Nightlife (16 page)

It's strange how a familiar place can be so comforting, even if that place is a run-down bar. You would think that as much time as I spent in that hole-in-the-wall while working, it would be the last place I'd want to be in my off time. Yet here we were. The three of us, blank faces over roiling emotions, walked through the door and headed straight for the bar. The tables, parked in the corners of the room, seemed too shadowed. Too isolated. As little as I liked having my back to the entire room, I liked the thought of sitting immersed in darkness even less.

It was still early enough that we were among a very select group of hard-core alcoholics. I slapped a hand on the bar to get Meredith's attention. "Hey, Merry, hose us down, would ya?"

She finished stacking glasses and moved over in front of us to lean suggestively on the counter. Her skintight, baby-doll T-shirt had a neckline low enough to display the produce far and wide. "Cal, Niko, who's your new friend?"

I should've known. Merry had probably smelled Robin coming five blocks away. New meat. Ding-ding-ding. Of course, it could be interesting. Two predators coming together. We could lay bets on who would get gobbled up first. "Oh, sorry. Meredith, this is Robin… er… Rob Fellows," I introduced less than smoothly.

She leaned further, the twins teetering precariously inside their cotton prison. "Nice to meet you, Rob," she murmured with a throaty purr. "Very nice indeed."

Goodfellow gave her only a shadow of his usual leer, the glance at her overflowing breasts barely lustful. "Not as nice as it is to meet you, my fairy princess. Especially as there is so much of you to meet."

It was almost disturbing, his lack of enthusiasm. This was not the Goodfellow we'd come to know and vaguely tolerate. "Merry, this man needs a drink and fast," I ordered with dark cheer. "Before we lose him altogether."

"We certainly don't want that, do we?" With a practiced and flirtatious flip of her hair she took our choice of poison. She was so enamored of Robin that she didn't even blink at Niko ordering a beer. Granted, it was an imported one, but it was alcoholic and it still gave me a shock to see Niko taking a pull from the bottle.

"No glass?" I touched my bottle to his with a clink. "You barbarian."

"I have every expectation the bottle is cleaner than any glass here," he said with lofty disdain. I couldn't argue with that. I'd washed some of those glasses.

Robin didn't bother with warming up, but instead skipped right to the hard stuff: Scotch straight up. No rocks, no water, hell, barely even a glass. I swapped amused glances with Niko as we watched him go. He'd said Homer had almost drunk him under the table. I didn't believe that for a second. The man, to use the term loosely, could drink. Within an hour he had all but drained the bar dry and wore out Meredith trying to keep up with his demands for more drinks. More people had started to trickle in and she was looking more frazzled with each new customer and every wave of Robin's hand followed by a caroled "Another round, fairy princess!"

Goodfellow was waiting for his latest drink when he finally started to list on his stool. His head ended up on Niko's shoulder, his nose buried in the long blond fall of my brother's hair. The braid was history, courtesy of my freak-out. Robin inhaled and murmured, "Your hair smells good, like warm summer sun."

Niko sighed patiently and shifted him back up onto his stool. Not one to give up so easily, he immediately listed to the other side and took a nosedive in some woman's shoulder-length brown curls. "Your hair smells good," he repeated happily. "Like warm summer sun."

"On that note." Niko stood and stretched. "It's your turn to babysit." He moved off toward the back of the bar and the bathrooms.

Robin used the opportunity to plop down on the deserted barstool. Pillowing his head on his arms, he studied me with half-lidded, sleepy eyes. "Hello," he said solemnly.

The alcohol fumes from his breath alone would give you a contact buzz. I snorted, "Hello yourself, Loman."

"You all right?" Robin's sly, sarcastic mouth was turned down with no hint of its normal irreverent twist.

He was worried, sincerely worried and obviously just as sincerely sorry for what had happened. I had a feeling Goodfellow wasn't used to being wrong. What had happened had really thrown him for a loop, even more so than it had me. In some ways I was relieved it hadn't worked. That probably made me one helluva coward. We hadn't gotten the information we'd hoped for. In fact we hadn't gotten anything except a sore throat and a few bruises. Considering I'd based a lot of hopes on what we'd find out, you'd think I'd be more disappointed. But in the end I think I'd been afraid what I would remember would change me for good and not necessarily for the better.

