Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson (ebook voice reader TXT) 📗

that embarrassed him to admit, like a baby, like a shrieking toddler, the need not something normal adults should feel.

They sank to the floor, twined around each other. He could hear her heartbeat and she could hear his. He could see her memories, feel her shock as she opened the bedroom door to find David in Jared’s bedroom back when he was a kid and saw the things happening that Jared didn’t want to dwell on. Her hands made fists in his shirt.

You should have killed David when you first caught him torturing your son, she was thinking. David is going to take a dirt nap. David is in your rifle sights and you are itching to send a bullet tunnelling through his brain. You want to hear him scream and then you want to end that scream.

“I’m a Trickster,” Jared whispered.

Abruptly, he was alone in his brain. His mother pulled back, their faces still close enough that he could see her pores, but she might as well have been on the moon. Her eyes narrowed as she processed what he’d just told her. He felt her dawning realization and the resulting fury that curdled her expression.

“Let’s get smokes, Mags,” Richie said. He might not be the most sensitive guy on the planet, but he knew his girlfriend’s moods. Especially the dangerous ones. “Let’s go for a ride and then have a smoke. Where’s your shoes?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Maggie said, and stomped off.

Richie scowled at Jared then jogged after her, bending to pick up a pair of black slouchy boots on his way out.

“My little diplomat,” Sophia said with a wry smile. “Couldn’t wait until she’d had some sleep to make that charming revelation, could you?”

“What did you say to Maggie?” Mave said as she moved in for a careful hug.

Jared couldn’t muster a clever comeback, struggling not to emote. Mave’s hair was usually gleaming in a careful pixie cut. She loved vintage outfits and pointy high heels. He’d never seen her with greasy hair and in sweats before. Justice, Mave’s adopted daughter, came over to touch his arm. She was wearing a shapeless black dress and sneakers, which was like seeing the Queen of England in a tank top. One of her acrylic nails was broken, marring the glittering perfection of her long hands. The two led him to the couch and then they all sat and they stared at him.

“Maybe we should get you some outside help,” Kota said.

“Kota,” Hank said, moving to stand over Jared, eyeballing him as though he was an unfamiliar dog that might bite. Hank, usually the scariest of his cousins, had fresh hickeys, which kind of ruined his vibe. Jared had never suspected that Neeka, Hank’s new girlfriend, was the hickey-giving type. Hank noticed Jared noticing his hickeys and scowled, his chiselled face an emoji of annoyance.

“Listen, my couch is your couch,” Kota said. “Call me if shit goes sideways.”

“ ’Kay,” Jared said.

Kota mumbled his byes to everyone.

Jared wanted his mother back. He wanted to know she was okay, but he couldn’t sense her. Everyone was still staring at him. He felt as if he should say or do something, but his mind drew a blank.

“Jared?” Mave said. “Are you okay?”

Her face was so familiar and yet it felt as though he was looking at her through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.

“Never mind answering for now,” she said. “Do you want some coffee? Hank, get him some coffee.”

“Maybe we should take him to the walk-in clinic,” Hank said. “He looks concussed.”

“And we should document the bruises,” Justice said. “Especially the ones around his neck.”

“Coffee,” Mave insisted. “Now.”

Bossy, his mom had repeatedly said of her sister. But he was glad of it now that Hank had stopped standing over him and gone to bang around the kitchen searching for where the coffee beans were being stored this week. Someone turned the TV on and Jared wondered if Dent, his ghost friend, was happy stuck as he was in the dolphin universe. Sophia was sitting in Dent’s favourite recliner, where he had used to watch hours of Doctor Who. Though the apartment was full of people, the lack of his otherworldly friends—Dent, Huey the big head and the little ghost girl, Shu—made it feel wrong somehow. Hank ran the coffee grinder. Out the window, rain now fell in heavy squalls. The kettle whistled.

“It’s going to be all right,” Sophia said.

I killed a bunch of people who were coy wolves, Jared wanted to confess. After David tried to kill me.

Back, way back, when he was dating Sarah, they’d gotten drunk and high and travelled to a universe only to bring back hitchhikers—men who were hominids but not human. Sophia had helped return the ape men to their home. Because Jared had already been there once, he thought of the ape men’s universe when he needed somewhere to take Georgina and her pack so they wouldn’t murder everyone in this room. That universe was where Jared had died and Georgina had brought him back to life again and again like a glitchy video game giving you free lives. Sophia would likely be mad at him when she found out what had happened in the ape men’s world, but now she reached over and tentatively touched his hand.

“You’re safe,” she said.

He wasn’t, though. He was dangerous to be near and a danger to himself. Sophia watched him with such sadness. He didn’t want to be the subject of her mournful eyes. “Dad’s religious now.”

She grimaced and pulled her hand back. “Philip goes out of his way to make me regret pushing him out of my uterus.”

“TMI, Sophia.”

“Everyone alive, my dear, was once in a womb and slid into this world in a bloody, goopy mess.”

Hank came back and handed Jared a coffee. He asked Sophia if she wanted one and she shook her head. Justice brought out a plate of peanut butter cookies. They were the size of your palm and she’d decorated each top with