Slashback

  I was walking back, plastic bag of cookies in hand, when I spotted our neighbor. Cal’s serial killer. He was picking up his paper from the tiny scrap of front yard. He was in sweats like me and a ragged terry cloth robe, but slightly blue bare feet. It was going to be full-on winter in another month or so. No bare feet then.

  I seized the opportunity. “Excuse me, sir.” I didn’t believe he was a killer, but there was no harm in being polite. Just in case. He lifted his head from the paper and blinked at me. He had soft brown eyes, drooping at the edges, like a tired old hound dog. Friendly and happy, but ready to leave the running to the pups while he lay on the porch. In reality he was likely in his mid-thirties. It didn’t matter. Most people in this neighborhood looked at least ten to twenty years older than they were. They were either honest and worked far too hard for far too little or they were into drugs and nothing aged you like that, selling or buying.

  This tired old dog also had a bit of a beer belly or fast-food flab and a receding jaw to match his receding hairline. He also had a small silver cross around his neck that looked like it had been worn to the brightest of shines from frequent fingering. He gave me a tentative smile that showed a gap between his two front teeth. “Can I help you, son?” He had a slight stammer, his eyes blinking more often as he spoke. Embarrassment, he hadn’t outgrown. Obvious signs and easy to read. Sophia was no kind of mother, but watching her work taught you things that were helpful. Since I didn’t use those things to steal, I didn’t feel guilty for using it for other things.

  “Yes, sir. I was wondering where you worked. I’ve been looking for a job.” Not true. I had two part-time jobs already, but a harmless lie was the best way to bring Cal around to the truth.

  “Sir?” He blinked again, more of a hound dog than ever. “I ain’t sure anyone’s ever called me sir. You can call me Junior.” He turned the paper over in his hands. His accent was a little Southern. We’d been all over the country. His wasn’t as far south as Georgia, more like Kentucky somewhere. His watery eyes looked me up and down, wary. While Cal looked younger, I looked older. I could pass for seventeen easily. And seventeen in this neighborhood was more than old enough to force you back in your house, take everything not nailed down, and stab you with a rusty five-dollar switchblade. I tried to look harmless, another trick I’d learned from Sophia—who was anything but.

  Junior seemed reassured. “Well, son, I work in the hospital cafeteria. No openings there, sorry ’bout that. But if you go by human resources, they post pages and pages of jobs on a bulletin board outside the office. Might find something there.”

  “Thank you, sir . . . Junior.” I gave him a friendly smile with no thought behind it. My mind was already elsewhere as I moved the fifteen feet over to our rented house. I didn’t think orderlies took a shortcut through the cafeteria to the morgue with the deceased patients, but hospitals were all about the sick and the dying. Maybe Cal’s nose had picked up on that. Or the smell of blood passing from a surgeon to this guy dishing up his mashed potatoes and gravy.

  It was possible.

  Cal didn’t agree.

  He’d already wolfed down a cookie while telling me with a full mouth that was bullshit at the same time I was telling him eggs first, dessert later. No teacher could instruct you in multitasking and how to fail at it spectacularly as raising a preteen. Cal had deserted his bed to follow me to the kitchen. Followed the bag of cookies rather as I started scrambling an egg. “So why is it bull . . . I mean, not true? And I told you about the bad language.”

  “You’re such a grandma. It is bullshit.” He shrugged, eyes fixed on the Oreos I kept close and safe while I pushed the egg around with a spatula. “I smelled dead people.” Then he forgot about the cookies and grinned. “Hey, I smell dead people. Why don’t I get a movie, huh?”

  I snorted but didn’t discourage the humor. It wasn’t often Cal laughed about his other side. “You’re too talented for your own good. Hollywood is jealous.”

  “Probably.” His eyes went back to the cookies and his mind to our neighbor. “I didn’t smell sick people. I smelled something, a lot of somethings rotting in his basement. Hospitals don’t let dead people hang around their cafeteria and rot, do they? Even I might have trouble eating through that. Hey, can I have onions in my eggs?”

