In the morning, I managed to get enough ingredients together for pancakes. The night before, having left Rev to his own devices while Trick moped off into the front room without a word, I’d been abandoned in the kitchen just my warm cuppa to keep me company. At least Rev left the heavily spiked tea behind, even if he took the lion’s share of the whiskey. Even Purrloin was nowhere to be found. Food didn’t entice her. She was probably very pissed at me for everything. We had that in common.

Eventually, I found a bedroom, and sheets in a drawer for making up the bed. I slept well, all things considered. In the morning, after a bit of searching, I found some women’s clothes. Dusty and out-of-fashion, but better than nothing. There was such a wide variety of sizes and styles, the clothes must have come from twenty different women.

Trick was still asleep when I got up. And no matter how much noise I made in the kitchen, he didn’t rise from his makeshift bed. I wasn’t sure how deep his sleep was, because he thrashed around and made noises like an animal caught in a bear trap. The smell of melting butter didn’t entice him, either. Rev, on the other hand, was a different story. I heard him coming long before he appeared in the kitchen doorway. And even though he clearly loathed me, he also couldn’t sound that hateful when he asked if I’d found the syrup.

I hadn’t.

He clomped across the kitchen, threw open a cupboard, and pulled out a small brown bottle of Vermont maple syrup. It was dusty.

“Uh, is that still good?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder, one eye trained on the batter slowly cooking in the pan.

“Maple syrup doesn’t go bad,” he growled, setting it down on the table and gathering plates and utensils. “They still have that shit from the tombs. In Egypt. Mummies.”

“That’s honey,” I said, flipping the first flapjack.

“What’s the difference?”

“One is made by bees, and the other is…”

“I’m eating the syrup,” he said, putting a plate down with twice the force necessary.

“Fine,” I said, sliding one only-slightly-blackened pancake onto a plate. “But don’t come running to me if you end up with food poisoning.”

“Nothing in your trunk to take care of that?” Rev asked with a quick smile.

“Nothing I’m willing to share,” I retorted.

Five minutes later and there was a lovely, fragrant short stack waiting to be drizzled in ancient syrup. Rev made a big show of drenching the plate in the sappy liquid, and started eating like he was punishing the food with his teeth. I went back to cooking. Trick still hadn’t gotten up.

“Why do you want me to help him?”

I should have known, by then, that Rev wasn’t the type to beat around the bush. Neither was I.

“Because it’s one hell of a loose string,” I said. “Sharing a house with your junkie brother, waiting for whoever he owes money to. Do we need the extra risk? What if…”

“I’ll kick him out,” Rev grunted through a mouthful of food. “I can do that, you know.”

“And then he runs off and says something to the wrong person, and they know right where to find us,” I went on. “I’m sure those guys back at my house got a good look at you. They won’t have to work very hard to figure out who I’ve got on bodyguard duty.”

“So we leave. There’s other places we can go.”

“Like where?” I challenged, looking up from the pan long enough to show him how serious I was. This wasn’t just a life-or-death situation. It was my life-or-death situation.

“I’ll find a place,” he grumbled. The kettle started screaming. I’d forgotten the coffee I was trying to brew, and now I turned my attention to the French press.

“Why don’t you want to help him?” I asked. “Seems to me like he’s your little brother, and he’s in a tough spot, and you giving him a little help would be good for everyone involved.”

“A little help? You call protecting him from some dealer ‘a little help’?”

I sighed.

“What if I could pay off his debt? I don’t have any big pile of buried treasure, but I’ve got a little money. Maybe he doesn’t owe that much, and we can just settle his debt and make all of this go away.”

“And why would I want you to do that? He’s his own man, Misty. I’m not too keen on bailing him out.”

“Look,” I said, frustrated. “He’s your brother. I don’t know what history you two have, but he’s your brother. What happened? He steal your first love? Think Daddy liked him more? Pawned your prize baseball? Stole your dog? Stole your bike? Ran over you when he was driving drunk? Tell me, Rev. What’d he do?”

“Nothing,” he sneered. “He’s just a junkie fuck-up. He’s always needed someone to bail him out. I’m done being that person.”

