I had no idea if she was serious or not, and I didn’t ask. I had a thirst for knowledge, but there were some things I didn’t need or want to know. This was one of them. There was something else, however, that I was curious about. The table where we’d been sitting was now empty. “Cal?”

“Manager’s office.” Her smile wasn’t as lascivious as that of the incubus, but it was close. “Watch front door. Ten minutes.”

“This, Delilah, is my brother you’re talking so glibly about,” I said sharply, catching her ponytail in a firm grip as she started away. When she lifted her upper lip in a challenging snarl, I added levelly, “Twenty minutes. He’s had a difficult morning.”

The snarl faded as she said, amused, “You are good brother. Twenty, if he survives.”

He did, and looked a little more relaxed for it. Outside the bar, I inquired, “You did take the time to ask about Oshossi, I’m assuming. Much in the same way I’m assuming I won’t have to take you to the dojo and beat a measure of sense into you.”

“I asked,” he responded defensively, although there was a brief sliver of panic on his face as endorphin-soaked brain cells struggled for the memory. “The Kin doesn’t know anything about Oshossi. They did notice the extra wildlife in Central Park, though. So we’re one for two. But she said she’d look into it.”

“How much?” I asked.

“You saying the mind-blowing sex isn’t payment enough?” He grinned smugly.

“No, of course not. You’re a stallion,” I said blandly. “How much?”

“Two K.” Disgruntled, he put his jacket back on. “Bastard.”

“You’ll think ‘bastard’ when we start meditation exercises today,” I said, entertained by the look of distaste that crossed his face.

“Oh, Christ, just sitting there, not doing anything. Not napping or watching TV. It’s not natural.” He flagged down a taxi and gave Seamus’s address. “And it looks boring as hell. Why the hell would I want to do it?” he finished.

“It’s about control, Grasshopper,” I said, trying to keep it light. We had enough of the dark at the moment without adding to it. “Control is useful in the restraint of emotion.”

“Control,” he echoed. “Control is good.” He went silent for the duration of the drive. I was fairly sure he believed me when I said he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Opening a gate was a far cry from picking up his gun and blowing away whomever was annoying him—which he had done in the past. But they had deserved it. Still, there were easier ways to kill than a gate to Tumulus, and he knew that. Instinct . . . reflex, whatever you wanted to call it, you might not be able to erase it, but you could blunt it, redirect it, control it. Unfortunately, Cal had a lot of anger—most of it justifiable, but that it was didn’t make things any easier.

Control was the answer, at least the best one I had. No, Cal wouldn’t use his Glock or his combat knife over a loss of temper with anyone he actually cared about, but opening a gate instead wasn’t desirable either. Sooner or later something was bound to come out of one of them. Cal had told me once that the gates were two-way. You could go in or something—the Auphe—could come out. But with enough will you could hold it, you could make it one-way. He had done it once, but with this—opening them unconsciously—an Auphe might very well slip through before Cal could close it or lock it to one direction.

Cal stared out the window, hand tightly fisted in the pocket of his jacket. I could see the round outline of it. Cal knew all about control. He had it in spades, although it might not appear like it to anyone else. To anyone who caught him napping on the couch, snarling at the Ninth Circle’s patrons, or slamming a revenant’s head repeatedly against a wall until brain matter came out its ears, it might not seem that way, but every minute of every day Cal was exercising a control he wasn’t even cognizant of. His mind used it subconsciously to keep two years of his life lost, to keep it from driving him insane—literally. He himself used it on a more aware level to not kick daily multiple asses of every creature out there that mocked, scorned, or outright hated him for his Auphe half. He used it to stay in one place when running, from the police seeking Sophia and then from the Auphe, was all he had ever known. He used so much of it, in fact, that I wondered . . .

Was there any left?

When we finally stood outside Seamus’s building, Cal took several seconds to carefully scrape back every strand of hair and tie it off. Stalling. Thinking. “I think it might be best,” I offered before he could speak, “if we waited until later to worry about telling them about the gate. With Cherish and that chupacabra there—they have no need to know, even if we knew they could be trusted.”

He nodded immediately with relief. “When all this Oshossi and Auphe shit is over. Yeah, then.”

I slipped off one of my Tibetan prayer bead bracelets. I wore a double row of them on each wrist. Made of steel, they were as good at deflecting a blade as they were for meditation. I handed it to him and he stretched the mala curiously, then put it on. “Robin will think we’re going out,” he snorted.

“I’m quite sure I don’t want to know what Goodfellow thinks about anything dating related. There’s only so much depravity I can face on a daily basis.” I tapped the beads around his wrist. “It’s for meditation. Say one mantra per bead. Do the entire bracelet every hour.”

“Mantra, huh?” he said. “And what’s my mantra?”

“Whatever you want it to be.” The temperature had dropped drastically, and the sun was gone. Several scattered flakes of snow blew past, a few hitting my jaw. “It’ll work best if it’s tailored for you. A word or two or three that makes you feel calm. Safe.”

“ ‘Thermonuclear warhead’ is a mouthful.” He fingered the bracelet, then pulled the jacket sleeve down over it. “So is ‘wholesale Auphe genocide.’ ”

“Why do I think you’re not trying?” I asked dryly as the wind picked up along with the snow, and we stepped into the building. Cal, calm and safe. Unfortunately, I had to ask myself if there’d ever been a time when he’d felt that way. I paused by the stairs as it hit me. It was the memory I’d had just days ago. The Auphe at the window. It wasn’t the best of ones for me, but for Cal maybe that wasn’t true. It had been our routine. When Sophia left us alone, it was our time and it was a welcome time. A safe time. “Fish sticks and cartoons.”

He looked at me warily as he pushed open the door to the stairwell. “All that granola and carrot juice has melted your brain. What are you talking about?”

I didn’t blame him. It sounded ludicrous aloud, yet . . .

Fish sticks and cartoons; he’d been three when Sophia had taunted him about his father, but he’d been five before he really understood, before he actually saw an Auphe himself. Five years old before he’d started searching every window he passed for the nightmare that usually lives only in a child’s darkest imaginary closet. Up until then, Sophia’s words had just been words, ugly and frightening, but just words. When she was gone, he and I were alone with our ritual. After he was five, he never thought we were alone again. And for the two years prior to that, I hadn’t ever let him think that I knew we weren’t. Of all the things I’d done in my life, I thought I was proudest of that than of anything else.

“It was a long time ago.” He’d been so damn young, we both had, but some memory had to linger. And if not a memory, then a feeling. “Just say it, or my new mantra will involve your head, the nearest wall, and twenty-four prayer beads an hour.”

He didn’t bother to say “You wouldn’t,” because he knew I most certainly would. Instead, he grumbled, then muttered low under his breath. I couldn’t hear it, but he had said it. I could tell by the spark of surprise in his eyes. “I feel . . .” He climbed up a step and another before stopping. “Hell, I remember. I watched cartoons and you made me fish sticks.” For a moment he was only a twenty-year-old caught in a pleasant memory. No monster father, no malicious mother. No impending Armageddon. Carefree. Unburdened. What he should’ve been, and what he never could be.