“Dude, are you arming these places to blow?” I say on the way back to Chester’s. “Is this another of your stupid tests? I have to solve your little mystery in the whopping three seconds I get to study it before the scene gets blown to smithereens?” The whole building had exploded outward, for a city block. We’d barely freeze-framed from the shrapnel zone in time.
“I lost a great deal of personal property in both explosions. I sacrifice nothing that is mine from which I might profit.”
“Which translates into as long as I’m useful, since you think I’m yours, I’m not going to get the—” I drag a finger across my neck.
“Kid, you might just annoy me into killing you.”
“Right back at you, boss.”
He smiles and I feel myself starting to smile back and it pisses me off so I look out the window and get real intent on what scenery I can make out in the pinkish moonlight, which isn’t much because the Shades took everything worth looking at out here. Got three hidey-holes down this way and a big stash. Didn’t know Ryodan was holing up here, too. I’ll vacate this district as soon as I get time to relocate.
“Observations,” he says.
“Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes.” They’d been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery.
He gives me a sidewise look. “Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word.”
“Sloppy, dude. Should have omitted the connective tissue part.”
“Nothing else.”
I give him a look. I hate his statement-questions. I’m not answering them anymore.
He laughs. “Nothing else.” His voice rises on else about one one-hundredth of a note higher than the word “nothing,” a concession only someone like me with superhearing would ever be able to pick up. Still, it’s a concession. From Ryodan. Rarer than water in the desert.
“The ice was layered the same. Maybe hoar frost. Definitely hard rime. Clear ice on top of it all. The hard rime’s weird. White ice comes from fog freezing. What’s fog doing inside both these buildings?”
“How did the place blow?”
I think back. It happened so fast and we were outside, and he was blocking my view, and I was more focused on getting him off me than anything else. I hate to, but I admit, “I can draw no conclusions, circumstances being what they were.”
He looks sidewise at me again.
“Talking like you, dude, thinking it might get all this stupid fecking stuff over with sooner. Communication is hard enough when everybody’s trying.”
“Isn’t that the truth. Give me your hand.”
“No.”
“Now.”
There’s no way I’m giving him my hand.
He says something soft in a language I don’t understand. My arm jerks up. I watch in horror as my hand passes to his side of the Humvee, palm up.
He drops a Snickers in it, murmurs something, and my hand is my own again. I wonder when, how, and why my fecking appetite became everyone else’s business.
“Eat.”
I think about throwing the candy bar back in his face or out the window. I refuse to let my fingers close around it.
But I sure could use it.
He brakes, comes to a stop in the middle of the road, turns toward me, grabs the collar of my coat, pulls me across the expanse between our seats and leans in. Locks eyes. We’re maybe eight inches apart, and I think the only reason my nose ain’t touching his is because one of the brackets on my MacHalo is just about touching his forehead. My butt’s no longer touching the seat.
I’ve never seen such clear eyes as Ryodan’s got. Most folks are crammed full of emotions, with lines around them like battle scars. I can tell by looking at grown-ups if they’ve spent their years laughing or crying or resenting the whole world. I hear moms say to their kids when they make faces, “Careful, your face will stick like that.” And it really does. By middle age most folks wear whatever they felt the most in their lives smack on their kisser for all the world to see. Dude, so many of them should be embarrassed! It’s why I laugh so much. If my face is going to stick, I’m going to like looking at it.
Looking at Ryodan is like staring the devil in the face. It’s obvious what he’s felt the most—nothing. Ruthless. Cold dude.
“I won’t ever hurt you unless you make me, Dani.”
“You being the one who gets to decide what constitutes the definition of ‘make.’ Big fat lot of wiggle room in there.”
“I don’t need wiggle room.”
“Because you annihilate.”
“Another of those fancy words.”
“Dude. What did you just do to me?”
“Gave you what you needed but were too stubborn to take.” He closes my fingers around the candy bar with his. I can’t shake him off fast enough. “Eat, Dani.”
He drops me back into my seat, puts the Humvee in gear again and takes off.
I munch the candy bar despite the sour taste in my mouth, thinking how I used to be invisible.
“Superheroes are never invisible,” he says. “They’re just deluded.”
Turning my head toward the buildings flashing by, I screw up my face and stick out my tongue.
He laughs. “Sideview mirror, kid. And careful. Your face’ll stick like that.”
I head out into the streets with boxes of freshly printed dailies (I love the smell of new ink!) in a battered grocery cart the minute my time is my own again. I can run with a cart and slap my papers up on poles faster than I can do it on my crotch rocket. My bike’s for pleasure, for pure downtime, when I got nothing else weighing down on me, like always saving the world. I don’t get to ride it much.
Ryodan’s reminder that I’m to report to work every single night at eight P.M. on the dot is still ringing in my ears, making me nuts. What the feck can he possibly have to torture me with every night? Is he icing these stupid scenarios himself just for an excuse to mess with me?
I head west and begin my usual route. It’s a little after midnight. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple hours, then I’ll start hunting for Dancer again. I’m getting a little worried about him. Most times he goes somewhere else without telling me, he’s only gone a few days. I don’t know all his haunts any more than he knows all mine but I’ll keep checking those I do.
I’ve got certain posts and poles and benches that folks frequent, like regular newspaper stands, waiting for my latest updates. Folks have probably been a little worried with my paper being late and all. I’ve got important info to share tonight.
I glance down at my rag, proud of it. The ink is crisp and clean, and it looks real professional.