The man held up his hands. “Hold your horses. You sure don’t look like brother and sister. He looking all Irish with that red hair and you looking, well, all kinds there is. Ain’t meaning to step on any toes regarding family.”
He was right. Zeke was my family, my brother, just as Griffin was. I’d lost my real brother, Kimano, years ago, and vengeance, while satisfying, couldn’t bring him back. But life had given me two more. Not my guys, not my boys, but my brothers. For a loner trickster who usually led the most wandering of lives, who made the most temporary passing through or ending of your life, I was picking up strays like crazy. They were anchors to my kind, Mama would be the first to say. I looked down the street to see Zeke swiveling his red head back and forth with a “Hey, what?” puzzled expression as people moved away from him.
No, not anchors, Mama. They were wings. They had wings when they cared to show them and they were my wings. I’d thought I’d been blessed to have one brother. Now I was blessed to have two.
“If you’re going to leave, then take the pervert with you,” I heard Zeke demand. “His dick touched my gun. Now I’ll have to take it to the free clinic to be tested. Do you know how hard that is to explain?”
Blessed was a strong word. Fortunate. I was fortunate to have two more.
“Especially when it’s the third time?”
All right, family. It was everyone’s burden to bear. And bear it I would . . . with the same grace and style with which I bore everything else.
“Does anyone have any goddamn hand sanitizer?”
My cell rang at just the moment I was considering taking the bat back from “Sarge” and using it on Zeke. Very good timing. Griffin was excellent at that. “What is Zeke doing?” he asked before I could say hello. “You’re zapping me with waves of irritation like a leaky microwave. Zeke feels the same as always—his usual nice Zen level of vexation with the world in general, and since I normally can only read what you want me to, I have to guess he’s also having a little fun with you.” He didn’t sound especially sympathetic. Amused was more like it. He dealt with Zeke’s quirks every day and he did it with the grace and style I was beginning to shed like a winter coat.
“Zeke is being Zeke,” I groaned. Since I was assuming his taking his gun to the free clinic was a joke, I added, “The more he develops a sense of humor, the more worried I get. It scares even my kind.”
I heard the grin in Griffin’s voice. “I wake up to it every morning. I’d think a big, bad trickster such as you could suck it up a little. Ouch. Fine. You want me to come over to that side and make Zeke play nice?” The “ouch” would be from my escalating annoyance.
The picture of Zeke playing nice made all the irritation instantly disappear. It was too ludicrous to imagine. Zeke being a good boy—I would’ve laughed, but in that moment I saw them . . . two men meandering down the sidewalk from Zeke’s end. They wore baseball hats and knee-length jackets bulky enough to hide a baseball bat. “Have to go, Griffin. I have two over here. Look for one on your side. It’s time to get off the bench and play for real.” I hoped that Zeke remembered we were here to help, but vengeance wasn’t ours this time. And it wasn’t Heaven’s. It belonged to these people.
I made a quick call, then put the cell phone away and waited. They kept coming, not trying to look inconspicuous by hunching their shoulders or keeping their heads down. They swaggered, predators on the prowl and proud as punch. Except they were more like poodles on the prowl, teacup ones, strolling into the open mouth of a lion. Pulling the hood of my raincoat over my hair, I did some hunching of my own. Hopeless, helpless, lost . . . victim. Put out what you want others to see and they’ll see it. Whether you’re a pretender to the throne or to the gutter, the ignorant rarely see the chameleon. And if the chameleon is actually less a tiny lizard and more of Godzilla waiting to swallow you whole . . . that truly was your bad luck. You should’ve looked closer. You should’ve paid attention.
They passed Zeke, still sitting with his gun now out of sight. They hesitated, but kept moving. Zeke would never a chameleon make. We all have different talents. Looking harmless wasn’t one of Zeke’s.
They might have swung a wide berth around Zeke, but the two of them came on, through shifting people, focusing . . . focusing. There . . . Look at that. There was a woman, hiding under her hood, so withdrawn from the world, so afraid, she’d balled herself up, hoping to disappear completely. Bullies loved fear. In seconds they stood in front of me, baseball bats now out and hanging by their legs, harsh grins showing as they gobbled up a fear that wasn’t there and saw a woman who didn’t exist.
“Hey, bitch.” A foot nudged my leg hard. “Look at me. I wanna see if you’re worth messing up or if you’re ugly as shit already.”