Iced Read online

  “You look like you got hit by a truck. And you smell. ”

  “I do not,” I say indignantly. “I would know. I have supersmell. ”

  He looks at me hard. “Mega, I think you have guts in your hair. ”

  I reach up, dismayed. I thought I got them all out on the way over. I root around in my curls and pull out a long slimy piece.

  I stare at it, revolted, thinking how maybe I should cut my hair really short or start wearing a ball cap all the time, then I look at him and he’s looking at me like he’s going to toss his cookies, then all the sudden we both start cracking up.

  We laugh so hard we can’t breathe. We’re on the floor, holding our sides.

  Guts in my hair. What kind of world am I living in? Even though I was always different, and saw things other people didn’t see, I never thought I’d be sitting on a sofa, in a virtual bomb shelter underground, with security cams and trapdoors and booby traps all around us, hanging with a seventeen-year-old (hot!) genius who makes sure I eat more than protein and candy bars (he says I’m not getting the right vitamins and minerals for proper bone health) and knows how to get a shower running in post-wall Dublin.

  He plays a mean game of chess, too.

  He pauses the movie when I head for the shower. I grab a change of clothes on the way in.

  This is Dancer’s place, not mine. But he keeps things stocked for me in case I come by. Like me, he’s got lots of other digs, too. You have to keep moving in this city to increase your odds of survival, and set things real careful when you leave, so you know if somebody’s invaded your turf while you were gone. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. People kill each other over milk.

  The hot water lasts four glorious minutes. I scrub my hair, wrap it in a towel and study my face in the steamed-up mirror. Bruises are me. I know the progression: black turns purple, purple goes green, then you get all jaundiced-looking for a while. I look past the bruises. I lock eyes with my reflection and don’t look away. The day you look away you start to lose yourself. I’m never going to lose myself. You are what you are. Deal with it or change.

  I toss the towel, finger-comb my hair, tug on jeans, a tee, and consider a pair of combat boots. Dancer picked them out for me. Said I won’t burn through the soles as fast. I decide to give them a try.

  I grab another bowl of puny orange slices on the way back to the sofa, pop open a jar of marshmallow cream and slather it on, then coat it all with hard-shell chocolate.

  Dancer and me get down to business. He starts the movie again while I get out the game board. He kicked my butt at Go Bang for hours the last time I dropped in, but I’m feeling lucky tonight. I even magnanimously accept a restricted second move when I win the flip for opening play.

  I do something I haven’t done in a long time. I let my guard down. I’m drunk on fruit and marshmallow cream and the thrill of winning at Go Bang. I was up all night last night, and my day was long and eventful.

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  Besides, Dancer’s got killer booby traps around his place, almost as good as mine.

  I push my backpack out of the way and fall asleep on his couch, fist under my cheek, sword in my hand.

  I don’t know what wakes me but something does and I lift my head a few inches, slit my eyes and peer around.

  Big, scary-looking men surround me.

  I blink, trying to clear my vision. It’s hard to do when my eyes are even more swollen than they were when I went to sleep.

  Dimly I realize I’m the focal point of a circle of machine guns.

  I shoot up to sitting and I’m just about to freeze-frame when a hand slams me back into the couch so hard the wood frame cracks behind my shoulder blades.

  I lunge up, and get slammed right back down again.

  One of the men laughs. “Kid doesn’t know when to stay down. ”

  “She’ll learn. ”

  “Bet your ass she will. If he lets her live. ”

  “He sure as fuck shouldn’t. Not after what she did. ”

  “Dani, Dani, Dani. ”

  I flinch. I’ve never heard anyone say my name so gently. It creeps me all kinds of out.

  He’s towering over me, arms crossed over his chest, scarred forearms dark against the rolled-up sleeves of a crisp white shirt. Heavy silver cuffs glint at both wrists. The light is smack behind his head, as usual.

  “You didn’t really think I’d let you get away with it,” Ryodan says.

  SIX

  “I will break these chains that bind me”

  “Hurt’s a funny thing,” Ryodan says.

