Moonshine (24 page)

And the one in said wife beater looked like a helluva negotiator.

His skin was dusky, a shade darker than Niko's. Wavy black hair was paired with a thick, drooping mustache and impenetrable dark eyes. Impressive muscles bulged as he folded his arms over his chest. As he eyed us with suspicious disfavor, the old woman whispered in his ear. Two other men flanked them, each casually swinging a baseball bat.

"What do you want here?" the obvious leader demanded harshly when we stopped about ten feet away. "We're not running a boarding kennel." The slow sneer was flashed at Flay. Flay yawned, unimpressed, yet showing some rather impressive teeth. He'd heard it all before, most of it from me.

Niko ignored the posturing. "We're in search of something. To buy."

That perked the Rom's ears up although he refused to show it. Looking Niko up and down, he curled his lip. "Vayash, eh?"

He was right. Our mother had been of the Vayash clan. That in and of itself wouldn't have been too amazing of a guess; the Vayash were the only clan to spawn blonds. How he knew Niko was of Gypsy stock was another matter.

"Yes," Niko confirmed. "Our mother was Vayash."

There were worlds of meaning behind that statement. We were Gypsy, but we'd not been raised Gypsy. The man nodded and frowned. "That hair, those eyes, that nose. Vayash." His eyes traveled past Niko to take me in. It couldn't be more clear that Flay wasn't Rom, and neither was Goodfellow with his coloring. "You." He shook his head. "The Vayash, always polluting themselves with the Gadje." Gadje… outsiders, non-Gypsy. "We thought they'd finally seen the error of that particular way."

It was a free pass if ever we'd been given one. They didn't know I was Auphe. Sure, I was half-Vayash at best. Polluted, second-class, not
true
Rom, but it was a definite step up from abomination. It was also a helluva lucky break and Niko didn't waste any time in taking advantage of it.

"Our acquaintance"—he indicated Goodfellow with a jut of his chin—"has a good deal of money. Perhaps you can help him spend it… if you have what we're seeking."

Robin's groan was nearly inaudible, but considering his money-grubbing ways, that was the equivalent of a ringing endorsement. Four sets of dark eyes focused on him, brightening with a look I'd seen more than once in Goodfellow's own. Baseball bats hung at rest and white teeth flashed expansively under a thick black mustache. "We have many, many things. Surely one will be what you seek. I am Branje." He swept an arm toward an RV to the right. "We'll sit, we'll talk, we'll drink. We'll take very good care of our new friends." Bullshit, every word of it. We knew it, and Branje most likely knew that we knew it, but it was the game, and the game had to be played.

Although not by me. Flay didn't seem much interested in the dark and gloomy interior either. Instead he wrinkled his nose, shook his head adamantly, and sat his furry ass on the ground. I kept him company under the broiling sun, leaning against the hot metal. Drinking and conniving, watching the highest levels of tricksters, the Rom and a Puck, going mano a mano, none of it much interested me. I'd sooner sweat and bake.

"Smell weird."

The clack of the door closing above our heads had been several minutes ago, and I'd been sitting with eyes shut as I listened to the sound of a million enraged bugs. At least it seemed like a million. Swatting yet another mosquito on my forearm, I asked incuriously, "What smells weird?"

"You."

I opened my eyes and slanted a glance at Flay's moist face. I'd have thought the panting would mean he wouldn't have to sweat, but it seemed Snowball had gotten the worst of both worlds there. "Yeah, yeah, I smell like Auphe. Monster. Stinky. The subject's been covered."

Eyes rolled in annoyance under the brim of the baseball cap. "No. Smell weird. Not just Auphe stink. More.
Human
weird."

"So you're saying, now I'm stinky
and
I smell weird?" I summed up as I wiped the sweat from my face. "Great. My self-esteem says thanks for playing."

The T-shirt-covered shoulders shrugged. "Tell what I smell."

At any other time that would've been funny. The casual toss off by a tourist-gear-wearing wolf. I almost wished I could appreciate it, but if I did, there would be other things waiting to push in… things I would appreciate a lot less. I closed my eyes again. "Promise likes calla lilies. Her apartment is always full of them, all colors."