  “We’re out of onions. We do have half a piece of cheese left. How about that?” Junior, damn it, why couldn’t your hefty, religious ass work at a funeral home? It would make convincing Cal much easier. And it would allow me to stop the internal cursing while getting Cal to stop his outer cursing.

  “Cheese is good,” he agreed. I looked at the ice pack lying on the table and when that didn’t work, pointed at it with the spatula. Cal sighed but put it back up to where his shirt covered the bruise.

  “Your ‘serial killer’ neighbor is also religious from the looks of the cross around his neck.” I stirred the egg again, then scraped it onto a plate I’d set in front of him. “How many serial killers are devout Christians?” I was really hoping to slide this one past him.

  “The Spanish Inquisition?” he said promptly.

  “I’d be impressed if I thought that was from your history class and not Monty Python reruns.” I handed him a fork. “He also has a gut on him. I doubt he could catch anyone if he tried.”

  “If lions are fat it means they’re the best hunters.” He took a bite of cheesy eggs.

  I could not win. “You’re not suggesting he’s eating them?”

  “Nope. If he did, his house would smell like barbeque, not roadkill. I just like lions. They’re cool.”

  Absolutely could not win.

  I sat down with my own plate of three pieces of toast. The last egg had gone to Cal. I couldn’t keep him away from the SpaghettiOs when I was at work or school, but I could make him eat one healthy thing a day when I was home. “Cal, give me the benefit of the doubt on this one, would you? He’s a flabby, churchgoing man who stutters. He’s not a raging homicidal maniac. He is not storing dead bodies in his basement. It’s simply not likely. Just trust me on this, all right?”

  “I always trust you, Nik. But sometimes you’re not practical,” he said matter-of-factly. He also said it frequently. He didn’t know as of thirty minutes ago when I’d first seen the spill of dark blood under his skin I was a true believer of the concept.

  Cal’s definition of practical had always both covered and absolved many sins. As he’d committed them on my behalf when I’d twice been sick enough not to be able to take care of myself, I had trouble getting him to see that his practical was most people’s criminal. As my little brother came first with me, his big brother came first with him. I thought I was smart, but in some ways Cal was far more so than I’d ever been.

  He popped in the last bite of eggs. “Just remember, don’t get laid until we move again. Stay a virgin and everything will be okay. I told you, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers wouldn’t lie.”

  Watching the fake butter refuse to melt on the bread, I lost any appetite for the toast or life in general . . . if only for a second.

  Laid.

  Sophia had gone from verbally to physically abusive. The first inevitable Grendel had shown up. The serial killer issue still hadn’t been solved, and now my eleven-year-old brother had just told me to not get laid.

  Why me?

  Honestly, why me?

  5

  Cal

  Present Day

  “Why me?”

  The faux leather/duct tape combo squeaked as Goodfellow leaned back and covered his eyes with an olive-skinned hand. “I have a limitless number of people to lie to, cheat, and rob. I’m a trickster. I have a calling and no time for this. Sweet Fortuna, goddess of luck, tell me, why me?”

  Let me fucking count the times I’d heard this song stuck on the radio. But, on the other hand, it was nice having a constant in a world of chaos. The brash ego, the bravery in the face of imminent death, and the accompanying bitching during the bravery in the face of imminent dea
th, never changed. Which was good. Change was rarely for the better.

  I tossed the now empty pancake container in the garbage. “Why you? Why us? Why Niko and me? What’d we do to him? Damn straight no one hired us to put him down. Hell, Niko didn’t know he existed until a body fell out of the frigging sky. What’s any of that have to do with you?”

  “What’s that have to do with me? Are you senile? When have the two of you not dragged my wit, wisdom, charisma, and impeccably formed ass along in the wake of your bloody misfortune?” he demanded.

  He had a point.

  “Lifetime after lifetime,” he moaned on. “It never ends.”

  “Are you measuring months as lifetimes now?” Niko asked, deadpan, as always when it came to Goodfellow’s exaggerations.

  “I may as well,” Robin complained. “It certainly does feel that way.”