  I say nothing. It’s taking all my energy to stand, despite the chains holding me. I’m somewhere in Chester’s, in a room with stone walls. I feel the distant beat of rhythmic bass behind me, in the soles of my feet. If I didn’t have supersenses, I wouldn’t be able to pick it up at all. Because it’s so faint, I know I’m far beneath the public part of the club, probably at the bottom. That means the lower levels didn’t get as badly damaged in the explosion yesterday as I hoped.

  They put a bag over my head when they brought me in. Wherever I am, they didn’t want me to be able to find my way back. It’s a logical deduction that they plan to let me live. You don’t bag the head of somebody who’s never going to see anything again. A single low-watt lamp illuminates the room behind him—or fails to. There’s barely enough light to see him standing a dozen feet away.

  “Some people fall apart when they get hurt,” he says. “Puddle into apathy and despair and never recover. They wait all their lives for someone to come along and rescue them. ” He moves in that strangely fluid way—not freeze-framing but not walking like a Joe either—a ripple of muscle and cascade of wind. Then he’s standing in front of me. “But others … well, they don’t go from hurt to pain. They flash from insult to fury. They raze everything in sight, which usually succeeds in obliterating the very thing that hurt them. However, it causes collateral damage. ”

  I hang my head so he can’t see the fire in my eyes. “Dude. Bored. If I’d ever been hurt, I’d give a shit. But I haven’t. ”

  He pushes the hair out of my face with both his hands, sliding his palms over my cheeks. It takes all I’ve got to conceal a shiver. He forces my chin up. I flash him my best hundred-Megawatt smile.

  We lock eyes. I’m not looking away first.

  “It didn’t hurt you when your mother left you in a cage like a dog, and forgot you for days while she was off with one of her endless string of boyfriends. ”

  “You’ve got a seriously wild imagination. ”

  He grabs a handful of my hair close to the scalp and uses it to keep me from looking away, as if I fecking planned to. When he reaches into one of my coat pockets and pulls out a Snickers bar, my mouth waters. I fought him and his men so hard back at Dancer’s place that I’m drained. I pretend my spine is a broomstick so I don’t sag into the chains holding me to the wall. Pretending is a game I’m good at.

  He rips it open with his teeth. I smell chocolate and my stomach hurts.

  “How many times did you curl in that cage, chained by a collar around your neck, waiting, wondering if she was going to remember you this time. Wondering what would kill you first: hunger or dehydration. What was it—five days she left you sometimes. No food or water. You slept in your own—”

  “You want to shut up now. ”

  “When you were eight, she died while you were locked up. Rowena didn’t find you for a week. ”

  That’s the story. I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. Things got real simple in that cage. There are only two things to worry about in life: either you’re free or you’re not. If you’re free, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re not, you kick the shit out of everything around you until you are.

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  “Sometimes her boyfriends played with you. ”

  Not that way. Never that way. I’m
a virgin and I take it seriously. I’m going to lose it in a really epic way someday, when I’m ready. I’m all about gathering up some fan-fecking-tastic experiences to compensate for the crappy ones I had as a kid. That’s why I wanted to give it to V’lane or maybe Barrons when I was old enough. Someone stellar. I want it to be with someone who will make it a night to remember.

  “Are we like swapping philosophies, Ryodan? ’Cause if so, here’s one of mine. Feck you. Past is past. ”

  “It carves you. ”

  “Vanishes. Means nothing,” I say.

  “You can never outrun it. ”

  “I can outrun the wind. ”

  “The wound you refuse to dress is one that will never heal. You gush lifeblood and never even know why. It will make you weak at a critical moment when you need to be strong. ”

  “I get it, all right? You’re going to torture me to death by talking. Kill me now. Get it over with. But use something quick and clean. Like a chain saw. Maybe a grenade. ”

  He touches my cheek. “Dani. ”

  “Is that pity, Ryodan? ’Cause I don’t need it. Thought you were tougher than that. ”

  His thumb brushes my mouth and he gives me a look I don’t understand. I head-butt his hand away.

