Rosewood blinds hid the now afternoon sun as I finally lay relaxed in a way I didn’t often allow myself the luxury of. There was a kiss in the dip of flesh where my neck met my shoulder. Only a kiss. Promise didn’t bite, not even gently. The lightest of nips, more of a caress, really, was as close as she came. Teeth were for food to her. They had been for spilling blood and ripping flesh for the majority of her life. When that was true, biting wasn’t erotic. It was the equivalent of using a steak knife during foreplay.

I imagined Seamus had felt differently. But a sociopath’s preferences, whether vampire or human, weren’t worth wasting thought on. I twined a mixed strand of dark brown and pale blond hair around my fingers and tugged lightly as she raised her face to smile down at me. “Are things better now?” I didn’t need my brother’s name added to the question to know that she wasn’t talking about her and me. The warmth of her draped over me was more than answer enough to that. As for Cal . . .

I told my first lie to Promise and kept my first secret.

“Cal is fine.”

I met her eyes as I said it. I could’ve hidden that it was a lie, covered it up with my mother’s skill. Or I could’ve looked away to soften it. I didn’t. In my mind I had no choice.

If there had to be dishonesty between us, then I would be honest about it.

That evening Niko and I had driven to one particular junkyard we’d been to more than once in the past. We’d passed through the unlocked gate when I let Niko know what I thought of the new arrangement between him and Promise. Honest dishonesty?

“As philosophies go,” I observed, “I gotta say: That’s fucked up.”

“No one asked you to say. It’s between Promise and me.” Niko eyed my wrist and narrowed his eyes.

“Jesus, yes, I’ve done my meditation. Give it a rest, Buddha.” I had done it, and I tried to do it every hour. So far it had worked. Either that or no one had really pissed me off. I had to say it was probably the second one, but I was still in there, meditating my ass off. Shoving the monster down. Niko said it would help, and if he said so, then that was gospel in my book. I’d do it until it became habit, and who knew? It might have me slamming less heads against the bar at work. “I’ll pay my tab next week,” my ass.

Habits. Meditation might make it there, but there was another old habit between Nik and me that I never needed reminding of. Without warning, I twisted sideways and jammed a foot in his abdomen. “See?” I said. “Meditation. My foot is one with your stomach.”

“Forgive me. I shouldn’t have doubted you. You seem so much more at peace.” Instead of the hands on the ankle and the wrench I expected, his leg twisted around mine and took me to the ground. The knuckles of his fist pressed just hard enough against my larynx to make the memory stick. “By the way, sometimes the fish sticks were fried zucchini,” he added, “and cartoon Great Danes don’t actually solve mysteries.”

“So you were born a diet Nazi.” I waited until he moved to sit up. I didn’t try anything else. There was no countermove to having your larynx crushed. Choking and dying tended to take up the rest of your attention. “And now you’re talking trash about Scooby. You are one evil bastard.”

“So I’ve been told.” He held a hand down to me. “By you. Repeatedly.”

I took his hand, got to my feet, and dusted off the jeans I’d borrowed from him. Black, of course. “It’s hard to be a ninja-slash-samurai-slash-Buddha-loving bad-ass in regular blue, huh?” I muttered. “God forbid.” I picked up the bag from the ground and started deeper into the piles of metal and trash that surrounded us, following the zigzag path. I didn’t limp as I went, but I wanted to. “I thought Buddha was about harming no living creature,” I grumbled on.

“Buddha was a wise man.” He walked beside me, apparently unaffected by my blow to his stomach. “I am not.” He didn’t seem particularly affected by that either.

“Maybe you should work on that.” I went ahead and limped as the muscle in my leg spasmed. What the hell. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know.

“It’ll pass,” he assured me, not especially sympathetically, as I limped on. “In approximately sixty seconds. And next time you’ll remember.”

A few seconds of discomfort were worth a few extra years of staying alive—because staying alive or sane was looking like an easy option now—but the smell out here? Nothing was worth that. Saturday in a Bronx junkyard—what’s not to love? I pulled the sleeve of my shirt over the heel of my hand and covered my mouth and nose. In reality, it wasn’t the junkyard so much as the waste station just up the river. But smell or not, this was where Mickey lived, and Mickey was who we needed to talk to. Which was why we were once again separated from the others in the loft. With Oshossi and the Auphe, it had come to the point where it was impossible to stay together all the time, not if we wanted to eventually get our asses out of the gigantic frigging sling they were in. I didn’t have to tell Niko that sooner or later the Auphe were going to seize the chance and attack the others while we were gone. Or us. More likely us. You didn’t need Auphe genes or a crystal ball to see that coming. Just a brain cell, and you were set there. But our choices were pretty much nonexistent, and sucking it up was the only thing left to do.

We’d run into Mickey two or so years ago when looking for parts for Nik’s decrepit car. You wanted parts for a decrepit thing, you came to a decrepit place. Mickey wasn’t decrepit, though. He could find pretty much anything you wanted. Nothing too new, of course, but anything used showed up in a junkyard sooner or later. Mickey had seen us walk in back then, smelled the difference on me, and offered up his services . . . for a price.

Luckily, Mickey’s price wasn’t as steep as Boggle’s tended to be. Where Boggle loved jewels and gold, Mickey was all about the food. He wasn’t your typical junkyard rat, content with rotting leftovers. He wanted the real thing, he wanted it fresh, and he wanted a wide variety. Chinese, Greek, Italian, Mexican, whatever; he liked it all. That didn’t mean he didn’t catch his own meal on occasion if times were hard. In that he was like your typical junkyard rat.

He ate his own.

“Smells good.”

The voice was oil spreading across concrete, smooth and slick. Very slick indeed, which was Mickey all over. I slowed and looked up at a pile of cars to see liquid black eyes reflecting the setting sun. Cool and cunning, I couldn’t be sure if they thought it was the Mexican food that smelled good or me. So far, the preference had been for takeout, but it didn’t pay to take anything for granted. “Hey, Mick. Brought you tacos this time.” And about a dozen burritos. Mickey had an appetite. A tamale to go wasn’t going to get it for him.

“Been long time. Yes, long, long time.” Black fur and skin slithered over shattered safety glass and rusted metal to hit the ground next to us. He was the same inky color as a cadejo, but where they had been doglike, Mickey was what I’d labeled him: a rat . . . if a rat crouched four feet high, had dark-skinned human hands, and talked. Niko said that there were old Rom legends about a shobolon, a giant rat with human characteristics. There were also legends of wererats. Whatever Mickey was, he wasn’t saying. Although considering the thick accent, I was betting he had something in common with Nik and me. And we weren’t part wererat.

Besides the accent, Mickey had a sense of humor. Okay, maybe not so much, but he didn’t have a bad temper, which wasn’t always the case with our informants. He was fairly mellow, considering what I called him. I doubted it was even close to the name he’d been given at birth.