  “Then since you know history repeats itself, try for a more positive attitude,” Niko suggested, not bothering to hide his amusement when Robin dropped his hand from his eyes to glare at us.

  “Positive attitude? Let me tell you about my opinion regarding certain death and a positive attitude. It’s the same thing I told Dickens over ale and who despite his view on workhouses was a horrible tipper.” He sat up. “I hate Tiny Tim. I hate his chirpy optimism. I hate his purity and goodness in the face of grinding adversity. The nerve of the little bastard. It’s unnatural. There. My personal view of a positive attitude.”

  Niko wasn’t impressed. “When Cal was three he shot Tiny Tim on the TV screen with his finger. Six imaginary rounds if I recall. You are barely in the running on attitude. Now, why is this Jack concerned with wickedness and immorality? Those are not concepts with which the paien usually bother themselves. That is closer to a human judgment.”

  He groaned and dug in his jacket for a gold-chased silver flask. “Absinthe. It doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, but it can make the frustration grow fainter. Sometimes.” Draining the alcohol to the last drop in three swallows, he reached for a second flask and did the same. Looking marginally less annoyed, he rang the two containers together, an alcoholic cowbell. The silver note hung in the air as he said, “First, we don’t know that it’s Jack for certain. I said I wasn’t committing to that until we have further proof and I meant it. He is that much of a nightmare.” He gazed at the empty second flask mournfully. “Second, rarely, very rarely, mind you, a paien can become attached to a human or a certain subset of humans. Relate to them. Embrace them. Take them on as family or worshippers. That, in turn, can have human habits and prejudices rubbing off on them.”

  Something Robin had done in the past—except for the prejudices. He’d set himself up as a god. It hadn’t ended well, but he hadn’t given up on humans, which is why he hung around Niko and me. And humans long before us. He’d almost married one in Pompeii before the volcano blew. He was one of the few paien who considered humans worthy company.

  “It most definitely wasn’t you,” Niko said, “or another puck. Besides you, vampires, and peris, I don’t know any paien that associate with humans. What kind of paien is Spring-heeled Jack exactly?”

  “Not me?” Goodfellow put away both flasks and gave a predatory grin. “Are you sure? I do have a preoccupation with licking the velvet-skinned throats of blond women and blond men. Blond anything really.”

  “Put it back in your pants.” I snorted. “And even you couldn’t leave a hickey the size of a hand.”

  Apparently I was wrong as he continued to grin. Niko frowned impatiently. “Goodfellow, we have a vicious paien serial killer roaming free skinning people alive. Focus. And if you continue with your lecherous behavior, I’ll tell Ishiah.”

  Goodfellow stretched his arms, spread his fingers, then linked them to put his hands behind his head. “Feel free. He accepted me as I am and although I am giving monogamy a try, it wasn’t a requirement. And I still talk the talk and look the look.” The grin grew wider. “I’d have to be dead for that to stop. As for what Jack is”—the grin disappeared—“I don’t know. I wasn’t in England then. I’ve not seen him. Let me think on it.” Rolling eyes in my direction, he continued, “I will need more alcohol. It’s far too early to be thinking. Morning mounting is mostly muscle memory and a nice alliteration, but thinking . . . for that I’ll have to bribe my brain.”

  I raided the fridge for two six-packs: one for him and one for me. Yeah, nice alliteration and one I was going to do my best to scrub from my own brain cells. As he looked down his nose at anything as common as beer, I was pouring Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper into a glass with the beer on top of that. Beer for the amnesia, the rest for caffeinated coherence. I wasn’t good with mornings either. I considered one or two p.m. still morning. I considered five thirty a.m. an abomination. If Hell had existed, it would always be five thirty there.

  “Seriously?” Goodfellow asked dubiously as he watched me mixing the brew with the combat knife that had proved useless against Jacky-boy or what might be Jacky-boy as Robin remained on the fence there. At least the puck was distracted from his own horrifyingly domestic brew.

