“You’re one helluva mechanic, I’ll give you that.” I tossed my bags over to Niko who was looking around the open trunk at the same pile of glass. I couldn’t see the expression behind his sunglasses and that was for the best. I imagine it would’ve melted my face like a bad monster-movie special effect. “I take it you want to tag along on this job?”

“Tag along?” The puck frowned. “I do not tag along. I have led crowds of virgins to a mass fertility and deflowering rite. I accompanied the Argonauts because I thought I’d look amazing in golden fleece, and a three-some with Castor and Pollux was nothing to sneeze at. I told a drunken and toothless hedge wizard a ridiculous story about the Holy Grail and watched King Arthur’s knights roam about the countryside forever, looking under every skirt and stone for the thing. I was with Columbus when he found the New World and at the Hawaiian barbecuing of Captain Cook, who, while a cranky bastard, was quite tasty.” He pointed the empty wine bottle at me and almost made it upright in indignation. “I create adventure. I live life as it has never been lived before. I forge legends. I do not tag along.”

“You’re tagging along,” I drawled.

“Yes,” he sighed, falling back again. “I’m tagging along.”

“Why?” I asked. “You hated our last road trip. You don’t like fast food. You don’t like gas stations full of ‘the common people’… you know, anyone who isn’t you. You get bored about thirty seconds on the road and start flashing ninety-year-old women drivers.”

“Someone needs to verify they’re taking their heart medication,” he mumbled, and sat up. “Ishiah suggested it. He thinks I should go and test my resolve or more realistically, he thinks, to give my resolve a rest.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” It was way too early to follow a puck’s train of thought. They were bullet trains at the very least. They would suck you into their two-hundred-twenty-five-mile slipstream and it would be all over for you.