The Grimrose Path (Trickster, #2)(24)
“You wouldn’t know why Cronus is into killing helpless little minnows like you, do you?” I gave Eli a second chance to tell us the why . . . although the why was only half of what I was interested in—the how I could use it to my benefit was something I was invariably interested in. “Don’twant to share? Sharing’sgood for the ...mmm ... whoops. Not the soul obviously. Psychological well-being?” I leaned over the bar and smelled the rose still in his hand. “Assuming you have a being to house that psyche in.” I looked into eyes that were distant, the bits of copper bright in churning thought. “And, Eli? Sweetie, that’s one assumption you can’t be making for too long, you hear?”
He heard all right. Enough so that he was gone, bathrobe and all, but he left the rose behind on the stool. Off to Hell to tell his boss and up the food chain it would go . . . all the way to the top—or maybe bottom would be more appropriate. I walked around and replaced the flower in the vase before resting a hand on Leo’s shoulder to whisper in his ear, completing what I’d been telling him while making the martini.
After nearly a minute, I stopped talking and went back to my chocolate elixir of the gods. You should never waste the good things in life. And where Eli had gone, there were no good things, not ever. “Flowers don’t always say, ‘I love you,’” I murmured to the empty stool as I picked up the rose.
“You are a bad, bad girl,” Leo said with a reluctant admiration. Coming from such a bad boy, that meant something.
“Yes, I am,” I said with a satisfaction that tasted sweeter than the chocolate. “I most definitely am.”
“What do you mean we can’t kill demons?”
Zeke sounded as outraged as an eighty-year-old meat-and-potatoes guy told he had to go vegan. “Relax, killer.” I pulled up my hair and then tied my sneakers. I hated sneakers, but you couldn’t run in boots. Or you could, but it wasn’t cardio-effective. How many blocks did a chocolate martini equal? I did know who killed Marilyn Monroe, thank you, Eligos, spawn of Hell, and I even knew where Jimmy Hoffa was, or what was left of him, but blocks versus chocolate calories, that I didn’t know. I only knew I had to run them off or outrunning demons was going to get more and more difficult. “It’s just for a while—until Cronus is out of Vegas. You don’t want to get between him and his nummy-num.” Or whatever a demon was for him.
“Cronus . . . He was a Titan, right?”
I gave an approving pat to Griffin’s knee as he leaned against the back of my car parked in its usual spot in the alley. “Someone studied at Eden House.”
“I studied,” Zeke complained as he gave the nearest tire a considering look and his foot twitched. I gave him a similar look and he rethought it, scuffing his shoe against the asphalt instead. Boys. Ex-angel, in reality probably older than I was, twenty-five human years genetically, but he was still a spoiled kid without his toys . . . dead demons. And that made him a strange spoiled boy, but weren’t we all a little strange now and again?
Zeke would survive the vacation, I thought, although I was sympathetic. He could take up a new hobby. Golf. Tennis. Goddamn jogging, like me. Male metabolism—it was proof that God, the Christian one, was male. As I glanced at his flat stomach, my sympathy for Zeke decreased a tiny bit as Griffin spoke.
“You studied how to kill demons and weapons. I’m fairly sure you napped during mythology, history, scripture, and so on.” Griffin folded his arms and looked up at a noontime blue sky, retrieving the memory from the sound of his semiexasperated exhalation . . . but only semi. It was Zeke. You rolled with the punches there. Zeke was Zeke. You had to love him or try to murder him in his sleep. There was no in-between. “Although the way you managed to sleep with your eyes open was impressive,” Griffin went on to drawl.
It would’ve had to be. When it came to teaching I didn’t think Eden House rapped a slacker’s knuckles with a ruler. They were ridding the world of demons for the glory of Heaven after all, not putting together a bingo game and spaghetti dinner. There would be less rapping and more capping, one to the brain and bring in the new recruit. Bury the slacker in the rose garden. Good fertilizer wasn’t to be wasted.
“I was not napping,” Zeke emphasized. “I was in my happy place.”
I finished with my sneakers and straightened. “And where would that be, Kit?”
“Someplace I can kill demons,” he said as if it were perfectly obvious, and if I’d given it a fraction of a second of thought, it would’ve been. “There was no Cronus there.”
“Believe me, that seems to be Cronus’s happy place too right now. Griff’s right. He’s a Titan. He created gods. Gods, Zeke. I know you think you’re badass, kicking demon tail right and left, and precious as a fluffy bunny while you do it.” I bounced on my toes and began to stretch. I pretended I didn’t hear a joint pop. I didn’t ignore Zeke’s irritation though. Why poke him with a verbal stick if I wasn’t going to let myself enjoy it? I did love to tease my guys, but I also had to impress on them how serious this was or they would be squashed as quickly and easily as that fluffy bunny I’d compared Zeke to. “But Cronus has killed more than nine hundred demons in six months. He’s ruled one of our heavens. He was imprisoned in one of our hells but took it over. Think about it. He was thrown down into Tartarus and made everyone there the equivalent of his bitches in no time. The inmate became the warden. Makes you think, huh?”