“You wouldn’t do that to a puppy.” I grinned. There was something wrong in enjoying injury as a license to bad behavior, but I’d never claimed there was anything particularly right with me.
“A puppy is capable of learning. A puppy doesn’t devote his life to seeing how far he can push me before I break mentally. A puppy does not order pizza and expect me to pay for it because he’s out of money.” Promise laughed at his seething outrage and rested her shoulder against his on the couch.
“Children can be such a blessing,” she said with mocking good humor as she continued to braid his wet hair, the bastard having beat me to the shower.
“Hardly,” Niko retorted. “I have done that tour of duty and have the post-traumatic stress disorder to prove it. The sex talk alone . . .” He gave a minute shudder.
The memory hit me and I rubbed my ribs with an absent, cautious touch. “Oh yeah. Isn’t that when I asked you what doggy style meant and did we need to borrow our neighbor’s poodle for a demonstration?” My grin transmuted into a smirk. “I think you foamed at the mouth a little. Good times, huh?”
“I don’t care about your ribs any longer,” he said. “I don’t care if they are broken and shards of bone are slicing your lungs to shreds. Pick. Up. The. Towel.”
Playing my “get out of brotherly violence” injury card, I ignored him and sat down very slowly in our beat-up recliner. Once in a comfortable position, I relaxed and waited for the warm wave of codeine to wash over me. “It is funny . . . not funny like the poodle thing . . . but funny weird how Goodfellow and Promise both insist there aren’t any such things as zombies, but they were there. If Robin hasn’t seen any and he’s literally old as dirt, the dirt T. rexes walked around on, then what the hell?”
Promise finished Niko’s braid and curled the end around one slender finger, her heather-shadowed eyes thoughtful. “I cannot think of an explanation. From Niko’s description of his appearance, Jack does sound like a typical storm spirit, but storm spirits, that I know of, don’t use skinning as a manner of killing.”
“And he is all about the skinning.” I yawned. “He was still going on about that at the bridge: wanting to save people’s skin. He’s like the world’s most homicidal stamp collector—he has to murder to do it and he just freaking won’t stop talking about it. I miss the monsters that just try to kill you, not tell you about their hobbies.”
“How are the legs?” Niko had leaned down to snag the towel and was folding it in his tragically OCD way.
“Not bad at all. That cloud he floats around in, it acted like a buffer. I’ve a few scrapes. Nothing major.”
“The pain pills working yet for your ribs?” He was a good brother: asking about my health, picking up my towel. I could probably get him to order that pizza for me if I looked pathetic enough.
“Feeling no pain,” I answered honestly.
“Good.” I was promptly hit in the face with my wet towel.
Of course, good brothers know tough love inside and out.
*
That night Promise stayed. Normally Niko and I would’ve switched off on watch, but Promise had no problem staying awake all night to wait for Jack to appear. Somehow I still managed to pull a two-hour watch. I say somehow because as much as Niko didn’t want to remember giving me the sex talk when I was a kid, I didn’t want to think about him and Promise doing the things I’d asked about back then.
Really didn’t want to think about it.
When I was a kid, I used to love giving Niko shit about sex. It drove him nuts. It was better than cable. But not now. If Niko hadn’t raised me in addition to being my brother, it could be different. I’d have bumped fists, blown it up, slapped his back, whatever the hell the wild and crazy kids did when their brother got laid. I didn’t know. Between the spine-shivering sensation other people had at the thought of their parents having sex and knowing my best friend was doing it with my boss, probably on the same bar where I served drinks, I was surrounded by a whole shitload of “I don’t wanna know.”
I spent those two hours simultaneously watching for Jack and telling myself that Niko and Promise were either practicing the lost, deadly art of flower arranging, or sharpening their already incredibly sharp blades. I hung grimly to those images, then slammed into my bedroom faster than I should have with my ribs when Promise appeared out of the darkened hallway with her elaborate coil of soft brown hair loose and spilling around her hips. Her feet were also bare, but bare feet were essential for flower arranging and sword care and no one could tell me differently.