Iced

I love that about Dancer. He always gets me without me having to go on and on telling how point A got to point B. “All I’m saying is this ain’t my fashion statement, so don’t hold it against me.”

“S’cool, Mega. You look cool.”

“I look stupid.” I’m so mortified I could expire of mortification.

“You look older. Sixteen or seventeen. If you had on makeup you’d probably look eighteen.”

I think I’m nonplussed. I’ve never been nonplussed before but I know the definition and I imagine this must be what it feels like. It’s not quite flummoxed, or bewildered. Words have subtle nuances. A year or two ago I might have been flabbergasted. This is a slightly different kind of stymied. Yes. I think it’s nonplussed. “Well,” I say, and smooth my skirt.

Gah! Feck! What are my hands doing to me? I actually just smoothed my skirt! Am I turning into some kind of sissy? I don’t even wear skirts! But when Ryodan made me change the only thing they could find that fit me was the waitress uniform from the kiddie subclub and I was so pissed off about the posters, then so glad to see Dancer, that I totally forgot I was wearing a short skirt, snug blouse, and baby doll heels that suck to freeze-frame in, but I had more important things to do than dash into a store and switch shoes, like tear my face off every fecking lamppost in the city. Feet are feet sometimes; if they’re working that’s good enough.

“Who took your sword, Mega? And how did anybody even get it from you?”

My mood darkens instantly. I get so mad I get lockjaw and I can’t talk for a sec. “Jayne,” I finally grind out through my teeth. I rub my jaw muscles a sec and loosen my mouth back up. Superstrength sucks sometimes when it’s in every single muscle in your body. When you get a muscle cramp, it’s a big deal. It can go on for a good long while. “That fecker Jayne took it and left me for dead. I got hurt by one of those …” All Dancer knows about the iced scenes is what he saw the other night and it still hadn’t exploded by the time they got me out of there. At least I don’t think it had. It occurs to me I’m not sure. I need to ask somebody later. “I got hurt and Jayne took it while I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I went to Ryodan and told him we needed to go get my sword back and he refused. Said he liked me better without it.”

“Dude!”

In a single word Dancer just gave me all the righteous indignation and pissed-offedness that the situation deserves. “I know, right?”

“What is he thinking? You’re the Mega. You don’t take Wolverine’s claws!”

“I know, right?”

“Dude,” he says again.

We look at each other commiserating, because grown-ups are so fecked up and we’re never going to turn out like them.

Then he grins. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go take it back.”

Since the walls fell, Dublin feels a lot like a movie set to me.

It’s the quiet. The city is a ghost town with squatters hiding in the wreckage, rifles cocked. Sometimes I see whites of eyes gleaming at me through boarded-up windows. If they’re human, I try to talk to them. Not all of them are receptive. There are some real nuts out there, as creepy as some of the Unseelie.

Before the walls crashed, back when I used to pedal around the districts on my courier bike, back when the sidhe-seers were masquerading as an international messenger service run by Ro, the city was filled with a constant white noise. It was hard, even with my superhearing, to distinguish between the congestion of cars and buses, folks’ heels on pavers and cement, planes landing and taking off, boats docking in the bay. Cell phones drove me crazy. There were days when all I heard was a blur of text message alerts, e-mail alerts, rings, songs, games.

Still, as annoying as it could be, it was music to my ears, the complex chords of the city I love. Now there are only the flat notes of soldiers marching, monsters hunting, and the occasional plaintive trill of something dying.

Dancer and I race through the streets, telling each other jokes, laughing our heads off. Hanging with him is the only time I can totally forget myself.

We round a corner and belly up to a contingent of Rhino-boys.

When they see us, one of them grunts into a radio, “Got her, boss, she’s at Dame and Trinity.”

I glance over my shoulder, lock everything down on my grid, grab Dancer, slide sideways and freeze-frame us out of there.

A short time later we’re skulking around outside Dublin Castle, quiet as two mice sneaking around the kitchen looking for cheese.

Dancer’s eyes are bright with excitement. I’d never freeze-framed him before. He said it was the coolest thing he’d ever done and wants to do it again. It used to make Mac almost puke when I did it to her.

After I hit a department store and changed into a cooler outfit of jeans, tennis shoes, and a new leather coat, we stopped in one of his digs I didn’t even know he had and got some explosives. Some of the best plans are the simplest, less room for error. He’s going to make me a distraction by blowing something up while I go in after my sword. I’ll grab it, grab him, and we’re gone. Then I’ll swagger into Chester’s tonight at eight and everybody will see you don’t mess with the Mega. Ryodan’ll see I don’t need him for nothing.

“You were right,” Dancer says, “the cages are crammed full of Unseelie waiting to be killed.”

I snicker. “Jayne didn’t know what he was getting into when he took my sword. I knew he didn’t have enough time to kill six days’ worth. Only way I can is I do it in hyperspeed.”