I licked my fingers clean of the sticky sweetness from the bun. "He also seemed worried about you. Seriously, Robin, who is he? He knows you, and I mean really knows you, the good and the bad. Not many people can say that." Niko and I couldn't, not entirely—not with Robin holding back on us.
He hesitated, pushed the food around on his plate, then exhaled. "What is he would be more appropriate. A recruiter for the good and noble life, you could say, one with a moral code even more stringent than that of your brother." He gave a mock shudder at the thought. "It's uncanny. Unhinging might be the better word. Far too many Boy Scouts in the world." The mild annoyance deepened to something darker. "We have a history, Ishiah and I do. One of him pushing and pushing and utterly pissing me off. He'd have me give up everything that makes me the magnificent specimen I am."
"The lying, the cheating, the screwing everything in sight?" I asked with a grin.
"Exactly." He took a bite of eggs, outraged at the thought.
It was hard to imagine the guy with the balls to try and recruit Robin Goodfellow to the straight and narrow. Even harder to imagine why. "He really did seem worried as hell about you," I said again. He'd been angry, but controlled because I hadn't seen his wings as he'd stalked off. There'd been only a pale gray leather jacket, blue shirt, and faded jeans. His blond hair had covered the scar, so it didn't give anything away. Blond hair…but pale, not the more familiar darker shade I'd seen every day of my life. Overcast blue-gray eyes in contrast to pure winter sky, fair skin to Rom olive, an inch or two taller, but …
The realization prickled in the back of my brain, not quite made but worming its way up. Robin liked Niko, a helluva lot. He had chased him relentlessly in the past before Promise showed up. Hell, chased him a little bit after that too. And Ishiah…Ishiah looked like Niko.
No. No, that wasn't it at all. Niko looked like Ishiah.
Robin, already gathering in the creaky workings of my brain, looked me up and down and took in my rumpled clothing for a quick change of subject before I could open my mouth. "Again … in one year? How can you bear the exertion?" he drawled. "Just remember, once you go furry, you never have to worry. Well, technically that's not true. She could transform halfway through and eat you…have a cookie with her nookie. Or worse yet, have you seen those nature channels? Romulus's hairy sac. You could be stuck for hours. Next time be sure to take the crossword, just in case. Or a crowbar and some WD-40."
That effectively ruined my appetite. "I hope your ribs hurt like hell," I grumbled as Niko and Promise appeared in the room. The Ishiah matter wasn't forgotten, but I shoved it on the back burner as Niko had something on his mind. I figured that out when he shoved me in the bathroom, slapped a bar of soap in my hand, a towel over the mirror, and bought that big lie I was still wearing. After the quick shower, he was pushing me out the door past a sweating and swearing cabbie toting what had to be a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound steamer trunk. Poor bastard. Better him than me.
By the time we hit the street, Niko finally spoke. "We need to check on Boggle."
I was actually rather relieved to hear it. I felt…hell, I wasn't sure what I felt. Boggle was a killer and a predator, but we'd gotten her into that mess. If she died because of it … it wasn't a good thought. "Okay. Wanna bring some lollipops for the kiddies?"
"And," he added, ignoring the wiseass remark, "Promise and I have verified Sawney's new 'cave.' "
"Yeah?" I said with grim interest. "Is it in that building?"
"More or less. Under it would be more precise. It was what I'd forgotten reading after all. That building is Buell Hall, the last remaining structure of a former insane asylum as they called it back then."
Oh, Jesus. It made sense. It made perfect sense. The slaughter at the mental institute, his fondness for the more psychologically damaged homeless, his fascination with the taste of Auphe craziness that he was so sure was in me. Sawney was all about insanity…twenty-four-seven. It made absolute goddamn sense he'd hole up in the ruins of an old asylum—as much as I didn't want it to.
But that neat, quaint brick building? It looked like the house of someone's grandmother. Cookies and milk, not electroshock and straitjackets. "You're kidding. Tell me you're kidding," I demanded.
He wasn't kidding. Where Columbia now stood had once been the New York Lunatic Asylum, renamed the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum years later. From 1808 to 1894, it had stood before moving to the New York Hospital in White Plains.
Frigging fascinating.
It wasn't creepy enough that the revenants were ravaging the campus; they and Sawney were also roaming the underremnants of an insane asylum from the eighteen hundreds. In addition to Buell Hall, there was the asylum tunnel system, once used for steam or coal transport, that ran beneath the campus. Tunnel upon tunnel. It would be perfect for getting around the place and popping up like a hellish jack-in-the-box without being seen in transit.