Iced

“Jealous, kid.” He lets the last word rise that one-hundredth of a note that he does sometimes when he’s humoring me. There’s a smile in his voice. It pisses me off more.

“There is no fecking way you can see a drop of water from here!”

“There’s another sliding down between the woman’s breasts. Just above the mole on her left one.”

“Dude, you can’t outsee me by that much!”

“I can out-everything you.” He gives me a look that I usually see in the mirror.

Just like that I’m in a total snit. “Then I guess you don’t need me, and I’m wasting my time.” I turn around and stomp back to the Humvee. But before I make it five steps, he’s in my way, looming over me, arms crossed, looking at me weird. “Not in the mood, Ryodan. Get out of my way!”

“Being needed is toxic.”

“It’s good to be needed. Means you’re important.”

“It means there’s an imbalance of power. There was no shortage of life-suckers before the walls fell. You’re not responsible for the world just because you’re more capable.”

“ ’Course I am. That’s what more capable folks do.”

“You could ask me to teach you.”

“Huh?” This night is getting weird in a hurry. “Teach me like you’re teaching a class or something? What are you going to call it: ‘You Too Can Be a Sociopath 101’?”

“It would be more like a graduate-level class.”

I start to snicker. His sense of humor sneaks up on you. Then I remember who’s talking and bite it off.

“You want to be faster, stronger, smarter. Ask me to teach you.”

“I ain’t asking you for nothing. And you might be faster and stronger. For now. No way you’re smarter.”

“Your choice. But turn around because you’re not leaving. It’s night, and you know what that means.”

“Like, it’s dark?”

“You’re with me until dawn.”

“Why dawn? You a vamp or a zombie or something that can’t stand the light?”

He freeze-frames away, moves in on the scene. “I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.”

There I am thinking normal thoughts about iced people and how much he bugs me, then he slams me in the eyeballs with sex for breakfast stuff, and just like that my hormones do that crazy thing they do sometimes, where they start slapping up pictures all over the inside of my head and each one is more embarrassing than the last. And I can’t close my internal eyes because they don’t really exist and hormones are more stubborn and unpredictable than even me.

I wish I’d never watched porn movies or seen Ryodan “eating breakfast” because then the pictures wouldn’t be so vivid and hard to get rid of.

But there he is, in graphic detail because I know exactly what he looks like naked, I saw him. I know how his body moves. He’s got a lot of muscle. Scars, too. I know that when he has sex he laughs like the world is a perfect place. And when he did that, my hands curled into fists because I thought about touching his face like maybe I could catch joy in my hands and hold it. I had all kinds of fecking strange and stupid thoughts standing there on level four. I could so kick the shit out of myself for watching. I don’t get hormones. I don’t understand why the horny little buggers would even notice an old dude like him.

“You coming?”

I shake myself mentally, pick up and shift sideways.

Nothing happens.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter.

“Kid, why are you still standing there?” He’s freeze-framing around the frozen trio. “It could blow any second.”

I don’t move, thinking how much I hope it will, so he won’t figure out I’ve lost my superpowers again.

“I have to, uh, use the, uh—” I gesture to the woods behind me. “Need a little privacy. Be right back.”

Just like I hoped, while I’m in the shrubbery, pretending to pee, the laundry people blow.

The ride back to Dublin is a long and silent one.

THIRTEEN

“The very worst part of you is me”

I’m on the roof of a building, across the street from the pile of concrete, twisted metal, and broken glass that once was Chester’s. The club is deep underground now. Usually there’s a line for blocks, but it’s four in the morning and everyone who wanted to be inside got inside about an hour ago. I guess that means enough people died to open up additional standing room because I didn’t see anyone come out.

A black Humvee pulls up.

It’s what I’ve been waiting for.

I used to hate being up high, which is ironic, considering I’m a Highlander. Or I was.

I’m getting used to heights. The view’s better. You see more and you might as well be invisible. People don’t look up much, not even in times like these, when they should because you never know what’s in the sky above you, getting ready to feed on you, maybe a Hunter, or a Shade. Or me.

I watch her get out of the Humvee. She’s bouncing from foot to foot between steps, moving sideways and forward at the same time, eating a candy bar. I’ve never seen anyone with so much energy. Her hair is auburn fire in the moonlight. Her skin is luminous. She has sweet young curves and long legs. Her features are bone china fine, and expressions rush across her skin like my new Unseelie tattoos rush beneath mine.

But it’s the heart of the girl that gets me.

He’s big and towers over her. Hard face. Hard body. Hard walk. They look so wrong together. They’re talking. She keeps looking up at him like he gets on her last nerve. Good. Her hand hovers near the hilt of her sword and I know what she’s thinking. She despises Chester’s. She can barely stand to be in the same place with Fae without killing them. She hates them. All of them.

It’s a category that will soon include me.

The owner of Chester’s looks up.

I’m deep in shadows on the roof, throwing a light glamour, a new power I’ve been testing, trying to make my face more palatable to her.

I focus on projecting a general blanket of night and emptiness so he can’t see me.

His gaze stops right where I am and he gets a smug-ass look on his face, but that’s his look most of the time. I’ve nearly decided that while he might sense a disturbance in the night up here, he can’t actually see me when he inclines his head in that arrogant, imperial way so characteristic of the dickhead.