"I'm all right," I assured him. "I don't remember a thing. Which is about par for the course for me, huh?"

"I'm not so sure you don't have the right idea there." Exhaling, he closed his eyes. "Wish I could forget." Then he straightened, sat up, opened his eyes, and shed the self-pity instantly. "Do you think you'll leave, then? Since we didn't find out anything, I'm sure your brother will be determined to hie for the hills."

I shrugged and took a swallow of my second beer. "Nik's got my best interests at heart, the stubborn bastard. Still, I want to stay. I'm tired of running." Setting the bottle down, I added without much optimism, "I'll talk to him, but Nik is Nik."

"You're fortunate, you know. Having a brother." He ignored the new drink Meredith deposited in front of him. Definitely less enamored of him than she had been previously, his fairy princess gave him a pointed glare and steamed off.

"I know." Revealing genuine emotion to someone other than my brother didn't come easily to me, but this was one of the rare occasions that I let it color my words. "As long as I have Niko, I think I just might survive all this shit."

An expression shifted fleetingly across his foxlike face. I thought it might be sadness or pity, maybe even both. "You realize that you could live longer, much longer than your brother," he said with grave apology. "You could still be young while he's old or even…" He didn't finish; he didn't have to.

I took another sip of my beer before replying matter-of-factly, "No, I won't."

"But, you
could
. The Auphe are enormously long-lived, as
much so as
I
am. You may have inherited that
. You could conceivably live hundreds, even thousands of years."

He thought that I didn't understand, that I didn't grasp what he was telling me. But he was the one who didn't have a clue. There was no way I was living without Niko, no way I could survive without my only family. No way I even wanted to. I pushed his glass closer to him. "Drink your Scotch, Loman. We're all fairy-tale creatures here, remember? Everyone lives happily ever after."

I wasn't sure if he read between the lines or not, but the gulp he took of his drink emptied half the glass. A cheerful rumble came over my shoulder. "You might want to cut your buddy off before he passes out."

I turned my head to see a familiar face. It was Samuel, the guy from the band, still as pussyfooted as ever. "You wouldn't say that if you'd actually spent time with him," I countered with mock gloom. "What are you doing here? I thought you weren't playing until Friday."

He leaned against the bar, a grin splitting his face with a blinding flash. "What? This isn't the place to be? Can't a guy come out for a brew?"

"No, it's not the place to be and I think Fellows here already drank all the brew." After leading a wholly solitary life except for Niko, I suddenly felt like I was developing an entourage.

A comradely hand slapped me on the back. "Well, I've never been one to get between a man and his liquor. Actually I came to pick up our money from last weekend. Genghis is running short of leather-pants funds. Your boss in the back?"

"Tallywhacker? I've never seen him anywhere else," I grunted. "Good luck prying dough out of his sweaty hand."

"I have ray ways." He waved and disappeared toward the back.

As I looked over my shoulder toward Goodfellow, Meredith caught my eye. She was checking her reflection in a small hand mirror, primping like she always did. It wasn't her but the sight of the mirror that made me take notice. Abruptly, I asked Robin, "Goodfellow, you know anything about haunted mirrors?"

He raised his eyebrows, fingers curled around a now empty glass. "Now, that is out of the blue." The words were only the slightest bit faded around the edges, not slurred, but not crystal edged either. "Haunted mirrors? As in ghosts?" He wiggled fingers in the air. "As in 'boo'?"

"Never mind," I said dismissively, signaling for another beer. "It's nothing."

"Caliban, wait. I didn't mean anything by it." He paused as I received my new brew, then continued as Meredith passed out of earshot. "Tell me about your mirror problem."

I shot a glance toward the men's room. Niko had just stepped out, but Samuel had stopped him and was talking to him. Good. "It's not exactly a problem. More like a nuisance. A little annoying, a little irritating. Kind of like you, in fact."

"And you actually want my help," he said sourly. "That's what makes it so amazing."

It was my turn to say I was sorry. It seemed like I was doing that a lot lately and I wasn't so sure I liked it. What had happened to the unapologetic son of a bitch I'd always been? "Sorry." Shrugging uncomfortably, I went on. "Something's been sort of following me from mirror to mirror, bizarre as that sounds. And it's weird, but I have the feeling it's happened before now. I've never actually seen it, but I hear it. It sings… Well, it hums anyway. Maybe it doesn't know the words."

