Nightlife by Rob Thurman
Our narrator is Cal and he's half-monster in this 2006 novel. His mommy was a drunk fortune teller and his daddy was a monster, literally. Cal's father burned mommy to death years ago and ever since Cal has been protected by his half brother Niko.
The half-brothers live off the grid hiding from Cal's daddy and various other things that go bump in the night. But now Cal's daddy has found them and what will Niko do when Cal is consumed by the dark half of his soul?
The first in a series. It has some promise but it isn't that good. It also bears a striking similarity to the TV show 'Supernatural'. There's a troll under the Brooklyn Bridge, a banshee in the mirror, a Boggle in Central Park that eats muggers, a merry widow who is the vampire version of Anna Nicole Smith and a used car salesman who is actually Robin Goodfellow. Niko and Cal communicate by merrily smacking each other around. The precocious kid psychic is paid in ice cream sodas for her psychic readings (let the reader pause briefly to vomit). How desperate for booze money was their mother to have consensual sex with Cal's daddy? I mean there is desperate and there is Desperate. Plus there is the logistics of the whole thing...ick.
