SEVEN
“I fall to pieces”
I’m absurdly easy to break if you know the right buttons to push.
If you’ve read any comics, you know superheroes have a critical vulnerability: the society they protect.
Jo’s part of my society. Fact is, any sidhe-sheep chained up next to me would have me singing a new tune. Well, maybe not Margery.
Actually, probably even her, too.
The hard thing for me is knowing I can take more than everyone else. Like that stupid bunny that used to be in commercials all the time, I take a licking and keep on kicking. And punching. And breathing.
Not true other folks. They die so easily.
Besides, I’m not afraid of the big sleep. I figure it’s just another adventure.
I try to talk Ryodan out of chaining Jo up.
He doesn’t listen to me.
Jo goes ballistic when he grabs her. Screaming and yelling and kicking. I’m kind of impressed by how hard she fights.
I think watching Dublin get destroyed on Halloween, seeing our friend Barb get taken by the Sinsar Dubh and ridden as a machine-gun-toting bitch to massacre so many of us, plus living in a world where you have to shake your shoes out before you put them on to make sure you don’t get eaten by a Shade faster than you can say “Aw, shit” is messing with Jo’s head.
She used to be like Kat, all even-tempered and cautious with decisions, didn’t have a sharp word for anyone.
“I’m going to kill you, you bastard, you won’t get away with this!” she’s shouting. “Let me go! Get your hands off me, you son of a bitch!”
Ryodan chains her next to me. She struggles but it’s like watching a fly batting at a window, trying to get outside. You know it’s never going to work.
I give her a look. “Got any more bright ideas, Jo? Try bringing a few babies for him to torture next time.”
She gives her chains a violent jerk. We’re bolted to a stone wall.
“Good luck with that.” If I couldn’t break them with my superstrength, she’s got a snowball’s chance in hell. I think he has the metal spelled. I think he has everything spelled. I want to know where he learns his spells so I can sign up for a crash course. If I’ve been down here three days, I should be, well, messier than I am. How did he keep me unconscious for three days? Put me in some kind of suspended animation? I seriously have to pee.
“I was trying to help,” she says.
“You should have just taken a baseball bat to my head. Put me out of my misery.” I could have held out down here forever until she went and served herself up to Ryodan as a weapon.
Ryodan stands in front of us, legs apart, arms folded over his chest. He’s a big dude. I wonder if Jo knows he has fangs. I wonder what he is. I wonder why she’s staring at him like that. She hates him.
I trash my pointless wonderings and cut to the chase. Procrastinating is number three on my Stupid List. You still end up exactly where you didn’t want to be, doing exactly what you didn’t want to do, with the only difference being that you lost all that time in between, during which you could have been doing something fun. Even worse, you probably stayed in a stressed-out, crappy mood the whole time you were avoiding it. If you know something is inevitable, do it and get it over with. Move on. Life is short.
If he tortures Jo, I’ll cave.
I know it.
He knows it.
Ergo, torturing her is a great big fat waste of time. His. Mine. Hers.
“What do you want from me, Ryodan?” I say.
“It’s decision time, Dani.”
“Deaf much? I said, what do you want from me?”
“You owe me compensation.”
“Dude, the bush is ready. Why you still beating around it?”
“I’ve lived a long time, kid, and I’ve never heard anyone mutilate the English language quite like you.”
“How long is that?” Jo says.
I yawn, big and dramatic. “Still beating. And me all bush-like.” I give an all-body, bushy bristle.
His eyes narrow on me like he’s thinking. Like maybe he hasn’t decided exactly what he wants from me yet. That worries me. It should be real simple: he wants me to work for him. I know he’s not as bright as I am, so I help him out.
“I’ll look into your little ice mystery, Ryodan. I’ll put it at the top of my priority list. Unchain us already.”
“It’s not that simple anymore. You complicated the f*ck out of things when you decided to defy me publicly. Nobody does that and lives.”
“Breathing here,” I say.
“Do you have to keep saying ‘f*ck’ around her? She’s barely thirteen,” Jo says.
“Fourteen,” I correct irritably.
