Burned

  I lost two and a half hours in the street that afternoon and have no idea what the Book did with me. I don’t know if I spent all of it torturing and killing, or—I terminate that thought. No point in going there. It’s done. I can’t undo it. I can only never let it happen again. Brooding about it will only make me feel worse, and when I feel my worst is when the Sinsar Dubh talks the most.

  As I round the perimeter balustrade and approach the top of the stairs, flanked by my gaunt ghouls, I realize it must be early morning, as the club is empty except for the many waiters and waitresses wiping things down. I hope they use antibacterial cleanser because virtually every horizontal surface gets used as a bed at some point. There are only a few hours when the dance floors are deserted. Ryodan closes the doors at dawn and doesn’t reopen to the public until eleven A. M. I’ve heard that’s when he gives his infamous nod to some woman and takes her upstairs. I’ve also heard that for an uncommonly long time it’s been the sidhe-seer, Jo. Really, how much of a relationship can she think they’re having when he’s still “selecting” her every morning?

  As if I’ve summoned the event merely by thinking of it, I turn the corner to see Ryodan standing at the top of the stairs, looking down.

  Lucky me. I get to witness the nod. Woohoo. Could my morning get any better?

  I stop abruptly and bony vultures pile into my back. They’re still silent. It creeps me out.

  I glance down to my right, past the railing. There’s Jo, looking up, waiting. I wonder again what the hell he thinks he’s doing with her. What she thinks she’s doing with him. Anyone can see they’re no match. Anyone can predict how this disaster will end. One morning Ryodan will walk to the stairs.

  He’ll look down and Jo will look up.

  And Ryodan will look beyond her, to some other woman, and nod.

  Jo will never share his bed again.

  Barrons and his men are something else. I may not care for Ryodan, we have baggage between us, but I have to admit any woman takes one look at him and wonders. And wants. It’s visceral. You know that when one of the Nine gets down to fucking, your world is about to get rocked like never before. And like it never will again. Unless you become a Nine groupie. Which I can honestly say might have its merits.

  If I was Jo, and it was Barrons at the top of these stairs, what would I do? Like Jo, would I choose to take what I could get of the hottest, dirty, intense sex and passion I’d ever experience, and deem it worth a shattered heart?

  There’s no question it will break hers.

  I see the hunger in her face. I see the light in her eyes as she gazes up at him. I see the tenderness and the desire and need in every line of her body.

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  It’s not there in his.

  He’s untouched by her. She burns for him.

  I want to grab him, shake him, demand he stop before he destroys her. I want to grab her, shake her, demand she stop before she’s destroyed.

  I hold my breath in silence. It’s not my place to choose for Jo a path I’m not sure I’d be willing to walk myself.

  Life is short. At the buffet of it, who doesn’t want the best dessert?

  Ryodan nods, Jo’s cue to toss her cleaning rag and race up the stairs into his arms. They’ll pass me and disappear into his office or a nearby bedroom, and I’ll go downstairs and pilfer precious eggs from the Nine’s private kitchen, whip up an omelet, and break into their espresso machine. Maybe even find some milk to add to my coffee. Oh, happy day.

  Jo holds Ryodan’s gaze for a long moment.

  Her lashes drop to shield her eyes.

  Slowly she turns her back on him and resumes wiping tables.

  I gape, stunned.

  Nothing against Jo, but I didn’t think she had it in her. I want to leap up on the rail and cheer her choice to pull the plug before the bathwater drowns her.

  Ryodan stands unmoving, looking down at Jo’s back.

  I begin to inch backward, feeling suddenly like the voyeur I am, in no mood to be caught at it.

  Jo turns around and looks up at him. I know what she wants to see. She’ll never find it on that implacable face. I want to shout at her to turn away again. Stop mining for gold where there is none. I tear my gaze from her and glance back at Ryodan.

  Again, I gape. That’s me, the flapping jaw this morning.

  I didn’t expect this. Not from him.

  He drops his head forward in a gesture of sorrow and lets it hang a moment. Then he inclines it slowly in acceptance and respect, and I see the tension in Jo’s body ease a little when he acknowledges her as a valued loss.

