It was hard to lose something that was almost impossible to find to begin with.

But I had told him all the same. The revenant had said the Kin had found out about Delilah and me, all of the Kin-not just her former screw du jour that I’d neutered in the park. “I didn’t have to tell you though, did I?” I asked Nik.

And I hadn’t. I’d walked into the apartment and he’d seen it, what I’d learned, behind my blank eyes and blanker face. He’d known, because he could read me like a book. He had asked what the revenant had said the Kin were going to do about it, though. But, that, the revenant hadn’t known. It was easy enough to guess. They’d either kill Delilah or give Delilah the opportunity to redeem herself by killing me. Simple. To the point. The Kin weren’t much on Machiavellian-style schemes. Hump it, eat it, or kill it-that was good enough for them.

Niko didn’t dwell on it after the short discussion, which was what I needed. He let me drive the car too, which I’d thought I’d needed, but now I was wishing for his side with the window that worked. Cooking in a sauna was a distraction, but not the most entertaining one. I’d switched to short sleeves and left the Eagle and Glock at home. This time I was carrying my SIG Sauer. I had to rotate my toys so they all got action. My jacket was in the backseat in case we were pulled over or had to stop at a public place and I needed to cover up the holster. The bandage taped over my forearm did the same for the revenant bite. I wouldn’t have bothered hiding it behind a bandage after cleaning it; it had stopped bleeding early on, but people tended to notice what looked like a human bite mark on your arm. Oddly enough, that kind of thing didn’t label me friendly, cheerful, and trustworthy to the world at large.

“It is unfortunate,” he began, deciding the subject needed more discussing after all. “I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” he said, echoing Robin’s earlier comment and my own thoughts. In sympathy, I guessed, he hit the radio with a much lighter tap of his hand and this time it immediately shut off. “When are you going to talk to Delilah about this?”

“You’ve had this car six months and you couldn’t do that before now? And when I absolutely can’t avoid it,” I griped, annoyed at the months of horrific excuse for music I’d suffered through. I was scarred. My eardrums were scarred. From what I could tell, the seventies had been a time of singers whose balls hadn’t dropped yet. Voices so high I couldn’t believe they hadn’t shattered every window in the Titanic’s rusty cousin we were cruising in. Although at the moment that would’ve been a good thing, since even with the top down the heat was god-awful. I mopped at the sweat again dripping along my hairline, thankful I’d pulled the now-damp strands back into a short ponytail.

“What fun would that be-not torturing my little brother?” He eased his seat back. “And avoiding it only makes the uncertainty last longer. This is something I would think you wouldn’t want to be uncertain about.” He closed his eyes, lecture over. “I’m going to meditate. If you see a Sasquatch looking for a ride on the side of the road, keep going. There’s not enough legroom in the back.”

I didn’t bother asking if Bigfoot was real. I’d stopped asking questions like that when I was eighteen. Sooner or later you’d find out one way or the other. Why spoil the surprise? In other words, my brain couldn’t begin to store all that was real, all that wasn’t, and the rest no one had a clue about one way or the other. I left that to Nik. It was easier than getting a pocket encyclopedia entitled When to Shoot, When Not to Shoot, and When to Run Away Like a Little Girl in Pigtails. Not to say a little girl in pigtails couldn’t be scary in her own right, especially if her teeth were pointed and her eyes glowed green in the dark. And you could bet your ass there were some out there like that. I might not have known the name or have seen one before, but the world was full of nightmares I hadn’t seen yet. It didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

Diversity: It made the world go round.

“Meditate away, Cyrano.” I tried to put my seat back. Naturally it was frozen completely upright and made for the comfort of the anal-retentive driver, stick up the ass a luxury option. “If I go through a drive-through, I’ll ask for a bag full of grass and oats for you. Maybe a lactose-free, chemical-free, flavor-free shake to go with.”

“You do that.” He folded his hands across his stomach, linking fingers. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten our discussion about gates. I’ll give you a break for now, because of the unpleasant day you’ve had.” The eyes, opened for a sideways gaze, steely and implacable, had me giving an internal wince. That was too bad, considering what I had planned for the rest of the day. It was too bad for me and too bad for my ass, which would receive a kicking requiring an organ donor with an Auphe/ human-compatible gluteus maximus. And those were hard to come by.

“But sooner or later,” he went on, “we will talk about it.”

Sooner would be my bet, and those, unfortunately, were always the bets I won.

I drove on while Niko meditated. I didn’t see Bigfoot, not until we arrived at the RV park, and then I saw them everywhere. Campers with their shirts off and backs hairier than any Sasquatch, Yeti, or woolly mammoth combined. My trigger finger twitched because, honestly, was someone with a carpet on his back, plaid shorts, socks and sandals, any less of a threat to the world-at least visually? But I drove past them and didn’t shoot a single one. I wished for a Weedwacker or a little temporary blindness, but I didn’t shoot, and that got chalked in the success column.

I followed Abelia- Roo’s directions via Nik, who’d gotten them from her when he’d spoken with her on the phone. He’d written them down for me in his neat, precise handwriting. “Hey, we’re here. Nap’s over.”

“Meditation isn’t a nap and if you think it is, maybe once an hour isn’t enough for you.” Niko nodded toward a gravel road to the right.

Hourly was doable. Five, ten minutes and I zipped right through the mantras counted on my mala, but zipping through them probably wasn’t the point. But flying through them or not, it was obviously working, or the meditation combined with the death of the Auphe was working. I’d made those three gates in the past six months without any of the Auphe side effects of the past. It was simple. I didn’t lose myself to it or to something buried in me. I owned it now. It didn’t own me. Only getting Niko to see that was going to be a trick, because he had seen the times it had owned me. And the memory of an Auphe-hissing brother, teeth stained with blood, and sanity on a temporary vacation, stuck with a person. It had stuck with Nik; that was for sure.

I just had to get him to see the light, and with his being equally as stubborn as I was, that was going to be a problem. When he was smarter than I was and capable of picking me up off the ground by my neck à la Darth Vader without the asthma-not that he would, but he could-that meant I rarely won an argument. At least I had the upper hand in knowing he wouldn’t actually kill me-no matter how much I deserved it.

I stopped the car before a half circle of about thirty RVs. There wasn’t a single person outside. That was different from the last time. They’d been wary, but I’d seen women, kids, and the not-so-shy-and-retiring muscle Branje who’d almost lost his nose to my temper. “How much do you think they have? The Sarzo Clan? Like down to the penny?”

“Fair-sized clan.” He took in the condition of the RVs. “Their homes aren’t too old, definitely not decrepit. Important enough to have several antiques lying about for sale.” Like the Calabassa crown that had nearly been the cause of his death. “Liquid assets, probably a hundred thousand. Abelia- Roo is sharp in all ways. I doubt her money-making skills are any less effective.”