It was overly warm inside the shop when I arrived. It was also empty except for its proprietor, reading the paper with hugely magnified lenses, two body-guard wolves in human form in a booth by the window, and Georgina.
Younger than Cal by two years, she was the oldest soul I’d come to meet. Wrapped in the package of an eighteen-year-old girl wearing a dark red velvet coat that was a bit worn around the hem. Consignment wear, but as with most things regarding Georgina, it was right for her. As this place was right for her. She took what came and always seemed content in it. Her nose was pierced since I’d last seen her. A tiny garnet. She was beautiful, if your eyes were open to what beauty truly was. It was in the softness of chocolate eyes, the pixie cap of dark red waves, skin of deep brown-gold, and freckles that sprinkled a perfectly ordinary nose. She had Samuel’s, her uncle’s, smile . . . slow and thoughtful.
“Niko.” There came that smile.
I sat in the booth opposite her. “Georgina.” I bowed my head to her as I had done to all my instructors at the many dojos over the years. In many ways, she was as much a teacher as they had been.
The smile faded. “I’m sorry. I tried. I did.”
“Tried? What did you try?” My hopes that she would help us were faint, straw-grasping, but if she were at least making an attempt, maybe they weren’t all in vain.
Her eyes were sad as she reached across the table to take one of my hands in hers. “I can’t change things, but I’d hoped I could look and see where the path ends. Where you and Cal will be when this is all over. I wanted to be able to tell you that you would pass through this. Be safe.” Her hands tightened on mine . . . with fear, I thought. “But I can’t. I can’t look because I’m afraid of what I’ll see. I can’t help you, and I can’t comfort you either,” she said with resignation.
“Georgina, you may be all we have.” We might find Oshossi, between Robin and Mickey, but no one could track the Auphe. They were here, there, nowhere . . . a poison-tainted wind.
“I’m sorry.” She squared her shoulders to deny, “There’s nothing I can do.”
Nothing. Nothing she could do. Nothing she would do. Her hands were warm on mine. She couldn’t be moved any more than a marble saint, yet she felt warm. It seemed wrong. The oldest soul I’d met and the oldest I hoped I ever did come to see. She was wise and compassionate beyond her years, beyond a simple human span of years, in fact. I respected her for it, but lately I’d come to see that the compassion of someone who sees the entire world as opposed to the single struggling ant isn’t necessarily a human compassion.
“There’s a reason and a purpose to even the darkest of the dark. Hold on to that, Niko,” she said softly. “Please.”
Purpose. Knowing that your purpose in life will inevitably be fulfilled isn’t a comfort when your purpose is to die ripped to shreds before your brother’s eyes to drive him insane. And that would be a kind and giving act compared to what would be done to him then. Insane or not, catatonic or screaming day and night, they would use him. Violate him until the day he died. Wishing he were dead before they had that opportunity was the best I could hope for.
Hold on to that? Forgive me if meditation only took me so far.
In many ways Georgina, who was fully human, was less human than Cal. In the two years we’d known her, she’d always refused to meddle with the larger affairs of the universe. She’d find a lost dog, tell if a baby would be a girl or a boy, offer hope that, yes, love was coming, and that your sick relative would pull through. She gave warmth and comfort, but she wouldn’t save your life. She wouldn’t save her own, if it came to that. In this situation she wouldn’t even look to see the outcome. Wouldn’t tempt her own philosophy. She had a wisdom only seen in the holiest of people.
But speaking from the ant’s perspective, I wished she had less wisdom and a more human perspective, because now people she could’ve saved were dying. I’d thought that might make a difference. It seemed I thought wrong.
“The Auphe killed one of Cal’s co-workers at the bar,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“I knew when you called. I am so sorry for Cambriel.” She plucked his name from the air like a bit of drifting dandelion fluff. “I wish it were different, Niko. Please know I do, but we all have to walk the road before us. I can’t change that.” She sounded genuinely sorrowful.
“I had my sympathy for your position, Georgina.” But it was gone. “But do you know what they plan to do to Cal? Do you know it’s a thousand times worse than any torture, any death? If they take my brother when a few words from you could’ve stopped it, I’ll have nothing at all for you then. Not one damn thing.” My hand tensed to stone under hers. “For once break a rule. If not for me, then for Cal.”
She withdrew her hands. “I can’t,” she said with a sudden and sharp flash of anger. I might wonder at her humanity, but she reacted the same as anyone when pushed into a corner. “Do you think I haven’t tried? When I was a child, before I knew better? You think I didn’t try to save my best friend or my grand-mother? Or the nice neighbor who made me cookies and didn’t deserve to burn alive in her apartment? I did try, and it was for nothing.” She slapped a small hand on the table. “Nothing. You can change the twists and turns, you even can make the way smoother, easier, but you can never change what lies at the end.”
“You haven’t looked, then, to see how all this will end?” I persisted. “You can’t at least give us that? You can’t at least look?”
“No. I told you I can’t. I tried, but I can’t. Call me a coward if you want.” She lifted her chin. “I know I’ve heard it before, but I just can’t look for endings anymore. Do you think I’d want to live whatever happens twice?” The anger disappeared as suddenly as it had come, melting to sorrow and regret. “I might have to accept the end of the path, but that doesn’t mean I don’t cry for it.” She wrapped her coat tightly around her, as if it were cold. It wasn’t. She looked away. “I miss Cal. Don’t tell him. It would only hurt him. But I do miss him.” And he missed her, but there was little to be done about that now. Both had stubbornly tied a knot in their relationship there was no getting around.
“Georgina, please.” It wasn’t a word I said often. I said it now with an angry desperation you didn’t need psychic powers to sense.
She pulled the coat tighter around her neck. “Good-bye, Niko, and take care.”
A singularly useless thing for her to say, I thought more savagely than I was proud of. Tumble into your razor-lined pit of destiny, but take care as you do so. My friend, my lover, and my brother gathered under Damocles’ sword . . . a hair from brutal and bloody death, all of them, and that was what she offered me.
“Just look,” I said sharply.
She slid out of the booth and began to walk away. I thought I saw tears. I didn’t care.
“Look.”
She disappeared into the back of the store. I gripped the edge of the table hard for a moment, then surged to my feet, flipping it over with a crash that sent the owner scrambling for the phone. The wolves watched me warily. They knew who I was through Delilah, and they knew I wasn’t Auphe. But they also knew I was dangerous. They slunk past me and followed Georgina out of sight, leaving me with the wreckage of my futility.
Outside the store I walked the ten blocks to Cal, who looked at my face and said warily, “What? What happened?”
I took his arm and pushed him into motion, saying brusquely, “I lost my temper. I imagine the police are on their way. Let’s go.”
It was dusk as we pulled up to the Seventy-second Street pedestrian entrance to Central Park to wait for Mickey. When we’d dropped him off on his mission, we’d set this as the time and pickup place for his retrieval. Not that it was easy to know it from what lay outside the car. A full-on blizzard had us surrounded by blowing white snow. You could barely see five feet, and it didn’t look to be letting up anytime soon. It could be dusk or midnight for all one could tell. The winter wonderland I’d been so skeptical of earlier in the day had shown up with a vengeance.