“Aside from you—the cat that drinks up all my milk in the middle of the night while I sleep—suicide crows, ghost riders in the school hallway, killer mosquitos, and plague doctors, I think we’re covered. Unless you want to count the rampaging teenage werewolves.” He glanced over to Kody. “Oh, and the ghost girlfriend, of course.”

“Plague doctors?” Xev scowled. “What are plague doctors?”

Nick snorted. “That’s all you got out of my rant? Really?”

Kody ignored him. “Zeitjägers.”

“Why were they there?”

Shaking his head, Nick shrugged. “No idea. They didn’t exactly speak. Just stared at me like my mom at a parent-teacher conference where I royally screwed up. And speaking of, none of this is getting me closer to my mom. I’m thinking we should go see Mark and find out what happened, as soon as possible.” He peeked through the curtains. “So how do we get rid of or through psycho Daffy Duck out there?”

Kody turned toward Xev. “Nick is still in charge, right? He can stop all this from getting worse?”

“Yes and no. You have to remember, he’s not the only creature who can call out Armageddon.… He’s only one of them.” Xev grimaced. “Granted, he’s a very scary one, but he’s not the only threat the world has. And we don’t know who or what started this. It might be someone after him, or another entity entirely. Someone or something we haven’t even thought about yet.”

Nick was so beginning to hate this day. “Look, I don’t want to be a threat to anyone, except who or whatever took my mom and hurt Mark and Caleb. I’m an easygoing Cajun. Live and let live. Laissez les bon temps rouler. That’s my motto. I just want to live my life in peace.” He paused. “After I kill whoever took my mama.”

Xev snorted. “Unfortunately, with your parentage, it doesn’t work that way. But I agree. We need to speak to your strange homicidal duck urine friend about what happened.”

“Can we teleport past the Memitim?” Kody asked Xev.

“We should be able to. The worst thing is they might follow the scent, thinking we’re Malphas.”

“Then buckle up, buttercup. Let’s see how bad I screw this up this time.” Nick took Xev’s arm so that he could flash the two of them to the hospital, since Xev wasn’t familiar with the layout of the building. Sad to say, Nick had been there enough over the last couple of years that he was rather intimate with it.

Even so, teleporting was still a risky move, but given the weather and the crows, he didn’t want to chance driving there while being dive-bombed by piranha birds.

As soon as they were clear and had materialized at the hospital, Kody appeared right behind them, inside a small broom closet. “Nice choice.”