Iced Read online

Page 110

 

  As we ascend to the second floor, I look out over the subclubs and see Jo, dressed as a Catholic, school-age child. I dislike the mockery of my faith and am still uneasy with her decision to work here, but she argued passionately for it, strongly committed to her mission to gather intelligence at the richest source. She has yet to tell me anything that makes me feel subjecting her to this cesspool is worthwhile. I know a thing about people: who and what we surround ourselves with is who and what we become. In the midst of good people, it is easy to be good. In the midst of bad people, it is easy to be bad.

  As we top the stairs, I find my eyes drawn back to the subclub where the waiters wear only tight black leather pants and a bow tie, revealing vast expanses of tanned, muscled skin, or in other cases generous bare bosoms. Only the stunning are employed there. I catch my breath. One of the male waiters has a beautiful back, a lovely long-limbed way of moving. I could watch him walk away for hours. I am a woman and I appreciate a fine-backed man. I am relieved because it is not Cruce. He has not so thoroughly perverted me that I no longer find human men attractive.

  My escort guides me down a hallway of smooth glass walls to my left and my right, unbroken but by nearly nonexistent seams. The rooms up here are all made of two-way glass. Depending on how the lighting is adjusted in each room, you can either see into it from the outside but not out or out from the inside but not in. I had heard from Dani a description of the upper levels of Chester’s so I knew to expect a see-through glass floor, but expecting it and walking on it are two very different things. People do not like to see what lies beneath. Yet here at Chester’s the owner forces you to view it with every step you take in his demesne. He is a calculating man, and a dangerous one. And so I have come here tonight to determine my debt, pay it, and get it over with.

  My escort stops before a seemingly seamless glass wall and places his palm against it. A glass panel whisks aside with a hydraulic hiss. The weight of his palm on my neck guides me into the darkened room.

  “Boss’ll be with you in a minute. ”

  I can see out on all sides, up and down. From Ryodan’s glass aerie, he studies his world by naked eye and camera. The perimeter of the room, at the ceiling, is lined with hundreds of small monitors, three rows deep. I scan them. There are cameras focused on every room, from nearly every angle. There are rooms that are sordid beyond my awareness of such activities. This is the world I must learn if I am to lead my girls.

  The door hisses open behind me and I say nothing, wait for him to speak. When he does not, I expand my empath gift to get a feel for him. There is no one in the room with me. I realize someone must have opened the door, seen me, not him, and walked on. I continue with my observations of the screens, turning slowly as I absorb the faces, the actions, the offerings. I must learn people as I have never learned them before.

  The hand on my shoulder draws from me a small, involuntary scream.

  I whirl, frightened, and I’m against Ryodan’s chest, with his arms gently around me. I would speak but I know I would only stammer. There was no one in this room with me. I did not hear the door open again. How, then, is he in the room?

  “Easy, Katarina. I did not save you from harm last night to harm you tonight. ”

  I look into a face that is unreadable. It is said of this man that he wears three expressions and three alone: amused mockery, urbane aloofness, or anger. It is said if you see anger, you are dead.

  I open my empath gift.

  I am in this room alone.

  I can find no words to say. I decide to use the ones I have. “I am in this room alone. ”

  “Not quite. ”

  “You don’t exist. ”

  “Touch me, Katarina. Tell me I don’t exist. ” He brushes my cheek with a kiss and I shiver. “Turn your head for me and I’ll kiss you as a woman should be kissed. ” He waits, his mouth brushing my cheek, for me to turn ever-so-slightly, part my lips and take his tongue. I shiver again. This man would not kiss me as I like to be kissed but as he does. His way is too hard, demanding, dangerous. His way is not love. It is passion and it burns. Incinerates. It leaves only embers as surely as the IFP his men tethered at my abbey last eve.

  When I pull back, he laughs and drops his loose embrace. I give him a level look. “Thank you for sending your men to tether the fragment of Faery. They spoke of payment. We do not have much. What can our abbey offer in return for such generous aid?”

