I freeze-frame through the club, hyperfast, knocking folks out of my way left and right. Hearing grunts all around makes me feel better ’bout stuff.
When I stop in front of her, she looks startled then mad. What the feck does she have to be mad at me about?
She removes the last drink from her tray, sits it on a napkin in front of a Rhino-boy then holds the tray to her chest, her arms around it like it’s a shield or something.
“Traitor. ”
“Dani, don’t do this. Not here. Not now. ”
“You did that up there,” I say, flinging my arm up toward Ryodan’s office, “without worrying for one tiny little sec about my here and now. The whole time I was practically dying, you were having sex two doors down with the dude you came to rescue me from. From his dungeon. Like, where he was holding me prisoner. Remember?”
“It’s not like that. ”
“What? I wasn’t in the dungeon? Or you didn’t come to rescue me from him? Don’t tell me you weren’t having sex. I saw what I saw. ”
“I didn’t believe he’d hurt you and he didn’t. He didn’t hurt either of us. ”
“He’s got us both working like dogs for him! You’re waiting on Fae, and I’m running around on his fecking leash! He feeds people to the Fae, Jo. He kills them!”
“He does not. He runs a club. It’s not his fault if people want to die. What is he supposed to do? Talk them out of it? Start a Chester’s counseling service? What do you expect of him, Dani?”
I stare at her in disbelief. “You’ve got to fecking be kidding me! You’re going to defend him? Stockholm syndrome much, Jo?” I mock.
She moves to an empty table and begins to clear it, stacking dirty dishes on her tray. It makes me madder that she’s cleaning up after these monsters. Doubly mad that she looks so good doing it. Jo’s making herself prettier. I don’t understand it. She used to be perfectly happy wearing jeans and a T-shirt and no makeup and just hanging with the girls. We had pj parties and watched movies. Now she’s all superglam Jo. I hate it.
“I thought you didn’t know what that was. ”
“I looked it up and, dude, you got it bad. You’re letting him screw you every which way. How long do you think it’s going to last? You think he’s going to bring you flowers? You think you’re going to, like, go steady with the owner of Chester’s?”
She stacks a small tower of glasses on her tray and gives me an exasperated look. “Can we just not do this right now?”
“Sure. If you tell me you’ll never have sex with him again, I’ll go away. Right now. End of conversation. ”
Her mouth tightens. As she wipes the table off with a damp cloth, she glances up at his office. It pisses me off how soft her face goes when she looks up. The tension fades and she looks like a woman in love. I hate it. I hate him.
She looks back at me.
“No, Dani. I won’t. And stay out of this. It’s none of your business. This is grown-up stuff between grown-ups. ” She turns away and heads for the bar with her cluttered tray. Distantly I hear Fae calling orders, trying to get her attention, but I don’t care. I want her attention.
I freeze-frame in behind her hard and fast, causing a wicked breeze in the subclub and nearly knocking the tray from her hands. She has to work hard to catch it. Almost doesn’t. Ryodan’s not the only one that can screw with people and things.
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“Don’t walk away from me. I’m not done yet. ”
“Yes, you are. ”
I hiss in her ear, “Don’t you get it? Dude’s never going to love you. He’s not wired that way. He’s just using you and he’s going to throw you away, and then there you’re going to be like a dirty piece of toilet paper he doesn’t want anymore. ”
She sucks in a breath and gives me a look over her shoulder that just fecking slays me.
I drown in instant self-hate for saying what I just said. And I hate him because I know it’s true. Jo will never be able to keep Ryodan’s interest. She’s too good. Clean and nice inside. She doesn’t have an ounce of malice or deceit or unkind feelings or anything bad in her. She’s not complicated enough for him. He’s twisted like that. I chose the wrong person to chew out. I should have chosen him. He’s going to hurt her and I’m never going to forgive him. So, here I am, hurting her first. Dude, stupid much?
“Do you really think I don’t know that?” If we weren’t in Chester’s, I’m pretty sure the wet in her eyes would start to slide down her cheeks.
