Rise of the Blood by Lucienne Diver

an eye on his friend.”
    There were no testosterone-fueled protestations that he should be the one to confront the creep, which was one of the many reasons I adored him.
    “But no trouble,” he warned. “I shudder to think what your yiayia would do to me if you were arrested on my watch.”
    I smiled at the very thought, almost tempted to find out. But not quite.
    “I’ll be good,” I promised, giving him a quick kiss as I jumped off the curb.
    I sauntered into the shop the man in black had disappeared into. I didn’t bother pretending interest in anything. I’d seen it all before—the embroidered linens, the baubles, the bangles, bottle openers in the shape of satyrs or nymphs, pottery, soaps and oils. I was shopping for a man in a black robe. The shop, as jam-packed with touristy trinkets as it was, wasn’t very big. I could almost see the whole place at a glance, and the only person in it was the proprietress, who bustled up to me, her reproduction coin earrings jingling, and asked what she could help me with.
    Short of tearing apart her shop, all I could do was ask, “A man just came in here. I was hoping to talk with him.”
    She glanced around the small shop and back at me. “There’s no one else here.” She looked me right in the eyes as she said it, a little too purposefully, and I knew she was lying. I couldn’t blame the man on my ambrosia withdrawal, not if Nick had seen him and this woman was covering for him. I wished, not for the first time, that my powers ran to compelling the truth out of people, but all I could do was stop her in her tracks.
    “Freeze,” I said, putting everything I had into it.
    She froze, mouth half open, as if it had been on the tip of her tongue to say more. But she was going to have to hold that thought.
    I stalked to the checkout counter, where three postcards lay abandoned, and peered over it. There was no black-robed man crouching behind it. Just to be doubly sure, I rounded the counter for a closer look. Nothing. It took no time at all to survey the rest of the shop. There weren’t any other places to hide. There was a door at the back, covered over by a tapestry. I might have missed it if the pots in front of it hadn’t been slid away to allow access, disturbing the dirt on the shop floor. I dashed to the tapestry, pulled it aside to reveal the hidden door. I yanked on the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked. And me without my lock picks. I thought about kicking it in, but given the disturbance in the dirt, the door opened toward and not away from me, and regardless of the way they made it look in movies, I’d break my leg before I’d break most doors. Oh yeah, and there was that whole not-getting-arrested thing. I’d promised.
    Regretfully, I admitted temporary defeat and slunk back outside.
    “Gone,” I said to Nick and Jesus as I approached.
    “His friend too,” Nick said, nodding to where the other man in black had been.
    “ Skata . I’ve had enough of this cloak and dagger crap already. Why can’t we just have a nice, straightforward wedding?”
    “Speaking of which, we’d probably better get back. Production meeting in T-minus twenty.”
    “What’re you, an astronaut?” I asked, suddenly irritable. Another thing, maybe, to blame on ambrosia withdrawal.
    “Am I the only one excited about this?” Jesus asked. “Come.” He linked an arm through each of ours, and I grabbed up his ouzo bottle from the curb so it wouldn’t be left behind.
    We let Jesus drag us off. I continued to look into storefront windows to see if I could spot our sneaky surveillance, but there was no further sign of them.
    We met Mom, Dad, Uncle Christos and his girlfriend—which seemed so weird to say at their age, since she was hardly a girl—coming through the door of the hotel, just back from a sightseeing trip of their own.
    “Tori!” Mom gasped, throwing her arms around me and waving Dad in for a group hug. He grumbled, as always, but complied. I didn’t