Seconds later I heard Flay get to his feet and start moving from RV to RV, knocking on the doors. I seriously doubted he would find any out here, but then again you never knew. It was nearly twenty minutes later when I was interrupted again. The sun had started to fall and the temperature had dropped nearly an entire degree when the door flew open and Goodfellow came storming out. He was cursing at the top of his lungs; I didn't have to recognize the words to know just how filthy they were. It was Romany he was speaking, the original language of the Gypsy clans. The dialect tended to vary from clan to clan, tribe to tribe, but as a rule every Rom knew it. Niko and I, however, didn't. Sophia hadn't let more than an occasional Romany word slip and those hadn't been exactly educational. Apparently, Robin's grasp of Rom foul language far exceeded Sophia's own, because I'd yet to hear anything that I knew.

Pointing a finger back at the RV, Goodfellow swore again, then switched to English. He'd once remarked to me that no language was quite as good as English for spitting disgust and disdain. French was close, but English won out in the end for sheer crudeness. "Soul-sucking harridan. Shriveled, toothless old crone. Put your malicious, grasping fingers away. You won't get a single penny from me."

There was the gentle thud of boots in the dirt beside me and Niko sighed, "Negotiations have begun. This may take some time."

"They have it?" I almost slipped. I almost felt the desperation. Yeah… almost. But you know what. they say about almost. Hand grenades and horseshoes. Nothing but hand grenades and horseshoes.

"It's a possibility." He sat beside me to watch the show. It turned out that the old woman, not the man with the mustache, was the leader—at least in the field of negotiations. "Abelia-Roo is a cagey opponent."

She came rocketing out of the RV shaking a wrinkled fist and swinging an elaborately carved cane. Not sharing Goodfellow's belief about English, she howled out a string of consonants and vowels in Romany that had even the perpetually jaded Robin's eyes widening. "My hair? My
hair
? You prune-teated old goat, you'd best take that back. Take it back or I'll rain fire on this miserable campsite until it's wiped from the face of the earth."

"Can he actually do that?" I asked skeptically.

Niko snorted. There was the tart smell of blackberry brandy on his breath. He had swallowed the traditional thimbleful to start the business at hand. "Hardly. If he could, every two-star restaurant in the city would be smoking ruins."

That was true enough. I watched as two gnarled fingers went up behind the white head like horns and Abelia-Roo made a sneering comment. "A leash?" Goodfellow shot back. "I think you're sadly mistaken, witch from hell. You've never kept one of my kind on a leash. Oh, I think perhaps you
worshipped
us as lowly cave apes should, and if anyone wore the leash, it was you." He spit onto the dirt at her feet. "Lying, thieving human."

This time she did switch to English. "Lying, thieving puck." Her spit actually hit Goodfellow's shoe.

Ah, it was like old times. I stretched my legs out into the dirt. "We're on a schedule, Nik. This is going to take forever."

"Have faith." His shoulder butted against mine. "Our shark against theirs? How can we not prevail?"

"I don't know. We've done a pretty good job of it so far." I drummed fingers on my leg and said pragmatically, "We could hurt someone. That would speed things along nicely, I'll bet."

There was an uncustomary hesitation on Niko's part before he said smoothly, "True." His finger thumped my knee before pointing. "How about her? She doesn't look precisely fleet of foot. We could run her to the ground in seconds." A pregnant Rom girl peeked at us from a doorway across the camp. Seeing our eyes on her, she quickly disappeared and slammed the door behind her. "We could break her wrist. It wouldn't take more than a minute at the most."

As brotherly lessons went, it was a little less subtle than usual. "I was thinking more of Branje," I drawled, "but you've made your point."

"Have I?" He was poised to say something more, but Flay moved past us carrying a handful of plum-colored lilies. Niko watched his progress as the wolf loped back toward our home away from home. A less-than-amused look was then turned on me. "I'm curious, little brother. How long have you had these suicidal impulses?"

"You're not afraid of a little competition, are you, Cyrano?" I elbowed him in a move so automatic that it worked entirely independently of my brain. "Besides," I added, "it gives him something to think about other than his kid." I closed my eyes again. "Wake me up when Goodfellow stops talking."

There was a swat on the side of my head, not hard enough to hurt, although it definitely stung. The words were more gentle. "Hang in there, Cal. We're halfway home."

Hours later, we were still only halfway there and Niko was giving new consideration to my idea. Eyeing Branje across the leaping campfire, he said thoughtfully, "We could rip off his mustache and feed it to him. That is sure to inspire a little spirit of cooperation."