All the sudden I’m miserable I said anything about any of it. I want to hug her. I want to run away. I don’t want Jo to hurt. I should have kept my mouth shut. I can’t keep my mouth shut. Grown-ups are so strange. But I don’t understand! “Then why? Why would you do something that you know is going to end up bad? Why would anyone ever do something they know is going to hurt them?”
“You’re too young to be talking about this kind of stuff. ”
“Aw, c’mon, Jo, it’s me. I was never young. Life didn’t happen that way in my world. Tell me. ”
“It’s complicated. ”
“Like everything isn’t. Try. ”
She doesn’t say anything so I just stand and wait. A long silence usually makes people fill it up with something.
It stretches. Finally she looks away like she’s embarrassed and, so soft it’s almost like she’s talking to herself, not me at all, she says, “Every morning he comes to the top of the stairs and looks down over the club and he stands there, so big and powerful and beautiful and …” She swallows hard like her mouth just went totally dry. “Sexy. God, so unbelievably sexy. ” Her eyes get a weird, intense look like she’s remembering something, then she makes a soft noise and doesn’t say anything for a second. “And he’s funny. Do you know he’s funny? You must know that. You spend a lot of time with him. ”
I fist my hands. Sure I do. I didn’t know she did. What do they do? Crack jokes with each other like Dancer and me?
Her expression is far off, seeing a memory. “Every morning when the night shift ends, he singles out a woman in the crowd and he nods at her. She goes upstairs and when she eventually shows up in the club again she looks like …” She shivers like she just got goose bumps. “And you wonder what he did that made her look like that. You watch her walking around, smiling, moving different than she moved before she went to him, and you know something happened up there that made her feel more alive than she ever felt before, that she got to be the way you hope you’ll get to be with a man, even if it’s just once in your life. A man has to see women a certain way for it to be that way. You try not to think about him, but it doesn’t work. I swore if he ever gave me that nod, I wouldn’t go. ”
“Dude, wake-up call. You went. ”
“I know. ”
She’s glowing again like she won some kind of prize instead of got picked by a class-A sociopath to be his disposable lube.
“Why him?” I don’t understand and I want to. I don’t want to feel like Jo’s a traitor. I lost Mac. I don’t want to lose Jo, too. “You know what he’s like!”
“He’s not a bad man, Dani. ”
“Bullshit. ”
“Everything isn’t black and white like you want it to be. ”
Some things are, and Ryodan’s blacker than black. He’s one of the bad guys, period, end of subject. I’m pissed. She needs to wake up and smell the coffee burning before the whole fecking coffeemaker goes up in flames. “And when he comes to those stairs tomorrow and chooses someone else?” I say. “It’s only a matter of time, Jo. You know he will. You’ll be standing here looking all dreamy like you do right now and it’ll be the waitress next to you that he chooses and you’ll never go upstairs again because a dude like that don’t press the replay button. When he’s done he’s done. How are you going to feel then?”
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She turns away.
I go after her, grab he
r elbow, make her stop. “Well? What do you think, Jo? That you’re special? That you’ll be the one that changes him? Give me a fecking break! You think you and him are going to go pick out china patterns together? Register for flatware?”
She inhales like she forgot to breathe, then when she remembered couldn’t get air fast enough. “I know what I’m doing, Dani. ”
“Good, then you can explain it to me! ’Cause it sure looks like every shade of stupid from where I’m standing!”
She’s distant again, talking soft, like I’m not even here. Even with my superhearing I lean in to catch it.
“There are men you build a future with, Dani. And then there are men that you know, going in, that you’re only making a memory with. I know the difference. ”
Doesn’t look like it to me.
