Dreamfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  The dreamy-eyed boy was reflected in the mirror below them. I stared. He didn’t look the same in the mirror. He was … blurred around the edges and … wrong, very wrong. I shivered, struck by a soul-deep chill. I tried to bring his reflection into focus. The harder I tried, the blurrier he became. The blurred shape cleared, gave me a sharp look. “Don’t talk to it, beautiful girl. Never talk to it. ”

  I gaped. “Her, you mean? The Gray Woman?”

  “It. ” He spat the word with such revulsion that I flinched.

  I looked down from the mirror at the real thing, not the reflection, and suddenly I could breathe again. He was a boy. A handsome, dreamy-eyed boy. Not something I wanted to run screaming from. “What ‘it’?”

  He stared at me blankly. “I didn’t say anything. ”

  “Now,” the man behind me growled impatiently. “Move. ”

  * * *

  They escorted me up a wide chrome staircase, to the top floor of Chester’s. Behind a chrome balustrade, dark-glass walls lined the entire circumference of the upper floor, smooth, without doors or handles.

  I glanced from one of my escorts to the other. They hadn’t spoken a word since they’d closed their hands around my upper arms and begun steering me through the crowd. Nor had I. I could feel what they were made of: leashed violence. Both looked to be in their early thirties, heavily muscled. The man on my left had hands that were badly scarred. They were massive men. There was something about their eyes that made me decide keeping my mouth shut until I had a better understanding of my situation was the wisest course of action.

  I glanced down as we topped the open-tread stairs. The waiter was on the floor, dead. The Gray Woman was already looking around for a new toy. My hands fisted. We walked along the wall of darkened glass until an indefinable characteristic in the featureless surface must have indicated a door, because the man on my right placed his palm to the glass. A panel slid aside, revealing a large room constructed entirely of two-way glass, cornered by metal girders. You could see everything going on outside it. The perimeter of the ceiling was lined with small screens fed by countless security cameras. Here were the guts of the club. Nothing happened anywhere in Chester’s that wasn’t seen here.

  “Brought her like you said, Ry. ”

  They pushed me inside. The panel slid closed behind me with a soft hiss. The room was dark but for the glow of LCD panels. I took a step to catch my balance. For a moment I thought I was falling, but it was an illusion created by the floor, which was also made of two-way glass. It was so dim in the room that all I could see were outlines: a desk, a few chairs, a table, and a man standing across the room, his back to me. Everything beneath the room, however, was clearly visible. It made each step feel like a leap of faith.

  “Glass houses, huh, Ryodan?” The first time I’d ever called IYCGM on my cell phone, Ryodan had berated me, told me people who lived in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, implying my goals were no loftier than Barrons’. Now here he stood, surveying his world from inside one. Did he consider his own goals so pristine? I narrowed my eyes. There was another room beyond the one in which we stood, even darker. Whatever lurked in its shadows, he was watching it intently.

  After a moment he said, without turning, “Why did you come, Mac?”

  “Why are you feeding humans to the Unseelie?”

  “There is no force at my club. Only desire. Mutual. ”

  “They don’t understand what they’re doing. ”

  Page 64

 

  “Not my problem. ”

  “They’re dying. Somebody needs to wake them up to reality. ”

  “They’re in love with dying. ”

  “They’re misguided, confused. ”

  “Not my problem. ”

  “You could do something about it!”

  “So I should?” he said. “Does that seem a friendly crowd down there to you? It trembles on the verge of another riot, yet you would have me play moral adviser. Men have been crucified for less. I’ve seen enough train wrecks to know when the rails are locked and the brakes have failed. It’s all train wrecks down there, Mac. Only one thing holds my interest now. Potential. Barrons thinks you have it. ”

  His tone made it plain. “But you don’t,” I said flatly.

