Nightlife (Cal Leandros #1)(3)

Nothing happened.

The lightbulb could be burned out; that's what your average person would think. Not me. Instantly I shrugged out of my jacket; the rustle of the leather would do its best to give me away before I moved an inch. I let it slip to the floor as silently as possible and then slid along the wall, slow step by slow step. The plaster was cool even through my shirt, a light trace of ice against my spine as I listened and listened hard. There was no sound, not the brush of a foot against the floor, not the single sigh of an exhaled breath. But something was there. I didn't need to spend $2.99 a minute on Miss Cleo to know that. I crouched slightly and started a cautious pass with my arm through the pitch-black air before me. Not a good idea.

A grip as unbreakable as any bear trap snared my wrist. It pulled me away from the wall, virtually off my feet. Something hard hit me in the pit of my stomach and I flipped to land forcefully on my back, the air exploding painfully out of my lungs. An iron pressure was applied to my throat and a sibilant voice hissed, "Any last words, dead man?"

I coughed, sucked in a ragged breath, then drawled hoarsely, "You are such an *, Niko. You seriously need to invest in a hobby."

"Keeping you alive is my hobby. It certainly doesn't appear to be yours." There was a sharp clap and the lights flared on. Wonderful. We now had clap-on, clap-off technology in our midst. All the better to illuminate my humiliaton.

I scowled and batted in annoyance at the long blond braid that hung down in my face. "I already have the one side of my family out to put me in a box or worse. Is it too much to ask you stop playing Cato?"

"Yes, it is." With an automatic shrug he flipped the braid back over his shoulder and stood. "And Inspector Clouseau would certainly be a better student than you." Holding out a hand to me, he asked pointedly, "And where exactly is that knife I gave you?"

I took the hand and let him pull me to my feet. "In my jacket pocket." Gray eyes shifted to the puddle of leather by the door, and pale eyebrows rose skyward in silent but potent disapproval. "Yeah, well, at least with it over there I'm not tempted to make like a Cuisinart all over your scrawny ass."

"Quite the threat," he said dryly. "I'm sure you are the terror of Girl Scouts everywhere." He brushed the dust from his black turtleneck and pants with a fastidious hand. "Lock the door, Cal. Let's not make it any easier for the Grendels than we have to."

Names were funny things. They meant things… no matter how much you might deny it, no matter how much you might want to believe they were chosen at a whim. Niko had come up with the name "Grendels." It wasn't enough he was a blond Bruce Lee, but he was smart as hell too. One reading of Beowulf in the sixth grade and he'd labeled my stalkers Grendels. I'd been only in the first grade myself, five years younger than Niko, so it hadn't meant much to me at the time. But Grendels they became; after all, monsters were monsters.

Of course now I was just three years younger than my butt-kicking big brother. Wasn't that a trick?

"Caliban" was a helluva name too. Nice label to put on a kid, right? Mom might have lived in a dark, cramped one-room apartment over a tattoo parlor. She might've told fortunes for a living, ripping off the naive, the desperate, the flat-out stupid. And she might have been as quick with a slap as she was to tilt a bottle of cheap wine. But one thing you could give her credit for, she knew her Shakespeare. The Tempest's Caliban, born of a witch and a demon. Half monster… a slouching nightmare of a creature tainting everything he touched.

Gee, thanks, Mom. You really knew how to make a boy feel special.

I locked the door and headed toward our bathroom, saying with a grin, "What're you still doing up? You know all good little ninjas should be in bed, visions of homicidal sugarplums dancing in their heads."

With a grunt of resignation Niko retrieved my jacket from the floor. It hung from the point of one of his many, many blades until he draped it over the back of our battered sofa. "They're not completely homicidal." His lips twitched with amusement. He followed me down the tiny hall, leaned with casual grace against the wall, and folded his arms. "And I had a last-minute scheduling for bodyguard duty. An off-off-off-Broadway actress who imagines herself the target of a literal army of sex-crazed stalkers. It was exhausting."

"I'll bet." I gave him a mock leer as I leaned over the bathroom sink. As I pulled the rubber band free from my hair, the ruler-straight black strands fell forward against my face. Squeezing a generous dollop of toothpaste on my brush, I went to work, scrubbing and spitting. Niko had a casual business relationship with an agency that provided bodyguards and security around the city. Actually, the agency was one guy with a lot of contacts, some of which were even almost legal. But it was fair money and the pay was strictly under-the-table. No taxes. No government. No trail for the Grendels. Not that I pictured a Grendel in a bow tie and spectacles climbing that corporate ladder or waiting on his retirement. Still, Grendels weren't above using humans, and most humans weren't above being used.

Niko watched me silently as I finished up, rinsing my mouth and then pulling off my shirt. I slid him a glance, a little worried. "Okay, what?" When you've known someone all your life you don't need a neon sign to know when something is wrong. A faint shadow in his eyes, a slight flattening of his mouth—something was bugging Niko.