My superpowers come back three blocks from Chester’s. I know because I’ve been trying to tap a finger in hyperspeed on my thigh the whole way back. Finally did it. I still haven’t managed to make only my eyes move like Ryodan but I’ve been practicing and can get certain parts of my body to speed up for short amounts of time. Only problem is, the place where the part connects to my body gets a little sore, like I stressed out the muscles where the slow-mo and fast-mo parts are having a kind of what-the-feck-are-we-doing-here battle with each other.
But it’s not like I could sit in the Humvee with the dude, who would love to know sometimes I’m helpless, and practice trying to freeze-frame my whole body. If he stopped sudden, I could go shooting straight through the windshield and then I’d be all cut up for days on top of my usual bruises.
I look at him, irritated. “Why are you never bruised?” What is he? Like the exception to everything? And if so, where do I apply?
“Participating and all that bunk,” he says. In other words, I don’t get to know because I’m not in whatever his inner circle is. Fine. Don’t want to be there anyway.
“You got some kind of magic salve, dude? Because it’s only fair to share stuff like that.”
He pulls up to the curb out front of Chester’s. I hop out of the Humvee the second he parks and instantly start bouncing from foot to foot, sideways, in between steps forward, to make sure I’m working right again. No way I’d go inside Chester’s with no superpowers. I whip out a candy bar, devour it then munch three more in quick succession, stockpiling energy. “Aren’t we done for the night? What else have you got for me to do?” I just spent an hour in an electrified sardine can with Ryodan, after losing my powers. He saturates confined spaces, like he’s got ten people’s stuff crammed into his body. He’s pissed at me for not inspecting the scene before it blew. I’m pissed at me, too, but it wasn’t like I had any choice. Without superpowers, I’m not getting anywhere near one of those scenes. It was a sucky drive. I want some time alone, or time with Dancer. He recharges me. Hanging with him is simple and pretty much perfect.
He doesn’t answer me and I look at him. He’s staring up at the roof of a building across the street and he’s got an amused, smug look on his face. I search the shadows of the roofline but I can’t figure out what he’s checking out. There’s nothing up there. “Dude, you listening to me? Hello? Do you even know I’m here?”
He continues looking at the roof like he’s seeing something I can’t see. Like that stupid drop of condensation I’m still not sure I believe was there.
“I always know you’re there, Dani. I tasted your blood. I feel you all the time.”
Okay, that’s disturbing.
“You mean like when I’m around,” I clarify for him.
“How do you think I found you at your little boyfriend’s place.”
“You need to look at him harder if you think he’s little.”
“And so breakable.”
“Stop talking about him. He’s none of your business. Just what are you saying? That you could find me, like, anywhere, anytime?” There’s a right answer and wrong answer to that question.
“Yes.”
That was the wrong answer. I get so mad I’m breathless. “Bull. Liar.”
He laughs and looks at me. “Want to play hide and seek, little girl?” He purrs it in a voice I’ve never heard him use before, and he actually makes it a question.
His fangs are out.
“Dude, you are one weird … whatever you are.” I’m nearly at a loss for words.
He laughs again and I can’t even stand to look at him so I charge off to the door in the ground that is the new entrance to Chester’s.
He holds the door up for me. I sigh gustily as I descend the ladder. I hate Ryodan.
So I’m walking across the dance floor, cutting a beeline straight for the stairs to head up to Ryodan’s office to do whatever it is he wants me to do, when I see her.
She’s moving across the main dance floor with Jericho Barrons behind her, and it looks like they’re heading for one of the subclubs, though I can’t figure out why. Mac doesn’t like it here any more than I do.
I freeze.
I hate seeing her. I hate not knowing what’s going on in her life. I hate what I’ve done. Can’t change it, though, so no point in feeling it.
Ryodan slams into my back, knocking me forward into the crowd. “Walk much?” I say testily as I careen off of a hulking Rhino-boy that gnashes yellowed tusks at me.
As usual, he doesn’t miss a trick. His gaze does that ocular-shiver thing all over my face. “I thought you and Mac were friends.”
“We are friends,” I lie.
“Then go say hi.”
Shit, I hate how much he notices. “We might have had a tiny tiff.”
“Tiny, my ass.”
“Quit nosing into my business.”
“Learn not to wear it on your face, kid. Except in private, with me and no one else. You need some serious training. Telegraph like that, it’s only a matter of time before somebody hoists you on your own entrails.”
“Dude, who uses words like entrails? Or hoists?”
“Tell me what happened.”
I fist my hands at my waist. “It’s none of your business and that’s the beginning and end of it. Some things you can horn into. Some things you can’t. Stay the fuck out of it.”
He looks at me weird. “You said fuck. Not feck.”
“That’s all you got from what I just said?”
“You want privacy on this. I’ll give it to you. See how easy that was. If you want something, ask me for it. You’ll find I can be a generous man. When you treat me right. If you ever figure out what that is.”
