Her mouth thinned, making him want to smile.
“Good.” Eddi grinned, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “But it’ll cost ya.”
“I don’t have much…” Nik stuck to his role, putting his hands into his jeans pocket and pulling out one of the three ten-dollar bills he usually carried. “Will this do?”
“Your boots would have been better,” Eddi retorted, “but I’m not in the mood to fight off those who’d want ‘em.” He pocketed the money and disappeared to his side of the basement, then reappeared a moment later with a thin, stained, foam mattress, tossing it at Nik’s feet before sliding the metal sheet back in place.
“Shady?” Eddi rapped his side of the metal, causing the thing to rumble like thunder rolling in the distance. “You need me, holler.”
“You can count on it.” She wheeled away, picked up a black tennis shoe lying under the crate, and it came flying at Nik’s head. Only his quick reflexes saved his face from a hard thump.
“How dare you play with his mind?” she hissed, the claret specks in her eyes flaring in anger.
“It saves time.” He resumed his normal form and glanced at the dingy mattress. Yeah, no, he’d rather lie on the dirt-crusted floor.
Feet shuffled beyond the metal sheet, a door shut, then the footsteps receded. The old man had left.
“Give me a description of the gang leaders,” Nik said. Time to get to work, find those pricks ASAP, before this female became another statistic.
Her delicate features hardened. “Rough’s about six-foot, skull-trimmed black hair. Deeply tanned…” Her gaze skated over his forearms and biceps. “And inked to his eyeballs, too. Acts like he owns the world.”
Nik ignored her goading, strolled to her, and handed her the footwear. “He makes his rounds in The Refuge and these parts?”
“In this filth?” She gave a feminine snort. “He wouldn’t be caught dead here. He has his goons policing the area, even though this isn’t part of his kingdom.”
“And the other leader?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know, never met the jerk.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why so interested in them?”
Nik didn’t sense any falsehood in her response. He shrugged. She might as well know the truth. “Someone’s been abducting homeless children and women and taking them to the Dark Realm—to the demon world.”
Her striking eyes widened. “Oh, dear Lord, Tomas,” she whispered. “He’s a homeless boy. Demons snatched him from right in front of me several months ago. Well, he’d run off after I’d taken him to The Shelter. I gave chase, and that’s when they appeared and grabbed him.”
“He’s safe. Týr, another Guardian, found him,” Nik reassured her.
She nodded, gnawing her lower lip, making Nik want to take over, taste her mouth—hell, he shut off the thought. She suddenly stilled, her gaze rushing to the door at the distant thudding of footfalls.
So, she possessed heightened hearing, too?
What else could she do besides fight demoniis like a pro, parkour like an ace, and knee him in the balls?
Nik watched as she paced back and forth in front of her makeshift bed for a few seconds, then he strolled to the door and halted in front of it.
“Who taught you how to scale drainpipes?”
“Halen, Eddi’s demon partner. Said it was safer to be up on a building, staking out prey, than on the ground.” Her gaze flickered back to the door. “He was killed a few years ago.”
Of course. It had to be through him she learned about the Guardians.
“Did he also teach you how to fight like hell?”
“No, that was Eddi.”
That she answered him without a scathing look or sarcastic comment meant whoever approached scared her. A wave of protectiveness rushed through Nik, making him want to kill the bastards. “Why live here in the underground?” he asked her.
A shrug. “When one doesn’t have any other place, this is as good as it gets.”
Nik frowned at her response.
