Iced

“Everything sounds wrong. This whole street feels wrong.”

“That’s because it is wrong,” Dancer says behind me. “Massively wrong.”

I turn. “Dancer!”

He gives me a faint smile but it doesn’t light up his face like usual. He looks tired, pale, and there are dark circles under his eyes. “Mega. Good to see you. I thought you were coming back.” He looks at Ryodan then me with a quizzical expression.

I slice my head once to the side and shrug. Last thing I want him to do is bring up that I told him Ryodan was dead. He reads me well, like always. Later we’ll chew over how the heck Ryodan survived a gutting. “I was coming back—”

“No, you weren’t,” Ryodan says. “You live at Chester’s now.”

“Do not.”

“I had to go to somewhere,” Dancer says, “and thought maybe you came looking for me but missed the note I left.”

I try to flash him a grin that says how happy I am to see him but it comes out wobbly.

“Me, too, Mega.”

I do grin then, because we’re always on the same wavelength.

“She lives with me,” Christian says from somewhere above us. “I’m the only one that can take care of her.”

I look up but don’t spot him. “I take care of myself. I ain’t living with nobody. Got my own digs. What are you doing up there?”

“Tracking the Hag. Trying to devise a way to trap her. She’s fast but she’s not a sifter.”

I jerk, and look around warily. That’s all we need right now. “Is she here?”

“If you brought that crazy bitch near me again.” Ryodan doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t need to.

“I left her south of the city. Knitting. She’ll be busy awhile.”

There’s a sudden, flat whoosh of air and it instinctively makes me duck, hare to a hawk. I think the noise made by the winged fliers of the Wild Hunt is branded into a sidhe-seer’s subconscious. I’m dusted with black snow. “Christian, you got your wings!” They’re huge. They’re incredible. He can fly. I’m so jealous I almost can’t stand it.

He cocks his head and looks at me. I don’t see anything human left in his face at all. “Don’t say it like it’s a wonderful fucking life. You didn’t hear any bells tinkling. What you heard was the sound of a demon, not an angel, recently born. And like any other newborn, it needs colostrum.” He gives me a look that I think is supposed to be a smile. “Och, and you, sweet lass, are mother’s milk.”

All the sudden he looks like the most gorgeous, hunky dude I’ve ever seen, and I blink. He’s standing there, nearly six and a half feet of black-haired, bronze-skinned Unseelie prince with gigantic wings, terrifying iridescent eyes, and brilliant tattoos moving like a storm beneath his skin, but I’m seeing a good-looking Highlander. Sort of. This is new. This isn’t a blast of his death-by-sex Fae nature. This is a controlled …

“You’re throwing a glamour!” He hits me with a blast of eroticism that almost buckles my knees. He’s learning control, fast. Way too fast for my comfort. I reach for my sword. “Off it!”

“For you. Today. Not always. And remember who gave you that back, lass.”

“Touch her, I’ll cut off your wings and use them to sweep the floor at Chester’s,” Ryodan says.

“Oh, I’ll touch her. And when I do, you won’t be able to do a bloody thing to stop me,” Christian says.

“Nobody’s going to be touching me,” I say. “Unless I say so. I’m not public property.”

“What is wrong with all of you?” Jo says. “People just got murdered in front of us and you’re all too busy arguing to—”

“Humans,” Christian cuts in. “Waste of space anyway.” He looks at Ryodan. “You’re alive. Pity. I was hoping the Hag did you in for good.”

“Not a chance.”

“You should have let them in,” Jo says to Ryodan. “Then they wouldn’t all be dead.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Ryodan says, soft.

“She’s right,” I say. “You should have let them in.” The flash of hurt in Jo’s eyes makes me mad. “And don’t you snap at her.”

“Right, dickhead,” Christian says. “You should have let them in.” When I give him a look, he shrugs. “Being supportive, lass. Part of a healthy relationship.”

I roll my eyes. “We’re not having a relationship and I don’t need your support.”

“If I’d let them in, the thing might have come inside after whatever it was that drew it to them in the first place, and iced the whole fucking club,” Ryodan says.

He has a point but I’m not about to admit it. “Don’t you snap at her,” I say again. “You be nice to Jo.”

“I can take care of myself, Dani,” Jo says.

“Difficult though you all might find it to believe,” Dancer says, “we’ve got bigger problems than your egos. Listen up. We need to talk. Let’s go inside. It’s bloody cold out here.”

Ryodan looks at him hard a sec and I can tell by the look on his face he doesn’t like what he’s seeing with his weird X-ray vision. “Whatever you have to say can be said here. Now.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Dancer says. “Periodically I suffer the brief delusion you might wise up. Brief.”

Jo and Christian look at Dancer like they think he must have a death wish. I snicker but keep it under my breath. Ryodan looks majorly pissed and I’m in no mood to be noodled over a shoulder. I want to hear what Dancer has to say because for him to hunt me down, it’s important. I look back at the iced scene and sober in a hurry. All those folks dead make me feel sick to my stomach. They died in a second, for no reason. Death is bad enough. Dying for nothing adds insult to injury.

I look at the ice sculpture. This evidence is as fresh as it’s ever going to be. The morning all those Unseelie got iced at Dublin Castle, I didn’t get to examine the scene. I want to get as close as I can today, without freeze-framing because that night in the church when I got bumped down into slow-mo and almost died, it seemed I could feel things better.

I move down the street, knowing they’ll follow: Dancer because he wants to tell me stuff; Jo because she’s … well, Jo; Ryodan and Christian because they got some kind of ownership issues with me like I’m a supercar they got the title to. They’re so deluded it’s laughable.