He moves past me and heads for his office.
I can’t help myself, I look back at Mac. I grin and kick myself inside for doing it but there was a time when I loved waking up every day in Dublin, different than I do now, because I knew she was there at Barrons Books & Baubles and we were going to go do something cool that day and then she baked me a birthday cake and picked me out presents and we watched movies and we fought back-to-back and I ain’t never had anything like that before and sometimes I feel like a homeless dog out in the rain and thunder and I’m muddy and cold and I’m staring in the window at the pretty collie sleeping on a doggie bed close to the fire, and there’s a name on the bowl that’s next to her, and I wonder what it would be like to—
“Gah! Get over yourself, wussy-girl.” I got big-dog teeth and a big-dog bite and I know the rules: you stay inside, you get collared and spayed. I pick myself up and start to freeze-frame after Ryodan when a commotion in Mac’s general direction makes me stop, stay in slow-mo and glance back.
There’s a new type of Unseelie in Chester’s tonight and they’re something out of a horror flick. They look like anorexic wraiths that might drift around graveyards, breaking open coffins and feeding on rotting corpses. They’re draped in black cloaks with hoods so you can’t see their faces, and they don’t walk, they hover and glide just above the floor. I glimpse a flash of bone at the sleeves. In their hoods I catch a quick hint of pale, bloodless skin and something black. There are twenty or so of them in the subclub Mac and Barrons are just entering. They make me think of carrion crow that sense the coming of a storm and perch in treetops everywhere, waiting for the destruction to begin so they can swoop down on the dying and tear flesh from bone with sharp beaks. I’m suddenly certain they don’t have normal mouths. And equally certain I’d rather never see what they do have.
They turn toward Mac like they’re a single unit or something, which is totally creepy, and begin making a chittering noise that sets every nerve in my body on edge. There are no snakes in Ireland. Not because St. Patrick banished them like folks like to tell, but because of the island and climate issues. When I was a kid I was fascinated by snakes because I’d never seen one. I took a holiday after Mom died and Ro freed me, before she started controlling me, too, and went to a bunch of museums and zoos. I saw a rattlesnake. When it moved its tail, it had the same effect on me as these hooded Unseelie when they chitter. The dry, dusty rattle elicited some kind of atavistic response in me and got me thinking maybe genetic memory really does exist and certain sounds just make you want to run like hell.
What are they? How come I’ve never seen them before? What’s their unique prey? How do they feed? How can they be killed? Better yet, why are they all peeling away from Mac like she has the Unseelie version of the bubonic plague?
There are too many people on the dance floors between us. I can’t get a good view. I slide sideways into fast-mo, blow past Lor and Fade guarding the stairs at the bottom, making sure I catch Lor a good one with an elbow and snicker when he grunts, then stop at the top of the stairs and look down. Much better view.
The wraiths are chittering even louder, gliding back from Mac and Barrons, but it’s Mac all those dark hoods are turned toward.
“Interesting,” Ryodan says close to my ear. “You have to wonder why they can’t get out of her way fast enough. I’ve never seen them do that before.” Ryodan doesn’t like Mac. He never has. She got between him and his best boy-bud.
I give him a look. “I’ll tell you a secret, Ryodan. You mess with her, Barrons’ll kill you.” I drag a finger across my neck. “Just like that. You aren’t all that. Barrons’ll stomp your ass, hands down.”
He smiles faintly. “I’ll be damned. You have a crush on Barrons.”
“I do not have a crush—”
“You do, too. It’s all over your face. Anybody could see it.”
“Sometimes, boss, you’re just wrong.”
“I’m never wrong. You might as well take out a billboard. ‘Dani O’Malley thinks Jericho Barrons is hot.’ My offer to teach you is still open. Save you from future embarrassment. If I can see it on your face, he can, too.”
“He never figured it out before,” I grumble, then realize I just admitted it. Ryodan has a tricky way of wording things that makes you say things you didn’t mean to say. “Maybe I’ll ask Barrons to teach me,” I mutter, and turn away from the stairs, heading for his office. I run smack into his chest. “Dude, move. Trying to get somewhere here.”
“No one but me is ever going to teach you, Dani.”
He touches me before I see it coming, has his hand under my chin, turning my face up. My shiver is instant and uncontrollable.
“That’s non-negotiable. You signed a contract with me that grants exclusivity. You won’t like it if you try to break it.”
I glare at him, wondering what the heck I actually signed. Kind of hoping I never find out.
“What are we doing here? Pansy talk or work? You got something else for me to do or not?” I glance over my shoulder one more time as I push past him. Barrons is standing in front of Mac like a shield, and I allow myself a quick flash of a smile. Ryodan is right, I need to learn to hide what I’m feeling. She’s safe. She’ll always be safe with Barrons in the picture. I never have to worry about Mac. Just about what she might do to me one day. I’d rather worry about that than Mac, so essentially all is right with my world.