  He smiles faintly. “Ah, so that is how we are to be. You speak eloquently for one who spoke no words at all until she was nearly five. ”

  I will not be rattled. So, he knows I was without voice for years after I was born. Many know the story. The pain of the world’s emotions overwhelmed me upon birth. I was a terrible baby, an awful infant. I cried incessantly. I never spoke. I curled in a ball and tried to escape the pain of the world. They called me autistic. “Thank you. ”

  Page 111

 

  “Until Rowena came and offered your family a deal. ”

  “I did not come to speak of myself, but of how I may repay you. ”

  “She would draw you from your autistic shell, but at eighteen years of age you were hers. You would come live at the abbey. Your parents leapt at the opportunity. They despaired of ever silencing your weeping. ”

  Sometimes, even then, Sean had been there. Sometimes in the delirium of my pain he had curled beside me and said, “Girl, why do you cry?” I remember moments of silence then. He would put his chubby arms around me, and for a short time the pain would go away.

  “How would they make a grand alliance with larger and nastier criminals if their only marriageable daughter was defective?” I say dryly.

  He laughs. “There you are, behind that eternal serenity. The woman that feels. Funny thing is, I, too, thought I was in this room alone. Until you said that. The dearth of emotion here is not mine alone. ” His smile fades and he looks straight into my eyes with a stare so penetrating, direct, and uncomfortable that I feel I am an insect pinned to a board, prepared for dissection. “You owe me nothing further. ”

  I blink. “But I haven’t paid you yet. ”

  “You have. ”

  “No, I haven’t. I’ve given nothing. ”

  “The price was not required of you. ”

  I get a chill and almost can’t get my breath. This man is dangerous. Clever. Terrifying to me. “Of whom was it required? I am the one responsible. I am the one who failed. I am the one who should have led them to safety, therefore it should be me and me alone who pays a price!”

  “Funny thing about payment is that it isn’t the buyer of the goods or services that gets to set it. It’s the seller. That’s me. ” His face is hard and cold now.

  “What price did you set?” I school my breath slow and even, waiting for his reply,

  He moves to my side, guides me to the glass and directs my attention below. “I have had difficulty staffing lately. My servers keep dying on me. ”

  The skin of my spine begins to crawl.

  “One club in particular is hard to keep staffed. The Tuxedo Club is constantly requiring replacements. ”

  It is the subclub where the servers dress in tight black leather pants and bow ties, and serve topless.

  “Your Sean was good enough to fill in for a time. ”

  Bile rises in the back of my throat. “My Sean does not belong here. ”

  “Perhaps. But even you have to admit he looks good in the uniform. ”

  I look where he’s pointing. The back I admired on my way up the stairs has known my hands on its shoulder blades as he moved inside me. I have tickled it many nights as he drifted to sleep. I have massaged it when he worked the nets overlong. I have kissed each and every muscle and curve. It is, indeed, a beautiful back.

  “How long?”

  “I haven’t decided. ”

  “Don’t do this to me. ”

  “Why.
”

  “He is …” I stop and sigh. This man would understand nothing of what I would say.

  “Go on. ”

  “Sean is my soul mate. ”

  “Soul mate. ”

  He mocks me. He mocks God. “Such things are sacred. ”

  “To who? Your god may love soul mates but man does not. Such a couple is vulnerable, particularly if they are fool enough to let the world see how shiny and happy they are. Their risk rises tenfold during times of war. There are two courses a couple in such circumstances can chart: go deep into the country and hide as far from humanity as possible, hoping like hell nobody finds them. Because the world will tear them apart. ”

  He is wrong. He knows nothing of soul mates. Still I cannot help but ask, “The other?”

  “Sink up to their necks in the stench and filth and corruption of their war-torn existence—”

  “You mean behave like common criminals. Would you prefer us ruthless animals? Why are you doing this?”