The fire, less for heat and more for driving away the bugs, billowed with a peculiar green smoke. It worked. The air was thick with the acrid smell of sage and eucalyptus, but the mosquitoes were gone, though the night had brought out another kind of predator. Promise stood at Niko's side, a single lily tucked in her hair. I'd seen the look exchanged between the two of them when she'd first appeared wearing the flower. Pure affectionate humor.

"It is an exceptionally unfortunate mustache."

Promise agreed. "You'd be doing him a favor. I'm sure he'd be much more attractive without it."

Goodfellow chose that moment to stomp over with an expression of outraged frustration on his face. "I give up. I do. That maniacal old crone cannot be reasoned with. Not now. Not ever." His hand moved up to nervously smooth his wavy hair. "She cursed me, said my hair would fall out before the next full moon." He pulled his hand away and peered at the palm carefully for any deserters. "My
hair
," he murmured, still shocked over the audacity.

"You don't actually believe in Gypsy curses, do you?" I asked with a faint overlay of scorn.

Green eyes narrowed on me with impatience. "Of course not. I, an immortal creature, am only standing here with a vampire, a half Auphe, and a walking talking wolf. Why would I possibly believe in something as ludicrous as a Gypsy curse?" He rubbed the heel of both hands over tired eyes and went on to snap, "And then there's that entire year I spent impotent thanks to one."

Niko skipped straight over that information as more than any of us wanted to know and said, "They won't sell it, then?"

"Sell it?" he repeated with disgust. "They won't even admit to having the Calabassa. They have, however, tried to sell me everything else under Zeus's infinite regard."

"After all that time?" Promise touched a shimmering nail to her lower lip. "Abelia-Roo must be a formidable opponent indeed."

"She would eat every one of my salesmen for breakfast and have room for a champagne chaser," he said glumly.

Goodfellow went on to say something else, but by then I had drifted off. It was a casual stroll with what looked like no particular destination in mind, yet I ended up past the fire and closing in on Branje. I didn't pull my Glock. The Rom were skilled knife fighters; they didn't respect the gun. And I wanted their respect. I wanted their fear more, but a little additional respect wouldn't hurt matters any. Branje, drinking from an unlabeled brown bottle, didn't see me coming until he was on the ground and the knife at his throat. I wasn't quite as practiced in the art of silence as Niko, but I was close. After all, I'd been taught by the best. Branje was tough, though—I had to give him that. With my knee buried in his stomach and my blade in the softness under his chin, he cursed and grabbed at his own knife on his belt.

I cut him.

The wound was two inches long and shallow, but it was enough to still Branje's hand. "My men will kill you," he hissed.

"I think they have their own problems," I said serenely. I didn't look up to verify that. I didn't need to. I could hear the whip of Niko's sword through the air and his cold command of "Back away.
Now
." I'd heard his low curse as he'd spotted me right before I reached my goal, and I'd known he wouldn't be far behind me.

The Rom's eyes flickered from one side to the other, then back to me. "Then Abelia-Roo will curse the pecker right off your body."

I moved the knife from his throat to insert the tip in his nose. "Probably, but how much comfort will that be to you after I cut your nose from your face? Or maybe your ears." I considered for a few seconds as I idly twisted my wrist. A tiny trickle of blood began to creep from his nostril over his lip. "Or maybe—just maybe—I'll take it all. Nose, ears, eyes, tongue." I gave him a consoling smile. "I'll leave the mustache. You seem very proud of it."

I felt him twitch beneath me, but his face remained unmoving and stoic. Like I said, he was tough. But were his people gathered around us as tough? Some might be, but there were bound to be others with slightly weaker stomachs or softer hearts. Someone would break… sooner or later. I pulled the knife back and said truthfully, "It's nothing personal, Branje. Try and keep that in mind." This time the blade found his ear. He had large, fleshy lobes. I could take half off and he'd still have enough to spare. The first drop of blood had appeared when a voice stopped me.

"Now, here is one who knows how to negotiate." There was the approving smack of Abelia-Roo's toothless gums. "Now, here is a
man
."

If you only knew, I thought with dark amusement before my emotion shifted to cautious surprise. This wasn't the surrender I'd been shooting for. This was Grandma having balls to put all ours to shame and a shriveled soul to match mine. I looked up to see her duck under Niko's blade as if it were a garland of flowers. Arthritic knees popping like gunshots, she crouched beside Branje and me. "You want the Calabassa, do you?" Brown eyes flecked with gold and black nestled in the midst of tissue-paper skin folded into hundreds of wrinkles.