Madhouse

"Aquatic," Niko murmured. "That narrows it down to a few hundred in the nonhuman pantheon. Very helpful."

"Hey, I tried." Getting accustomed to the smell, I shifted impatiently on the grass and checked my watch again. "Crooks, monster or human, they're all the same. No damn consideration."

I suppose that's how my gun found its way into my hand as the first figure appeared out of the trees. "Bishop-fish," Niko murmured. "Nothing extraordinary. Easy to kill."

If I was a little disappointed at that, I kept it to myself. As creatures went, it wasn't that impressive. I'd seen someone more grimly u

Maybe.

Dappled here and there with the ghost of scales over nearly transparent pale skin, the bishop-fish had the form of a human. Sort of. The shape of his head was a little off. Hairless and only lightly scaled, it was oddly flattened and the mouth had thick, rubbery lips and tiny triangular teeth. No kelp eater, this one. He wasn't wearing a stitch—not a damn thing, which told me he didn't rub shoulders with the local New Yorkers much. I looked down. Even they would give that a glance. Yeah, that.

Now I knew where fish sticks came from.

I decided keeping my gaze on his eyes was the lesser of two evils despite their unblinking bulge. Guess you can't blink if you don't have eyelids. Round pupils took us in and the mouth opened to gurgle, "These are the demands. First—"

That's when I shot him.

My patience with kidnappers was long gone before I had even taken a step into the park. I put a bullet in his chest, which exploded like an overripe tomato and splattered fluid in a wide arc. With his impossibly wide mouth gaping, he teetered and began to fall. I stepped forward and slipped the paper from the fleshy claw as Mr. Fish Stick crumpled to the ground with a disturbingly wet slapping sound. "I can read, asshole," I muttered.

Niko said from behind me, "Really? When did you learn?" Raising his voice, he asked mildly, "Is there anyone here we could negotiate with that my brother would find less a

The smell I was picking up from a distance wasn't as bad as that of the fish. It was the scent of old things and attic must and hundreds of abandoned spiderwebs. In other words, it smelled like Niko's library of books. Knowing Niko would be watching its approach, I squinted at the paper in my hand, ignoring the damp slime on it. If the moon hadn't been so bright and plump in the sky, I wouldn't have been able to see anything. I might have monster smelling—whoopee…what a superpower—but I had human vision. As it was, I could make out only a few words. Money wasn't mentioned. I wasn't that surprised. Very few monsters were into the material world. Vampires, pucks, and werewolves liked to live high on the hog, but most of the nonhuman world was more interested in eating. Lots and lots of eating.

The ransom mentioned people. Nice, plump people. Nice, juicy children. The kids. Why was it always the kids?

Some kidnappers don't want to earn their money, and some don't want to catch their own di

"Black A

She scuttled with the back and forth motion of a poisonous centipede. Part of the time she was on two feet, the rest on all fours. She looked like an old woman, but not a sad wraith in a nursing home or cheerful crocheting grandma—unless it was one who'd have no problem picking her teeth with a sliver of Hansel's gnawed leg bone.

Now, this was a little more disturbing than the fish. And it became more disturbing when six more of her appeared to race across the grass.

"You thought she was a myth. She. Singular. Is that what you were saying?" I dropped the paper to the ground. I still had my gun in my right hand and I drew my knife with the left from the double holster under my jacket. Ugly and serrated, the blade had been a constant and faithful companion for a while now. Niko did give damn fine Christmas presents.

"Apparently the myth is incorrect. It only makes things more interesting," he said blandly. "Surely a few old women don't concern you?"

Old women, my ass. The seven of them were covering the ground with freakish speed. Long, thick fingernails scored the ground, sending dirt and grass flying, and their teeth…let's just say they weren't the kind that got put in a glass on the bedside table. The A

"Fine. You play shuffleboard with the gra

"Leave one alive, Cal, to lead us to the lamia."

Thick and bitter fluid flooded out of the A

I tossed the thing off me, its teeth still feebly gnashing, and saw Niko, who had moved a distance away to get a little elbow room. He was surrounded by four of them. "Forget the restraint," I called. "They ate her." I smelled it in the one twitching beside me … in the blood, on her last breath…hell, leaking out of her damn pores.

Niko shook his head. "A

He had things, as always, under control, and I decided to take care of my own business. Two more of them were circling me, wary of the knife. What they weren't concerned with was the gun I had hidden behind my leg. One snarled, I swear, just like the cranky old woman we'd lived next to in one of the trailer parks where our mother had set up her fortune-telling scam. That old biddy had sicced her yappy, ankle-biting dog on us more times than I could count. The A