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

wanna drag you away from that to clean up another one of my messes. I figured David would be an asshole for a while and then get bored.”

“Are you okay that I killed him?”

Jared searched inside himself for any part of him that had an opinion. “I think the root cellar burned off all my hate for him. I don’t know if he would have stopped stalking me if you let him live, but it turned out he was, like, one of us and he couldn’t deal with it. He was sad.”

“Huh,” she said. “I could kill him all day and still hate his motherfucking guts.”

That struck Jared as hysterical, and his mom watched him as if she was expecting him to fall back into a crying jag, but he was able to stop laughing this time. Then he picked up the bowl and poked his soup with his plastic spoon, tried a sip. Oily, lukewarm water.

They watched TV after supper. Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and then the news. His mom went and stood at the window, peeking through the curtains. Her hand rested on her Glock. She paced the room, and then came and sat beside him.

“We need to figure out how many people are after you, Jared. Okay? Tomorrow, me and Richie need to go poke around and see what’s what. I want you and Sarah to stay with Mave. You just need to be eyes and ears. I’m not expecting you to kill anyone. If you get a whiff of coy wolf, you holler and stall whoever it is until we get there. Got it?”

“Stall them? How?”

“Annoy the crap out of them.”

“What if Mave’s collateral damage? I don’t…I can’t…It’s just…”

“Jared, she’s already a target. That’s why you need to watch her.”

“I dunno.”

“Fine. Let her be dragged to a root cellar and eaten alive. Your call.”

“Holy,” Jared said. “Way to lay on the guilt. I’m good at getting people killed, Mother. I don’t know if I’m any good at saving them.”

“Then sit around with your thumb stuck up your ass. That’s always a winning plan.”

“Ha,” Jared said. “Mom’s maaaaaad.”

“See? You can annoy anyone. I have faith in you.”

“Mommy-and-me time. Mommy. And me.”

“Jared.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I’m armed.”

“Dancing with the Stars is on. Please change the channel, Mommy dearest.”

“Eat your fucking soup before I shove it up your nose. I don’t care if it’s cold, you need it.”

12

GET ANGRY

They had breakfast at Denny’s. Or, more accurately, everyone else had breakfast. Jared, experiencing his first hangover in a year, hugged his coffee. He ordered toast, more to get his mom off his back than out of any actual desire for toast.

“I like my toast dry, just like my martinis,” Jared said. He held up his mug. “Can you just leave the pot?”

The waitress said she thought he was hi-lar-ious in a tone that meant she didn’t.

He could taste the coffee. The coffee was good. All hail the coffee bean, bringer of life. Sarah, unable to find a vegan option, had opted for hash browns and a fruit cup. Cheap dates, both of them.

“Some Wild Men of the Woods are hugans,” Jared said. “They are the vegans of the Otherworld.”

He’d been trying to make things less awkward at the breakfast table by dropping some knowledge, but instead, his mom’s expression went from annoyed to murderous and Richie looked as if he was mentally counting to ten.

“Are you mocking me?” Sarah said.

“No, no. Wild Men of the Woods are a part of the Otherworld—”

“What Wild Men?” Sarah said.

“Just fucking say sasquatches, you prissy shit,” his mom said.

Which killed anyone’s desire to break the silence at their booth.

Jared wanted, more than anything, to lie down on the banquette and have the waitress bring him coffee all day.

Eventually, Sarah and Richie started quietly talking about pistols, and his mom used that moment of distraction to ask, “How did you piss off a pack of coy wolves, anyway? Who was the woman in your head?”

I killed a lot of them, he thought, but the words wouldn’t come out. I took them to another universe and there was no air and they died fighting for breath. Georgina wanted…She wanted…But it was as though his brain had crashed and was rebooting. He blinked at his mother.

“Maybe give him another day to process,” Sarah said.

“Sure,” his mother said. “It’s not like we’re risking our lives or anything.”

“I don’t want you to,” Jared said. “You should go back to Winnipeg. I’ll be fine.”

“Wow,” his mom said.

“He’s really still kind of out of it,” Sarah said.

“He didn’t sleep a lot,” his mom said.

“And he’s hungover again.”

“I’m right here,” Jared said, pointing his finger and slowly reaching over to poke Richie’s shoulder. “You feel that, right?”

“I’m going for a smoke,” Richie said.

“I’d like a smoke,” Jared said.

“Maggie,” Richie said.

“Stay,” his mom said to him. “Stay with Sarah. Don’t fucking go anywhere, Jared.”

She and Richie left the restaurant, not looking back.

“We’re trying to help,” Sarah said to him. “Can you stop punishing us for it?”

“I wasn’t mocking you. I was trying to explain things. Hugans don’t eat people. They’re like vegans. They’re people-vegans. Pegans, maybe, although that sounds gross.”

“Are you still half-cut?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought so. Maybe stop trying to crawl up your mom’s ass, okay? I’d like to live a little longer.”

“Okay.”

The waitress came by and refilled his coffee. Sarah gulped her water. She reached over and held his hand.

“I kinda know what you’re going through. Gran died. Then Mom threw me in the gulag and then I ran away and met this witch who said he’d help me, but then he ate my fireflies instead and everything that made me special died with them. Then Děda starved himself to death ’cause he couldn’t live without Gran. Everything hit so fast I felt numb. Everything was surreal. No one’s ever tried to kill me, though. No one’s ever stalked or tortured me. No one killed my dad to get to me. I’m amazed you’re still standing.”

“I missed you,” Jared said.

“Good,” Sarah