“Some memories are worth the price. I’ll deal with it. ”
But she won’t. I know she won’t. I know Jo. She’s brilliant and kind and has the heart of a warrior but she doesn’t have ice and razor blades inside where your soul is supposed to be. She loves. And she doesn’t know how to take it back when you have to, because sometimes you sure as feck have to. Got to grab it up with both hands and pull it back before somebody turns it into knives and uses it to cut you to pieces. She’s not going to be able to deal with it good at all. And I’m going to have to clean up the mess he made, and kill him. I suck in a breath. “You’re too stupid to live and I’m not talking to you anymore. You need to pull your head out. ”
“You need to quit judging everyone. ”
“You don’t know shit about me. And I’d rather judge people than be a pansy-ass that can’t make her mind up about anyone or anything and gets sucked into all kinds of stupid shit. ”
“Dani, please don’t—”
“My ears are full. I can’t hear anymore!” I turn away and start to slip into freeze-frame. I have no idea what makes me look up. Kind of like a rubber-band feeling, like it’s fused into my gut, and like something at the top of the stairs is pulling at my opposite end.
Ryodan is standing at the top of the stairs looking down at me. And I think what Jo said about him being big and powerful and beautiful.
We lock eyes.
Mine say, “Don’t you ever choose her again. You leave her alone. ”
His say something I don’t get at all. Then he does that ocular-shiver thing all over me and I get a real clear: “Go home, kid. ”
He looks right past me at Jo.
And he nods.
SEVENTEEN
“These girls fall like dominoes”
We’re not so different, you and I, Cruce says as he moves inside me. Both born to lead.
I try desperately to wake myself. I’m in the Dreaming and he has me in his wings. The moment I fell asleep, he was there, waiting for me at the end of a white marble path in a garden of exquisite blood roses. He lays me on them, with a crush of velvet petals. I brace for the thorns.
You must not rue it, Kat. The sun does not rue that it rises.
He goes deep, filling me completely, making every nerve ending in my body vibrate with erotic ecstasy. I arch my back and hiss with pleasure.
We will rule the world and they will love us. We will save them.
“Dreaming of me, are you now, my sweet Kat?”
Like a dropped snow globe, my dream world shatters and I remember why I asked Sean to stay the night with me at the abbey. Why I slipped him around back and into my suite of rooms. To save me from Cruce. To ground me to the world I know and love.
I roll into Sean’s arms and press against him, shuddering with fear that I pretend is desire. We make love quick and hard and fast. He never knows I’m trying to erase someone else.
Someone that makes me come harder. Better. More.
Sean, my love, my childhood friend, teenage sweetheart, mate to my soul. I’ve never known life without him. We shared a playpen and went to our first day of school together. We got the measles the same week, swapped our first flu snuggled in blankets in front of the TV. We got pimples and got rid of them. He was there the night I started my period, and I was there the day his voice began to change. We know everything about each other. Our history is rich and long. I love his dark eyes, his black hair and fair Irish skin. I love the way he wears a fisherman’s sweater with faded jeans and always has a quick smile. I love how strong his arms are from years of pulling fishing nets, and the way his long-limbed body moves, how he looks when he’s lost in a good book, the way he feels moving inside me.
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“Are you all right, love?” He brushes a tangle of hair from my face.
I lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beating, solid and sure. Sometimes I think he has a touch of my sidhe-seer gift, he reads me so well. He’s known about my emotional empathy since we were children. Nothing about me disturbs him, a rare gift from those who fully understand what I do. Few can lie to me. I sense their inner conflict, unless they suffer no guilt or scruple about anything, and I’ve been blessed to encounter only a handful of those in my life—all of them in or near Chester’s, recently. I don’t know the truth, only that there is a lie. It takes a scrupulously honest man to love me. That’s my Sean. We learned to trust each other completely before we were old enough to have learned suspicion.
“What if I can’t do it?” I say. I don’t elaborate. With Sean few words are necessary. We’ve been finishing each other’s sentences since we were young. We were virgins when we made love the first time. There’s never been anyone else for either of us.
Now I have an invisible lover violating everything I hold dear. Making me want him and not my Sean.
