“By making a tourist vomit and giving you a chance to take out your frustrations by kicking him in the stomach?” I asked curiously, tearing my eyes away from the screen before it burned my retinas with its idiocy.
The grin was quick and fleeting, but it was there. “Don’t do it again, but, yeah, I enjoyed it. I shouldn’t have—a few of my old ways creeping back. But sometimes you need a distraction, and you, little brother, are always that. I needed it today. Now, get your ass off the computer and go to bed. It’s past midnight and we both have to go back to work tomorrow as if nothing happened.” Because as far as anyone knew, nothing had, but it didn’t stop the darkness in him from beginning to overflow. He needed time to remember, time to put those memories in all those tiny boxes we have inside us. To put them away for another day—a day when they would be bearable again.
“Go.” He pointed at my bed where Godzilla was curled up on my pillow. “And . . . thanks.”
He closed my door. I didn’t sleep, though Godzilla snored through a tiny deviated septum. I was nineteen and far beyond curfews and bedtimes, but Stefan’s trying to take care of me made him feel better about Anatoly, so I didn’t argue. I simply didn’t obey, and by the morning I had more than enough reasons for Stefan to take back that thanks he’d given me.
I iz up shit crick, haz no paddle.
I now liked all animals except cats, which, if they’d allowed this travesty to go on, weren’t as smart as I had thought they were. Kind of like me, I thought grimly before correcting myself. Self-blame, so sayeth Jericho, was destructive to the mission, any mission, including staying free and alive. I should’ve seen it sooner. I hadn’t. It was time to move on to more constructive thoughts.
Stretching, I yawned, but only lightly. We healed faster, and as I got older, I started sleeping less too. Four hours were as good as eight to me. Less downtime, double the assassinations—Jericho had Walmart beat hands down for sales efficiency. I hadn’t told Stefan yet about the change in my sleep patterns. I wanted to be as normal as possible in his eyes and with all the other genetic baggage I had, that was not easy. I got out the chair, showered, fed Godzilla, Gamera, and Mothra, and was waiting for Stefan in the kitchen with breakfast and a stack of pictures I’d printed off my computer.
He stopped in the doorway, which was also freshly painted—the mobster who’d traded his gun in for a paintbrush, or had switched hands with them anyway. Paint with the right, keep a weapon in your left. He didn’t look much better than yesterday, especially with the addition of dark stubble that his scar ran through like a road to nowhere. “You cooked?” He rubbed the sleep crust from his eyes and took another look. “And it’s healthy. That can’t be good.”
Cheese omelet with butter-fried potatoes, sausage, toast, coffee, and orange juice. Compared to my usual chocolate chip pancakes or cinnamon-banana waffles, it was healthy. He sat down and started digging in, every fork stroke a testament to massively overacted resignation. “I’m rebuilding the garage, you know,” he mumbled around a mouthful of food. “Poison ivy. Splinters. You couldn’t have waited until winter to blow it up? When all the poison ivy, oak, and whatever else was dead?”
“You are such a drama queen,” I said drily.
His eyebrows shot up and he almost choked on his eggs. “Sara at the coffee shop taught me that one,” I explained. “It seems to fit.”
“Glad you’re picking up all the slang, but cut me some slack and at least give me drama king.” He put down the fork and reached for the coffee. “Go on, spill. Let’s get whatever it is out of the way. What could be worse than the garage, because I have houses to paint and you have tourists to not piss off today.”
“Eat first,” I ordered. He wouldn’t feel like eating after, not for a while.
“Misha . . .”
“Eat.” I folded my arms.
“Michael, I’m serious.”
I looked up at the ceiling. There were cracks there. Three formed a completely perfect equilateral triangle. I’d measured it one day just to be sure. If there was a God, the bipolar one who was wrathful and vengeful in the Old Testament and raining fluffy kittens of love in the New Testament, it wouldn’t be in the sky or the sea or the inexplicable saving of a life. It would be in a perfect, equal-sided triangle. God would be the universe; the universe is physics; physics is science. Therefore God would be science. I wondered if I could cut it out of the ceiling and sell it on eBay. People did that with tortillas all the time and you couldn’t measure the Madonna, Mother of God. I had proof. Surely that would get me a higher price.