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haven’t opened it up to take a peek, have you?”
    “And be struck blind, deaf, and dumb instantly, foolish puck? Or have my heart explode in my chest? No.” For the first time she seemed unsettled. “We heard him now and again. Through the iron, we would hear his screams of fury. His sly whispers of rewards for his release. His singing. The old songs . . . the ones for death. Dirges for any so suicidal as to try to look on his face.”
    Her dried face shriveled further, cheeks hollowing. “Whoever took him, for whatever reason, it won’t matter. Once they set him free, birds will plummet from the sky. Fish will turn belly up. Every creature whose path he crosses will fall to a crumpled corpse.
    “He will devour the world.”

2
    Cal
    “Why is it always the world?” I tossed at the wall one of the Nerf ninja stars I’d given Niko as a joke and watched it bounce. “Why is it never just half a block? Or Jersey? You know, something we could live without?” It was after work and almost four a.m., but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to see my bed any time soon unless I gave in.
    I wasn’t giving in.
    “Because life is a lesson to be learned, not recess for lazy-minded little boys.” Niko snatched the star from midair and tossed it himself. This time the foam imitation of a weapon actually embedded itself in the moss green wall. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. Niko not only defied belief, but physics too. “Have you heard back from Delilah regarding the park attack?”
    “No. Either she’s busy on a job or sniffing around”—I grinned—“so to speak. To see what’s up.”
    “And you’re sure they were Kin Wolves?” he persisted.
    “Definitely. They brought a revenant.” Only werewolves in the Kin would be hanging around with a revenant. They used them as pure dumb muscle—usually for things the Kin found too boring or disgusting to do themselves and because they considered them completely expendable. I had to agree with them there.
    “Since Delilah’s a wash for now,” I went on, “what about this job . . . this job we are so not going to take, right?” I crossed my arms across my chest from where I was reclined on our apartment couch. The apartment was a nice loft in SoHo thanks to a big payday we hadn’t expected . . . much nicer than anything we’d ever had. Up until then, we’d lived in anything from rat holes to trailers to not-quite-converted warehouses. But the sofa was the same one from our first days in New York almost three years ago. It was battle battered, repaired several times over, and perfectly hollowed out to the weight of my back and slothful ass. It took a long time to get furniture to fit the pickiest parts of my body.
    “Plague of the World. A walking, talking, most likely extremely annoyed grim reaper out to destroy anything in his path. He also apparently lives forever. And you feel we should let this one pass?”
    “You forgot he likes to sing,” I grumbled. “Maybe he’ll hit American Idol and that asshole Brit will humiliate him to death.” I didn’t watch reality TV. I was victimized by it. They turned it on in the bar. It was so hideous, you couldn’t ignore it and if I shot the TV, it’d come out of my pay—like everything else.
    Niko looked at me with as much disappointment as if I’d admitted to eating puppies for a late- night snack. “You watch—”
    “ No ,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t. And I don’t work for Abelia-Roo either. She’s a liar. She almost got you killed. And she’s hornier than Robin, which scares the living shit out of me. Let her find someone else.”
    He considered it for a moment, slipped the sneaker off one of my feet dangling over the sofa’s arm, and then beaned me in the forehead with it. “That, in case you were curious,” he said, “was social responsibility knocking at your door.”
    “Ow!” I glared at him and rubbed my forehead. “Since when? We always looked out for ourselves and nobody