“My men want you dead. They’re pushing for a dramatic execution, in the club. They say it’s the only way to appease the patrons of Chester’s.”
“I always wanted to go out in a big way,” I say. “Maybe we could do some fireworks, huh? I think there are some left up at that old petrol station on O’Clare.”
“Nobody’s executing anyone,” Jo says. “She’s a child.”
“I’m not a fecking child. I don’t think I was even born that way.”
“I told them I believe you can be useful,” Ryodan says. “That I can control you.”
I bristle and rattle my chains. Nobody controls me. Not anymore.
“They say you’ll never answer to anyone. Not even Barrons is on my side.”
No doubt because TP was telling Barrons to tell Ryodan to kill me. Or let her do it.
“It’s eight against one,” he says.
“It’s eight against two,” Jo says. “If you count her sister sidhe-seers—and you’d better—it’s eight against thousands.”
“Your numbers have been severely diminished,” Ryodan says.
“Worldwide, we’re over twenty thousand.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say to Jo. “Why didn’t I know that?” To Ryodan, I say, “Dude, kill me or free me.”
“If you kill her,” Jo says, “you’ll incur the wrath of every sidhe-seer in the world. They’ll hunt you. Dani’s a legend among us. We won’t lose her.”
“If I decide to kill her,” Ryodan says, “no one will ever know what happened to either of you.”
I blink, mentally replaying what Jo said again and again, but I can’t hear it enough. “Really? I’m a legend? Like, around the whole world they know of me? Say it again!” I preen. I had no idea. There might be a little swagger left in my body after all. I cock a jaunty hip.
“Let her go,” Jo says to Ryodan, “and I’ll stay in her place.”
“The feck you’ll stay!” I explode.
“You’re offering to stay here. Chained up. With me. In exchange for her.” A smile plays at his lips.
“As long as you have me as a hostage, she’ll behave.”
“The feck you’ll stay!” I say again since nobody reacted like they were supposed to, like, by obeying me. Or paying any attention to me at all.
“I haven’t forgotten what you did to my cell phone, sidhe-seer,” Ryodan says.
“You were taking pictures on our property. It’s private,” Jo says.
“You’re on my property. It’s private.”
“I’m not taking pictures. I came to take back something that’s ours. Something you had no right to take.”
“I’m not a something. Or a child,” I say.
“She had no right to kill the patrons of my club. She’d been warned. Repeatedly.”
“And you know how well she listens. You shouldn’t have brought her into your club and left her alone with a sword. Could you possibly be that stupid?”
“Dudes, quit talking about me like I’m not here!”
“Sidhe-seer, tread lightly,” he says to Jo, and his voice goes real soft. Soft from Ryodan is never good.
“Let me stay in her place. She’s just a kid.”
“I’m not a kid! And she’s not fecking staying here. Nobody’s staying here! Except maybe me!”
“You do understand what it would mean,” he says to Jo, like I’m not even having a violent, noisy fight with a wall and four chains. “If she makes a single misstep, you’re dead.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. I always misstep. Misstep is my middle name, right after Mega. I can’t not misstep. I have feet.
“I understand.”
“She doesn’t mean it!” I shout. “She doesn’t even know what she’s talking about! She doesn’t have any clue what you dudes are really like. Besides, I don’t really even care about her at all. You can kill her. So, you may as well let her go.”
“Shut up, Dani,” Jo says.
“You’ll have to sign an employment application,” Ryodan tells Jo.
“Don’t sign it, Jo! He’s got some kind of spell on it.”
“Am I being held hostage or applying for a job?” Jo says.
“I’m short a few waitresses. Some of them were—” Ryodan gives me a look. “—collateral damage the other day.”
“I didn’t kill any humans.”
“Two of them had enough Unseelie in them that apparently you couldn’t tell the difference,” Ryodan says.
I killed humans? How much Unseelie had they eaten?
“You want me to be a waitress?” Jo says, horrified, like it’s a fate worse than death. “I tried to wait tables in high school. I can’t. I drop plates. I spill drinks. I’m a researcher. A linguist. I live in my head. I don’t wait tables.”
