PART THIRTEEN-HUNDRED-AND THIRTY-FOUR
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Friday
Mr Lancaster stiffened. “I beg your pardon.”
“Beg all you like—you’re not getting shit from me.” Nuncio walked around me towards Mr Lancaster, poking him squarely in the chest and driving him back several paces with the jab. “I’ve done more for you than any other mortal on this planet lately. Hell, because of you, I had to spend a realm-damn week cleaning shit up in Puerto Rico! And this?” He thrust his hand in my direction. “This is how you thank me for my generosity, you little pissant?”
I could see Mr Lancaster’s confusion. It was right up there with mine.
“What are you talking about, cuz?” I asked first.
His focus remained on Mr Lancaster. “Where do you think that dickhead was hiding Melody, and who do you think brought her back to New York for you and her mother to find?” He slapped his chest as dawning awareness registered on Mr Lancaster’s face. “That’s right. Me! And now you come after my cousin, whose only crime in all of this is to try to help you some more? Never mind the gold lump I left Melody with to pay for all her medical needs, you ungrateful ass!”
I saw Nuncio’s right hand clench into a fist, and I lunged at it, wrapping my whole body around the limb to keep it from connecting with Mr Lancaster. If he hadn’t meant to knock McCreepy out but still did, a deliberate punch would probably smash straight through Mr Lancaster’s torso like paper.
“He didn’t know he had to be grateful,” I insisted, pushing myself between them and forcing Mr Lancaster even farther back. “You haven’t exactly broadcast your part in Melody’s recovery, have you?”
“You’re really the one who brought Melody back?” Mr Lancaster asked over my shoulder.
“Catches on quick, don’t he?” Nuncio jeered at me. Then he looked at the man while flicking his head towards me. “After his brother and I fucked up that little bastard first, yeah.”
I used my grip on Nuncio’s arm to whirl him around to face me. “Fisk was there, too?” I demanded. Nuncio gave me a look that said, ‘Not now’, but I wasn’t letting this slide. “Fisk blew up someone’s house?” I all but screeched.
“Oh, fuck no. Don’t be ridiculous. That was all me. Fisk just wanted a piece of Alex because of what that asswipe did to Gerry and what she means to you.” He frowned deeply for a second. “I’d have thought you, of all people, would’ve put that part together. We did fuck him up on the local fishing dock over there, after all.”
I groaned and let him go long enough to cover my eyes—because if I’d known that, it would’ve been obvious. Then I dropped my hand. “Wait … it wasn’t one of his docks, right?” The last thing I wanted was for any of this to blow back on Fisk.
“Fuck off, dude. That tiny Podunk island wouldn’t have the means to—uhhh, yeah, I mean, no. Not one of his company’s docks, kiddo.”
It took me a second to catch what he’d ducked around. Fisk’s flagships were his massive super trawlers—too big to fit anywhere in Puerto Rico, or anywhere else. In fact, they didn’t belong in the world! Period!
And I guess my annoyance must’ve shown on my face.
“Now, now…cuz. Don’t be getting all riled up. He got rid of them all, just for you. His fleet is super-trawler free…”
“I would’ve preferred it if he scuttled them and turned them into underwater habitats for marine life.”
“Yeah, well, from what I understand, you weren’t exactly willing to sit down and discuss those options with him at the time, were you?”
That was also true.
I heard a deep, chesty rattle and looked past Nuncio to where Haynes was helping McCreepy to sit up. Nuncio followed my eyes and pointed at them. “That still doesn’t count, right?” he checked.
“Hey, Haynes,” I called, and the woman looked up at me in surprise. My gaze cut to McCreepy and back to her again. “Is he okay?”
“Umm…battered and bruised, but he’ll live,” she answered, after first looking at Mr Lancaster.
Good enough. The jerk had put a knife to my cousin’s throat, after all. “Then I guess it’s fine,” I said, and Nuncio made a production of breathing out a relieved sigh and wiping his brow…and it was so condescending that I really wanted to smack him.
“Sam, it doesn’t change the fact…” Mr Lancaster began.
“Of course it does, you moronic fuckwit,” Nuncio cut in sharply, losing all of his comedic attitude in favour of a dangerous one once more. “It’s my system. All of it. And who I give access to what is at my discretion. Not yours. Not anybody else’s. Mine. Get the fuck over yourselves if you think otherwise.”
I waited for Mr Lancaster to argue the point. I still didn’t know exactly what they were hunting for, but that answer of Nuncio’s wasn’t an answer at all.
Yet the tension in Mr Lancaster’s shoulders dropped, and the muscle guy beside him did likewise.
Clearly, I was missing something again.
“Nuncio…?”
“It’s fine, Sam.” He grinned unpleasantly at Mr Lancaster. “They know who they’re dealing with now.” He moved away from us and headed to the table where Hayne’s computers were, stepping up and over Haynes and McCreepy as if the three-foot jump was nothing.
I looked back at Mr Lancaster. “Are you okay?” I whispered, wanting to believe Nuncio hadn’t done something to his ring to give him access to his bending ability, but not knowing the chaotic Highborn Hellion well enough to be sure.
