Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(58)

On the other hand, despite inheriting our mother's honey and rum voice, I couldn't play or sing a note. That hadn't stopped Darkling from leaving me a present. Unwelcome, unwanted, and unknown up until now. It didn't matter. He was dead, chopped to the finest of pieces. I'd done the chopping. I knew for a fact he was gone.

But the reflection came before I could stop it, at least when he'd been in me, no matter who left, I wasn't ever alone. Schizo as hell, but not alone. It was a thought that left me so repulsed and exposed that I veered away from it instantly. Folding arms on the top of the piano, I rested my chin on them. "I'm used to having all my eggs in one basket." That would be Niko. One steel-shelled egg, one unbreakable basket. God, I hoped.

It was an obscure statement and coming after an exhibition of a freakish musical talent I shouldn't have had, you had to give Niko credit for catching on to it. "The more eggs you have, the more likely one is to break."

"Poached. Scrambled. Pureed in a blender for an over-the-hill boxer. Whatever." I extended an arm and touched the corner of the nearest frame. Promise and a dark-haired little girl, both colored sepia and dressed in clothes from at least a hundred years ago. For the things that I did know of Robin and Promise, there were thousands upon thousands of things that I didn't and might never have the chance to learn.

"I'm not good at this shit, Cyrano. I'm not good at caring, and I'm sure as hell not good at all the crap that conies with it." I looked up at the ceiling, eggshell with a hint of rose. It reminded me of the inner curve of a shell scoured clean by salt water. Full of dawn's purity and glow. "He made me like him, the son of a bitch. And I don't like…didn't like anyone but you. But Goodfellow made me like him and then he goes and proves he's mortal after all. It sucks. It just goddamn sucks." I pushed away from the baby grand and stood. "I'm hungry. You hungry? Want a sandwich? Great. Sandwiches coming up."

"I think you need to avoid sharp objects for a while," Niko ordered as he moved away from the wall. "I would hate for you to ram a butcher's knife in Goodfellow's leg in the hopes he wouldn't force you to like him anymore. Although the aborted attempt to brain him with a candelabra might already have him tipped off to your cunning plan."

"I am so screwed." I sat back down, this time on the floor. Dirty red shirt, damp jeans, and black sneakers, I was a definite test to the stain-repelling skills of the oyster gray, violet, and ebony rug beneath me. "Why do I like him?" I muttered, more to myself than to Nik. "Promise … I have to like her. I get that. She's yours. You're hers. It's a package deal. George …" I shut my mouth. There was no way to continue that sentence without regret, not a single one.

"We should've left New York. Even after Darkling was dead and we thought the Auphe were, we should've kept moving." I exhaled heavily as I sheathed fingers in my hair and said by rote, "You don't get attached, you never tell anyone your real name, and you always leave. Those were the rules." You always leave being the most important of them.

Niko sat across from me on the floor. His legs were folded in a style that made mine ache just to see it. He loosely rested his hands on his knees. His wrists were banded with what looked like a double row of Tibetan meditation beads, except these were made of steel and would deflect the blow of nearly any blade easily. "I know," he said. "I made those rules." The corners of his mouth deepened downward briefly. "And Sophia thought I scorned the old ways."

Sophia didn't have much room to talk. She'd broken ties with her clan when she'd run off, and they'd done the same to her years later when they found out what perverse bargain she'd made with the Auphe. As for the "old ways," she had never purposely taught us a thing, not once Niko had refused to be part of her scams. As young as the age of six, Nik already had an unwavering moral compass; he was a regular Dalai Lama of the trailer park. Whether we were involved or not, though, it didn't matter— the lessons were still there for the taking. She'd run a fortune-telling con at the kitchen table while we watched cartoons four feet away. At night she'd run a different kind of con and the walls were much thinner than four feet.

"Her rules, your rules." I shook my head. "I don't care. We should've lived by them. I should've. You wanted to leave. I was the one who said we should stay in New York." I frowned at him. "Usually when I'm an idiot, you don't listen to me."

"If that were true, I would be selectively deaf every hour out of the day," he stated, hitting my knee with a not-quite-painful flick of his finger. "Besides, you were right. We thought the enemy destroyed and we had made a life here. Granted it was a life of only a few months and we both broke the rules in doing so, but it was still a life. We had an ally and friend in Robin. We had the potential for more in Promise and Georgina. Why give that up for no reason at all?"

"Sanity is a reason," I countered, scraping a bruised knuckle along the silken fibers of the rug. "Pretty good one too."

We should've known better. Seeing their destruction with our own eyes aside, we still should've known better. The Auphe were still out there, and they wouldn't stay hidden forever. Then there was Robin. Someone wanted him dead, and that was probably a fairly frequent event. Jesus. As for Sawney…we'd made him our problem and it was possible he could take one or more of us out. I'd managed to survive the uncertainty of George's and Nik's disappearance months ago. Managed, as in, just goddamn barely, and only by becoming the coldest son of a bitch that I could be.