  I hold my breath, waiting for the bastard to nod to the next woman. The waitresses are all staring hungrily up, bristling with excitement that the boss’s bed is once again open and their lives just got so much more thrilling. Some other lucky woman is about to get her world rocked and lord it over all the other waitresses until she, too, is rejected. She won’t care. It’s a status symbol. Like the disgusting Unseelie roaches they invite beneath their skin as fat burners.

  Ryodan turns from the railing and is abruptly walking directly for me.

  There goes my jaw again. I might need to muzzle myself to keep it in place this morning.

  I search his face, trying to read it.

  “Don’t mine for gold where there is none, Mac. ”

  “Stay out of my head. ”

  “Wouldn’t be so easy to get in there if it wasn’t so empty. ”

  “Jackass. ” I scowl at his back as he vanishes down the hall.

  I’m heading up the stairs after breakfast when Barrons opens the door to Ryodan’s office and inclines his head, motioning me in. I didn’t know he was back. I suck in a breath. I wonder if we can evade Ryodan’s radar and slip off to the bookstore. For heaven’s sake, I’d take fifteen minutes. Anything would help. Part of his neck is now tattooed and I wonder what he’s been up to while I was sleeping.

  A good-looking kid stands inside. Tall, lean, and lanky, with thick dark hair that hasn’t been cut in a while and beautiful aqua eyes behind glasses, I put him at about eighteen to twenty. He has a sort of brainy Canterbury scholar look, even in jeans and a blue tee-shirt. He gives me an appraising once-over as I step inside, then cocks his head as if processing some anomaly.

  “Tell her what you told us,” Ryodan says to the kid, closing the door on my ghoulish procession. I don’t tell him it’s pointless. He’ll figure it out soon enough.

  The kid says to me, “Who are you? And why do you smell so bad? Don’t you have showers in this place? I can hook one up for you. ”

  I have to unclench my jaw to answer. “I’m Mac. Who are you?”

  The kid whistles soft and low. “Ah, so you’re the one who broke her heart. ”

  I don’t ask her-who. I don’t want to go there.

  The kid goes there anyway. “Dani calls out your name when she sleeps. A lot. Sometimes Alina. ”

  Ryodan seems to suddenly expand and saturate the air like Barrons does. “You won’t be hearing it again. Dani sleeps at Chester’s now. ”

  I say nothing, keep my mask on.

  “She doesn’t sleep anywhere lately, old dude. Thought we established that last time you came calling. And the first time. And the twentieth time. ”

  “Kid, you want to be careful around me. ”

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  “Ditto,” the kid says mildly. “Old dude. ”

  “You haven’t seen her either?” I ask hastily, trying to stave off a completely unmatched battle.

  “Nope,” the kid replies. “But she’s disappeared before, like I told the boss man here. And his lackeys. And his lackeys’ lackeys. I hate it when she does this. ”

  I almost smile. He calls Ryodan’s men lackeys. I’d like him for that alone.

  Unseelie begin sifting into the office since they can’t use the door. The room doesn’t hold many, considering how wide a berth they gi
ve all three males. Not just Ryodan and Barrons, who they always steer clear of by ten feet or more, but also the boy that must be Dancer if he’s heard Dani talk in her sleep. I grow more aggravated by the moment as they cozy up to my backside. Dancer? Really? They don’t bother a teenage kid?

  Barrons and Ryodan are eyeing him, too, no doubt wondering the same thing.

  Dancer shrugs. “Guess they don’t like my soap. They certainly like something about you. And dude, do they stink. So, what gives with this?” he asks me. “Why do they like you so much?”

  “I find that fascinating myself,” Ryodan says. “Answer the kid. ”

  Barrons gives him a look. “Tell her what you just told us,” he says to Dancer.

  Dancer pushes his glasses up on his nose, managing to look adorably brainy and hot in a collegiate hunk way. I get what Dani sees in him. He’s pretty much perfect for her. If only he had a few superhero parts. Dani is going to be hell on a man’s self-esteem when she grows up, and while Dancer doesn’t seem to suffer in that department, in this world caring about a mere human is a liability.

