"Hey, Georgie Porgie." I grinned. "How's the freckle queen?"
I had a routine with George, a trick that I liked to think kept me on the straight and narrow. Kept me sane. I treated her like a little sister—a kid barely off her Big Wheel. Hell, she was petite enough to pass for one. I teased; I called her affectionate yet annoying nicknames. Rolled my eyes at her stories, tugged her curls, and all but patted her on the head. I did my damned best to make the two-year difference between us seem like ten. But despite all the production, all the arm waving—"Look over here; look over there. Just don't, whatever you do, look at me. Don't see me, and don't… don't see what I'm trying so hard not to think." Despite it all…
None of it did me a damn bit of good.
Georgina shook her head, dark red curls corkscrewing wildly about her delicate shoulders. "The boys in my class are more mature than you, Cal," she said with soft humor.
Niko elbowed me sharply without mercy. He was aware of why I behaved the way I did, and he did me the remarkable favor of never saying a word about it. Neither I nor my inner monster was ready for that particular subject, and he knew it. "Something I have been telling him for years, Georgina. He refuses to listen."
George gave him a sympathetic look from huge velvet brown eyes. "Kids." As always she turned the tables on me so neatly that I couldn't stop the faint flush that burned over my cheekbones. Rough, tough, and capable of kicking anyone or anything's ass… and this girl had me squirming in my seat.
While they sympathized with each other over my immature ways, I retreated to the counter and snagged us three icecream sodas. Pineapple for George, boring vanilla for Niko, and chocolate cherry for me. Ignoring the fact it was almost bigger than she was, George went to work on hers immediately. She never took money for her readings. Absolutely refused. But she would take ice cream. With as many people that came to her, it was a miracle she wasn't a four-hundred-pound psychic.
"How is your family, Georgina?" Niko asked gravely as he slowly swirled a straw through the vanilla soda. "Your father?"
She touched the back of her hand to her mouth, blushing slightly under faintly freckled, caramel skin, and reached for a napkin. "He's doing okay," she replied with equal gravity.
George's father was sick, so sick that okay was the best that could be hoped for. Full-blown AIDS. He hadn't been such a great father to George or her brothers and sisters when they were younger. But he'd shaped up, pulled himself out of the deepest pit of hell, and given up the drugs. It just turned out it was too late. George and her family had gotten him back only to be on the verge of losing him again, this time permanently. Still Georgie was Georgie and she saw things in a light most people were blind to their whole lives. At least that's what Niko said. I was one of the nearsighted. If there was a light, I hadn't seen it, not even one dancing mote of it. The light was the big picture, the whole enchilada, life's puzzle. And I had two, maybe three pieces, none of which fit together.
"I'm very glad to hear it." Niko, a solid corner piece if ever there was one, laid his hands flat on the table. "Georgina, we need a reading."
"I know," she said simply before giving him a cheeky grin. "I am psychic after all."
Niko curled up one side of his mouth in a rare smile. "So you are." He held out a hand. "Shall we begin?"
Wiping her hand carefully on the napkin, she then laid it on Niko's, palm to palm. Her small hand dwarfed by his, she closed her eyes and hummed softly under her breath. It was a familiar process, one I'd seen several times before… with other people. This was our first reading, a fact that hadn't seemed to surprise Georgie at all. I'd considered, God knew how many times, finding out if George could see where I'd been those two years I was missing from my life. But in the end two thoughts always stopped me. The first being, wherever I'd been, whatever had happened to me, I was damn sure it was nothing she should have to see. And the second, I wasn't sure I even wanted to know. Maybe the Grendels had made sure I wouldn't remember or maybe I had. Whatever my life had been in that missing time, you could bet your balls it hadn't been all wine and roses. If my mind was the one refusing to remember, there had to be a helluva good reason. A helluva good one or a thousand god-awful, mind-shredding ones.