Kicking It(94)

I was scared. Of course I was scared. Lucifer Morningstar, the first of the fallen, was just about the biggest and baddest thing going. As far as I could tell, the only thing stopping him from ripping me into tiny little pieces of confetti was his attachment to anyone of his bloodline, no matter how distant. But there was no way Lucifer could have good intentions for the Red Shoes. And Beezle kept telling me that Lucifer respected strength. So I gazed just as steadily back at him, and hoped he couldn’t see my fear.

“I can’t let you take them,” I said.

“And what will you do with them?” Lucifer asked. “How will you keep them safe? Once word gets about that you have the shoes in your possession, there will be creatures aplenty coming to claim their power.”

“I’m counting on two things to stop them from bothering me,” I said.

Lucifer looked amused. “And those two things are?”

“Your reputation. And mine,” I said. I might not be the first of the fallen, but there were lots of rumors about me, and I’d already proved more than once that I was no pushover.

“So you are willing to claim me if it’s convenient to your purpose, and otherwise you would disdain my offer?” Lucifer asked.

He’d implied more than once that he wanted me to be his heir, but I wasn’t interested in being mistress of all evil.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” I said. “I keep the shoes, and if anyone tries to take them from me I’ll just remind them who I am. And who you are.”

Lucifer laughed suddenly, his eyes sparkling. You could see when he laughed like that how he managed to tempt so many, to charm good people onto a path strewn with thorns.

“Very well,” my great-grandfather said. “Let us say that you will keep the shoes for me, then. For a little while.”

That was probably the best deal I was going to get. The shoes were out of Lucifer’s hands for the time being. Maybe, if I was very lucky, he would forget about them.

Or maybe not. Lucifer had been alive for a long time and he seemed to remember everything.

Still, it was a victory of sorts.

Lucifer rose and stretched, turned his face toward the east and the rising sun.

“You may find that those shoes will be useful to you someday, granddaughter,” Lucifer said.

I thought of the sick craving I’d felt when I’d first seen the shoes, and the palpable evil that surrounded them. I thought of dancing until you died, a puppet controlled by a will that was not your own. I don’t think I’d wish that fate on my worst enemy.

“Nah,” I said. “Red isn’t really my color.”





SNAKESKIN





BY ROB THURMAN


These boots weren’t made for talking.

—TRIXA IKTOMI


This story, while part of the Trickster series, is a ten-year prequel and introduces several beloved secondary characters such as Zeke and Griffin. Enjoy.





There’re all sorts of sayings about shoes. “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” “It’s no use carrying an umbrella if your shoes are leaking.” The last you don’t hear much unless you travel, but it is as wise as the others—worth remembering. But on and on it goes. Full of good intentions, these kinds of sayings are. They’re something to guide people who have no common sense or thoughts of their own, my mama liked to point out. My mama—well, I’d long stopped fighting it—my mama was rarely wrong. Sometimes a tad misdirected, but wrong? I can’t say that she was.

When it came to shoes and sayings, I had a favorite by a brilliant man who had enough thoughts for twenty people. Mark Twain said it as he said and wrote many things, not many of which I could disagree with, not offhand. He knew the hearts and minds of humanity and the lack that lay in most. It was my new client’s shoes that made me think of this particular saying of his, a delicious one: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

It was particularly outrageous and apt to describe this client—oh she was a liar, a talented one of spectacular degree. Her lies were a thing of glory that put the blue, blue heavens to shame.

And her shoes were almost as fabulous.

—

I lived in Las Vegas for several reasons, but one of them was it let me work. It let me do. And I needed to do, because if you don’t do, then how can you know you even exist? Boredom is the name of the game. Other people call it Russian roulette. You just keep pulling that trigger, click, click, click, and feel the excitement ramp up higher each time, all the while hoping that one of those pulls doesn’t propel boredom through your brain. Boredom was worse than any bullet for people like me. Adrenaline junkies—we couldn’t stand it when the fun stopped. When the fun stopped, life stopped, and boredom was that all over.