Niko leaned forward for a look and nodded thoughtfully. "It does look that way." Settling back, he pointed out, "It is protein. Probably would be quite nutritional. You should give it a chance." Snorting, I wavered between fishing my new friend out with a spoon or sending the Coke back. Decisions. Decisions.

Unsympathetic to my dilemma, my brother went to work on the fresh-from-the-oven pizza on the table between us. Pushing my glass away, I decided to let nature take its course. Sink or swim. Survival of the fittest. Ladling a piece of pizza onto the thick white plate in front of me, I yelped and blew on singed fingers. Looking down his not inconsiderable nose, Niko handled his steaming piece with smug aplomb and commented, "It's a simple matter of discipline. Mind over matter."

"Yeah, and I bet you can break boards with your dick. You're a helluva man." I picked something green off the top of my slice and eyed it narrowly. Broccoli. "So, what do we do now? Hope the Grendel was sightseeing or dig into it further?"

"I'm not looking into membership in the Optimist Club these days, Cal. Are you?"

"That's what I thought." I checked my watch. "You teaching today?" When he wasn't pulling bodyguard duty, Niko supplemented our income by teaching at a tiny dojo. More money under the table for our running-like-little-girls fund.

"Later perhaps," he dismissed. "If we get this resolved. Now eat your broccoli before it gets cold."

I scowled but obeyed. "Scrub the floor, Cinderelly. Eat your broccoli, Cinderelly," I grumbled around a mouthful of cheese and bread.

By the way… the bug made it. Good for the bug.

Chapter Three

Mom had been a fortune-teller in nearly every rundown carnival and one-horse town in the country, although she'd actually preferred the towns over traveling with other carnies. She didn't have to split her money when it was just her in some gloomy one-room apartment ladling out useless bits of crap and outright lies to the desperate. Yeah, the whole ball of wax was hers then. And Sophia had liked her money. Or rather, liked the things it could buy her, booze and drugs… the bright-and-shinies of her world. Safe to say that she had never kept money long and she would have done anything for it.

And I do mean anything.

That's how she'd ended up with me. For a while, when I was younger, I thought it could've been another way. She'd been a young woman, a girl really, beautiful in the way storms are… wild and free. Maybe so beautiful that a monster couldn't resist taking her and doing things to her that might twist her. Twist her, change her, make her care about no one but herself. Drive her to the kind of destructive behavior that tainted her and everyone around her. How could she not hate me considering where I came from? How could she forget an act so horrifying, so hideous? And how could you not forgive someone who had had that hell visited on them?

Of course it hadn't been that way. This was real life, not a made-for-TV movie, chock-full of bland, overwrought nobility. But I'd been young and stupid and looking for any way to… hell… absolve her. One of Niko's fancy words, but it rang true. Because no matter how tough you are, how jaded, every kid wants a mommy. Every kid.

Like all things with Sophia, though, it had been about money. No victim. No aggressor. Just a simple business arrangement. And, she'd said, the worst one she'd ever made. The money hadn't lasted any time, not to mention the trouble it took to convert raw gold and silver to cash. She had laughed harshly over an empty glass and said, "But you're still here, Caliban. The money is gone and you're still goddamn here." The laugh had smelled of whiskey and truth. Guess I'd been lucky she'd waited until I was ten to let that particular truth slip. Sophia might have been a fortune-teller, but she saved all her truths for me.

I guess you could say I didn't have a whole lot of faith in fortune-tellers after being raised by one. Me or Niko. But we'd both gotten a bit of a surprise when we'd first wandered to New York two years ago. We'd met George. George was a genuine talent, a seer. George was truth and faith. George was hope and warmth. George was belief when you had none.

George was also seventeen. So we had to wait until school was out to talk. Holding court in an ancient icecream parlor run by a wizened old man who turned a blind eye to the constant stream of people who came in and out, George always politely suggested the clients buy a soda or milk shake before they left. It probably kept the place open and in the black. We were waiting in a booth when George came in, spotted us, and with a gentle smile slid into the seat opposite us. Everything about George was gentle, and in a world where that quality is more myth than fact, I had learned to cherish every glimpse I could steal.

"Hey, Georgie Porgie." I grinned. "How's the freckle queen?"

I had a routine with George, a trick that I liked to think kept me on the straight and narrow. Kept me sane. I treated her like a little sister—a kid barely off her Big Wheel. Hell, she was petite enough to pass for one. I teased; I called her affectionate yet annoying nicknames. Rolled my eyes at her stories, tugged her curls, and all but patted her on the head. I did my damned best to make the two-year difference between us seem like ten. But despite all the production, all the arm waving—"Look over here; look over there. Just don't, whatever you do, look at me. Don't see me, and don't… don't see what I'm trying so hard not to think." Despite it all…

None of it did me a damn bit of good.

Georgina shook her head, dark red curls corkscrewing wildly about her delicate shoulders. "The boys in my class are more mature than you, Cal," she said with soft humor.

Niko elbowed me sharply without mercy. He was aware of why I behaved the way I did, and he did me the remarkable favor of never saying a word about it. Neither I nor my inner monster was ready for that particular subject, and he knew it. "Something I have been telling him for years, Georgina. He refuses to listen."

George gave him a sympathetic look from huge velvet brown eyes. "Kids." As always she turned the tables on me so neatly that I couldn't stop the faint flush that burned over my cheekbones. Rough, tough, and capable of kicking anyone or anything's ass… and this girl had me squirming in my seat.

While they sympathized with each other over my immature ways, I retreated to the counter and snagged us three ice-cream sodas. Pineapple for George, boring vanilla for Niko, and chocolate cherry for me. Ignoring the fact it was almost bigger than she was, George went to work on hers immediately. She never took money for her readings. Absolutely refused. But she would take ice cream. With as many people that came to her, it was a miracle she wasn't a four-hundred-pound psychic.

"How is your family, Georgina?" Niko asked gravely as he slowly swirled a straw through the vanilla soda. "Your father?"

She touched the back of her hand to her mouth, blushing slightly under faintly freckled, caramel skin, and reached for a napkin. "He's doing okay," she replied with equal gravity.

George's father was sick, so sick that okay was the best that could be hoped for. Full-blown AIDS. He hadn't been such a great father to George or her brothers and sisters when they were younger. But he'd shaped up, pulled himself out of the deepest pit of hell, and given up the drugs. It just turned out it was too late. George and her family had gotten him back only to be on the verge of losing him again, this time permanently. Still Georgie was Georgie and she saw things in a light most people were blind to their whole lives. At least that's what Niko said. I was one of the nearsighted. If there was a light, I hadn't seen it, not even one dancing mote of it. The light was the big picture, the whole enchilada, life's puzzle. And I had two, maybe three pieces, none of which fit together.