"That's not much to go on." Robin furrowed his brow and scratched his chin. "Lots of creatures are musically inclined. Sirens, for one. That guy and his rats, for another."

"The Pied Piper? Damn, was there anyone you didn't know?" I held up a hand just in time. "Rhetorical question. And anyway, didn't you play the pipes?"

"Who do you think taught Rat Boy? The ungrateful bastard." He sighed, leaning a bit harder on the bar. "Ancient history. Point is, between sirens, ghosts of opera singers, and hundreds of others, it could be anything. The mirror, though, that's more esoteric. Let me think on it." A slightly sheepish smile curved his lips. "When my thoughts aren't quite so bogged down in Scotch…"

"Okay." Niko had finished talking to Samuel and was walking in our direction. "Don't mention it to Nik, would you? I think he has more than enough on his mind."

He clicked a tongue against his teeth and shook his head. "All right, but it's not my ass on the line. Don't forget that when he's kicking yours high unto heaven."

I gave him a silencing hiss and was drinking my beer with casual aplomb when Niko moved up beside us. "Your friend Samuel is quite friendly." That wasn't a compliment, coming from Nik, no matter how it sounded. I might not have gotten my cynicism from my brother, but every bit of suspicion, caution, and flat-out paranoia, I'd learned from him.

"Except when it comes to his singer," I pointed out. "No love lost there."

"I gathered that was a recurring theme for him." He frowned. "I may have let it slip that we were leaving town. He offered us money to help him unload his equipment Friday. When I said we would be unavailable, I might have hesitated too long."

"Shocking indiscretion," I drawled. "I've lost all respect for you, Cyrano. Though in all fairness I blame it on the one mouthful of beer you drank." Leaving town. As if it were a foregone conclusion. All my arguments to the contrary hadn't made a dent in Niko's determination. I could still argue and I would, but I didn't have much doubt who would come out on top. When it came down to sheer ruthlessness, damn if my brother didn't put me in the shade. He'd threatened to physically put me in the car. That threat could and would become an accomplished fact in a heartbeat if I dragged my feet for much longer.

Robin ran both hands through wavy hair and then scrubbed his face with them. It didn't make him look much more sober, but he was giving it his best shot. It was an oddly forlorn gesture. "Are you sure leaving's really necessary? Who's to say the Auphe situation wouldn't be worse elsewhere? You've only seen the one here, and it's no more."

"Better safe than sorry." The black humor in Niko's next words was softened with a hint of sympathy. "If I did have something inscribed on my ass, Goodfellow, that is what it would be."

In Robin's life people were bound to come and go; I'd seen the result of that in his eyes. Considering his long life span, it probably happened with a depressing regularity. If they didn't leave, he'd soon be forced to leave himself to avoid discovery. His life had to almost rival ours for rootlessness. Hell, if we were in a Western, it would be time for the image of a lost and lonely tumbleweed to go drifting across the screen. But no such luck. It was always so much easier in the movies. I didn't envy Robin his near immortality at all. Mortality was more than challenging enough.

"Cheer up, Loman." I punched his shoulder lightly. "We'll send you a dirty postcard."

"Really?" He squared his shoulders and gave us a smile, breezy, carefree, and nearly convincing. "I'll hold you to it. You going to finish that?" He didn't wait as he picked up my beer bottle and took several long drafts.

"I think this evening is winding to a close, festive though it was. Pay the bill, Cal." Niko carefully pried the bottle out of Robin's hand and set it out of reach. In some strange, convoluted way I think we both felt a responsibility for Goodfellow's condition. If we hadn't stumbled onto his place of business, there was a good chance Robin wouldn't be drowning his sorrows now. It's easier to be alone when you're used to it, when there's no other option. It was just Robin's bad luck we'd presented a fleeting alternative, and now we were pulling his unexpected life preserver away. The hypnosis's going south in a big way hadn't helped him much either. Spreading cheer and joy wherever I went, the story of my life.

I dug out a handful of cash from my pocket and scowled pessimistically at it. There was no way in hell I could cover what Robin had drunk with two tens and a five. Sliding off the stool, I gave Meredith a casual wave. "Merry, I'll settle up tomorrow." Ignoring her outraged call of my name, I jerked my head toward the door. "Let's get out of here before she takes it out of my hide."