  “You worry me. ”

  “You worry me, too. ” I took a few more steps into the room. I wanted a better look at him. I wanted to know what he was watching. Like Barrons and my escorts, Ryodan was tall, well built. I wondered if it was a requirement to be whatever they were: no wimps allowed. He wore dark pants and a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled up on thickly muscled forearms. A silver cuff, identical to Barrons’, glinted at his wrist.

  “Everyone seems to think you’re the solution, don’t they?” he said.

  I shrugged. “Not everybody. ” Rowena didn’t.

  “Has it occurred to you that you might be the problem?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why do you think you keep having so many brushes with the Book, when everyone else who’s searching for it never gets a glimpse of it? Even Darroc, your illustrious master, can’t get close to it. Word is it’s been taking its own—Unseelie—chewing them up and spitting them out. But nobody who really wants it can find it. Except you. ”

  “I’m an OOP detector,” I reminded him. “I’m the only one who can sense it. There’s potential for you. ”

  “Indeed. Potential for what? Has it occurred to you that perhaps you don’t keep finding the Book—it keeps finding you?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What do you think the Book wants, Mac?”

  “How should I know? Death. Destruction. Chaos. Same as the rest of the Unseelie. ”

  “What would you want if you were a book?”

  “I’m different, and that’s easy. I’d want to not be a book. ”

  “Maybe you’re not so different. Maybe it wants also to not be a book. ”

  “It has other forms. It’s the Beast, too. ”

  “Has the Beast ever harmed anyone? Don’t you think it would if it could? Isn’t that its nature?”

  I studied his back, pondered his words. “You’re saying the Beast is only glamour. That like any Fae, it creates illusion. ”

  “What if its only true form is a book? One that can’t walk, or talk, or move, or do anything on its own?”

  “Are you saying you think it takes people over just to have a body?”

  He glanced up at the LCD screens above his head. “I don’t know what I think. I consider everything. You watch them long enough, you see what they want. Unseelie hunger, like starved prisoners, for whatever it is the Unseelie King brought them into existence lacking. What if the Book is after corporeality? A movable form it can use with autonomy? A body it can keep and control? A life of its own?”

  “Then why would it kill the people it takes?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe, like dolls, they break. Or maybe some part of them manages to regain control for a few moments and stop what the Book is doing to them the only way they can. Or maybe it’s biding time, waiting for just the right moment. Maybe it has the Fae ability of prognosticating possibles, delicately shaping events to achieve certain ends. Has the Book ever spoken to you?”

  “Yes. ”

  “Barrons said it called you by name. ”

  I’d never told him that. He must have heard it speak to me that night. I’d thought it spoke only in my head. “So? I don’t know how it knew my name. ” He liked the “maybe” game. I could play it, too. “Maybe it knows everybody’s. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but the Book repels me. I can barely get close to it. I’m too good and it’s too evil. ”

  “Really. ” He could not have said it more dryly.

  “What do you mean, ‘really’?” I said defensively.

  “Good and evil are merely opposite sides of a coin, Mac. Get tossed in the air enough
, it’s easy to come down on the wrong side. Maybe the Book knows something about you that makes you different. Makes it want you. Makes it think if you flipped sides, you’d be worth more to it than any of the rest of us. ”

  Page 65

 

  What he was saying didn’t make sense. And it was creeping me out. “Like what? And if that was the case, then why wouldn’t it have taken me already? It’s had plenty of chances. ”

  “Darroc bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment. Maybe you’re not primed to flip yet. Eternal life breeds eternal patience. If you lived long enough, you might feel that if today amuses, today is good. All sense of right or wrong, all morality, all value, might cease to exist. ”

  With the exception of two compartments to hold everything: stasis and change—the classic Fae attitude. Of course, immortality would do that. “So you think the Book is amusing itself, waiting for the right moment to pounce? Wake up. There’s never going to be a right moment for it to pounce on me. ”

  “Arrogance, like anger, is often a fatal flaw. ”

  “Darroc lost me. He didn’t get what he wanted. I’m still standing. And I’m still fighting. And I will never flip sides,” I said coldly.

