welcome and that she has four protective brothers who would be ecstatic to tutor me on the concept. So, as difficult as it is, I behave myself."
I could tell he thought it was a pity, though, as he watched her begin to work. With her flawless peach-colored skin, enormous ageless black eyes, and glossy dark hair that she wore piled high on her head, Seraglio was beautiful in all the ways there were to be beautiful. I would've guessed her to be thirty-five, but I could've been a decade off in either direction. She was also a little person, but not Good-fellow's kind of little person. She was a human one, barely four feet tall—medically speaking, a person with dwarfism. And if she wasn't proof positive that once in a while Mother Nature got something right, I didn't know what was.
"Why, are you looking at me, Mr. Fellows?" Her voice reminded me of orange blossom honey, Spanish moss, and the thorns of a wild blackberry bush. Georgia or somewhere down that way. We'd lived in a trailer park there once; I recognized the broad drawl and faded Rs. Her words drifted over her shoulder as she bent over to retrieve cleaning supplies from the bottom half of the pantry. Robin's lips curved into a wicked grin as he watched her uniform pants pull taut over her rounded backside.