  “You think you’re going to chain me to a wall then stand here and tell me why it’s okay that I am the way I am? That because of all the crap folks put me through when I was young it’s all right that I turned out like this? Dude, I don’t have a problem with how I turned out. I like me. ”

  “Rowena made you kill your first human when you were nine years old. ”

  How the feck does he know this stuff? She made it a game. Told me she wanted to know if I could whiz in and dump extra milk in Maggie’s cereal bowl without her seeing me. Of course I could. Maggie died, sitting there at the breakfast table. Ro told me it was a coincidence, that she was old and had a heart attack. When I was eleven, I found out the truth. Ro hated Maggie because she’d been rallying sidhe-seers to elect a new Grand Mistress. I found the old witch’s journals. She chronicled everything she did, like she thought one day she’d be immortalized and people would want to read her private memoirs. I have all those journals now, tucked away in a safe place. I’d poisoned Maggie that day with the “milk” I’d added to her bowl. I’d done a lot of other things, too, that I hadn’t understood.

  “Significant words there: Rowena made me. I got over it a long time ago. ”

  “Funny, your speech is changing, kid. Getting all grown-up-like. ”

  “Dude,” I add.

  “You’re going to be a tough one to crack. ”

  “Let me give you a clue: substitute the word ‘impossible’ for ‘tough. ’ ”

  He peels the wrapper back from the Snickers. Offers me a bite.

  I turn my head away. I won’t eat like a chained-up animal.

  “When we find your little boyfriend, you’ll change your mind. ”

  My guts unknot and I almost slump into the chains with relief but I lock my knees so I can’t. He said “when” we find, which means they haven’t. I don’t telegraph unless I slip. I was afraid they had Dancer. He must have left while I was sleeping. He keeps odd hours, goes off sometimes until he feels like coming back. I can’t always find him when I want to. Sometimes I don’t see him for days. It’s good to know he’s safe somewhere. They didn’t get him. They only got me. I can handle this kind of stuff. I cut my teeth on it. Dancer … well, until the walls fell, he lived a charmed life. I never want him to have to deal with these men.

  “He isn’t my boyfriend. ”

  “How long will you make me keep you here, Dani?”

  “Until you figure out it isn’t going to do you any good. ”

  He smiles faintly and turns away. At the door, he pauses and puts his hand on the light switch like he’s giving me a choice. As if all I have to do is give him a look that says “Please don’t leave me in the dark” and he won’t.

  I flip him off big and showy, with both hands chained over my head.

  He leaves me without my sword, in the dark.

  I don’t worry.

  I know Ryodan. If anyone is going to kill me, it’ll be him. That means he’s got this place protected from Shades and Fae or he’d never have left me here.

  I’m hungry and tired. I close my eyes and play an old game with myself, one I learned young.

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  I pretend I have a giant, cushy pillow in my stomach, filling it up softly, absorbing the acid that boils from extreme hunger. I pretend that I’m stretched out in a downy soft bed in a perfectly safe place where nobody can hurt me.

  Hanging by manacles around my wrists, I sleep.

  “What did you think was going to happen, Dani?” Mac says.

  I squint my eyes open a slit and groan. TP is here, standing right in front of me.

  I do a quick scan. I don’t see her spear but I know it’s on her somewhere. She doesn’t go anyplace without it.

  “Not fair,” I say. “You can’t kill me while I’m chained up. Dude, you have to at least give me a fighting chance. Unchain me. ” I won’t fight her. But I will run. I can outrun TP till the end of days.

  “I don’t understand, Dani,” she says. “You had to know when you killed all those Fae in front of thousands of witnesses that it would put you on the shit-list of every person and Fae with any power in this city, with Ryodan and his men first in line. Were you trying to become Dublin’s most wanted?”

  “Not like you weren’t for a while, and you survived. ”

  “I had Barrons at my back. You pissed off your potential version of Barrons. ”

  I’m deliberately obtuse. “Christian MacKeltar? He’s not pissed at me. ”

  “Ryodan. ”

  “Ryodan isn’t Barrons and never will be!”