He laughs. “Kat, sweetheart, you can do anything. ”
My heart feels like a rock in my chest. I burn with shame, and deceit. I’ve made love in my dreams in exquisite detail with another man, and have done so every night for over a week. I’ve taken him in my mouth, felt him at the entrance of my womb, places that are Sean’s alone. “But what if I can’t? What if I make mistakes that cost lives?”
He rolls onto his side and pulls me back into him, spooning. I press in. We fit together perfectly. Like we were carved from the same piece of wood, from the same tree.
“Hush, sweet Kat. I’m here. I’ll always be here. Together we can do anything. You know that. Remember our vows. ”
I pull his arms tighter around me. We were young, so young. Everything was simple then. We were fifteen, deliriously and passionately in love, delighted by our developing bodies, growing up together into one. We stole off to Paradise Point out by the lighthouse, dressed up like it was our wedding day, and took vows with each other. We came from broken families, temperamental fighting families, and we learned from watching them. Too much passion burns. Tenderness fuses. We knew what it took to stay together. It was nothing fancy. Common sense, really.
If you weaken, I’ll be strong. If you get lost, I’ll be your way home. If you despair, I’ll bring you joy. I will love you until the end of time.
“I love you, Sean O’Bannion. Never leave me. ”
“Wild horses, Kat. Couldn’t drag me an inch. You’re the only one for me. Always. ” There’s a smile in his voice.
We make love again, and this time, when dark wings try to shadow me, they fail. There’s no one else in bed with me but my Sean.
I watch him dress while dawn paints pale white rectangles around the heavy drapes. I have young charges at the abbey and we are not wed. We’d begun making plans to marry before the walls fell but our families interfered. The O’Bannions tried to stop it. When they realized Sean was having none of it, they tried to take over and turn it into the spectacle of the decade.
An O’Bannion marries a McLaughlin!
It would have been a grand step up for my family. We were small-time criminals. His family controlled nearly all Dublin’s mob underbelly. I grew up with Sean because my mother was his nanny. <
br />
We’d been fighting bitterly with our parents for months before the walls fell and billions died.
Including our families. Where else would they have been than out in the riots, watching the chaos, trying to profit from the lawlessness?
I can’t pretend that I’m sorry for their deaths, and I won’t feel ashamed that I’m not. The only deaths I rue are those of my two half brothers that survived the fall, only to be killed by Shades. Rowena didn’t teach us about eating Unseelie in time for me to save them. My parents and other siblings were corrupt to the core. Sometimes people are born into the wrong family. Sean and I turned our backs on them years ago. But our families never stopped pressuring us and never accepted letting us go. I used to worry so much about what they would do to Sean, how they might try to force him into the family ways, but now such worries are a thing of the past.
It’s today and we’re free!
As soon as we get a quiet moment, and a priest, we plan to wed. Some of the girls are hoping we’ll decide to make a lovely ceremony of it here at the abbey. A wedding in times like these can be an uplifting thing, but I’ll not make my wedding into something for another. It’s between Sean and God and me.
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When he holds my face in his hands and kisses me, I feel his heart, both against my chest and with my gift. He’s happy. It’s all I need.
He asks if I’ll have him again tonight and I smile and kiss him.
“Aye, and every night thereafter and well you know it. If you’re fishing for a compliment, my bonny Sean, I’ve thousands for you. ”
But as he slips out, my laughter dies and I stare at the bed.
I should tell him what’s happening. I would wish it from him. I would fight for him at night against my invisible foe. We would stand together as one. I would know all the secrets of his tormenting succubus, the better to defeat her.
But I can’t. I just can’t. It happened before I could stop it the first time. I’ve had intimate carnal knowledge of another man. I’ve felt things with Cruce I’ve never felt with Sean. And I hate myself and I can’t tell him. I just can’t.
So I’m walking home slow-mo Joe style, pissed off but having a hard time focusing on being pissed off because my body feels so good. My mind’s grumpy, but my body’s saying, “Hey, dude, let’s play!”
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