“What is it, then? Because the Unseelie that ate Alina sure thought so, too. They asked if Dani would bring them another ‘blondie’ like my sister.” My hands fist at the memory, nails digging deep. I have Mick O’Leary’s blood on my hands. I may as well have my own.
I search his profile. A muscle ticks beneath his left eye. Both hands are on the steering wheel, knuckles white. For an instant I see Barrons in him, a violently passionate man who controls it flawlessly, so the world thinks him ice.
“Answer me,” I snap. “Did she or didn’t she kill my sister?”
His only response is a rattle deep in his chest, the kind Barrons makes when he’s deeply disturbed.
“Have I fallen down a rabbit hole into an alternative reality where you actually have feelings?”
He gives me a feral look and I glimpse fangs. He closes his mouth swiftly, is motionless a moment, then says carefully, “I protect the best and brightest.”
IYCGM, Barrons’s shorthand for If You Can’t Get Me, is a number I can call on my cell phone that Ryodan always answers, but it’s never proved useful. Eyes narrowed, I tell him that.
“Precisely.”
“Do you sit around thinking up things to say to antagonize me?”
“Back at you, babe. When did you see her last.”
Why doesn’t he want her to know he was there that night, following her? Why is he saying Dani didn’t do it? What does he mean by “It’s not what you think”?
Since he’s already refused to answer those questions, I try another. “Why would you deny it if I told her?” When he says nothing, I say, “Quid pro quo, Ryodan. Take it or leave it.”
“There are things Dani doesn’t know about herself,” he says finally. “It’s a delicate situation.”
I frown, not liking the sound of that. “What kind of things? What are you saying?”
“I answered your question. Answer mine.”
I want to find Dani. Now doubly so. Is there something I don’t know about the night Alina died? Something that might change everything? I should have enlisted his help from the beginning. The man has his ways. I sigh. “The night I chased her through a portal into Faery.”
He grits, “Talk. Now.”
By the time we get to Chester’s, we’re not speaking. Hostility is a wall between us. He blames me for chasing her through. He says if she dies, it’s on my head. Like I don’t know that. He insists I go looking for her. I tell him Barrons vetoed that for good reason.
He gets on his cell phone, which shouldn’t work, and barks orders to his men. Says they’re better off in Faery right now than at the club and orders them to start searching for Dani.
Then he’s talking to Barrons and arranging for him to meet us at Chester’s. I don’t like that one bit. I have no doubt he’s putting Barrons in the presence of at least one, perhaps multiple Unseelie Princesses, to encourage me to deal with the situation swiftly. It’s one of his demands with which I intend to fully comply. I’m too starved for Barrons myself to tolerate the idea of another female touching him.
I stalk into Chester’s, hand on my spear, a wave of grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous Unseelie trailing me like a morbid bridal train.
JADA
At the top of the chrome and glass stair, the woman pauses and looks down. The air inside Chester’s just altered, charged by the presence of powerful newcomers.
She is highly attuned to subtle nuances from years of training and meditation. She has battled blind and deaf. And won.
These auras are far from subtle.
Three have entered from two different locations. She scans the dance floors, picking them out: there is the one called Ryodan, polished, bestial owner of this club; a second of the Nine known as Barrons, that keeps largely to the shadows¸ collector of antiquities and the most versed of them all in dark magic; and a young, blond woman that leads a small army of Unseelie as black as the shadowy nimbus that surrounds her.
All exude enormous power.
She glances at her bait, nude, perfect, and prime for the hook, then below.
There are possibilities. There are choices.
There is never emotion involved.
Two of the three who’ve entered are on her list but each will be a difficult kill, taxing her many skills, and to attempt it with both present would be suicide.
She plays to win at her choice of time, place, and method.
As they move through the subclubs, approaching her, one from the east, two from the west, she aborts her mission, slips down the stairs and exits Chester’s.
She will reconvene with the others, dispatch tasks for the night, move to the next name on her list.
MAC
Once, 939 Rêvemal Street was an elegant aboveground nightclub frequented by Dublin’s young, bored, and beautiful. It’s now a fetish-filled underground orgiastic ball from a Daliesque painting.
The first time I came here was with Dani. It’s gotten a lot worse since then. Or better, depending on who you are and what you want.
For the See-you-in-Faery girls, who call the Fae the new vamps, and will do virtually anything for the high of eating Unseelie flesh, the place is paradise. More Fae stake out their bizarre corner of the sex trade here every night.
As I push into the mass of people, laughing, drinking, eating things I try really hard not to look at, I toss coolly over my shoulder, “How do you justify the number of people who get enslaved and killed here every night in order to grow your damned empire?”