“He’s fine,” Nuncio answered for him, picking up my phone on the other side of the room. He then yanked on it, which should have been sufficient to disconnect it from the computer. Instead, the entire table flipped, crashing everything to the ground in a flurry of sparks and broken hardware. “Whoops,” he said, in a childlike mocking voice that said the exact opposite.
“You are such an A-Hole!” I railed at him, while Haynes whimpered, otherwise staying frozen beside McCreepy.
The sod grinned at me like I’d totally complimented him. “They’re still not hurt,” he pointed out.
My growl rode out my full exhalation, but technically, apart from McCreepy, he was right. I turned back to a stiff Mr Lancaster. “I did warn you not to get involved with my family, man.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Some of them can be real jerks.”
“Love you too, sweetie-pie,” Nuncio sing-songed as he sashayed his way back to us. “Here. Try not to—ooooooOOOOoooo.” The note was drawn out into a sung sound of appreciation as he ran his hand over the back of my jacket, his eyes taking in every inch of it. “What haaaaave we here?”
I gave him a small shove. “Knock it off. It was a gift, and I love it, so don’t start.”
“Hmmm,” he hummed, still looking over the jacket. “It’s not your dad’s handiwork. The craftsmanship is too sweet for his ham-hands. Not Aunt Col either—she doesn’t play favourites like that.” His eyes lit up. “Have you met Keiko?” He rubbed the soft leather between his fingers. “This would be right up her alley…”
“No, and it’s not. Stop fishing.” I took my phone from him, pocketed it, then looked over the jacket myself, searching for any indication that it was a divine construct. I found nothing out of place. “Actually, how did you know this was from one of us?”
“Dude, no human put that baby together. It’s divinely perfect.”
My eyes shot to the others, and Nuncio scoffed. “Cuz, I can say whatever I want. I’m Nuncio Nascerdios. They’ll hear whatever they need to hear to get off my back.”
“Man, that’s not exactly how the veil works.”
“Oh, and you’re such an expert on it now, are you? You’ve known about it, what? Two minutes? Maybe three?”
Okay, fine. It had only been a couple of weeks. “Still doesn’t change the rules,” I insisted, defensively. “Believable doesn’t automatically give you a pass.”
Nuncio took a half step back and stared at me as if trying to figure out if I was joking or not. Newsflash, I wasn’t. I sucked at sarcasm. He pointed to the muscle mountain. “You,” he snapped, giving him no chance to dodge. “What did I just say?”
The poor guy was only just starting to figure out how badly they’d underestimated the situation. “Uhh…Two minutes? Maybe three?”
Nuncio scowled and curled his fingers into a loose fist. When he opened his hand, there was a ball roughly the size of a half dollar in his palm, which he tossed at the guy’s head. It bounced off his jaw with a solid, rubber thock and returned to Nuncio’s outstretched hand. “Like you said, dipshit – nobody likes a wiseass.” The guy jerked with the blow but didn’t stumble or go down.
“Leave my people alone,” Mr Lancaster warned.
“Oooooh, or what, tough guy?” Nuncio asked, angling his head in a dare.
I grabbed Nuncio’s arm and pushed myself between them once more. “Don’t,” I warned. “He’s protecting his own, and we’ve always respected that.” At least, I knew Dad and my siblings had. And Lady Col. And everyone else I’d met. I could only hope Nuncio was included in that number.
He stared at me for a long time, then refocused on Mr Lancaster. “Fine. You answer it then. What did I tell my cousin about the craftsmanship of his jacket?”
Credit to Mr Lancaster: he didn’t bat an eye. “You said it’s perfect and that no one outside your family could have made it.”
Nuncio gave him a fingertip golf clap. “See?” he asked me.
Yeah, yeah, I saw. The veil not only covered for him, but the reinterpretation avoided the most obvious tweak of ‘He said it, but Nuncio is crazy’. Apparently, everyone else was expendable to the veil—except the Nascerdios.
And they wonder why I hate using it.
“You good to go, cuz?”
I glanced at Mr Lancaster, who didn’t seem to want to stop us. Muscles stepped out of the way of the stairs too. I’m sorry, I mouthed, for I knew they’d only done what they thought was right. “I’d still like to help Melody…”
“Are you crazy?” Nuncio shouted. “They were about to torture you! You get that, right?” When I went to argue, he half-dragged/half-kicked at the plastic sheeting under our feet. “That is NOT the latest designer trend, doofus. They were going to roll you up and bury you somewhere if you didn’t tell them what they wanted to know.”
Yeah, even I had figured that much out, coming down the stairs. “It might have been their plan, but it wasn’t going to hap—you know what? Can we just go?” I was never going to win this argument with him, and I was sick of trying. I just wanted to leave.
Nuncio laid an arm across my shoulders like we were old friends. “Later, losers,” he said, flipping everyone the bird with his free hand as he strode forward with me, dragging me unceremoniously through a realm-step.
* * *
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