“Same as usual? I have McKay-Stewart Spontaneous Colonic Hyper-spasm syndrome, and it’s the dog for early flatulence detection or a bucket because there isn’t an adult diaper big enough in the world.”

I grinned in agreement and jumped down to trot to the bathroom and turn on the shower with my jaws. Two hours later I was lying in the aisle, watching a Batman movie. Given my size, I was actually blocking the aisle. A fire hazard, that was me. I knew Rafferty was watching me for any signs of an “episode,” and I heard a few whispers about my size. How if I were a dog, then some guy would kiss my furry butt. I ignored it all as I buried my muzzle in a popcorn bag, extra butter, and for two and a half hours watched as some bad guys got their asses kicked, a hero fell from his pedestal, and an oddly sympathetic psycho villain took out people right and left, blowing them up; shooting them; catching them on fire; tossing them off buildings. But that was all right. It was just entertainment, not real life. For two and a half hours, I was able to escape knowing that that was real life for some. For two and a half hours, I was able to eat popcorn; I was able to sit with people, watch actors do their thing, and watch couples in the back make out.

I got to watch a brand- new movie. I got to hang out with my cousin in public.

I got to be normal.

It was absolutely a glass-half-full day.

That morning was Hell on Earth, which is my definition for every morning, but especially this one. Once again I was running on little sleep, about half what I’d gotten the night before. Three hours put my thinking skills at about the level of a highly inbred hamster or a former kiddie star turned pop singer, although that was insulting the hamster.

“Huh?” I said as I kept my eyes shut. Nik had said something, but honestly, right then, I didn’t care what it was. I didn’t care if he’d told me that alien space bimbos had landed in search of our seed and they all had six breasts, all double D. I only wanted to sleep.

“I said, we’re here.” A flick to my ear woke me up to the back of a taxi and a rising sun. “Why?” I groaned. “This damn early, why?”

Niko looked at me through opaque dark sunglasses. “We’re on a mission from Buddha,” he said matter-of-factly.

I snarled at him and fought the seat belt and door to get out. It seemed hamster brains and seat belts didn’t mix. I considered sawing through it with my knife.

“All right,” he modified in a humoring tone. “We’re running a day and a half behind and we’re on a business transaction for a malicious old woman who’d happily see us dead, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring. Besides, I think Buddha would believe we will gain good karma at saving lives from a deranged healer.” He reached out with a single, somehow smug, finger and punched open my seat belt.

“Buddha can kiss my ass.” I received a stinging swat on the back of the head as I dragged my two duffel bags behind me, one packed with clothes and one with weapons, onto the curb in front of Goodfellow’s car lot in Brooklyn.

“And I know I’m heaped with good karma for putting up with your incessant bitching and moaning. If you didn’t sleep, I wouldn’t escape it at all.” He placed his own bags beside mine and paid the cabdriver. “Forget the usual hundreds of reincarnated lives one usually must pass through. It’s a wonder I didn’t become enlightened and reached nirvana before you hit puberty for my righteousness in the face of incomprehensible suffering.”

“Unh,” I growled incoherently. “Asshole.” There. That was a little more understandable.

“The first caveman grunting followed by foul language and the second a body that would’ve made Michelangelo’s chisel salute north. The Leandros brothers have arrived,” came Robin’s voice. Unlike all other times, Niko’s Eldorado was parked directly in front, convertible top down, paint proudly peeling, and two bare feet sticking up from the backseat and propped up on the side of the car.

“Tell me he’s not naked,” I groaned. “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks to tell me he’s not naked.”

“I’m the one who makes chisels rise. You tell me.” Niko took his bags to the trunk, opening it quickly enough to block his view.

The feet spread into a V, letting me see wildly tousled brown hair, overly bright eyes, a mostly empty bottle of wine cradled against his chest with several empty ones in the floorboards, and clothes. I might not be a God-fearing or believing man, but say hallelujah. There were clothes. I moved closer. It wasn’t clothes after all, but pajamas. Silk, expensive like all Goodfellow’s things were, and it looked like the shirt was on backward and inside out. There were also feathers in his hair-white and gold ones; Ishiah’s feathers; my boss’s feathers. And there was no unseeing that as much as I wanted to. “So, Goodfellow…,” I started.

“Tell Niko that I fixed his window. Free of charge.” As he tilted the wine bottle back and finished it off, I looked at the driver’s window. It was gone, and there was a mound of safety glass and a hammer on the asphalt beside the door.

“You’re one helluva mechanic, I’ll give you that.” I tossed my bags over to Niko who was looking around the open trunk at the same pile of glass. I couldn’t see the expression behind his sunglasses and that was for the best. I imagine it would’ve melted my face like a bad monster-movie special effect. “I take it you want to tag along on this job?”

“Tag along?” The puck frowned. “I do not tag along. I have led crowds of virgins to a mass fertility and deflowering rite. I accompanied the Argonauts because I thought I’d look amazing in golden fleece, and a three-some with Castor and Pollux was nothing to sneeze at. I told a drunken and toothless hedge wizard a ridiculous story about the Holy Grail and watched King Arthur’s knights roam about the countryside forever, looking under every skirt and stone for the thing. I was with Columbus when he found the New World and at the Hawaiian barbecuing of Captain Cook, who, while a cranky bastard, was quite tasty.” He pointed the empty wine bottle at me and almost made it upright in indignation. “I create adventure. I live life as it has never been lived before. I forge legends. I do not tag along.”

“You’re tagging along,” I drawled.

“Yes,” he sighed, falling back again. “I’m tagging along.”

“Why?” I asked. “You hated our last road trip. You don’t like fast food. You don’t like gas stations full of ‘the common people’… you know, anyone who isn’t you. You get bored about thirty seconds on the road and start flashing ninety-year-old women drivers.”

“Someone needs to verify they’re taking their heart medication,” he mumbled, and sat up. “Ishiah suggested it. He thinks I should go and test my resolve or more realistically, he thinks, to give my resolve a rest.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” It was way too early to follow a puck’s train of thought. They were bullet trains at the very least. They would suck you into their two-hundred-twenty-five-mile slipstream and it would be all over for you.

He hesitated, groaned, then said, “Monogamy.”

“Monogamous? You and Ish? You?” My mouth opened, closed, and opened again as I heard Niko, infallible warrior born and bred with nerves of titanium steel, fumble wildly at the M word and drop his bag. “I mean… you?” Robin? The horniest puck in a race that all but defined themselves by their level of horny. Wouldn’t other pucks rush to form an intervention? Monogamous Anonymous? They’d tell him they’d have him off his feet and onto his back again in no time. Or his front. Or all fours-whichever he’d prefer. That Robin? “Seriously?”

Robin glared silently. It was answer enough.

“How… Christ, how long?” I felt like the hammer on the ground had levitated and smacked me in the head. It was that unbelievable-inexplicable even. Only brain damage could explain it-profound, massive brain damage.