Nightlife (Cal Leandros #1)(19)

Walking into his room, I leaned around him to extend a finger and run it along the smooth, silver satin of an elegant dagger. "The acid of skin is detrimental to the metal," Niko said mildly as he rolled another blade in a length of dark green felt. He didn't mention my absence and I was grateful for the restraint.

"And all the blood is like mother's milk," I snorted, raising a different and more eloquent finger for his perusal.

"Actually…" He curved his lips in a contemplative shadow of a smile. "Never mind."

I lowered my finger before he took the notion to treat it like a wishbone. "So when do we pull out, Master? In the morning?"

"Patience, Grasshopper." Rapping me reprovingly across the knuckles with the swaddled weapon, he went on. "He who makes haste risks falling from the path of enlightenment."

And suddenly George's good-bye to me made sense. Swearing, I fell back against the wall, the mattress creaking and complaining beneath me. "It's your car again, isn't it? Your goddamn hunk-of-junk car." The same hunk of junk I spent more than my fair share of time moving from one side of the street to the other to save it from the wrath of the boot.

I would never see Niko looking sheepish. It simply wasn't in him. But he did shift minutely, almost a whole millimeter, and his nose somehow or another became more hawkish. "She runs reliably nearly seventy-five percent of the time. For the money that's more than acceptable."

Seventy-five percent of the time wasn't so great when you were on the run all of the time. And wasn't this a blast from the past? The last time we'd had this conversation, I'd taken a walk on the Grendel side. Here was hoping we didn't have a rerun of that little experience. Still, I had no real desire to bring up that nugget of ancient history, so I kept my mouth shut for once and quietly watched as Niko continued to pack.

Not fooled for a moment by my silence, Niko zipped up the long duffel bag and set it easily on the floor. "I honestly don't believe there is any desperate hurry, Cal. Boggle has his muddy ear to the ground. If he's not heard anything, chances are, that Grendel was a lone anomaly." His eyes narrowed. "A lone ex-anomaly, if you will. In any event I believe we comfortably have a few days to get things in order." Clearing his throat, he added offhandedly, "Perhaps buy a new car."

"You think?" I drawled sarcastically.

Niko was as deadly with a headlock as he was with a sword. He had me in one before I could blink. With his mouth close to my ear, he warned mildly, "Be careful, little brother. Any further comments from the peanut gallery and I may just purchase a motorcycle. Perhaps strap you to the handlebars when we leave town."

"Couldn't be any worse than that death trap we're rattling around in now." I feinted an elbow at his gut and then simultaneously hooked a foot around his ankle and bit him on the arm. Niko went down and I landed on top of him hard. Rolling off, I bounced to my feet and aimed a one-two punch at the air. "Put 'em up. Put 'em up. I'll take ya with one paw tied behind my back." It was faked, the humor, but Niko went along regardless. He wasn't one to let me stew.

Niko snorted through his long nose, sitting up with ease. "The lion? Hardly. Toto maybe. A member of the Lollipop Guild on your very best day."

Triumph over Nik wasn't something to be wasted, no matter how black my mood, and I gave him a faint grin. "Sore loser." Reaching down a hand, I heaved him to his feet. I was under no illusion that I'd actually taken Niko down. It was a simple move he himself had taught me and one he was more than prepared against. Every day in every way, my brother was testing me, teaching me. I rubbed my thumb over the faint bite impressions in the skin of his arm. "Maybe we should put some barbecue sauce on that."

This time I was the one who went down. And it damn sure wasn't a legal move. After all, how often is a Grendel going to give me an atomic wedgie?

An hour later we hit the streets in search of a good used car. We started in Brooklyn but kept New Jersey open as an option. A scary last-ditch option. Grendels had nothing on a Jersey car salesman. Emerging from the womblike darkness of the subway and a heavy nap full of copper and glass dreams, I blinked at the bright sunlight that spilled out of a piercingly blue October sky.

Grumbling incoherently, I fished in my jacket pocket for sunglasses.

"Fear not, night dweller," Niko said with mocking gravity. "It is merely the sun, something you would see more often if you would roll out of bed before late afternoon."

I would never know if my morning sluggishness was inherited (the Grendels had obvious nocturnal preferences), or just sheer human laziness on my part. Either way Niko was damn hard to take this early. Rolling my shoulders, I snarled silently and kept trudging down the sidewalk, brightening only when I spotted a hot dog stand a block down. Five minutes later I was happily buried face-first in a chili cheese dog heaped with onions and relish. Everything but the kitchen sink—just the way I liked it. It really was the simple things in life that kept you going.

Niko kept his distance, claiming the fumes were making his eyes water. Big baby. He wouldn't touch anything that was even remotely in the mystery meat family. "Do you have even the vaguest idea what is in that thing?" He eyed the dripping dog with distaste.

"Nope." I took another bite. "I've carefully avoided that knowledge my entire life just so I could enjoy this one moment. You mind?"