“When’s the last time he asked?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Rev barked. “Let me check my diary. What’s your point? I’m kicking his ass to the curb, no matter what you say. You want me to protect you, we do it my way.”

Oh, was that how we were gonna play it? He gets grazed by a bullet and now he’s the damn king of the house? Gonna call all the shots?

Screwy as it was, I didn’t like that idea. I appreciated everything he’d done so far, but I’d rather go it alone than give all the power to a man. This wasn’t a monarchy. My voice mattered, too.

“When did that become the law of the land?” I asked, careful to keep my anger in check.

“When I brought you here, to my damn property,” he growled. I set a mug of coffee down in front of him. It was kind of cute, this whole homemaking charade. Me at the oven, flipping pancakes and making coffee. Hubby at the table. A bright, cheery, morning-type conversation. Except the maple syrup was old and the hubby was a con and the conversation was bitter as the coffee.

“A man’s gotta care about someone,” I finally said. “If you don’t care about your family, Rev, who do you care about?”

“He doesn’t care about me,” Rev spat.

“There’s something to be said about being the bigger man.”

He was silent for a while. I finished fixing my plate of pancakes and slid into the seat across from him. I reached for the syrup out of instinct, then remembered the dust that had collected on the bottle. They’d be fine dry. I knew he was convincing himself he was right. Sometimes, you gotta tell a man he’s right before he’ll ever understand why he’s wrong.

“Listen,” I said. “You’re right, you know. This is your place. And you do get to choose what happens after this. And maybe your brother doesn’t give a shit about you. Maybe he’s just some fucked-up roper who’ll never care about anyone but himself. Maybe we’re better off chasing him out of here.”

Rev’s eyes narrowed as I spoke. He had to know the game I was playing.

“But we’re all headed to the grave one way or another,” I finished up. “And it doesn’t matter what Trick has to say for himself when he meets his maker. But you? You have the choice now. You can say you looked out for your brother. That you did your best by him. Whether it stuck or not, you did your best. Or you can say you gave up, and maybe drove him to his grave a little sooner than he was meant to get there. That when he needed shelter, you kicked him to the curb.”

Rev growled. But he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look at me anymore, either. Just down at the crumbs on his plate.

“I know what I’d want to say at the end,” I finished. “But I’m not you. I don’t know him. And I don’t even have any siblings of my own to compare him to.”

Rev looked like he wanted to punch something... or someone. When he stood up, hands in fists, I thought maybe I’d pushed things a bit too far. He walked right past me into the front room, where his brother was still doing something like sleeping.

“Trick,” he said, loud enough to wake the dead - certainly loud enough for me to hear. “Trick! Get up. Get your ass in here. Get some fucking food in you. You’re too damn skinny. C’mon.”

I heard mumbling and rumbling and grumbling. I chewed through a forkful of pancake. Purrloin appeared, having spent the night hiding somewhere, and looked at me with contempt. She was hungry, too. Getting up, I prepared a bowl of wet food for her, and by the time I was setting it on the floor Rev and his brother had joined me in the kitchen. Trick could barely keep his eyes open, but he was managing it as best he could. Without another word, I dropped a pat of butter into the pan and poured a dollop from the rest of the batter.

“Get some damn food in you,” I heard Rev mumbling. “Then we’re gonna talk about why you’re here. You’re going to tell me who you owe, and how much…”

He kept on like that for a while, at least until I was back at the table, sliding a steaming heap of pancakes in front of Trick. That got his eyes opening a little wider, and he started picking at them. Rev turned his gaze on me looking unhappy about the situation, but I saw the truth behind those eyes. All I could do was smile. There was a good man in there, after all. I knew that. He just needed some encouragement to bring out his better half.

The longer I sat there smiling, the more it seemed like Rev was fighting a losing battle. He couldn’t hold onto that anger. It started in his eyes before drifting down to his lips. I watched the whole thing melt away, until he was smiling back at me, and very clearly hating himself for it.

We could make a good team, I thought out of nowhere. I had to look away, then, because I realized what I was doing to myself. What I was doing to my heart. I was looking into that abyss, and this time it wasn’t just looking back.

It was smiling, too.