Page 102 of Blade

“I need to work on finding some kind of man bag that I can use to carry weapons.” Women always complained about not having pockets, but lately men’s pants were always so tight I couldn’t carry anything without it being obvious.

“I’ve seen the online travel people talk about outlet malls. They should have options.” Blaine tried to take a subtle deep breath, but I could feel his stress. “Your backpack is nice but you can’t get into it quickly.”

Yeah…we needed to do some shopping.

“Hiney…aren’t you going to come say hi?” Euston’s grin might’ve been his attempt at looking innocent but it didn’t work.

He just looked like a Batman villain.

Blaine went still as I reached in my pocket and pressed the fob to unlock the truck. “That’s disgusting.”

“He couldn’t say my name when I was born?” That was what I’d always been told but one skeptical glance from Blaine had me shrugging. “I’m running out of excuses, so let’s just ignore this one.”

“Alright, my mate.” Ignoring my brother, Blaine cocked his head. “Do you have strong feelings on what I do to defend you?”

Did I?

“Um, I probably should?” Logically I knew most people would. “Do you want me to?”

I could probably fake horror and emotional damage for a while if it’d make him happy.

Blaine coughed again, rolling his eyes. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“If that’s what you decide.” I wasn’t going to talk him out of it. “Oh, and we have enough water for a quick shower if we get messy. I made sure to top that off when I was dumping the black water tank.”

Doing that in the dark was a pain in the ass I was going to try not to have to do ever again.

“Good thinking, my mate.” Nodding slowly, Blaine was handling the situation remarkably well. “Now, is our plan still the same?”

That was a very good question.

“I don’t know where the cameras are or if they cover the parking lot, otherwise I’d ask your thoughts about shifting.” I was going to need to re-evaluate situations like this going forward. “Let’s do a debrief on this tomorrow and see what we should’ve done differently.”

He didn’t bother trying to hide his grin that time. “Yes, let’s do that over lunch or dinner. It’ll give us a nice break from driving.”

“Sounds good.” Dawdling sounded good too but it wouldn’t help the situation. “Let’s get this over with.”

Because putting it off wouldn’t help.

“Lead on, my mate.” Standing straighter, Blaine’s expression shifted into neutral again as we started down the steps.

“I didn’t see any missed calls from you, Ewie.” I hadn’t been able to say his name properly either, and then didn’t bother correcting it because he’d always made me want to go eww. “Is everything okay?”

There’d been something wrong with him even when he was young…which was probably why he was my dad’s favorite. I was starting to think I’d been too normal as a kid for the rest of the family to like me. I hadn’t been quite enough of a sociopath for the rest of them.

None of it explained why he was hanging out with so many different types of paranormal people, though.

Euston’s grin got creepier. “I had better ways of finding you.”

So one of his new friends could track us magically?

Great.

Something about the way Blaine barely jerked beside me said it meant something to him, but I tried not to draw attention to it.

“That’s handy.” We stopped at the bottom of the stairs, still too close but at least we were on flat ground. Falling down concrete stairs seemed more dangerous than having the high ground under the circumstances. “Is that a skill one of your new friends has?”

No point in pretending they were human…they weren’t trying to pass.