Get in line.

As we made our way out at about the halfway point, I heard a skittering behind. I didn’t smell anything, but I heard it. And if I heard it, then Niko and Robin had probably heard it before me. “What now?” I asked, starting to turn.

Niko shook his head and gave a dismissive shrug. “Just one of the cats.”

Oh, sure. Just one of the undead mummified cats. No big deal. I grimaced as I heard the croaking cry. That Wahanket was one sick bastard. As we walked on, the croaking got closer until finally Robin jerked and cursed in the gloom between the dim bulbs, “Bast’s bountiful breasts,” and shook his leg. That skinny, zombie-gray, wrinkly fleshed cat from Wahanket’s lair had leapt, hooked its claws into Goodfellow’s pants, and it wasn’t letting go. Flickering jack-o’-lantern eyes looked upward and it croaked again.

“Do something,” Robin demanded, shaking his leg again.

“What would you have us do?” Niko asked blandly. “It’s already dead.”

“And it’s just a cat,” I observed, hiding the grimace this time. Just a cat. Just an undead, walking, croaking, creepy-as-hell cat.

“Monster killers, my immortal ass. Fine. I’ll take care of it myself,” he muttered as he tried to yank it off. It didn’t budge; it had to be strong as hell. Robin then drew out a blade as long as my forearm from within his long brown leather coat. He tried, without luck, to slide the blade between his leg and its body. It was clamped on too tightly. “All right, then,” he said with determination. “If that’s the way it has to be.” He angled the blade under its chin, and that’s when we heard it. Loud and clear.

The purr from beyond the grave.

It was like the rattle of bones, but that’s what it was, all right. Rough and coarse and rapturous.

“No.” Robin shook his head. “Absolutely not.” The blade fell away. “Absolutely not.”

As Niko had said last night: Repetition didn’t change a thing.

By the time we reached the stairs it had climbed Robin’s leg, slithered under the coat, and wedged itself under his arm. And Goodfellow, who always had an answer for anything—whether you asked for it or not—had an expression of disgust and despair on his face. “I don’t like cats. Even live ones. They’re demanding and annoying, they imagine themselves to be so very superior, and they shed.”

“That one won’t shed,” I grinned. “As for the rest . . . sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” I ignored his snarl and turned to Nik to say, “Think we should tell Sangrida? Before there’s a mummified security guard walking around here too?”

“I already passed that message along through Promise once Wahanket went rogue.” Niko had had his sword in hand, wary of any traps the mummy might have set. Bad things happened down here. We’d seen that on a previous visit. Now he sheathed it as we reached the top. “No one comes down here now without Sangrida, and she is capable of handling Wahanket.”

Maybe. She could break him like a twig if she could catch him, but he was cunning as hell. Still, her museum, her problem. Hell, we had more than enough of our own to worry about at the moment.

We parted ways with Robin and his new best friend at the front entrance as Niko dragged me to the main branch of the New York Public Library. I wasn’t a fan. Not that I didn’t read. I read—and not comic books, as Niko claimed. And not porno mags—well, yeah, okay, I did look at porno mags on occasion. What twenty-year-old didn’t? But I read mysteries and sci-fi once in a while too, which I picked up in used bookstores. I liked older books. These days, the space suits on the front of books aren’t made to showcase the proud Double D astronaut. And you couldn’t tell me Spandex couldn’t keep out the vacuum of space. NASA had no idea what they were doing.

Despite my perfectly valid literary choices, Nik had made sure I knew my way around the library the first week we’d moved to New York. The mythology section was home base for months. I had to give credit where it was due: My brother had done all he could to shove the knowledge in my head, and some stuck. But mostly? Mostly, I read a sentence and forgot it the second I hit the period. Having the knowledge of the Auphe in my head was monster news plenty. I didn’t want to study the other kinds hanging around. Enough . . . hell, enough was just enough. I picked up the info I needed on the streets and during fights—Nik was the only person who’d give you a lecture on the monster you were fighting during the fight itself.

“. . . and is well-known for the barbed poisonous tail.” Duck and slice said tail from body. “It also builds a nest of mud and clay, and lays eggs in the chest cavity of its dead victim as a means of procreation.” A thrust of steel and a jet of dark blue blood comes spurting from its heart. “Are you paying attention, Cal?”

Honestly, wasn’t that enough studying?

This time as I trudged through the main lobby, about to call Internet shotgun while Nik dealt with the books, is when I saw it. “Hey, look.” I nudged Niko in the ribs and nodded my head toward a guy sprawled in one of the chairs reading the Post. On the front page in the bottom corner read the headline: NAKED ALBINO MENTAL PATIENT GOES BUS SURFING.

Had that naked albino mental patient not been a creature bent on the torture and murder of my family, friends, and me, it might’ve been funny. As it was, the lack of humor I was feeling had me snarling at the man, who started to protest when I moved over and yanked the paper out of his hand. He then took one look at my face and backed away slowly.

“I apologize for the rudeness,” Niko said. “He’s off his medications and consequently more himself than usual.” He handed the man a couple of dollars for the paper. I ignored the guy as he slid carefully past me with the money and worked at putting a lot of space between himself and me.

“If I hear voices, it’s because of whatever freaky-ass vitamin you put in my morning coffee when I’m not looking,” I muttered as I scanned the short article.

“If you hear voices, it’s because you only eat irradiated nitrates and have grown a microwave-spawned tumor in your frontal lobe.” He took the paper from me. “Assuming you have a frontal lobe or a lobe of any kind. My latest theory is your skull hosts a hamster running in a wheel that keeps you upright and less coherent.”

“Don’t you mean ‘more or less coherent’?” I snorted and continued reading over his shoulder.

“No.”

I thought about a light punch to his kidney, thought about the elbow I’d get jammed in my diaphragm before I got halfway through the punch, and decided to finish the article instead. It wasn’t much. A few people had spotted something on top of a bus that had looked pretty abnormal, and somebody in the police department had filled them in on the melanin- and clothing-challenged mental patient, but he’d been captured and returned to the hospital. All was well. These aren’t the ’droids you’re looking for and all that. No, of course, the name of the hospital or patient couldn’t be revealed. Confidentiality rules. Blah, blah.

“Somebody actually covered it up,” I said, surprised. This wasn’t a random reporter spotting a boggle in Central Park and doing a Bigfoot-hits-the-big-city story on it. This was a genuine cover-up with an authority figure involved and everything.

“That they did. But who are they and why did they do it?” He folded the paper. “How is a good question as well.”

They were all good questions, but . . . “We don’t really have time for any more mysteries right now. Hell, we don’t have time for Seamus’s,” I pointed out. I thought it was too bad the spear had gone through Niko’s coat instead of Seamus’s heart. It would’ve solved at least one of our problems, because, truthfully, I didn’t give a damn if the guys shadowing Seamus were a threat to him or not. “Screw the mysteries and let’s go have a hot dog.”