I couldn’t be more impressed. It’s so brilliant I’m jealous. This is snooping elevated to a whole new techno-nerd level of expertise.
“Like what you see, kid. ”
I pick at my cuticles, pretending to be bored.
The elevator stops and the doors swish open. I figure we must be at least half a mile beneath Dublin.
First thing that hits me is the cold. I pull my coat tighter but it doesn’t do a lot of good. Love the look of leather. Hate the insulation of it.
Second thing that hits me is the quiet. In most parts of Chester’s you can hear faint strains of some kind of music or conversation, 24/7. At least some kind of white noise. This level is still as death.
Third thing is how dark it is.
Ryodan is waiting for me outside the elevator.
“Can you actually see out there?” Does he have another superpower on me? I see good in the dark, but not in pitch-black.
He nods.
I hate Ryodan. “Well, I can’t. So, turn on some fecking lights. Besides, Shades much?”
“They don’t bother me. ”
The Shades don’t bother him. Shades eat everything. They don’t discriminate. “Bully for you. They bother me. Lights. Pronto. ”
“The lights aren’t working down here. ”
Before I can dig one out, he removes a flashlight from his pocket and hands it to me. Coolest one I ever seen, shaped like a bullet. It’s tiny, sleek, silver, and when I turn it on lights up the hallway beyond the elevator like the sun came out.
“Dude,” I say reverently, “you got the best toys. ”
“Off the elevator, kid. We’ve got work to do. ”
I follow him, my breath frosting the air.
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I used to think there were only six levels in Chester’s. Now I know there are at least twenty; I counted on the way down. The level we’re on holds three very different subclubs. I glimpse things through the open doors of clubs that no fourteen-year-old should see. But then, that’s been the story of my life.
The cold is getting worse the farther down the hall we go, as we make for a pair of tall doors. It slices through my long coat, cutting into my skin. I shiver and my teeth start to chatter.
Ryodan glances at me. “How cold can you get before you die. ”
Blunt and to the point. That’s Ryodan for you. “Dunno. I’ll tell you when I think I’m pushing it. ”
“But colder than most humans. ”
As usual with him, it’s not a question, but I nod anyway. I can take more of everything than most humans.
Still, by the time we stop outside the pair of closed doors at the end of the hall, I’m hurting. I’ve been stamping my feet with every step for fifty yards. I begin to jog in place, to keep the blood from icing in my veins. My throat and lungs burn with each breath I take. I can feel the cold pressing at the other side of those doors like a presence. I look at Ryodan. His face is frosted. When he raises a brow, ice shatters and hits the floor.
I shake my head. “Can’t. ” No way I’m going in there.
“I think you can. ”
“Dude, I’m awesome. I’m even All That sometimes. But I have limits. Think my heart’s getting sludgy. ”
Next thing I know his hand is on my chest like he’s feeling me up.
“Get off me!” I say, but he’s manacled his other hand around my wrist. I shake my head and slant my face away like I can’t even stand to look at him. I can’t stop him. Not with words or actions. I may as well let him do it, and get it over with.
“You’re strong enough. ” He drops his hand.
“Am not. ” It’s been a rough morning. Sometimes I like to test myself. Now isn’t one of them. Not after my earlier stutter.
“You’ll survive. ”
I look up at him. Weird thing is, as mad as he makes me, as unpredictable as he is, I believe him. If Ryodan thinks I can take it, who am I to argue? Like he’s infallible or something. Figures I’d put more faith in the devil than any god.
“But you’ll have to do it at your top speed. ”
“Do what?”
“You’ll see. ” The double doors are tall and ornately carved. They look heavy. When he touches the knob and pushes the door open, his fingers are instantly encased in ice. When he takes his hand away, chunks of frozen skin are left on the handle. “Don’t stop once you’re in there. Not even for a second. Your heart will last only as long as you’re moving. Stop and you’re dead. ”
He could figure all that out from a palm on my chest? “And I’m going to go in there why?” I can’t see a single reason to take such a risk. I like living. I like it a lot.
“Kid, Batman needs Robin. ”
Dude. I go all soft and melty inside and swallow a dreamy sigh. Robin to his Batman! Superhero partners. There are lots of versions where Robin gets way stronger. He could have had me at hello if he’d said that first. “You don’t want me to work for you. You want a superhero partner. That’s a whole different story. Why didn’t you just say so?”
