EPILOGUE

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Fridays were praised by the working stiff, but for me it heralded the chaos of weekend shifts at a peri bar. As soon as the sun set they came out from sewers and penthouses with a view. Monsters of the nightmares that kept those working stiffs' children awake at night. And I was serving them drinks.

It was just another night. One fight already broken up with a peri swinging a baseball bat into the thick skull of a werewolf that had one too many and two revenants shoved out the door for more reason than their veritable stink turning the stomachs of other patrons. Just another night at the Ninth Circle. Just another night that felt like it should have been more.

It was a feeling niggling at my frontal lobes like a teething kissi and had been doing so for more than a few days. Why wasn't it just another night? I hadn't the faintest and I had accepted that I never would.

Nothing had changed since Pyriel/Jack bit the big one to float off into a Neverland that was obviously not going to be Heaven this time. Nothing different except I woke up with my ribs aching and more mangled than they'd been before. There were new scrapes and bruises and somehow I'd lost about five days. Niko too.

Goodfellow had told us we drank well into the morning hours in celebration of defeating our first angel. I remembered that, Nik remembered that, but the rest…

The more Goodfellow told us about our supposed week-long bender the more I didn't want to know.

I'd let loose like that before. Sang with the puck, plastered and not remembering who Caliban Leandros was. Forcing Nik to get tatted up so we'd truly be brothers in arms. I was a much better person drunk and amnesiac, but apparently –by Robin's account– I was a bit more destructive when I was drunk Cal.

Fought with some Kin, naked with a beer in one hand and my gun in the other, he'd said. Got my ass busted up, but won. Threatened to cut Niko's braid off, got my ass busted up, didn't win. Drug home only to lose days. Goodfellow, trickster and master of weaving a tale, recounted our unrecalled adventure with gleeful details teetering on a fence between probable and an outright lie.

We knew it was a lie.

Nik and I both. We knew it was a lie, just as we knew that whatever happened during those five days, it was better left in the blank void of blackout. It was best believed lost in the celebratory bender. Because my ribs had been re-fractured, there was a sniper rifle by the name of Sally under my bed beside the flamethrower, and Niko…there was the faintest of scars tracing one side of his throat. Barely discernable, but I knew his scars better than my own and those hadn't been there before. Something terrible had happened. Something that had almost took our lives, or upended them, and my bets were on Heaven or Hell.

That was why we didn't change out our toothpaste. Didn't get new milk or toss the coffee grounds. Showed an unbelievable amount of trust that we didn't, especially for Niko.

Robin was dosing us so we'd forget. I was guessing Nepenthe venom, unless the puck found another means to erase memories, because Niko and I would never drink enough to blackout. Well, Niko never would. And roofies would only explain one day of memory loss, plus we would have woken up in some disturbing situation, likely missing clothes, with pictures to commemorate it if Robin had anything to do with it.

I'd been here before. I'd been here floating in that happy space of not knowing. I'd liked it there and wasn't sure if I wanted to come down. Hell, I only came back at all because Niko needed me. So I was fine with not knowing. An apparently Niko had enough of knowing, that not knowing was satisfying enough for now.

Maybe we didn't want to know the truth because Goodfellow wasn't lying and the things he was claiming, which were better never revisited, actually happened. Maybe it was because we didn't need to know. Maybe the puck was getting me back for telling him about the night Junior took me and made him swear not to tell Niko. Regardless…

Goodfellow would step in if we started forgetting out address or how to load a gun blindfolded. We trusted he would. And he would. He could have the secret of the forbidden week. He and Ishiah, because my boss obviously knew a thing or two as well.

He scowled at his lover when Robin sat down at the bar that night, he same way he had every other night since we the night of the great blackout. Ishiah was lying too and Mr. Formally Heaven's Bitch didn't like it. Goodfellow was a master at his trade though, and I didn't mean the sex part. He gave me his most charming and secretly satisfied smile as I set a bottle of whiskey from his personal stash behind the bar out for him.