“Conveniently, I have two applications handy.” Ryodan withdraws a folded packet of papers from his pocket.
“Why two? I ain’t waiting tables,” I say belligerently.
“I have to serve Fae? As in take orders and fill them? And bring things to their tables?” Jo can’t seem to wrap her brain around it. Like she’d rather stay chained to the wall than wait tables.
“And my men. Occasionally, I imagine, even me. With a smile.” He looks her up and down, slo-mo. “You’ll look good in the uniform. Do we have a deal.” In typical Ryodan fashion, his voice doesn’t rise at the end of the question. He knows they have a deal. He can read Jo like a book with see-through covers.
My chains rattle as I test them with everything I’ve got. He is not putting Jo to work in the kiddie subclub. She’s got the kind of face that’s so delicate and pretty that she can wear really short hair like she does and look totally hot. Even those stupid glasses she wears when she reads just make her look good because they make her bones seem even more dainty. She has something ethereal. She is not wearing a short plaid skirt, tight white blouse, socks, and baby doll heels. She will not be waiting on him and his men! Chester’s will swallow her up like a tasty morsel and spit out blood and gristle.
“No, Jo,” I say flatly. “Don’t you dare.”
“We have a deal,” Jo says.
He unchains Jo, hands her the “application” and a pen.
She flattens it out on the wall and signs it without even reading it.
He folds it up and hands it back to her. “Take the elevator back up the way you came. Lor is waiting for you there. He’ll get you a uniform. You start tonight. You have a single priority—make my patrons happy.”
“Lor is waiting for me,” Jo says. She pushes a hand through her short dark hair and gives him a look that kind of surprises me, it’s got so much balls in it. “I thought you said your men expected you to kill us.”
“If you don’t hand him the signed application, he will. I suggest you make sure he sees it the instant you get off the elevator.”
“What about Dani?”
“She’ll be up soon.”
“She comes with me now,” Jo says.
“Never. Tell. Me. What. To. Do.” Ryodan’s talking soft again, and I don’t know about Jo but it gives me a shiver when he speaks like that.
“Get out of here, you stupid fecking sidhe-sheep!” I say. “I’ll be fine. I’d have been finer if you’d never showed up!” He owns her now. He’s got some kind of spell on her. It pisses me off so bad I’m shaking.
After Jo leaves, Ryodan glides toward me in that weird fluid way he has. He didn’t move that way in front of Jo. He walked all slow-mo when she was here.
I see the glint of a silver knife in his hand.
“Dude, no need to cut me. I’ll sign the fecking application. Just give me a pen.” I have to get out of here. I have to save Jo. She put herself on the line for me. I can’t stand it.
“Kid, when will you learn.”
“You’d be amazed the things I know.”
“You might be able to thrash your way out of a spiderweb, but thrashing in quicksand doesn’t work. The harder you fight, the more ground you lose. Struggling merely expedites your inevitable defeat.”
“Never been defeated. Never will be.”
“Rowena was a spiderweb.” He touches my cheek with the hand holding the knife. The silver glints an inch from my eye. “Do you know what I am.”
“A great big pain in my ass.”
“Quicksand. And you’re dancing on it.”
“Dude, what’s with the knife?”
“I’m not interested in ink anymore. You’re going to sign my contract in blood.”
“Thought you said it was an application,” I say pissily.
“It is, Dani. To a very exclusive club. What’s Mine.”
“Ain’t nobody’s.”
“Sign.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Or Jo dies. Slowly and painfully.”
“Dude, why are you still talking? Unchain me and give me the fecking contract already.”
There’s a guillotine above my neck. I hear it swishing as it slices through the air. There’s a name carved into the shiny blade: JO. I see it in my periphery with every step I take. It’s going to make me nuts.
After I sign his fecking contract—I got a paper towel in my fist because my palm’s still bleeding where he cut me—he lets me go. Just like that. Unchains my other arm and legs, offers to heal me, to which I say a great big kiss-my-booty, then escorts me to the elevator and tells me to go wherever my current version of home is.
