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.