"Good evening, Cal. How are we feeling today? Any secret urges to run as naked as nature intended through Central Park tonight? Or would you rather shove you gun down the throat of another snide werewolf? Considering the psychological interpretations of a man's firearm, like his car, being an extension of his manhood I believe a little self reflection should be considered. You seemed to enjoy sinking that barrel in deep, right to the trigger guard."

I slammed a rocks glass down next to the whiskey bottle. "The stories are pointless, Goodfellow. We know it didn't happen."

For a split second his broad smile vanished, his eyes flickered to Ishiah standing on my right, but then it was back on like a light switch flicked off by mistake, only revealing darkness for a moment before it became too frightening to behold. "Are you accusing me of lying? My dear friend, even I could not make up such a fantastic tale. The Unmaker of the World happy as a nymph, dancing and singing, and not while on a pile of corpses recently slaughter. It is a milestone, a miracle—"

"A lie," I supplied.

"You remember what happened?" Ishiah asked cautiously. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see his gold-barred wings shifting heavily on the peri's back. He was startled and worried. He hadn't wanted Robin to give us the blue pill and toss us unknowing back into the Matrix, but he didn't want us to remember what happened either. Another reason for us never to know. Another reason for me to toss a raised bet on it being about the angels I'd never knew about a month ago. As long as an alien baby didn't pop out of my chest, I didn't care.

"I don't remember jack," I growled, then snorted and corrected myself. "Well, I remember Jack, but I don't remember what happened those weeks after." I wiped a rag over the bar, then slapped it over my shoulder. "I don't want to either. You can keep your secrets."

Robin's shoulders rolled forward. He leaned one arm to the bar and poured himself a drink with the other. His smile was gone, but he was holding true to a passive expression. "You don't want to know?"

"No, I don't. I don't care. Neither does Niko, considering we're still using our toothpaste."

"Why would I use the same trick twice when I have so many up my sleeves," the puck cooed, all but admitting he was drugging us. I took his glass away from him, surprised he let me, and bent in close.

"The moment it endangers his life. The moment this secret threatens to give him another scar, because don't you for one second think I didn't notice, that is the moment you tell us. Understood?"

Robin nodded. The fact that he said nothing was more testament than a verbal agreement. I handed him back the whiskey and he set it on the bar without taking a drink. "I suppose that means you don't want to hear anymore stories about your drunken night. How we took a trip to Atlantic City and all piled on a bed together after you made a fort our of the suite's couch cushions, flinging casino chips across the room like a castle under siege."

"All I want to know is how he got that scar on his neck."

Goodfellow downed his two fingers of whiskey and poured himself some more. "It involved a call from a desperate angel, debilitating drugs, you finally looking in a mirror, striking out with a beautiful woman, and Grimm."

I straightened at that last bit. Grimm. That would explain why the faded scar on Nik's neck looked like a claw mark, like Grimm's fake Auphe glove. Whatever happened it had been epic and, so help me, I couldn't help but be hopeful. "Did I kill him?"

"Grimm? No, you didn't. Not for lack of trying. He will be on hiatus for an undetermined amount of time again."

I nodded slowly. It breached a whole new set of questions? Where was he now, why were the angels involved, had he attacked Niko –breaking out tenuous agreement– or had he been defending against my brother?

There were questions, but truth be told I didn't want the answers. Goodfellow would explain one day. One day when it would hurt less or save us from inevitable death. For now, I was satisfied. Niko survived, we were both breathing, and if he noticed his new scar I wasn't going to be the one to tell him where it came from. I would certain show Grimm my appreciation when I saw him next, though that had been the plan the moment he poofed out of Fort Tilden. That hadn't changed. I hadn't changed. Therefore the world hadn't changed and all was well.

Without looking, I cracked open two beers and slid them down the bar to some regulars. "That's good enough for me."

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