Today, I would show him.
The voice of my conscience protested thinly. I quashed it. Conscience wasn’t going to keep me alive.
I eyed the tray. My mouth watered. Those were no simple egg, tuna, or chicken salad sandwiches, those scrumptious little confections I’d worked so hard to make, and was now dying to eat. Dreaming of eating. Hungering for in a way I’d never hungered for human food.
Those wriggling little delicacies were Unseelie salad sandwiches.
And Jayne was about to get one great, big, eye-opening look at his city.
_____
It went about as well as train wrecks do.
The inspector ate only two of my tiny sandwiches: the first because he hadn’t expected it to taste so awful; the second, I think, because he’d thought surely the first must have been a mistake.
By the time he’d swallowed the second one, he could see that the sandwiches were moving on his plate, and there’d been no chance of getting a third one into him. I wasn’t sure how long the effects of such a small amount of Unseelie would last, but I figured he had a day or two of it. I hadn’t told him about the superstrength, regenerative powers or skill in the black arts that resulted from eating Unseelie. Only I knew he was currently strong enough to crush me with a single blow.
My hands had trembled when I’d forced myself to flush the rest of the uneaten delicacies down the toilet before we’d left. I’d set two aside, in case of emergency. Halfway out the door I’d called my own bluff and gone back to flush those, too. I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, white-faced with the strain of denying myself what I so badly wanted, the bliss of strength, safety from my countless enemies roaming the streets of Dublin, not to mention being able to hold my own with Barrons. I’d clung to the edge of the toilet, watching the chunks of meat swirl around in the porcelain-cradled whirlpool, until they’d disappeared.
We stood on the outskirts of the Temple Bar District, and I was exhausted.
I’d been with Jayne for seven long hours, and I didn’t like him any better now than before I’d fed him Unseelie, and forced him to see what was going on in his world.
He didn’t like me any better, either. In fact, I was pretty sure he was going to hate me for the rest of his life for what I’d made him confront tonight.
I’d drugged him, he’d insisted, shortly after I’d commenced our little monster-tour. Given him hallucinogens. He was going to have me arrested for trafficking in narcotics. He was going to have me kicked out of Ireland and sent home to prison.
We both knew he wouldn’t.
It had taken hours of steering him around Dublin, showing him what was in the bars, driving the cabs, and running the vendor stands, to get through to him, but I’d finally managed. I’d had to coach him the entire time on how to act, how to sneak looks and not to betray us, unless he wanted to end up as dead as O’Duffy.
Regardless of what I might think of his methods of handling me, Inspector Jayne was a fine cop, with sound instincts—whether he liked what they were telling him or not. Though he’d insisted none of it was real, he’d nonetheless employed the stealth of twenty-two years of investigative procedure. He’d regarded the mouthless, sad, wet-eyed monsters and the leather-winged gargoyles and the hulking masses of deformed limbs and oozing flesh with the perfect impassivity of a nonbeliever.
He’d slipped up only once, a few minutes ago.
I’d quickly nulled and stabbed three Rhino-boys in the dark alley we’d been using as a shortcut.
Jayne stood there, staring down at their gray-limbed bodies, absorbing the lumpy faces with jutting jaws and tusklike teeth, the beady eyes and elephant skin, the open wounds, revealing pinkish gray flesh marbled with pus-filled cysts. “You fed me this?” he said finally.
I shrugged. “It was the only way I knew to show you what you needed to see.”
“Pieces of these . . . things . . . were in those little sandwiches?” His voice rose; his ruddy face was pale.
“Uh-huh.”
He looked at me, his Adam’s apple convulsing, and for a moment I thought he was going to vomit but he got it under control. “Lady, you are one sick fuck.”
“Come on. There’s one more thing I want you to see,” I told him.
“I’ve seen enough.”
“No, you haven’t. Not yet.” I’d saved the worst for last.
I concluded our sightseeing tour at the edge of a new Dark Zone on the north side of the river Liffey that I’d been planning to scout, so I could ink its parameters on the map I’d nailed up on my bedroom wall. “Remember those places you couldn’t find on the maps?” I said. “The area next to the bookstore? The ones O’Duffy was checking into? This is what they are.” I waved a hand down the street.
Jayne took a step toward the darkness and I barked, “Don’t leave the light!”
He stopped beneath a streetlamp and leaned against it. I watched his face as he watched the Shades slithering hungrily at the edge of the darkness.
“And you expect me to believe these shadows eat people?” he finally said, tightly.
“If you don’t believe me, go home, get one of your kids, and send them in. See what happens.” I didn’t feel as cold as I sounded when I said it, but I had to get through to him, and to do that, I needed to hit him where he lived, bring the threat as close to home as I could.
“Don’t you ever mention my children to me again!” he shouted, turning on me. “Do you hear me? Never!”
“When this wears off,” I pointed out, “you’ll no longer know where the Dark Zones are. Your children might walk to school through one, and never come home again. Will you go looking for their piles? Will you even know where to look? Will you die trying?”
“Are you threatening me?” Big hands fisting, he bristled toward me.
I stood my ground. “No. I’m offering to help you. I’m offering you a deal. In a day, give or take a little, you won’t be able to see any of this anymore. You won’t have any idea where the danger to your family lies, and it’s all around you. I can keep you informed. I can tell you where the Dark Zones are, where the majority of the Unseelie are gathering, and how best to keep your wife and children safe. If it gets really bad, I can tell you when to get out of town, and where to go. All I want in exchange is a little information. It’s not like I’m asking you to help me commit crimes. I’m asking you to help me try to prevent them. We’re on the same side, Inspector. Until tonight, you just didn’t know what was on the other side. Now you do. Help me stop what’s happening in this city.”
“This is insane.”
“Insane or not, it’s real.” I’d had a hard time accepting that, too. The bridge connecting the sane world to this dark, Fae-infested Dublin had taken me many faltering steps to cross. “It killed O’Duffy. Will you let it kill you?”
He looked away and said nothing. At that moment, I knew I’d won. I knew he would call me the next time a crime was radioed in. He would hate every minute of it, he would tell himself he was crazy, but he would make the call, and that was all I needed.
I left Jayne at the Garda station on Pearse Street, assuring him the vision would wear off soon. As we parted, I saw the same hollow expression in his eyes I sometimes glimpsed in my own.
I felt sorry for him.
But I needed someone on the inside at the Garda, and now I had him.
Besides, if I hadn’t opened his eyes tonight and forced him to see what was going on, he’d have ended up dead in a matter of days. He’d been nosing around too much. He’d have spotted an abandoned car down some back alley and walked into a Dark Zone at night, or whoever’d slit O’Duffy’s throat to silence him would have slit Jayne’s next.
He’d been a walking dead man. Now, at least, he had a chance.