Barrons didn’t show up Monday night or Tuesday. Wednesday came and went with no sign of him. By Thursday evening it had been five days since I’d seen him, longer than he’d ever stayed away before.
I was growing impatient. I had questions. I had accusations. I had memories of a fight that had ended in disturbing lust. I’d been sitting in the rear conversation area of the bookstore, every evening for hours, before a softly hissing gas fire, pretending to read, waiting for him.
The bookstore was huge and silent and I felt alone and a million miles from home.
After five days, I broke down and dialed JB on the cell phone he’d given me. There was no answer.
I stared at the display, thumbed through my short contact list: JB; IYCGM; IYD.
I didn’t quite have the balls to try the last one.
I punched up IYCGM instead.
“Ryodan,” a voice barked.
I hung up instantly, feeling embarrassed and guilty.
The phone blared with the thunder of a hundred celestial trumpets in my hands, and although part of me had fully expected it, it still scared me out of my skin.
The display blinked: IYCGM.
I sighed and pressed send.
“Mac? Are you all right? Talk to me,” a deep voice growled.
Ryodan: the mysterious man who talked about Barrons to people he shouldn’t talk to, the man Barrons had been fighting the day I’d gone to Alina’s apartment.
I hesitated.
“Mac!” the voice roared.
“I’m here. I’m fine. I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why did you call?”
“I wondered where Barrons was.”
There was a soft laugh, a deep, rumbling purr. “Is that what he’s calling himself these days? Barrons?”
“Isn’t that his name? Jericho Barrons?”
More laughter. “Is he using a middle name?”
“The initial Z.” I’d seen it on his license.
“Ah, the Omega. Ever the melodramatic one.”
“And the Alpha?” I said drolly.
“He’d probably try to make a great case for it.”
“What’s his real name?”
“Ask him yourself.”
“He wouldn’t answer me. He never does. Who are you?”
“I’m the one you call when you can’t get Barrons.”
“Duh. Thanks. Who’s Barrons?”
“The one who keeps saving your life.”
I wouldn’t have believed two men could sound so much alike, both masters of circuitous answers that went nowhere. “Are you brothers?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
I didn’t have to press further to understand that, like Barrons, Ryodan would only tell me what he intended to tell me and all the questions in the world would fall on deaf ears unless he wanted me to know something. “I’m leaving, Ryodan. He lies to me, he bullies me. He never tells me anything. He betrayed me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What? The lying, bullying, or betraying?”
“Betraying. The rest of it is classic…what did you call him? Barrons. But he doesn’t betray.”
“You don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
“Open your eyes, Mac.”
“What do you mean?”
“Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them. He thinks you have the heart of a warrior. He believes in you. Believe in him.”
“In what? A mercenary? He wants the book to sell it to the highest bidder! The Hunters are mercenaries, too!”
“If I were in your shoes, I’d never call him that. Who are you to talk? You think your motives are so pure? You have such a noble calling? Bullshit. What’s good about you? You want blood. You want revenge. You don’t care about the fate of the world. You just want your happy little place in it back. People who live in glass houses…” He trailed off as if I should know what came next. I didn’t.
“What? People who live in glass houses what?”
“Fuck, you are young, aren’t you?” He laughed. “Shouldn’t throw rocks, Mac. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks.”
The line went dead.
The bell jingled. Barrons walked in.
“Barrons.” I hastily shoved the phone between the cushions.
“Ms. Lane.” He inclined his dark head.
“You tattooed me, you bastard.” I got right to the point.
“So?”
“You had no right!”
“Would you rather I hadn’t?”
“That doesn’t make it okay!”
“But it does, doesn’t it? And that’s what rankles you. I overruled your wishes. I took care of you in the way a man used to take care of a woman before the world was a place where children could sue to divorce their parents, and if I hadn’t, you’d be dead. Are you going to pretend to wish you were dead? I know you. You’re crammed full of life and selfishly glad you’re alive, and you always will be. If you need a stage and an audience to play the maiden nun who would sacrifice her life to preserve her virginity to appease your conscience, find it somewhere else, I’m not going to applaud. Will you hang your life on values that have none in the final analysis? When you were too young and na?ve to see the risks, I incurred your wrath to protect you. Scream at me for it if you must. Thank me for it when you finally grow up.”
I changed the subject. He hits me with so much sometimes that it’s easier to veer on to some other topic, one that would put me on the offensive, and him on the defensive instead of vice versa. “Why did the Lord Master take one look at you and leave? What are you, Barrons?”
“The one who will never let you die, and that’s more, Ms. Lane, than anyone in your life has ever been able to say to you. More than anyone else can do.”
“V’lane—”
“V’lane sure as fuck didn’t come get you in the grotto, did he? Where was your golden prince then?”
“I’m sick of your evasions! What are you?” I stalked over to him, punched him in the shoulder. “Answer me!”
He knocked my hand away. “I just did. That’s all you’re getting. Take me or leave me. Stay or go.”
We glared at each other. It seemed like all we did anymore. But there was no real fight in me, and he sensed it.
When I went to the sofa and sat down, he turned away.
“I assume you are yourself again,” he said, staring into the fire.
“How did you know that?”
“I spent the past few days researching the ramifications of what you’d done, to find out if it was reversible. I learned the effects of eating Unseelie are temporary.”