He steps into the room and I hate to admit it but I’m awed that he can do it. I couldn’t and I know it. The blast of killing cold coming through the open door makes me want to cry from the sheer pain of it, makes me want to turn and run the other way as fast as I can, but he just pushes forward into it. He doesn’t move fluid, as usual. It’s like he’s shoving himself into concrete, by sheer force of will. I wonder why he doesn’t go fast, the way he’s telling me to.
That he can do it at all provokes me. Am I going to be a chicken? Let myself be outdone? This is Ryodan. If I’m ever going to be able to beat him, I have to take risks.
“What am I looking for?” I say through chattering teeth, psyching myself up to freeze-frame. I really don’t want to go in there.
“Anything and everything. Absorb all details. Look for any clue. I need to know who did this to the patrons of my club. I guarantee protection. I deliver it. If word of this gets out …”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. It can’t get out. Chester’s has to be safe ground with no exceptions or he’ll lose business. And Ryodan isn’t one of those men who will ever tolerate losing anything that’s his, for any reason. “You want me to play detective for you. ”
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He looks back at me. His face is coated with ice. It cracks at the seam of his lips when he speaks. “Yes. ”
I can’t help but ask. “Why me?”
“Because you see everything. You aren’t afraid to do what it takes and not breathe a word of it to anyone. ”
“Talking like you know a thing or two about me. ”
“I know everything about you. ”
The chill I get from those quietly delivered words is almost worse than what’s coming out of the club. I know people. Ryodan doesn’t talk big. Doesn’t blow smoke up other people’s tushes or bluff. He can’t know everything. No fecking way he knows everything. “Quit talking. I need to concentrate if you want me to put both my superbody and my superbrain to work at the same time. That’s a whole lot of Mega-nitude. ”
He laughs, I think. The sound is flat and tinkles like ice in his throat.
I shine my flashlight into the darkened club. A hundred or so humans are frozen, mid-gyration, mid-sex, mid-dying, mixed in with a caste of Unseelie I’ve only seen a time or two: the caste that served as the Lord Master’s imperial guard. The room is decorated in tribute to their rank, all red and black, with frosted red velvet drapes and ice-dusted black velvet chaises, red leather sofas and padded racks and lots of chains on every piece of furniture. Leather straps. Sharp blades. There are puddles of black ice on the floor. Human blood.
Torture. Murder. People slaughtered.
It sinks in and I just stare a second, trying to get a grip on my temper. “You let this happen. You let people be killed by those monsters!”
> “They come here of their own volition. The line into my club last night wrapped around two city blocks. ”
“They’re confused! Their whole world just melted down!”
“You sound like Mac. This isn’t new, kid. The weak have always been food for the strong. ”
Her name is a kick in my stomach. “Yeah, well Mom taught me not to play with my food before I ate it. Dude, you’re a fecking psychopath. ”
“Careful, Dani. You’ve got a glass house of your own. ”
“I got no place like Chester’s. ”
“It’s a famous quote. ”
“Not too famous if I don’t know it. ”
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Maybe you want to talk about your mother. ”
I look away. I’ll pocket my stones for a little while. At least until I know for sure exactly what he knows about me.
I turn my attention back to the room and my tension melts away, replaced by an anticipatory thrill. I love mysteries. Way to test my brain! Dancer and me do logic puzzles. He beats me sometimes. Dancer’s the only person I’ve ever met that I think might be smarter than me. What’s with this place? What happened? “You got cameras in here?” I say.
“They stopped working while everything was still normal. ”
As if anything was ever “normal” in this torture chamber. Now it’s even weirder.
Each person and Fae in the room is frozen solid, silent, white, iced figurines. Twin plumes of diamond-ice crystals extend from many of their nostrils; exhales frozen. Unlike Cruce, who is contained inside a solid block of ice, these folks look like they somehow got frozen right where they stood. I wonder if I pinged one of the Fae it would shatter.
“You think it was the Unseelie King did this?”
“No reason I can see,” Ryodan says. “He’s not the kind to waste time on small stuff. Hurry up, kid. Standing in here is no picnic. ”
“Why are you?”
