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

basic traffic rules. So you are all that’s standing between more violence and Jared. You are not up to this. This is not your jam. You are shaky terrified.

You can leave, Jared says in your head. You can walk away. It’s my shit, not yours.

Please, Jared. Please.

I don’t want to get you killed. I don’t want to get anyone else killed and I don’t want to kill anyone.

You don’t have to.

I killed Dad. I got him killed.

That wasn’t your fault.

If the coy wolves come, you either shoot them or they’ll eat you alive, one limb at a time, while you scream. So you better shoot them.

Deep, trembling breath. At least Jared cares if you live or die. There’s no one else who does.

You could go back to your uncles.

But their houses are places where you edit yourself constantly. Places you have to be careful to not be too weird. Dead or fake. If those are the options, you’re staying put.

10

MAGGIE

You and Richie drag Jared’s stink ass to the tub. Richie skitters away, not willing to help peel the clothes from your giant baby. That is a bridge too far for your knight in shining armour. He’s off to hit the casino and mindlessly play the one-armed bandits until he feels ready to come back to a motel room with two dramatic teens and the fucking love of his life. Blended families are not for the faint of heart.

Jared isn’t in the body you’re washing the blood and puke off of, but he is watching Netflix with his ex on her laptop, laughing at The Office, an episode the girl knows well enough to recite the lines. Which is progress, right? He’s not moping on the roof anymore.

This reminds you of bathing him in the kitchen sink when he was the size of a kitten. You do an inventory. Light bruising around the wrists. A bump on his forehead. Scars from the otter cave. Scars from David. Scars from stupid shit he did during drunken parties. Bruises around his neck fading to an ugly purple with a piss-yellow halo. But otherwise he’s whole. His black hair floats in the water, waving as you lift his neck and squirt his scalp with shampoo. His face wears the blank expression of an empty vessel.

For the love of Christ, Sophia had texted. Jared’s not Wee’git. That Trickster’s moping in his house in Kits because Jared won’t talk to him. Get your head out of your ass, Maggie.

And then, after tracking you down, Sophia personally delivered the news about Phil and Shirley. Sophia with her thousand-yard stare, the deep croak of large, man-eating birds sounding like a morning jungle around her, an assembly of invisible creatures ready to eat your brain out of your eye socket or crack your skull like a soft-boiled egg. She is old-school magic, unforgiving and bloody. You don’t want to be the target of Sophia on a tear. Thank fucking Christ she has other things to hate.

But once she lets loose, you’ll need to worry about the coy wolf stragglers, who will have nothing to lose and hearts full of vengeance. Them and the soft targets like Mave, la-di-da-ing through the world thinking she’s so political and that she knows how things work. Jared at least knows when he’s in deep. Mave won’t know until they’re eating her face. It was so much easier when you didn’t give a rat’s ass if she lived or died.

Did you find him? Mave had texted.

You pause to let your giant baby soak.

Yes, you finally text back. He’s still in shock about Phil. We need some time to work things out as a family.

Things you want to add but don’t: stop fucking posting every goddamn thing about this on Facebook, you clueless civvy.

Thank the Creator. Maggie, I’m so sorry. Let me know if I can do anything.

Will text more l8r.

K.

Give all of him a light scrub with a wet face cloth. Unplug the tub. Pat the body dry and heave him up. Call for the girl and you both wrestle him into a bathrobe and back to bed. People surprise you. You blew her off as twitchy, but she’s handling death and mayhem like a champ. You don’t know what to make of her fashion choices—who wears tulle on a raid?—but she’s steady in a crisis. Didn’t balk when you left her alone with a pistol she didn’t know how to use. She led you to the compound, able to hear your son when you couldn’t. None of you knew what you were walking into, but she didn’t hesitate. The compound was big. Surprisingly empty. Fuck-all for security, the dumb bastards.

You were not sure how you and Richie were going to find your missing, trouble-magnet son in the maze of buildings when something came lurching out of the dark. The shock of seeing Jared’s liver bouncing like a demented football, showing you the way to the root cellar like a skinless Lassie, just in time to see more hopping organs coming your way, being chased by three very angry coy wolves in human form.

Jared moves as far away as he can get from his body in this small motel room, fading, visibly fading, alarming his little witch. Ignore him and eat cold pizza, plain cheese because the girly-girl can’t stomach animals.

Of Jared’s crew, Hank looks as though he could do some damage. Plus he’s dating a fucking Donner, who turns out is an otter in human form. Neeka. Your source for all the things Jared wouldn’t share with you. Neeka knows the score.

It was the crew we suspected who had him, you text her.

Jared?

Alive. Problem dogs on the rez tho.

I’ll get Mave to stay with us.

Thanx Neeks.

No worries.

Jared’s annoyed. You feel that very clearly, because he wants you to know he’s not happy about you knowing Neeka. You’re not braiding each other’s hair, but you recognize someone who’s been through the same grind, life having had no mercy