  “I mean look at it, Katarina. See things for what they are. Drop your blinders and raise the sewer to eye level; admit you’re swimming in shit. If you don’t acknowledge the turd hurtling down the drain toward you, you can’t dodge it. You have to face every challenge together. Because the world will tear you apart. ”

  “You are manipulative, cynical, and base. ”

  “Guilty as charged. ”

  “Life is not as you see it. You don’t know anything about love. ”

  “I am intimately acquainted with the vagaries of fate in times of war. They’ve been my worst and best centuries. ”

  Page 112

 

  “That is not love. ”

  “I didn’t say it was. ” He flashes a smile, white teeth gleaming in shadow. “I prefer war. The colors run more brilliant; food and drink are more rare, and the sweeter for it. People are so much more interesting. More alive. ”

  “And more dead,” I say sharply. “We lost nearly half the world and you find it ‘interesting’? You are a pig. Barbaric and cruel. ” I turn away. I have had enough. If this is his price then I am free to go. There is nothing more I owe him. He has already taken it all.

  I move for the door.

  “You must tell him, Katarina. If you are to have any hope at all. ”

  I stop. He cannot know. There is no way that he could know. “Tell who, what?”

  “Sean. About Cruce. You must tell him. ”

  I whirl, hand fluttering to my throat. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  I search his eyes and I see there that somehow he knows my deepest shame. They hold a secret smile and a certain amused resignation. As if he has watched humanity’s idiocies play out in front of him so many times that they have begun to … not pain but perhaps perturb him. As if he wearies of watching the rats in the maze run into the same walls over and over. I expand my empath gift, I push with all I’ve got, and still I can’t even sense that he is in the room with me. There is nothing where he stands.

  “If you don’t tell Sean that Cruce is fucking you while you sleep, it will destroy what you have with him more certainly than any job in my club could. That, down there”—he points to Sean serving a drink to a pretty, nearly naked Seelie—“is a bump in the road, a test of temptation and fidelity. If your Sean loves you, he will pass it with flying colors. Cruce is a test of your fucking soul. ”

  I don’t bother arguing with him. He knows. Somehow he knows. Perhaps he can read thoughts like I read emotions. It is a terrifying idea. “Why can’t I feel you?”

  “Perhaps the lack is not mine. Perhaps it is within you. ”

  “No. ” Of this I am certain. “There’s something wrong with you. ”

  Again he flashes that smile. “Or something right. ”

  Perhaps I take the coward’s way. Perhaps I take the honorable path. I cannot decide. My head is a muddle. But I give the Tuxedo Club wide berth and pull up the hood of my cloak. I do not confront my Sean as I leave. If he tells me, we will discuss it. If he does not, we will not. I tell myself I am respecting his boundaries, preserving his dignity. This is where he will be instead of in my bed in coming nights.

  The price of saving my abbey is a piece of my heart and the lion’s share of my spine. That is what Ryodan called due.

  My Sean will face temptation alone every night at Chester’s, and I will face it alone at the abbey, in my bed.

  This is not a world I ever wanted to know.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “In the white room”

  One night when Mac and me were killing Unseelie back-to-back, she had a kind of meltdown and started crying and yelling while she sliced and diced. She said that she was going to send them all straight back to hell because they stole everything from her that mattered. She said she used to know her sister, everything about her, and that was where love was, in the knowing and sharing, but it turned out Alina had a boyfriend she’d never mentioned and a whole other life she knew nothing about, and not only didn’t Alina love her, her entire existence to date had been one great big fat lie. Her parents weren’t her parents, her sister probably wasn’t her sister, nobody was what they seemed, not even her.

  In Rowena’s stash of journals chronicling her nasty, evil reign, I found Mac’s sister’s diary. I have over four hundred journals locked away with the Grand Mistresses emblem emblazoned on dark green kidskin leather. She was eighty-eight when she died, though she didn’t look a day over sixty. She had a Fae she’d been nibbling on for decades locked in a vault beneath the abbey. I killed it when I found out about it.

  When I discovered Alina’s diary, I tore out pages and got them to Mac on the sly, trying to make up for silencing her sister’s voice and show her she’d meant everything in the world to Alina.

