While Barrons dispatched Fade to fetch a container, Jada closed her eyes and pinned Cruce’s sudden appearance in the Humvee on her mental bulletin board. Around that inexplicable event, she tacked up every fact she knew about him, stepped back and studied the big picture, seeking logic. The world around her vanished, leaving what she loved best: a mystery, an unexplained event, and her fierce, consuming desire to riddle it out. Everything in the universe made sense, if one gathered enough information and examined it properly.
Up went the impaired state of Cruce’s prison, the closed doors of the cavern, the cuff she’d worn for months without it ever closing, the apparent release of Cruce by the Sinsar Dubh (or had it caught him wandering the grounds, already free?), the cuff abruptly closing—as if responding to a signal it had previously been unable to receive—the legend that in addition to affording a protective shield, the cuff of Cruce had served as the concubine’s way of summoning the Unseelie King. For that reason alone, Jada had deemed it worth stealing from Cruce’s arm, but it never worked.
Suspicion took the cohesive form of a valid premise. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she murmured.
“What?” Barrons demanded.
She opened her eyes. “We were talking about him right before he appeared. When I took the cuff from his arm, he was still imprisoned, his power contained. A short time ago, before he was turned into a blob, he must have been free for at least a brief time.”
Long enough that the cuff might have responded to its creator and established a bond between them?
Trusting that Barrons was correct and she wasn’t summoning another version of what Mac had become, Jada tested it. “Cruce.”
The prince was back again, standing in the middle of them, swaying slightly, his hand at his throat, looking shocked and startled before his expression turned thunderous.
He vanished.
“Cruce,” she said again.
He was back again, coldly furious. “You will stop doing that, human, and you will give it back to me. It was never meant for you.” He stalked toward her, hand outstretched, but froze when she slid the sword from behind her back.
She scrutinized him closely but detected none of the enormous malevolence she expected from the Sinsar Dubh. “Your deceit doesn’t work on me anymore.” She’d felt the intense pressure of the illusion he’d just tried to force on her, to convince her that he’d taken her sword and she was defenseless against him. “I’ll only bring you back, each time. We can do this all day.”
“Give me my cuff or die, human.”
“Explain,” Barrons fired at Jada.
She smirked. “It seems I’ve got the all-powerful Cruce on a leash.”
“That same leash tethers you, human,” Cruce purred, and vanished.
“Bloody he—” was all Jada managed to get out before she, too, was gone.
Jo offers me a smile when she sees me approaching. “That’d be great, Mac,” she says, accepting my offer of aid. “We’re trying to collect what supplies remain and move them below.”
“Isn’t that water over there?” I say, nodding toward the half-collapsed pantry. “Looks like a dozen or more jugs.”
Her smile brightens. “We need to get that out to the women. Most of them haven’t had anything to eat or drink since last night.” She moves to the collapsed structure and begins removing the jugs.
She doesn’t know she’s handling poison, death. Idiot. She doesn’t understand that nothing can be taken for granted in this world, would undoubtedly refuse to believe we even exist—those of us that see through others as if they’re cardboard cutouts with their simplistic needs scribbled in Sharpie on their flat, one-dimensional faces.
I need nothing. I am desire. Lust. Greed.
“How are things with Lor?” I toy with her as I move near. She begins to hand me water jugs, one after the next. I sweep a dusting of ice from a long flat stone, place it there, then three more in quick succession beside it. I open one and while her back is turned pretend to take a drink. “Oh, that’s good. Here, have some.” I offer her the jug and watch as she takes a long, deep swallow.
“Ew, that’s weird,” she says, wiping her mouth. “It tasted sweet.”
“Probably some of the jugs Jada put sweetener in,” I lie. “She told me sugar-water fuels her freeze-frame better than plain. So what’s up with Lor?” I prod. I want to see her happy, excited about the life she’s never going to have when I take it from her.
She laughs. “Oh, God, Mac, I never would have guessed that man was so…complicated. He’s smart. Like super freaky smart. Who’d have thought? He’s trying to help me create a filing system for my memory.”
“Do you care about him?”
She takes another drink, grimaces, and hands me the jug back. “I haven’t had time to think about it,” she demurs. “We’re all too busy just trying to survive.”
But she does. It’s there in the soft glow in her eyes. She’s thinking that she has someone she can count on, someone strong who makes her feel good and alive, as if life holds endless opportunity for adventure and—what a stupid fucking delusion humans erect and cling to—romance. She’s happy. She put on makeup this morning, took care with her hair. She’s hoping to see him today.
She will never see him again.