No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) Read Free

need.  Something moved inside me, not physical, not mental, but something in-between.  “Magic,” I said.  “Gilgamesh.  Magic.”
    Keaton’s eyes opened wide.  “Yes!” she said, snapping her fingers.  A happy noise.
    “That was more than strange,” Gilgamesh said.  “Just before she spoke she burned juice.”
    I sat down, confused, and put my head in my hands.  Too much strangeness.  Gilgamesh knew about the big Arm secret of burning juice?  How did he know I burned juice?  Was his metasense that good?
    “This is new,” Keaton said.  She wasn’t worried that Gilgamesh knew the big secret.  He showed no signs of torture.  Perhaps he was innately deferential to her dominance?  I wished I knew how I figured things out.  Had to be this ‘logic’ thing that no longer made sense to me.  “Burning juice is a physical trick, or at least it is for me.  The question is, then, whether this is another of her post-withdrawal changes or some trick she figured out while in Chicago?”
    Such as this.  Keaton’s ‘logic’ went over my head.  Annoyed, I leapt up and hopped on top of a cabinet that held gym supplies, and leapt over to one of the two ropes.  “Unsafe,” Keaton barked out with her drill sergeant voice.  Not at me, so I ignored her.  I climbed up the rope, upside down, until my feet met the ceiling.  Gilgamesh vanished for real this time, taking cover outside the gym.
    I hissed and growled down at the room.  Angry and frustrated, I wanted to bite something and thrash it.  Some creature’s neck would do.
    Keaton walked over to the bottom of the rope and glared up at me.  “Get the fuck down from there and lose the Monster attitude,” she said.  Her voice brooked no delay and I followed her orders.  Only her orders hadn’t been given in her drill sergeant voice.  I knew they were orders, though.  I didn’t know why.
    I met her gaze, quizzical.  “Monster?”
    “Your predator effect doesn’t come across as Arm, but as Monster, when you do that,” Keaton said.
    This was good and bad.  Keaton didn’t think of me as an Arm but as a Monster.  I wasn’t competition.  My memories flagged this as ‘good’.  However, I flagged Monsters in my memories as ‘bad’, as in ‘to be slain on sight’.  Keaton didn’t appear ready to kill me, though.  I didn’t understand.
    “Notmonster.”
    Keaton shook her head.  “You work out.”  She turned to the gym entrance.  “Gilgamesh.”
    There!  That was so neat to see him appear and disappear like magic.  I started to work out.  This I knew.  I didn’t even have to think.  I just exercised until I exhausted myself and couldn’t move.  A few minutes later, I started up again.  Exercising felt good.  I could exercise like this all day and night, as long as I got food.
    As I worked out Keaton got in Gilgamesh’s face.  “That was one sorry ass bit of panic, chickenshit.  What the fuck have I been teaching you?”
    “Find a place to hide so I can defend myself and fight back, if appropriate,” Gilgamesh said, stressed.  Of course, he had a Keaton in his face.  I would be stressed, too.
    “And where did you end up this time?”
    “Kitchen, northeast corner.”
    “Where you didn’t have line of sight to toss any of your rotten eggs at the problem.  I swear, a blind lame housecat could do better.”  Keaton tapped her foot.  “Let’s try this again.  Boo!”
    She hit him with Arm predator, threatening death, from two inches away from his face.  I couldn’t follow his movement, but found him a moment later behind a dumbbell rack with a tennis ball in his hands.
    Needless to say, this bit of entertainment totally confused me.  I treated what followed as if I watched a Saturday morning cartoon in a foreign language.
    “Better,” Keaton said, and then charged him yelling “Yaaah!  Yaah!”  He found another place to hide.  This went on for several minutes, his hiding and her charging, his stress