"So …" I sucked in a breath and the oxygen deprivation spots began to fade around the edges of my vision. "What now?"

"That is a good question." Niko looked back toward the tunnel. "A very good question indeed."

12

Charity work in the tunnels didn't mean I got to skip the "day job." Two hours later I'd cleaned up after the tunnel battle, was back at the bar, and facing something worse than a horde of hungry revenants. A whole lot damn worse.

"Let me tell you a story."

Goodfellow was drunk. Not buzzed, not a little loose, but absolutely shit-faced. I'd long lost count of the number of drinks he had. What was the point? He never paid for them anyway—another way of thumbing his nose at Ishiah.

"How about I tell you one? It's about the moron who got loaded when there was someone out there trying to kill him." I kept my eyes on the rest of the bar. I always did, but this time I did it with a mental target branded on every patron's vulnerable areas. Robin seemed to have forgotten about the attempts on his life, but I hadn't.

"Why don't you stop serving him?" Ishiah said at my shoulder before finishing acidly, "Although the alcoholic fumes emanating from his pores should drop any creature in its tracks."

"I tried. He threatened to go somewhere else and guzzle." I checked my watch. It was nearly three thirty a.m. I'd gone to the apartment to change after the tunnel fiasco, then had come to work. I'd been dead on my feet before I even got there. Now I was wondering just how difficult it would be to drag the puck back home with me, because it was doubtful he was up for fighting off a foot fungus, much less your generic inhuman killing machine. The thought didn't make me feel any less beat. "At least I can keep an eye on him here."

"And why do you bother? Most do not. He's an extraordinary amount of trouble. He always has been. He always will be." It was said without anger or accusation. Ishiah said it as if it were nothing more than the truth—the sky is blue, the earth is round. Neither good, nor bad. It simply was what it was. Although there did seem to be a trace of more personal observation of this particular puck than simple general knowledge of the race at large.

"He saved my life." I caught the glass that came tumbling through the air across the bar, refilled it, and set it back in front of Robin. "He stood with me and Nik against some pretty nasty shit when he damn well should've run the other way." I would have. At the time I didn't give a shit about anyone but Nik and myself. Goodfellow, the ultimate self-serving creature, had risen above in a way I know I wouldn't have. Not then.

"Robin's changing. After all this time." I couldn't read the emotion on Ishiah's face. A coma victim wasn't as deadpan as my boss could be when he wanted. Whatever lurked behind the current stony façade was well hidden, but from the phrase "after all this time," I could guess. "And I do have many years of perspective on our friend," Ishiah apprised us as he studied Goodfellow's slumped form. "More than he would probably like, and I don't mean that in a neg—"

He didn't get a chance to finish. Robin had started talking again, seeming oblivious of both Ishiah and the crowd noise that swelled at his back like a wave. "Let me tell you a story," he muttered into his glass.

Second verse, same as the first.

"Yeah," I groaned. "You've been telling it awhile now." And he'd yet to get past the word "story."

"This story"—his gaze meandered up, then in an uncertain circle until it managed to find me and attempted to scorch me with a fuzzy glare—"features a god of unparalleled charm, unsurpassed wit, with a male beauty unseen in this or any other world…" He took another swallow of his drink. "And who was hung like the Trojan horse."

"No relation to you, I'm sure," I commented blandly.

Ishiah had moved from my back to beside me at the bar to say with quiet intensity, "Robin, you don't want to tell this one."

It was rather serious talk for what sounded like one of Goodfellow's usual cock-and-bull stories— heavy on the cock, light on the truth. His glare expanding to include Ishiah, he ignored the warning and went on. "And this god, so very perfect in every damn way as he'd be the first to tell you, met a people. Warm, friendly, open-minded…always a plus…and too unbelievably stupid to possibly kn—"

"Enough!" Ishiah's hand slammed down on the bar with a force that temporarily halted all conversation in the room. If he had actually been feeling some sort of satisfaction, it was gone now. His wings were visible as well and that wasn't a good sign. "Caliban, take him out of here now. Do not let him near another drop of alcohol. And"—as he leaned in toward Robin, the scar at his jaw blanched bone white—"if this seems to be a problem for you, Puck, if you wish to be difficult, I'll be happy to help your friend carry your shiftless, corrupt, and unconscious body out of here."

The next few minutes proved to be a learning experience.

First: Bar fights are the same, human or otherwise. The enthusiasm is identical; only the level of violence changes. Second: Peris can fly. Really. Third: Peris, flying or grounded, have hellacious tempers. Four: Pucks don't let anyone tell them what to do. Five: Even blind drunk, said pucks can kick some serious ass.

Before it was all over, there were chunks of fur, scales, feathers, and some things I didn't recognize littering the floor. There were also pools of blood and splatters of vomit, all covered with the glitter of shattered glass in an unpleasant kaleidoscope that I had no intention of cleaning up. Finally, there were Ishiah and Danyeal. They were flinging drunken fighters through the door while hovering in midair with wings fiercely beating, and it was something to see: The biblical exit from Eden meets a caged death match. I pushed up, sat on the bar, drank half a beer, and enjoyed the show. Meanwhile, Goodfellow took on two wolves with a bar stool and a glass mug. One fur ball ended up choking on ground glass, while the other poor fuzzy bastard ended up impaled with a wooden stool leg. Both would live…werewolves were sturdy.

"I challenge you all." One of the remaining legs of the stool was waved aloft, Excalibur in the hands of Arthur. After all, if anyone could've seduced it out of the Lady of the Lake, it would be Robin. "Every last one of you impotent, parasite-ridden, Yeti-toe-loving…yes, I said it. You suck their hairy toes. You suck them with enormous relish. Now come to me! Come to me, you…gama mou," he abruptly cursed, and ducked.

I was taking another swallow rich in hops when I deciding ducking wasn't such a bad idea. As I did, Danyeal came hurtling over my head. He hit the wall behind the bar wings-first and slid down. He twitched once, then lay frozen, copper head tilted to one side, but eyes still blinking slowly. The Amadán who'd done the throwing started toward the bar to finish the job. Amadán, some sort of faery if I remembered right, were nasty. They excreted a venom through their skin. One touch and you'd be paralyzed for at least an hour. It made hand-to-hand combat rather tricky, as Danyeal had been so helpful in demonstrating. Hand-to-hand combat always had been seriously overrated in my book. I pulled the Glock, pointed it between opaline almond eyes, and peeled my lips back in a welcoming grin. "Interesting fact. I get paid whether the customers are alive or not."

With shining waves of silver and black hair, lithe figures, and ever-changing eyes, the Amadán were the supermodels of the unnatural world. Skinny, hungry as hell, and couldn't buy a brain cell with a bucketful of credit cards. Fortunately for this one, he was capable of wrapping the empty space between his ears around the fact that a bullet bouncing about in the confines of his skull might be undesirable. He faded back into the seething mass of the crowd, everyone he touched skin to skin falling at his feet as he moved.