Shadowfever

He was in front of me.

“Hey, what the fuck ya think ya doing? No sifting in the club!” someone cried. The golden god jerked and disentangled himself from the arm that he’d materialized around. It seemed to slide from his body, as if the section containing it had abruptly become energy, not matter.

The guy the arm belonged to was young, with a faux-hawk, a petulant expression, and twitchy, restless eyes. He clutched his offended appendage, rubbing it as if it had gone to sleep. Then he seemed to see what had just sifted in next to him and his eyes rounded almost comically.

A drink appeared in the golden god’s hand. He offered it to the guy with a murmured regret. “I did not mean to break the rules of the club. Your arm will be fine in a moment.”

“S’cool, man,” the guy gushed as he accepted the drink. “No worries.” He stared up at the Fae worshipfully. “What can I do for ya?” he said breathlessly. “I mean, man, I’d do anything, ya know? Anything at all!”

The golden god bent down, leaning close. “Would you die for me?”

“Anything, man! But will you take me to Faery first?”

I leaned in behind the golden god and pressed my mouth to his ear. “There’s a spear in a holster beneath my arm. You broke a rule and sifted. I bet that means I can break a rule, too. You want to try it?”

He made that hissing Fae sound of distaste. But he eased away and stood straight.

“Be a good little fairy,” I purred, “and go get V’lane for me.” I hesitated, weighing my next words. “Tell him I have some news about the Sinsar Dubh.”

Laughter and all voices died; the club fell silent.

Movement ceased.

I glanced around, absorbing it. It was as if the entire place had been freeze-framed by the mere mention of the Sinsar Dubh.

Though the club was a bubble frozen in time, I swore I felt eyes resting heavily on me. Was there some kind of charm cast over this place so that if someone uttered the name of the king’s forbidden Book, everyone but the person who’d spoken the words and the person who’d laid the spell would momentarily freeze?

I scanned the sub-clubs.

Air hissed between my teeth. Two tiered dance floors down, a man in an impeccable white suit was holding frozen court in a kingly white chair, surrounded by dozens of white-clad attendants.

I hadn’t seen him since that night long ago, when Barrons and I had searched Casa Blanc. But, like me, he wasn’t frozen.

McCabe nodded to me across the sea of statues.

Just as suddenly as everything had frozen, life resumed.

“You have offended me, human,” the golden god was saying, “and I will kill you for the slight. Not here. Not tonight. But soon.”

“Sure, whatever,” I muttered. “Just get him here.” I turned away and began shoving my way through the crowd, but by the time I reached the kingly white chair, McCabe was gone.

I had to pass the sub-club where the dreamy-eyed guy tended bar to get to the stairs. “Directly,” construed as a geographical command, didn’t preclude stopping along the way and, since I was parched and had a few questions about a tarot card, I rapped my knuckles on the counter for a shot.

I could barely remember what it felt like to mix drinks and party with my friends, jam-packed with ignorance and shiny dreams.

Five stools down, a top hat gauzed with cobwebs was a dark, unused chimney badly in need of sweeping. Strawlike hair swept shoulders that were as bony as broomsticks in a pin-striped suit. The fear dorcha was hanging with the dreamy-eyed guy again. Creepy.

Nobody was sitting next to it. The top hat rotated my way as I took a seat, four empty stools away. A deck of tarot cards was artfully arranged in its suit pocket, a natty handkerchief, cards fanned. Knobbed ankles crossed, displaying patent-leather shoes with shiny, pointy toes.

“Weight of the world on your shoulders?” it called like a carny selling chances at a booth.

I stared into the swirling dark tornado beneath the brim of the top hat. Fragments of a face—half a green eye and brow, part of a nose—appeared and vanished like scraps of pictures torn from a magazine, momentarily slapped up against a window, then torn off by the next storm gust. I suddenly knew the debonair and eerie prop was as ancient as the Fae themselves. Did the fear dorcha make the hat, or did the hat make the fear dorcha?

Because my parents raised me to be polite and old habits die hard, it was difficult to hold my tongue. But the mistake of speaking to it was not one I’d make twice.

“Relationships got you down?” it cried, with the inflated exuberance of an OxiClean commercial. I half-expected helpful visual aids to manifest in midair as he hawked his wares—whatever they were.