  “You’re still standing because of that one, Mac. ” He nodded at the room he was staring into. “Don’t forget it. Never seen anything like her, and I’ve seen a lot. ”

  I moved to stand beside him, peered into the room. Up close, I could discern shapes. Dani was in the middle of four men, spinning ceaselessly, sword up, snarling.

  “You hurt her, I’ll kill you,” I told him. No matter that he was a foot taller than me and twice my mass.

  “She said the same about you. ”

  Suddenly Dani went into hyperspeed, then they all disappeared, and then there was Dani again, surrounded by four men.

  “She hasn’t stopped trying to get out since I put her in there. I wonder how long she could survive. ”

  Not very long without food, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I looked up at him.

  He turned his face to mine, looked down. Handsome, chilling man. His eyes were the clearest I’d ever seen. This was a man that suffered no conflicts with himself. He had no problems being what he was.

  We stared at each other. “Black looks good on you,” he murmured. “Has Barrons seen you like this?”

  “Eternal patience,” I murmured back. His tie was loosened, and in the open collar of his white shirt his neck was a skein of scars, with a long, wicked-looking one stretching up the left side from shoulder to ear. I didn’t need a nurse to tell me he’d healed from a wound, long ago, that would have killed most men. How long ago? “Does today amuse, Ryodan?”

  His lips curved. He looked back at Dani and, after a moment, nodded. “It does. More than it has in recent … years. ”

  “She’s thirteen. ”

  “Time will remedy that. ”

  “You worry me, Ryodan. ”

  “Back at you. Bit of advice, Mac. Life’s an ocean, full of waves. All are dangerous. All can drown you. Under the right circumstances, even the gentlest swell can turn tidal. Hopping waves is for the weekend warrior. Choose one, ride it out. It increases your odds of survival. ” He watched Dani for a moment, then said, “There are rules in my house. ”

  “Your buddies already told me the first two. Neutral ground. Break a rule you die. ”

  “No killing Fae inside my club. In my walls means under my protection. ”

  “I just watched one of your protected Fae kill a human. ”

  “If they’re stupid enough to be here, they’re stupid enough to die. ”

  “Does that mean I can kill humans, too?” I said sweetly. There were two in particular who had just caught my eye. Derek O’Bannion, the younger brother of the Irish mobster I’d killed after I stole the Spear of Destiny from him, and current right-hand man to the Lord Master, was crossing the dance floor beneath my feet. Accompanying him was Fiona, the woman who used to run Barrons Books and Baubles, until she’d tried to kill me; then Barrons had fired her.

  Now I just needed the LM himself and a few Unseelie Princes to have all my enemies in the same place.

  “Special rules for you, Mac. You don’t get to kill anything in my club, Fae or human. Your fight is outside these walls. And if Barrons’ belief in you is unfounded, there won’t be anyplace you can hide. Every last one of us will come after you. ”

  I didn’t dignify his threat with a response.

  He knocked on the glass and made a gesture with his left hand. Three of the men disappeared. Dani blinked out. Then suddenly there she was again, and one of his men had her sword pointed at her throat.

  “If you ever come into my club carrying again, we’ll take your weapons and never give them back. Clear?”

  Page 66

 

  “As the floor beneath my feet. ”

  I felt like the Queen of Standoffs, hostility and tension everywhere I turned. Always venturing, never gaining.

  Last night I’d realized I wasn’t the only one with trust issues. None of the players on Dublin’s board trusted anyone else. I’d made the mistake of assuming—since Barrons had chosen Ryodan to be my backup support—that when I went to see him he would be, well, supportive.

  Not only wasn’t he, he’d impugned my motives at the deepest level, questioning my fundamental character. He’d made it out like the Book might be after me, drawn by something kindred. I was about as far from evil as the North Pole was from the South. “Throwing stones, my ass,” I muttered. There he’d stood in his glass house, letting Unseelie prey on humans, and he accused me of having moral issues.

