Silver and Salt(30)

As Trixa’s trickster lessons were almost always lethal, I could settle for that. She straightened the wings of the butterfly and put it in her hair. It caught immediately in the wild explosion of curls. She always looked like she was standing in a wind machine or had a fork stuck in an outlet. I liked it. It gave you the same feeling as unscheduled fireworks, wild and unexpected. “I won’t ever lose this, Kit. I simply can’t stay mad at you. I can’t get mad at you, you thinking of me like that, sugar.”

Then she got into the truck, and its engine purred as it went down our street to disappear around the corner. Griffin watched it go silently before saying mildly, “Was that the piece of trash that you found stuck to your shoe in the car after we ate in that Chinatown restaurant yesterday?”

“Yeah. They make a lot of girly drinks there. Think it came off one of them. Kind of lucky it was red.” Red being Trixa’s favorite color. The only color that existed, as far as she cared. I gave him a grin. It didn’t have to be sly. He could feel the emotion bubbling in me as I could hear his laughing thought of “I’m doomed” in his head.

“You out-tricked a trickster. If she ever finds out, you won’t have an ass left to kick.” He swatted mine in emphasis. “Everyone, even me, underestimates you sometimes.”

I scuffed my foot again, this time on the empty space where our garbage can had been. You could bet Leo wouldn’t bother to bring it back. Great. Now we had to buy a new one, and I was going to get a few of my own lessons. At least Griffin’s weren’t lethal…not when it came to me. “And sometimes they overestimate. I should’ve thought about the cops.”

“But not the garbagemen?”

“Nah. I’ve been reading their thoughts for years now. They would’ve been good to go on making the extra bucks.”

Griffin gave me a shove back towards our small house. “And that doesn’t make them murderers? As much in need of punishment?”

“More like subcontractors,” I clarified. “The punishment is just. Doesn’t matter who carries it out.”

“No?” He opened the door and we were inside. It was a cave at first. All Vegas houses are. Blinds down, small windows, anything to keep the eye-searing, air-roasting light and heat out.

I dumped the sunglasses and flopped on the couch. “You’re saying no, but you’re thinking yes. You’re thinking it matters a lot. And I don’t know why.” I never knew why. I didn’t know if I’d ever learn. Depressed, I flopped farther from sitting to lying with my knees dangling over the arm rest. “I guess I am stupid after all. Crazy and stupid just like Eden House labeled my chart. Maybe I need a T-shirt to label myself. Batshit Crazy and Stupid as Hell.”

I heard the refrigerator open and the distinct clink and whoosh of two ice-cold beers being opened. Griffin came back, handed me a beer, and used his free hand to lift my head up. He sat down and took the first swallow of his own beer as he lowered my head to rest in his lap. “You’re not stupid and you’re not crazy.” I winced, expecting the flick to my temple or ear I usually received when I said those things. Griffin was determined I think as much of myself as he did of me.

Which was impossible. I could comprehend Heaven and Hell, but what Griffin thought about me, felt for me, that I’d never understand. He deserved someone better, the best there was, and I didn’t come close to being normal, much less the best. I rolled the beer bottle between my hands. “Are we significant others?”

“We are,” he said and instead of the flick to the ear I expected, he slowly and carefully twisted a strand of my hair around his finger.

“What’s that mean?”

“That we’re together and we love each other.” This time he combed fingers through all my hair.

That was simple enough. The truth usually was. “Then why don’t they just say that?” I grumped.

“Because it’s people who are stupid, not you.” He drank more of his beer until the level was down around the top of the label, then he swapped with me. That way I could drink without spilling it on me, as I was all but flat on the couch except for Griffin’s legs being my pillow.

I took a swallow and toed my sneakers off. “So…subcontracting is wrong?”

“Yes.” He didn’t say out loud why, although I heard random thought fragments of “leading them onto a dark road,” “our duty, not theirs,” “our experience, our training,” and he didn’t mean Eden House training with the last one. An ex-demon, Griffin, was really only an ex-ex-angel. We’d both started in the same place, been built on the same Biblical bones. But he didn’t say those things, because saying that would spoil our new lesson plans. He was all about the showing now.

Before we were together…wait, that wasn’t right. We’d always been together—every day we shared on Earth thinking we were human, we’d been together.

Best be accurate: before we started sleeping together, lessons hadn’t been half as goddamn entertaining.

“Do you save the puppy or kill the demon?” “Do you run a red light and knock over a busload of flabby tourists to nail a demon or wait for the green light?” “Do you squash an * murdering census taker for annoying you or wait until later when the cops won’t know?” And if I managed to give the right answer, I got Griffin’s approval. When you’ve only depended on one person in your damn life, at least the life you remembered, that approval…it’s everything. When most everyone else thinks you’re a freak and a time bomb and crazy as they come, when you half suspect that yourself, to get nothing but warm thoughts, affectionate slaps on the back, and complete acceptance—I couldn’t imagine what could beat that. Some days, it was all I could see worth living for.