  “After we defeated the Hoar Frost King, I couldn’t let it rest. Something was bothering me. I get obsessive like that when facts don’t gel, or do so in a way that seems to imply impending catastrophe. Then I have to—”

  Ryodan says, “Not one fucking ounce of interest in your personal problems. ”

  “Christ, you’re a cranky bloke,” he says to Ryodan. To me, he says, “Each of the Unseelie has a favorite food. The Unseelie that was icing Dublin and its inhabitants was devouring a specific frequency. ”

  Okay, that’s weird. “Why would an Unseelie feed off a sound?”

  “Dani and I speculate it was trying to complete itself. That it was aware it was derived from an imperfect Song of Making and was attempting to obtain the correct elements to evolve into something else. ”

  “Go on. ”

  “I was able to isolate the precise frequency: the flatted or diminished fifth. ”

  I had less than a month of music theory. “What’s the flatted fifth?”

  Dancer says, “Mi contra fa est diabolus in musica—where the mi and fa don’t refer to the third and fourth notes of the musical scale but to the medieval principle of overlapping hexachords. ”

  I say impatiently, “Clarify. ”

  “Also known as Satan’s music, or the Devil’s tritone, it’s an interval spanning three whole tones, such as C up to F# or F# up to C, the inverted tritone. It’s used in sirens, can be found in the hymn ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,’ Metallica’s ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ ‘Purple Haze’ by Jimi Hendrix, ‘Black Sabbath’ by Black Sabbath, Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, the Dante Sonata by Liszt, Beethoven’s—”

  “We get the picture. Get on with it,” Barrons growls.

  “Mathematically speaking, harmonies are created by notes sounding together in proportion to one another that can be expressed in numbers. The Devil’s tritone is commonly assigned the ratio of 64/45 or 45/32, depending on the musical context … And your eyes are glazing and I haven’t even gotten started,” Dancer says. “Okay, then, it’s jarring, disconcerting, some even consider it depressing. There’s a lot of controversy about whether or not ecclesiastical sorts banned it in medieval times out of fear it could summon the devil, him—” He breaks off and grins at me. “—or herself. How’s that for laymen speak? Personally I find it challenging, invigorating—”

  “Again with the we-don’t-give-a-fuck,” Ryodan says. “Tell her what you told us. ”

  The grin fades. “Like music, all matter is composed of frequencies. Where the Hoar Frost King took his ‘bites’ of melody from the world, it completely consumed that frequency. ”

  “What are you saying? We have no flatted fifths left?”

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  He gives me a look like I have two heads. Math and physics have never been my strong suits.

  I guess again. “It’s quieter in the places he iced?”

  Dancer says, “In a sense. Cosmically. And that’s only part of the problem. ”

  “What’s the real world application?” I growl. Nobody likes feeling dumb.

  “I’m getting there. I had a hunch. I’ve been going back to the scenes every day. I didn’t find what I was looking for until a few days ago and have been observing it since, taking measurements, projecting and speculating on the potential ramifications of—” He breaks off and looks at Ryodan. “I think we better show her. Telling her doesn’t seem to be working. I thought you said she was smart. ”

  “I took Barrons’s word for it. ”

  “Apparently he was misinformed,” Dancer says.

  I have the beginnings of a headache. “Oh, shut up both of you, and just show me what you’re talking about. ”

  “I think the church is the closest spot where she can get a good look,” Dancer says. “The one outside Chester’s is still forming. ”

  Ryodan looks pissed. “I’ve got one closer. ” Whatever it is, and wherever, he’s not at all happy about it.

  I follow the three of them to the door of one of the many sleekly concealed elevators in the club.

  Because there isn’t enough room for my volt of vultures to maintain their distance from the men when we step inside, I get a respite. I hear thumps as they settle on the roof of the compartment.

  We ride down. And down. Through the walls of the elevator, I watch the levels of the club whiz by as we descend into the chrome and glass belly of the beast. Like the city hidden beneath the abbey, the private part of Chester’s is enormous. There’s no way they built it all recently. I wonder if it’s been standing as long as or longer than the sidhe-seers’ hallowed enclave, and if so, where they got the building materials back then.

  We continue dropping for half a mile or more. I can feel tons and tons of earth around and above me and shiver. I’ve always hated being underground but my interment in Mallucé’s lair beneath the Burren escalated dislike to near claustrophobia. I can barely breathe down here.

