The Grimrose Path (Trickster, #2)(40)

I was working on the black stain that had once been Armand. I was on my knees on the floor with a heavy-duty scrub brush and cursing the demon with every swipe when Zeke kicked down the front door. At first glance, I wasn’t that concerned; Zeke had a key. Sometimes he remembered to use it; sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes it was important . . . ten demons in the newest club reaping souls. Sometimes it wasn’t . . . I’m hungry. Feed me. This time it wasn’t either. It was vital—to Zeke the most crucial thing in the world.

“What do I do?” he asked numbly. “He’s gone. What the f*ck do I do?” The glass in the door was supposed to be shatterproof. The pool of it around his feet as he stood in the doorway said I deserved a refund, but considering I’d all but stolen the bar, I couldn’t complain.

I could find out what was going on with Zeke though. I stood and peeled off my thick rubber gloves. “Lost, Kit? Gone? What do you mean?” He didn’t mean dead. If Griffin were dead, Zeke would know it and he wouldn’t be standing here talking about it. He’d go through as many demons as he had to to catch up to Griffin—on this side of life or the next, it was as simple as that. I would do my best to take care of the former angel if something did happen to Griffin, but Zeke wasn’t Zeke without Griffin and he knew it. Zeke was a ship, but Griffin wasn’t his anchor. Zeke’s ship had a hole in the hull and Griffin was the one bailing the ocean back out. He was the one who kept Zeke from plummeting to the darkest depths. For all that I was willing, only Griffin had that power.

“He went out this morning. He said he wanted to get some food, bring back breakfast. He’s been doing it a lot lately. Going out for food instead of cooking. He likes to cook.” He frowned. “He likes to cook. Why has he been going out so much when he likes to cook?”

Why indeed? “Kit,” I verbally prodded him. “Griffin went out to get breakfast, and then what?”

He looked around as if he’d forgotten where he was before shaking off his reverie. “He didn’t come back.” One piece of red hair hung loose from the yanked-back ponytail he wore for fighting. “I called him and his phone is turned off.” He hoped. Turned off was better than destroyed. “I looked, all the places we go.” “Go” meant where they hung around looking for demons and “looked” meant he’d stolen a car. The two of them had only one car. Zeke’s decision-making skills weren’t compatible with driving as a rule. Passing a driver’s test for a license could conceivably end up with him at the California agriculture checkpoint declaring an intent to smuggle a case of silicone breast implants and an Elvis impersonator in the trunk, not to mention a panicked test instructor in the passenger seat screaming for help.

“And no one had seen him?” I moved over to him and pulled him into the bar. Zeke would’ve asked too and asked hard. I took his hand and he was far gone enough to actually wrap his fingers around mine and hang on. Lost, damn it, was the worst word I knew.

“No,” he answered.

“You can’t hear him?” Zeke’s telepathy was usually limited to a few miles, but with Griffin, I didn’t know how far it reached. Maybe the city, maybe the country.

“No.” Each no was sounding more and more bleak.

“How far can you hear him?”

“The world.” Stark and simple. “I can hear him anywhere in the world.”

I didn’t think they’d tested that principle, unless it had been a mission while Eden House was still around in Vegas, but I didn’t question it. If Zeke said it was so, it was so. “Then he’s unconscious, which means he’s alive and that means we’ll find him. Stay here. I need my shotgun.” One of them. It wasn’t as if I named them. First, I wasn’t concerned about the size of my nonexistent penis. Second, guns were for killing . . . no matter what some amendment said. Guns were for killing, nothing more, nothing less. You appreciated what a great job a gun did performing its function, but that’s it. If you named something like that, something manufactured for the sole purpose of ending life, you had problems. You were sick.

I chose my Browning Gold, a semiautomatic and autoloading shotgun and not called Goldy . . . as tempting as it might be. As I clattered back downstairs, Zeke’s gaze was so raw and naked that I wanted to look away, but then it focused on what I was carrying. “Goldy.”

All right. Not sick. Different. Never had a pet when he was young—human young. Didn’t have action figures or toys. Nothing to name in those foster-kid days. Zeke could call my shotgun whatever he wanted.

“Goldy.” I kissed his cheek. “Now, let’s get Griffin. Did you try Bubba?”

“Beelzebub.” There was enough of Zeke with me, barely, to wrinkle his lip at that. “What could he possibly know? Demon wannabe. Stupid shithead.”

“Exactly,” I said. “A wannabe follows the real things. He listens. He could know things precisely because they have the same opinion of him that we do. He’s a nut job. They wouldn’t pay attention to him.”

“Beelzebub” was a rare exception in the demonic sense. He was just a guy. He’d played around with a lot of things in his time, I’m sure. Rocker who couldn’t sing or play an instrument. Goth who didn’t have the ennui down quite right. Emo when emo was so very last year, A satanist who really wasn’t a satanist. After all, Those books are thick. Reading is hard. The Necronomicon isn’t even real. Who knew? Patterning yourself on a bad late-night TV movie is easier than doing actual research. And, to give credit where it was due, the real satanists, who are rare and far between . . . the genuine ones, the down-and-dirty ones—they get their desire sooner or later. Off to Hell they go. A Twinkie or bag of chips to be devoured whenever the torture becomes boring for the demons. I didn’t think that’s what they had planned when they were butchering Wilbur the pig or Foghorn Leghorn the rooster on their altar while trying to say the Lord’s Prayer backward . . . which would be the satanic DUI test. Instead of ZYXWVU, while touching your nose with a fingertip, you had to pull off “Amen. Ever and ever for glory the and, power ...” while chopping off a chicken’s head. They could chant and chop all they wanted. They still ended up as a TV dinner.