“And I handled it, was late, and traveled to the bar,” I admitted.
His eyes narrowed. “Because lateness was life threatening?”
I could’ve half joked and said that with Ishiah it could be, but that would have been shitty of me. And while I had no problem being shitty with anyone else, I damn sure wasn’t going to be shitty with Nik. He was the sole reason I was alive, the sole reason I was sane.
In the face of that, how could I be shitty? How could I lie? I couldn’t, not to him. “No, but, hell, Nik, I need to stay in practice. How can I do that if I don’t open a gate once in a while? How can I save our lives if I can’t do it fast enough or if I start foaming at the mouth and become worse than what we’re running from? How do we know if the meditation works if we don’t test it?” I fingered the mala bracelet around my wrist as I asked. I’d gotten it from Nik-one of four that belonged to the Buddha-loving badass himself.
The bracelet was made of steel beads, each one a meditation mantra. It was supposed to keep me centered and in control of my nonhuman side, because in the past when I traveled, it wanted to come out and play. Meditation helped me push it back down. Control. It was all about control, because, believe it or not, they don’t make a pill or a patch for wanting to tear people apart thanks to over a million years of genetic tendencies.
His gaze didn’t shift a millimeter. “And that’s what you were thinking when you traveled from the park to here? Practicing?”
Yeah, in a sling big- time. “Sit down. You’ll need a good hour to ream me.” I sighed. “Beer or tea?”
He didn’t sit and he didn’t speak. I went and brought back both. Brewing the tea took a few minutes, an opportunity for Niko to become a little less furious. I brought the tea that I kept for him under the bar, some mix that cost a ridiculous twenty dollars an ounce, but desperate times called for criminally overpriced tea. Kind of like throwing a virgin on some old god’s altar in hopes he would cure that pesky leprosy. Probably wouldn’t work, but didn’t hurt to try.
I put down the tea. He looked at it, the beer, then me. “I can’t decide which would be the more effective lesson: a bottle smashed over your head or hot tea thrown in your face.”
Maybe it did hurt to try. I took the beer for myself. “I just… needed to. I feel like a hawk stuffed in a cage. I needed, I don’t know, out.”
“A hawk,” he snorted. “A parakeet on your best day.” But he sat down and wrapped his hands around the mug of tea. “You need to?”
“It’s like a rubber band in me, stretched tight enough to snap. If I travel, I feel normal again.”
Better than normal.
“And I haven’t foamed at the mouth or tried to eat anyone even once, swear. I think with the Auphe all dead and losing the mental connection with them, I’m okay. Either that or the meditation is kicking in, but either way, I’m good. I am. And I’ve only done it twice in the past six months.”
“Counting tonight?” he prodded.
“Three times,” I corrected, and glumly drank more of the beer.
“I should’ve had the phone reprogrammed sooner. Meditation works, but not that quickly and not for one of your skill level… virtually nonexistent,” he said darkly. “But we’ll discuss this later. We’re meeting a client here in a few minutes.”
“Who?” It’d been three weeks since our last job. I’d been getting bored. Niko and I, and sometimes Promise and Robin, made up what Niko called Preternatural Investigations. I was convinced he called it that because I could barely pronounce preternatural. My nice, simple Ass-kickers, Inc. had been voted down. “Someone Promise recommended?” I asked. Promise, Niko’s vampire girlfriend, sent the majority of our clients our way, although since they’d only recently reconciled, I didn’t expect it to have come from her. They were taking things slowly from what I could tell, feeling their way carefully. With her daughter, Cherish, having almost killed or made mental slaves of all of us, it was for the best. And with Niko having bypassed the “almost” in killing when it came to Cherish, you’d want to make sure the foundation of the relationship was solid first.
“Actually, someone called my cell and asked for the meet.” He decided drinking the tea instead of scalding me with it was the better plan and took a swallow. “He wouldn’t say anything more.”
That was weird. It wasn’t as if we wrote our number on bathroom walls or paid for subway ads. Monster Maimers, Inc. Call 555-5555. Our work tended to come by word of mouth… from either Promise or Robin. “He, huh? Did he say what he wanted?”
“No. Think of it as a surprise.”
It was a surprise. A helluva surprise.
One: It wasn’t a man.
Two: She was human… in the Ninth Circle and not afraid.
Three: We knew her. And maybe she was human, but she was also one of the scariest humans I’d come across. A hundred if she was a day and a greedy, manipulative, borderline psychotic witch… and I didn’t mean the Wizard of Oz kind. The only thing magical about her was the level of her pure vile nastiness. She liked me-I think because I’d been a little psychotic myself when I’d first met her.
Abelia-Roo.
Head of the Sarzo Clan. Rom. Toothless, wizened, maybe four foot ten, and didn’t give a rat’s ass who died as long as she got money out of it. She’d once sold us something we’d needed as ransom in a hostage situation and hadn’t bothered to mention that activating it took the blood of a gypsy. That blood had turned out to be Niko’s and that I definitely gave a rat’s ass about-a giant rat’s ass; big, furry, and pissed. It made me wonder how socially unacceptable it was to break the kneecaps of an old lady with her own intricately carved cane.
She leaned that cane against the bar, sat her tiny frame on the stool next to Niko, and arranged the red fringed shawl over her sacklike black dress. “Niko and Caliban Leandros of the Vayash Clan.” Her black eyes glittered. “You enjoyed our hospitality once. I expect to be as well treated.” She knotted her gnarled hands on the bar and rattled off something in Romany, which neither Niko nor I spoke. Sophia had never bothered to teach us the language. She had left her clan before we were born and when the clan had found out what she’d done to produce me… well, they hadn’t exactly welcomed us with open arms.
Abelia-Roo grinned, showing her gums. “But I forget. You do not speak your own tongue. A disgrace. I will have a glass of your best wine. And if it is not your best, I shall know.”
“I’ll have to get a wineglass and scoop some water out of the toilet. Give me a sec,” I growled, my eyes slits. “Or better yet, haul your wrinkled old ass back to Florida or wherever you’ve set up camp. And tell Branje hey.” I’d threatened to slice off the nose of Abelia-Roo’s main muscle man. Then again, when you had him on the ground, knee in his gut, the tip of your knife up a nostril and you fully intended to do it, I guessed it wasn’t a threat.
The gums showed again, this time specifically in my direction. “Still a real man. It’s difficult to believe the Vayash Clan ever produced one.” The Vayash Clan also hadn’t seen the need to spread around that they gave birth to a half-breed Auphe. The rest of the clans would’ve had serious words to say about that. She still didn’t know about me then. “If I were ten years younger, my boy, I’d give you the ride of your life.” She patted the white bun at the back of her head with a coy hand. It didn’t do anything to cover up the pink-brown skin that peeked through the strands covering her scalp.
It was hard to stay pissed when you were trying not to spew all over yourself and the bar. I managed. I liked to think of pissed as number one in the repertoire that made up my general crapfest of moods. I was really, really good at it. Pulling in at the last of that emotional list would be forgiveness. “That’d still put you at nine hundred,” I said with distaste. “No thanks. The only thing I want from you is to get the hell out of here. Thanks to your not telling us about the Calabassa, my brother almost died, you evil bitch.”