Read Online Doubletake by Rob Thurman - Free Book Online Page A

them.
    That wasn’t boring. That just sucked. But for my brother, I would do it.
    Not that it still didn’t suck.
    “You think I made a mistake gating that SOB to the boggles before we found out what the Vayash burdenis?” I asked my brother, who was working beside me with methodical movements.
    The last Rom clan who’d come to hire us to find their lost duty, their burden had been the watchers of an antihealer known not so euphemistically as the Plague of the World. Suyolak could’ve destroyed all life on the planet if we hadn’t stopped him. The Black Death was just a kiddie party to him, and one he’d started. It made me wonder what the hell the Vayash were supposed to be keeping locked down.
    If it was anything remotely close to Suyolak, that was bad fucking news.
    Niko showed no signs of being concerned as he shrugged slightly, following my lead with the glasses. “He’ll be back, as you said. And whatever the Vayash have lost, we cannot find today. Today is the Panic, and not only are we committed, but I think the Panic may supersede any other threat on the face of the planet.”
    It should’ve been a joke, but it didn’t sound like a joke, and I was under no illusions that it was.
    Goodfellow was the typical trickster with typical trickster ways, but he was sane. Fairly content, even happy now that he was in what used to be the foulest curse word in his vocabulary: a relationship. But he was only one of two pucks I’d met. The other, Hob, had been insane, malignantly narcissistic, and would not only kill you for no reason, but do it more efficiently than anyone alive. When you’re the first, born conceivably a million years ago, you learn to fight like there is no fucking tomorrow. My genes were
of
the firstborn, but I was not
a
firstborn. There was a difference—as in unnumbered-amount-of-years-of-carnage-experience difference.
    If they hadn’t crippled you, it would be different
.
Much different.
    “What do you mean, ‘crippled’?” Niko asked, the glass suspended in his hand. His knuckles were white and tense. Shit, I’d actually said that aloud.
    The door opening managed to get me out of an immediate explanation. Robin walked in wearing his usual outfit of expensive green shirt, black slacks, and shoes. He sat on a stool and said rapidly, “All right. Extremely important. Before the others get here you are not to mention, hint, or even
think
about how I’m in a monogamous relationship. Are we clear? It would ruin my reputation among the Panic. They’d hang me from the ceiling and beat me like a piñata. So keep your mouths shut.
¿
Entienden?
”
    “Whatever,” I said. “Trust me, I’m traumatized enough. The last thing I want to talk about with a hundred other yous is your sex life.”
    The green eyes shifted to something less Robin and considerably nastier as he raised his voice. “Come on in, brothers!
Adelfae!
Hear the news.” The door swung open again to reveal a streaming horde of pucks. “It’s true. Goodfellow is
monogamous
. He’s become a freak. A pervert. Depravity on the cloven hoof.”
    “Or his balls fell off,” suggested another puck who came to the bar. “Or his dick. Anyone who would hang about with Bacchus is bound to get a catastrophic genital rotting illness at some point.” This one was also identical except his hair was a few inches longer and he had both ears pierced with small gold hoops.
    Niko looked at me as the priest must’ve looked at the guy sitting in the electric chair in the old days right before the switch was flipped: resigned sympathy. “I didn’t know he wasn’t Goodfellow,” I protested, feeling the desperation sharply. Not our Goodfellow at any rate, but his carbon copy. “He looks dead-on Robin. He said he was Robin.”
    “Implied,” Niko corrected, the sympathy turning one hundred and eighty degrees to a mildly sadistic pleasure he didn’t make an effort to hide. “He implied it. He didn’t say it.”
    “He’s wearing the same