  “Dr. Dew. Good for what ails you and a barrelful will decompose a body if you’re out of sulfuric acid.” I had no idea if that was true, but it sounded true. It also felt true as the first swallow hit my stomach and became a miniature nuclear explosion. I was back on the couch and guzzling. When I felt my eyes begin to burn and my nerves do a convulsive dance, I said, “Okay, I’m awake. For about forty minutes. Jack—our monster of the month. Maybe. Go.”

  Robin had finished his first, second—hell, he was on his fifth beer in less than a minute. “Black, fog or mist, possible wings, the ozone smell you said, I’m thinking some sort of storm paien. Too bad it’s not a parasite, looking only to drain energy. They’re more pests than anything. This one, however, sounds far above the pest category. Hopefully it’s a creature or spirit and not a god.” Yeah, we’d fought pseudo-gods before. Not fun. “Perhaps in earlier days he associated with uptight humans. Your people are quite good at that, labeling anything such as sex, gambling, and drinking as being depraved.” All of which happened to be the puck’s favorite activities. “Insanity beyond the pale. You said Ishiah was certain all the victims were human, yes? That would make sense if he clung to humankind for a pace. We hate what we love and love what we hate. Let me consider this for a moment longer.”

  All human victims. Or at least partly human when it came to me. Then once tasted, I was off the menu. That hurt my feelings.

  As Goodfellow closed his eyes to concentrate, I finished my Dr. Dew. When I came back with a second one, my knife that had been on the coffee table was gone. I glared at Niko, who was drinking soy milk with the obvious delusion there was some sort of taste to it.

  “When you stop twitching like a lab rat with electrodes in his brain, you’ll get it back,” he responded calmly. “Stir your poisonous concoction with your finger and if it eats the flesh from your bone don’t come crying to me.”

  I stirred, drank, and growled. My finger turned slightly red but that was probably psychosomatic. When I said so, Niko told me I didn’t have the depth of imagination for a psychosomatic disorder. I poured half of the Dr. Dew in his grass milk. He poured all his milk over my head. Normally he would’ve flipped me over the couch, but this was his way of being considerate of my stitches.

  “This is what you do while I think?” Robin’s eyes were now open. “Squabble like children in a sandbox?”

  “No, usually I kill something when I’m bored, but there’s nothing here to kill except you,” I complained halfheartedly. “And Niko hid my knife.” I tried to wring the milk out of my sopping hair.

  “Lack of an immediately convenient weapon. Never was there a truer sign of friendship.” He got to his feet. “I have an idea or two and someone to verify them. Fortunately, her business is open twenty-four hours a day. She’ll be awake. Let us go.”

  “How about a shower first?” I complained.

  “No, leave the milk.” Hi
s lips curved in a way I long recognized as being at my expense. “She’ll like you better for it. Apollo knows, you need all the brightening of your personality that you can get.”

  “But . . . milk?”

  “Milk,” he confirmed at the door before pausing.

  “Oh. And a dead rat if you happen to have one.”

  * * *

  “A cathouse? You brought us to a whorehouse?” Niko, arms folded and eyebrows furrowed, looked up at the face of the four-story brownstone built of warm-colored stone and accented with creamy white. Nice. Expensive. Classy. This wasn’t the place if you wanted a quick fifty-buck suck-and-fuck.

  “Now you sound as judgmental as Jack-the-skinner-Sprat, if that’s who it is. And it’s not a cathouse. It is the Cathouse. It has existed for well over four thousand years in different locations. I have stock in it. It’s quite profitable . . . except for the kilos of catnip they go through monthly. That does eat into the profit. But we all have our vices.”

  It had been a twenty-minute cab ride here and I now smelled like sour milk. I had two guns under my jacket and Niko had given me my KA-BAR knife back, but my mood was not good. There was the caffeine crash combined with the itch of new stitches and it was still too goddamn early for anyone or anything to be upright and viable for life.

  Sometimes I hated my job.

  I ignored the doorbell, a softly glowing button surrounded by a curved brass sleeping mouse, and pounded on the door. “We’re three little kittens who’ve lost our mittens. Ah, the hell with it. It’s a whorehouse.” I pounded on the door again. “Kits who need tits. Open up.”