  As we begin to slow, Ryodan says, “Do not exit until I do. Then follow me, remaining behind me at all times. ”

  The compartment settles and the door swishes open.

  I move into the dark, silent corridor behind his broad back.

  The air is chillingly cold.

  It’s so dark that I instinctively open my sidhe-seer senses to scan for the unique Shade frequency—a trick I perfected last month when I discovered a ship down near the docks where several of the vampiric Unseelie had holed up—and instantly my head explodes with pain.

  I fall to my knees, clutching my skull with both hands, crying out.

  I haven’t felt pain like this since the night I went to meet Christian at Trinity College. I made it only a few blocks before the Sinsar Dubh reduced me to a gibbering, drooling mess in a gutter in Temple Bar, crushed by the agony it was inflicting.

  Spikes pound through my brain. My stomach cramps and my spine becomes a red-hot poker impaling my body.

  Pain fills me until I’m nothing but a single, giant exposed nerve alternately being raked over coals, then diced and iced, before getting seared again.

  Barrons has me then, his arms strong, sheltering. “What the fuck, Mac?” he growls. “What’s happening?”

  We are definitely not having sex so I must be dying. He called me Mac. “Music,” I grit through clenched teeth. “That … damned … music!”

  “You hear music down here?” Dancer sounds incredulous.

  My only response is a whimper.

  Distantly, through the pain, I’m aware Barrons is carrying me back onto the elevator.

  “Get a picture of it,” Ryodan says to Dancer.

  “Already got a dozen, other places. ”

  “When I tell you to do something, don’t think. Don’t talk. Don’t breathe. ”

  “Reality check, thinking and breathing, necessary to take pictures. Otherwise I might end u
p with shots of—”

  “Fucking do it. ”

  “—your nose hairs, or mine, or—”

  “You won’t have a fucking nose left, you keep talking. ”

  I hear a cell phone camera snapping.

  Whatever it is, I want to see it for myself. I didn’t make the miserable trek belowground and suffer this pain to leave without getting a good look at whatever our latest problem is. I drag my pounding head from Barrons’s chest and peer into the darkness beyond.

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  Ryodan shines the wide beam of a powerful flashlight out the door. My stalkers have begun popping into the corridor.

  Halfway down the hall, I see a low-hanging round black globe. Not because Ryodan’s flashlight has illuminated it, but because the beam has lit everything but the circular area suspended in the air.

  One of the Unseelie sifts in close to it, and as more arrive, it glides back to make room, and inadvertently brushes the black globe.

  The instant it touches it, the ghoul contorts, is stretched long and thin into a tatter of black-skinned robe and bones, and screams with such terror that the skin all over my body prickles in goose flesh. As its hood elongates impossibly, I catch a glimpse of something shiny, metallic, where I think its face should be.

  The black globe swallows it whole. Which is impossible, given the globe doesn’t have a twentieth the mass of the Unseelie.

  My ghouls jostle and shove in panic. Each one that brushes the globe suffers the same fate. Stretched long and thin, then gone. The screaming is deafening, far worse than the hideous chittering. Some sift out. Others stand frozen.

  The elevator doors close.

  “Now do you get it?” Dancer says.

  I’d shake my head but it would explode. I peer at him with pain-blurred eyes and whisper, “No. ”

  “When the Hoar Frost King bit chunks of frequency from our world, it created a cosmic deficit. The fabric of our universe began to unravel. That alone was problematic enough, but compounding it, at each site where it fed it also deposited something, like an overfed scavenger, regurgitating unwanted bones. Whatever it expelled possesses astronomically compact mass and density. ” He pauses. When a lightbulb doesn’t instantly brighten over my head, he says with elaborate patience, “It’s. Deforming. Space-time. ”

  “Are you saying what I just saw is a black hole?” I manage. The farther we get from the globe, the less pain I feel.

  Dancer says, “I lack the ability to perform the tests I’d like to run. Speculation aside, I can only observe these facts: they share certain similar characteristics to black holes, they were no larger than pinpricks at first, they absorb everything they come in contact with, and they’re growing. The one we just saw is the largest I’ve seen at any of the sites. ”