"We should've left New York. Even after Darkling was dead and we thought the Auphe were, we should've kept moving." I exhaled heavily as I sheathed fingers in my hair and said by rote, "You don't get attached, you never tell anyone your real name, and you always leave. Those were the rules." You always leave being the most important of them.
Niko sat across from me on the floor. His legs were folded in a style that made mine ache just to see it. He loosely rested his hands on his knees. His wrists were banded with what looked like a double row of Tibetan meditation beads, except these were made of steel and would deflect the blow of nearly any blade easily. "I know," he said. "I made those rules." The corners of his mouth deepened downward briefly. "And Sophia thought I scorned the old ways."
Sophia didn't have much room to talk. She'd broken ties with her clan when she'd run off, and they'd done the same to her years later when they found out what perverse bargain she'd made with the Auphe. As for the "old ways," she had never purposely taught us a thing, not once Niko had refused to be part of her scams. As young as the age of six, Nik already had an unwavering moral compass; he was a regular Dalai Lama of the trailer park. Whether we were involved or not, though, it didn't matter— the lessons were still there for the taking. She'd run a fortune-telling con at the kitchen table while we watched cartoons four feet away. At night she'd run a different kind of con and the walls were much thinner than four feet.
"Her rules, your rules." I shook my head. "I don't care. We should've lived by them. I should've. You wanted to leave. I was the one who said we should stay in New York." I frowned at him. "Usually when I'm an idiot, you don't listen to me."
"If that were true, I would be selectively deaf every hour out of the day," he stated, hitting my knee with a not-quite-painful flick of his finger. "Besides, you were right. We thought the enemy destroyed and we had made a life here. Granted it was a life of only a few months and we both broke the rules in doing so, but it was still a life. We had an ally and friend in Robin. We had the potential for more in Promise and Georgina. Why give that up for no reason at all?"
"Sanity is a reason," I countered, scraping a bruised knuckle along the silken fibers of the rug. "Pretty good one too."
We should've known better. Seeing their destruction with our own eyes aside, we still should've known better. The Auphe were still out there, and they wouldn't stay hidden forever. Then there was Robin. Someone wanted him dead, and that was probably a fairly frequent event. Jesus. As for Sawney…we'd made him our problem and it was possible he could take one or more of us out. I'd managed to survive the uncertainty of George's and Nik's disappearance months ago. Managed, as in, just goddamn barely, and only by becoming the coldest son of a bitch that I could be.
Deal?
What a lie. After sitting, pacing, sitting again, and thinking of other things to bash over Robin's head while he slept, I obviously wasn't dealing.
"I have to get out of here for a while." I got up more quickly from the couch than I should have, my body groaning from multiple revenant blows.
"It's four a.m.," Niko pointed out, unmoving. "Where will you…ah." He gave an approving nod. "An excellent idea, if she cooperates. If she will 'look.'"
"Yeah." I started toward the door. "That's a big if." But if I had my way, she wouldn't get away with not looking.
Not this time.
16
George was sitting on the stoop of her apartment building waiting for me. For that, she had looked. Or maybe for the little things, she didn't look. Maybe she just knew without any effort at all.
She was wrapped in a robe. Hundreds of patches were stitched together in a tapestry of velvet, silk, simple polished cotton—any material you could think of. Some were embroidered, some not; the only requirement was they were all a shade of red. Scarlet, garnet, crimson, ruby, candy-apple, every hue you could imagine was there. That combined with her deep gold-brown skin and copper hair reminded me of a painting we'd passed in the museum while looking for Sawney. Some artist, the name began with a K, but I remembered the repeating pattern of squares, the vibrant colors, the tranquil face.
At almost five a.m. we were as alone as you could be in the city, and I looked at her silently. She knew. About Charm, she knew, and I didn't think that had anything to do with being psychic. It had to do with being a woman. I ducked my head and then sat two steps below her.
She rested a hand on my hair, smoothing it. "We all have to learn our own way. Make our own passage." She dropped her hand and said with anger and disappointment, "You always were and always will be one for the difficult path." She squared her shoulders and shook her head. "There is the road traveled, the road less so, and the cliff. You head straight for the cliff, Caliban. Every time. Every single time."
She tightened the robe around her and clasped hands around her knees. "When you tire of hitting the bottom, let me know. Maybe I'll still be here. Maybe I won't, but I can tell you this: The only things that you'll find on the difficult path that aren't on the smoother one are bruises and regrets."