  “Agreed. But he could have your back, if you’d let him. Instead, you not only blatantly antagonized him, you put him in a position where he has to punish you. You defied him in front of the entire city. Dani, Dani. ”

  “Who the feck’s side are you on? And why aren’t you trying to kill me?”

  “I don’t need to. You’ve got the whole city lined up waiting to do that. Dani! Dani!”

  “They have to catch me first. Why do you keep saying my name like that?”

  “Wake up. You’re caught,” TP says. “I know you’re not stupid. What are you doing? Dani! Dani!”

  “Same thing you always did. Taking a stand. Not backing down. Even if I don’t have all the answers and can’t predict how I’ll get out of this one, I will get out of this one. ”

  I’m still waiting for a spear through my gut. Instead TP smiles and says, “Hold on to that thought. ”

  “Wake up, Dani!”

  My face stings like somebody slapped me. I squint my eyes open when I thought they already were.

  Jo’s standing in front of me. My cheek stings. I’d rub it but I’m chained.

  “Where did TP go?” I say, confused.

  “What?” Jo says.

  I lick my lips, or try to. My mouth is so dry my tongue doesn’t make any difference. My lower lip is split and crusted with dried blood. The base of my skull hurts. I must have banged myself a good one passing out, or got hit in the back of my head when I was fighting Ryodan’s men.

  “I’m sorry I hit you but I was afraid you were … oh, Dani! What did he do to you? He beat you! Then I hit you, too!” She looks like she might cry. She touches my face gently and I flinch.

  “Get off me!”

  “I’m going to kill him,” she whispers, and something in the softly spoken words surprises me. Like she’s turning all bloodthirsty, becoming like me.

  I try to figure out if TP was the dream or Jo is, or they both are. I have the weirdest dreams sometimes. As if TP would actually bother trying to give me advice. I should have known it was a dream instantly by the fact that she wasn�
�t killing me.

  “I ran into him,” I tell her. “As in collided. Twice. That’s why my face is so beat up. ” Well, it’s most of the reason.

  “Are you defending Ryodan? Look what he’s done to you! Dani, has he brainwashed you? Are you getting Stockholm syndrome?”

  “What the feck’s Stockholm got to do with any of this? Ain’t that some city in Sweden?”

  She wraps her arms around me and gets all in my space. It’s awkward with my hands chained above my head and my ankles shackled to the floor. She sort of hugs me and I can’t get her off me because I’m stuck.

  “Dude!” I give a whole body shrug, trying to dislodge her. She’s tenacious, lopping all over me. “What are you doing?”

  When she pulls back I see she’s crying. I must look pretty bad.

  “Why did you do it?” She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “We talked and talked about it, and can’t figure it out. You didn’t just wave a red flag at a bull. You sauntered right up to it, punched it in the face then tried to dance on its horns. Dani, what were you thinking?”

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  I sigh. People ask the stupidest questions. Sometimes you don’t think. You just do. Some moments are too golden to pass up. You play—you pay. I’ve always been okay with that.

  I peer at her suspiciously. Jo can’t be here. Not in the guts of Chester’s. “You’re not real,” I say.

  She feels my forehead. “You’re running a fever. ”

  I know. I’m dripping sweat and freezing cold. I always get a fever if I get dangerously hungry. It’s another fecking weakness. So many superstrengths. So many limits. I don’t let folks know about them. “Must have caught a cold,” I tell her. I have food stuffed in every pocket, but with my hands chained above my head I can’t get to one bite of it.

  “Get a protein bar out of my pocket and feed it to me. ” If this is really happening, I’ll get strong again and my body temp will drop back to normal. If this is a dream, at least I’ll get to dream the taste of food. I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a key to these manacles lying around somewhere convenient?” I say with no hope. Ryodan’s not sloppy.

  Four protein bars later I know I’m not dreaming. My head is still throbbing but starting to clear. TP wasn’t real.

  But Jo is.

  She tells me word spread everywhere that I’d single-handedly taken on a bunch of Fae in Chester’s then sauntered out all cocky-like with an Unseelie prince. Margery insisted the Unseelie prince had killed me, and managed to convince a lot of sidhe-sheep to write me off, taking up right where Rowena left off, smearing my name.