  “Why the feck are we here?” I say crossly. I wouldn’t even be thinking about Mac if we weren’t. Christian’s been sifting me around the city, helping me plaster my Dailies on lampposts. I been letting him touch my pinky finger to do it. He keeps trying to put his arms around me. His last sift deposited us catty-corner to Barrons Books & Baubles, with the street between us.

  Page 113

 

  I feel like puking.

  I ain’t been here since the night Mac found out the truth about me. The night she baked me a cake and painted my fingernails and saved me from the Gray Woman, only to end up ready to kill me herself a few minutes later.

  In the middle of a ruined city, Barrons Books & Baubles stands untouched. I think a silent benediction: May it always. There’s something about this place. As if its mere existence means the world will always have hope. I can’t explain why I feel that way but all the folks I know that have ever visited it, all the other sidhe-seers, feel the same. There’s something different, something extraordinary on this island, in this city, on this street, in this precise spot. It feels almost like once, a very long ago time, something terrible nearly happened here at this longitude and latitude, and somebody put BB&B on the gash to keep the possibility from ever occurring again. As long as the walls stand and the place is manned, we’re okay. I snicker, picturing it looking just like it does right here and now, in prehistoric times. It doesn’t seem so improbable.

  To the left and right the cobbled street is swept clean. There’s no riot-detritus outside Barrons’s establishment. No husks left from Shades gorging. No trash. Planters line the cobbled street, and there are small plants trying to grow in them, valiantly fighting the uncommon chill. The entry to the tall, deep brick building is drenched in dark cherry and brass and polished to a high gloss. The place is Old World and urbane as the dude himself, with pillars and wrought-iron latticework and a great big heavy door with fancy sidelights and a transom that I used to bang through, and sometimes I’d go in and out, in and out, just to hear the bell above the door tinkle. It sounded really cool in fast-mo, used to crack me up.

  A hand-painted shingle hangs perpendicul
ar to the sidewalk, suspended by an elaborate brass pole bolted into the brick above the door alcove, swaying in a light breeze.

  Amber lights glow behind glass panes tinged with a hint of green.

  It’s all I can do not to go banging in that door, say, “Dude, what’s up?”

  I’m never going to bang in that door again.

  “Get us out of here,” I say crossly.

  “Can’t. This is where we need to be. And what the bloody hell is up with that?”

  I look at him. He’s looking up at the roof of BB&B, where dozens of enormous floodlights shine down into the street. I have to back up a few steps to see past them and see what he’s seeing because I’m so much shorter. I gape. “What the feck are ZEWs doing here?” The entire roof of BB&B is covered with Zombie Eating Wraiths. Hulking anorexic vultures, with creepily hunched bodies and a gaunt grimness that defies description, they huddle in their voluminous black robes, dusted with dirt and cobwebs, unmoving. Carrion-eaters, packed shoulder-to-shoulder, they’re as fixedly still as a deathwatch. I’m not sure I would have even noticed them if Christian hadn’t pointed them out. They’re not chittering and it’s somehow worse that they’re silent. “Why they hanging out on Mac’s roof like that?”

  “How the fuck would I know? Sorry, lass. I mean, how would I know?”

  “You can say ‘fuck’ around me. Everybody does. And you’d know because you’re Unseelie. ”

  “Not completely, not yet and not originally. That’s a lot of nots. And just because the rest of the men in this city are pigs doesn’t mean I am. There’s another ‘not’ for you. I’m bloody well made of nots tonight. I’m not the monster being hunted either. ”

  I give him a look. His eyes are wild. This is a dude on serious edge, teetering, arms pinwheeling. “So, what are we doing here?” I try to bring some focus back to the conversation.

  He doesn’t answer me. Just stalks off, straight toward the bookstore, and right when I’m about to freeze-frame it out of there because there’s no way I’m going inside, even if nobody’s home, he turns sharp and heads down the alley between BB&B and the neighboring Dark Zone.

  “If you want to stop the Hoar Frost King, you’ll have to come with me, lass. I’m taking you to the Unseelie King’s library. If there are answers to be had, they’ll be found there. ”