“Yeah, but it’s so much more fun to scare a little boy who’s afraid of clowns.” Caleb flashed an evil grin at him.
Nick shifted indignantly as he knew exactly what Caleb was referring to and he didn’t appreciate it in the least. “Hey now, that thing ain’t no clown I’m afraid of … it’s a Mardi Gras jester. Get your terms straight, old man. Your senility’s showing again. Besides, it’s evil and talks under the light of your magic. And you know it. So don’t you be hassling me over a well-founded fear about Mr. Creepy and his little head on a stick. That thing’s nasty and whoever put it in the middle of a tourist district where they got little kids walking by it all the time ought to be tied naked to a Mardi Gras float on a cold rainy day and left there to be mocked. Just saying. It’s all kinds of wrong.”
And it wasn’t like Nick was the only person alive with coulrophobia. That fear was quite common and normal. Maybe not for a Malachai demon who could tear a clown apart, but still …
Nick hadn’t known he was the Malachai until many years after he’d developed his coulro-jester-phobia … on a stick. By then, his fear had become second nature.
Caleb made a rude dismissive noise before he passed a snide stare to Kody. “You know he’s still having nightmares about that night?”
At least Kody defended him. “I’m still having nightmares about that night. I don’t fault him on that account. It was pretty gruesome.”
Yeah, and his father, the baddest Malachai ever born, had died in that battle.
And all of them had been wounded. The night they’d faced the talking jester with the tiny head, and the demon krewe had been that terrifying.
“Thank you, sug!” Nick kissed the air in her direction before he picked up another beignet and shoved it in his mouth whole.
“But I can’t watch this.” She turned her back and shuddered. “I’m getting diabetes just being here.”
“And losing respect for your boy by the heartbeat,” Caleb added.
To Nick’s immediate cry of, “Hey!” Kody still ignored them both.
And neither of that kept Caleb from his merciless quest to have fun at Nick’s expense. “You’re a ghost,” Caleb reminded her. “You can’t get diabetes.”
“So you say. I’m willing to debate it.” She shivered again even though she couldn’t see their contest any longer. “I can’t watch this insanity. Simi? You got my boy covered?”
Simi doused another plate of beignets with barbecue sauce. “‘Course I do, Akri-Kody. The Simi won’t let no demons or nothing else et your demon-boy or hurt him on my watch. Promise. Cross my heart, with barbecue sauce on top.”
“Thank you, Ms. Simi. I’ll see you two later.”
Nick licked at the sugar on his fingertips as he watched Kody head off in the direction of her house. He cut a meaningful stare toward Caleb. “Speaking of … aren’t you afraid your house guests are going to set fire to something? Like the whole, entire planet? Now that all three of the evil Celts are together and alone without adult or any kind of responsible supervision … ”
Caleb went pale. “Yeah, clowns don’t scare me. An unsupervised war god, hellhound and banshee … this could have nuclear-level meltdown repercussions. Only thing worse would have been to leave Bubba with them. See ya later.”
Wiping his hands down the leg of his jeans, Nick tried not to be too obvious. But he couldn’t help the intense way he stared after them both, making sure they were completely out of sight before he returned to Simi. He brushed his dark brown hair back from his eyes. “Okay, I think we’re safe now.”
Simi looked up with a slight pout which was made twice as adorable given that her mouth was covered in powdered sugar and barbecue sauce. He didn’t know why, but that combined with her black and red cybergoth pigtails made her look more like a kid his age than a demon who was thousands of years old. And while her speech was unorthodox to most ears, it came from the fact that English wasn’t her native or primary tongue.
Charonte was.
Unlike the Malachai who could speak all languages with ease, she sometimes had trouble navigating between the two languages—especially with subject-verb agreement, something that often caused her to ramble as she tried to make sense of words that baffled her with their similarities.
To her, many of them were superfluous and unnecessary, as in humans should be able to follow her meaning simply by the context. And if they couldn’t … Well, to quote Simi, poo on you.
Not that Nick minded her random jumps in logic or sequence. While he might understand and speak all languages, he was most fluent in Gibberish most days anyway.
And, he should get special bonus points for speaking in rapidly fluent Stupidity. At least according to his mom, and most of his teachers. If there was a wrong thing to say at a wrong time, he had a Ph.D. in it.
Dr. Nick Dumb-butt. That was him.
“What?” Simi battered her eyelashes. “You meant we gotta go now?”
“They might come back if we don’t.”
“Well, poo to that!” Simi sighed heavily in her obvious disappointment. “And here the Simi was all happy with her eats. You a mean demon-boy to drag the Simi away mid feastery!”
“That’s what they tell me.” And it was what he was trying his best to avoid. That and ending the world as they knew it. He’d really like to die centuries from now without causing the world to go with him on his way through the Pearly Gates.
Nick winced as that cold reality slapped him hard for the ten millionth time. He missed the days when he’d looked forward to a normal future of routine college, wife, kids, nine-to-five job, and growing fat, old and complacent with the world around him. When he’d been ignorant of his true destiny and future role in the larger universe.
It sucked to know that you would one day be the end of all living things.
At least that was what Kody and Caleb had led him to believe, but now …
They didn’t know anymore. It was why he needed Simi to take him to Olympus so that he could meet his half-brother, the sleep god, and ask Madoc about time-travel and consequences. Nick needed answers and he didn’t want anyone to interfere with the real stupidity he was planning. Which was exactly what Caleb and Kody would do if they were here.
They’d stop him from being even more suicidal than he already was. Warn him to stay away from Madoc and tell him why the last thing he needed was to cross those lines.
But as Kody had noted, he didn’t listen whenever he had his head set on something.
Simi tucked her barbecue sauce into her coffin-shaped purse, then wiped her mouth. “Okies. Whenever you’s ready.”
“I was born ready for being an idiot.” Nick braced himself for their trip through the dimension portals that he hated so much.
Simi blinked her eyes and jerked her head like a bird.
He felt that cold familiar, weird fluttering in his stomach that he got any time he had to cross into other planes or dimensions. Faster than he was prepared for, kaleidoscope colors twisted and blended and then quickly sorted themselves out. It was the strangest head trip. Like throwing hot crayons into a blender and leaving the lid off—something Nick didn’t advise anyone doing unless they really wanted their mother to disown them or ground them for the rest of their natural born lives.
It took him a second to get his bearings. Especially since this wasn’t where he was expecting to end up.
Yeah, not by a longshot. Confused, he glanced around the green and dark orange room that was way out of context. Had they taken a wrong turn at the bright light on the left? Or was this something else?
He’d assumed all of Olympus would be similar to Artemis’s Greek temple, where he’d met the goddess before. Big columns. Lots of white and gold. Delicate marble things everywhere that made him extremely nervous as he was forever banging into stuff and knocking it over. ’Cause he never knew where his limbs ended these days.
That it would have some frescos. Gaudy paint. Weird fauna and robed attendants who were way too happy, given the unpredictable natures of the beings they served. That it would at least have something remotely Greek to it.