I expect him to tell me I have to move into Chester’s so he can watch my every move, like Barrons did with M—TP.
I expect him to go all control-freak on me.
I don’t expect him to give me my sword back and send me on my way with a casual reminder to show up for “work” tomorrow at eight P.M. He says there’s something else he wants me to see.
I hate this.
He’s not reeling off one thousand and one Ryodan commandments like I thought he would.
He’s giving me all kinds of rope to hang myself with. I tie knots with rope. And I move really fast. It’s inevitable I’ll get tangled up in all that rope somehow, with a loop or two around my neck.
How am I going to get Jo out of this?
Four of his big scarred dudes are waiting for me when I get off the elevator. I glance warily around for Barrons and TP as I wave my contract big and noisy at Ryodan’s men so they don’t give me any grief before they take it from me to put it wherever it is Ryodan plans to keep it and I’m going to have to eventually steal it back from. I’m out of protein bars and not in the mood for a pissing contest. Fortunately, TP is nowhere to be seen.
I hit the bathroom under heavy guard. What do they think I’ll do? Blow the place up? I can’t. I don’t have my backpack. No MacHalo either. They didn’t bring it when they nabbed me at Dancer’s. I’d look out a window but there aren’t any in the club. My bones tell me it’s night. I don’t take chances with Shades. I refuse to die so stupidly. “I need flashlights,” I say, blowing out of the bathroom.
One of the dudes grunts and walks away. The rest of them escort me through the subclubs. I get stared at by every Fae we pass. There’s murder in their eyes.
Something weird happens to me on the way out.
Freeze-framing feels like picking myself up mentally and shifting sideways into a different way of being, and I like it.
Now, as I walk out and see all the pissed-off faces, human and Fae, a completely different part of me gets picked up and shifted sideways without me even trying—in fact, I’m pretty sure I’m resisting—and I don’t like it one bit, because all the sudden I’m seeing my world with what feels like totally different eyeballs.
I don’t like these eyeballs. They see things wrong.
The Fae hate me. A lot of the humans do, too.
Ryodan’s men want me dead and I have no idea why he’s keeping me alive.
TP—oh, feck it—Mac, the best friend I ever had, Mac—who made me a birthday cake and hung with me and treated me cool, and sold a piece of her soul to the Gray Woman to save me, hates me, too. She wants to kill me because I killed her sister on Rowena’s orders before I ever even knew Mac existed.
Jo’s life dangles on a thread held by my completely unreliable hands.
And I have a thought that I’ve never had in my entire fourteen years of life (and I’ve had a lot of thoughts!), and it’s a little muffled (probably because I’d rather not hear it) and it goes something like this:
Geez, Dani, what the feck have you done?
I’ve always been a speedboat blasting across the whitecaps, thriving on sensation, wind in my hair, salt spray on my face, having the time of my life. Never looking back. Never seeing what happens around or behind me.
These new eyeballs see my wake. They see what I leave behind when I’ve passed.
Boats capsized. People flailing in the waves.
People I care about. I’m not talking about Dublin, my city that I always keep cool and impersonal with no real face. These people have faces.
We pass Jo. She’s already dressed and at her new post, paired with another waitress, being trained. She does look good in the uniform. She gives me a look as I pass, part exasperation, part plea to behave. Her trainer stares daggers at me. I wonder if the waitresses I killed were her friends.
“They shouldn’t have eaten so much Unseelie,” I mutter in my defense.
I try to shift back to the way I was before I got off the elevator, back to Dani “the Mega” who doesn’t give a crap.
Nothing happens.
I try it again.
Still feeling the breeze from that guillotine.
One of Ryodan’s dudes, Lor, hands me a flashlight. “Gee,” I say, “thanks. A whole flashlight against a city of Shades.”
“They moved on. Mostly.”
I roll my eyes. “ ‘Mostly’ might be okay with you ’cause, like, they don’t eat whatever you dudes are. Why is that?”
Lor doesn’t answer me, but I didn’t expect him to.
The second we reach the door, I freeze-frame.
I can outrun anything.
Even myself.