  I was in a horrible mood. Dani and I had pretty much slunk back to “our” house after getting tossed out of Chester’s by four of Ryodan’s “men. ”

  Dani’s eyes had been feverishly bright and she’d been spitting fury, but, beneath the pale-faced bravado, I’d glimpsed fear. I understood. Just when I thought I’d finally become a halfway decent power on the board, traded my pawn in for a rook or a knight, some king or queen came along to remind me how ineffectual I was.

  I was getting damned sick of it.

  I’d lie awake on the couch—sleeping in a stranger’s bed had seemed weird—stewing, until nearly dawn. Then I slept like the dead for a few hours and woke to feel the wind ruffling my hair as Dani paced: zing-zing, zing-zing.

  I swung my legs over the edge of the couch and sat up, eyeing the blur. Although being at the abbey had been bad for Dani in many ways, Rowena and the girls had kept the gifted teen occupied constantly. She had too much energy, intelligence, and angst to leave to her own devices for long.

  When I asked her to go spy at the abbey, to find out when Rowena planned to send the girls in to scout Dublin, she looked relieved at the prospect of something to do.

  “Nobody’ll even know I’m there,” she promised, grabbing her sword and coat and slinging her backpack over a shoulder. “When do you want me back?”

  “Just make sure it’s before dark. ”

  After she left, I contemplated the fireplace morosely. The house we were squatting in, like the rest of Dublin—except for Chester’s, which I assumed was powered by an entire room of underground generators—had no electricity or gas. Not only was it dark, it was freezing. And—of course—it was raining outside. I tugged the comforter that I’d pilfered from the bedroom more snugly around my shoulders and sat, teeth chattering. I’d have given my eyeteeth for a cup of coffee. Where was V’lane when I needed him? I considered the pile of logs and tried to decide where the prior owner might have stashed matches.

  I heard the kitchen door open. “What did you forget, Dani?” I called.

  A silhouette stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “I had begun to think the child would never leave,” said a deep, musical voice.

  I don’t have Dani’s hyperspeed—but I achieved something close to it. One
moment I was sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself, the next I was plastered back against the far wall, spear drawn.

  In that moment, I faced a harsh truth: I might have a serious hate on, I might even be stronger than I’d ever been before, but I still wasn’t strong enough.

  I still needed allies.

  I still needed Barrons’ tattoo, and I still needed V’lane’s name on my tongue, even though neither could be completely relied upon. I needed Jayne and his men, and I needed the sidhe-seers. And I hated needing anyone.

  “Brought you coffee, MacKayla,” said the Lord Master, stepping into the room. “I hear you like it strong and sweet, with a lot of cream. ”

  “Where’d you hear that?” I was shaking. I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood, focused on the pain, and stopped shaking.

  “Alina. She talked about you a great deal. But she pretended you were her friend, not her sister. She hid you from me. Think about that when you remember her. Why did she conceal your existence unless she sensed, from the very beginning, something about me was not to be trusted? But she chose me anyway. Loved me anyway. ”

  “She didn’t love you. And you’re lying. You must have found her journal and read it. ”

  “And she wrote in her journal how you took your coffee? Pitiful rationale, MacKayla. ”

  “You took a lucky guess. Get out of my house. ” I eyed my gun, which was lying on the floor next to the couch. I should have grabbed it, too, but his voice had sent me flying off the sofa, all instinct and no intellect. The only reason I had the spear was because it had been on my lap when he walked in. Although the Lord Master had once been Fae, the Seelie Queen had punished him by turning him mortal. He was now merely human, pumped up on Unseelie. Could I kill him with a gun? I was more than willing to try. I doubted he’d let me get close enough with the spear. I was surprised he’d come this close without a sifting Fae standing next to him.

  Page 67

 

  “Sit down and drink your coffee. And put that spear away. ” He glanced at the fireplace, murmured a few words, and flames leapt from the cold logs.