Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(31)

"I'll bet." He was completely asleep now, head pillowed on the counter by my money. I looked down at her skin against mine, sunset amber against moon pale.

Monster pale.

I slid my hand from beneath hers, missing the warmth of it instantly. I didn't look at her eyes or her short cap of wavy red hair or the faint freckles that spilled across her nose and the tops of her gold-brown cheeks. I didn't have to—I had them memorized. "I need to find Robin," I said abruptly. "He's in trouble."

"Trouble?" Her brow wrinkled. Never one to back down, she left her rejected hand on the table as if it were only a matter of time before I changed my mind.

"Yeah. Something is after him. I have no idea who or what, and now I can't find him." My own hands I dropped into my lap to rest on my thighs. Get thee behind me, Satan, or get thee under the table. Whatever.

"Robin." She said it as if she were calling him, as if he were around the corner. Out of sight, but still within earshot. Closing her eyes, she frowned, eyes moving behind the copper-brushed lids as though scanning the page of a book. Several seconds passed and then her eyes flew open. I thought it was with distress or fear, but then she flushed. "Oh."

I got it immediately. This was Goodfellow she was trying for a peek at. "Oh," I echoed sheepishly before apologizing. "Shit. Sorry. I didn't think about that."

"He's very…limber." She parted her lips, showing small teeth in a gamin smile. "I'm impressed and educated."

"He's okay, then?" I leaned back in my chair, tried not to think about the word "limber" and that knowing smile she'd flashed, and exhaled in relief.

"He's fine." Eyes bright, she tilted her head. "And very happy right now. Among friends—the friendliest of friends."

"You're laughing at me," I snorted. "Go ahead. Someone should get some enjoyment out of this besides Goodfellow. Can you give me his address? He's safe now. He might not be after he leaves." She would know if he would be or not, but I wasn't going to ask. If she'd been willing to look that far, she would've told me. Besides, I refused to believe in that whole "everything happens for a reason" bullshit. Any universe that would actually plan my being born of an Auphe wasn't a universe I wanted any part of. Destiny and fate could kiss my ass.

"Yes. I can give you the address." She did and watched as I stood up. "You are stubborn, you know."

Just as she'd said that morning in my dream. "Some things are worth it," I said quietly. And they were…worth being stubborn, worth the sacrifice. Like keeping her safe. Like letting the Auphe line die with me.

"Cal."

I shook my head and stood. "Thanks for the help, Georgie." I made it to the door before she spoke again.

"You've run all your life, Caliban. You have to stop. Sooner or later, you have to." The bell overhead rang as I opened the door, but it didn't drown out the next words. "Please make it sooner."

Significant words. They deserved to be thought about, to be considered carefully. I pushed them out of my head the moment I passed through the door. I needed my resolve, which wouldn't be helped by mulling over what she had said. Or by the fact that every time I turned my back on her felt like I was turning my back on a good portion of my life. Those things couldn't matter. Not if I wanted to keep her safe, and in my life she never could be.

It was the way it had to be.

The address was in the East Village, not too far from the fifth-floor walk-up Niko and I used to live in that barely deserved to be called an apartment. Good times. I had a feeling there would be wildly colored hair, tattoos, and lots of black in the near future. Goodfellow had always liked artists—they were open-minded, adventurous, and willing to worship him in many mediums, and what better place to find them than the East Village?

Robin even had a fresco of himself hanging on his apartment wall, though the artist who'd painted that had done that for the love of a beautiful form in general, not for the love of Robin's form specifically. He'd been the brother of the woman Robin was going to marry. Goodfellow wasn't one for talking about his past—a statement not as ridiculous as it seemed. He would talk without end about every casual encounter, every historical figure he'd ever met or screwed from the birth of time on.

The key word was "casual." Robin wasn't quick to share the things that truly touched him. I thought in the beginning that it was because nothing did touch him. When Niko and I had first met him, I didn't think there could be a creature more superficial, shallow, or self-absorbed. I'd been wrong.

The puck had the depth of a long-abandoned well, and if those depths were desolate and murky, that was the result of outliving everyone you cared for. Robin was a human-lover, not a nice turn of phrase among monsters. So not only was he despised for a puck's natural trickery and thieving ways; he was scorned as well for the company he kept. His human companions would die, and the nonhuman would have little to do with him. Robin boasted of his vast circle of acquaintances—how many he knew—but knowing and being accepted are far different things.

I didn't know when Robin gave up on humans, when letting them go … when watching them die got to be too much, but I suspected it was around the time of that painting. It had been created in Pompeii days before he lost his chosen family, and now that hunk of ancient wall hung on a modern-day one—a constant reminder.