“I take nothing for granted. ”
He means he thinks it’s possible one of them isn’t completely frozen. “You’re watching my back. ”
“I watch all my employees’ backs. ”
“Partner,” I correct, and I don’t even like that. I was flattered when he called me Robin to his Batman, but I’m over it already. This is who he is: someone who runs a place where humans get killed for the amusement of the Fae.
I save them. He damns them. That’s a gulf between us no bridge will ever span. I’ll look into this. But not for him. For humans. Sides have to be taken. I know which one I’m on.
I go all cool inside, thinking about how many folks in Dublin need a little help to survive, and just like that I’m perfect and on fire and free, and I slip sideways into freeze-framing like gliding into a dream.
Moving like I do makes seeing things a little difficult. That’s why I stood at the door, looking in so long, collecting observations from a distance. Even freeze-framing, the chill causes intense pain in every bone in my body. As I whiz past him I say, “What’s the temp in here?” planning to get the answer on my way back around.
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“No thermometer can take it,” he says by my ear, and I realize he’s freeze-framing, too. He’s right beside me. “Don’t touch anything. It’s too cold to risk. ”
I circle a Fae guard at top speed. Around and around, looking for clues. If the Unseelie King did this, why would he choose here? Why ice his own guards?
“Is this the only cl-club that g-got iced?” I stutter with cold.
“Yes. ”
“Wh-When?” I stamp my foot in hyperspeed, pissed that I’m stuttering. Doesn’t matter that it’s from the cold, it makes me sound pansy. Next thing you know, I’ll lisp.
“Eight days ago. ”
A few days after Ryodan cornered me on my water tower. I cock my head. I just heard a sound in a completely frozen room. I whiz back to where I was when I heard it and go in tight circles, listening hard.
Silence.
“D-Did you hear th-th-that?” I manage to spit out. My face is going numb and it’s getting harder to move my lips. I circle a human woman, frozen mid-coitus. It’s not hoar frost that turned her white. She’s covered with hard rime, the kind of ice that builds up on a cold foggy night. Over it all is a layer of clear ice a good inch thick.
“Yes. ” Ryodan flashes past me. Warily, we circle the room on opposite ends, watching everything real careful-like.
It’s hard to listen good when you got so much wind in your ears from moving like we do. Ryodan and I have been practically shouting at each other the whole time we’ve been talking. “Like a high-p-p-pitched whine,” I say. I’m not going to be able to stay in the room much longer. There it was again! Where was it coming from? I whiz though the subclub faster and faster. Ryodan and I do figure eights between the frozen figurines, trying to isolate it.
“You f-feel that?” I ask. Something’s happening … I feel a vibration, like the floor has the tremors, like everything is … changing.
“Fuck!” Ryodan explodes. Then his hands are on my waist, and he’s tossing me over his shoulder like that stupid sack of potatoes again, and moving faster than I’ve ever managed to move in my whole life.
That’s when they begin to pop, going off like firecrackers. Fae and humans explode, filling the air with icy, flesh-colored shrapnel.
One after the next, they blow violently, and with each new explosion, the next one blows harder. The furniture is popping now, too. Sofas erupt into icy splinters of wood and rock-hard chunks of stuffing. Racks get blasted into smithereens of metal shards. It sounds like a thousand machine guns going off.
A pair of knives whiz by, chased by a dozen ice picks.
I bury my nose in Ryodan’s back. My face has taken enough of a beating for the day. I’m not in the mood for anything sharp in it. Something slams me in the back of my head and I wrap my arms around my skull. I hate being over his shoulder but he’s faster than me. I tense, pelleted by chunks, waiting for one of those nasty-looking blades or picks to sink into me.
We’re halfway down the hall, almost to the elevator. The other two clubs have begun blowing up, too. I hear an enormous, deep, rumbling sound and realize the floor is cracking beneath us.
Chunks of ceiling begin to fall.
At the elevator, Ryodan flings me from his shoulder into the compartment in one smooth motion.
I explode right back out. “Fecking thing is going to blow and you want me on it?”
“It’ll last long enough to get you out of here. ”
“Bull-fecking-crikey! I give you fifty-percent odds I’ll make it!”
“I’ll take them. ”
I’m in the air, over his shoulder, slammed back into the elevator again. The whole ceiling of the hallway is coming down now, crown moldings, drywall, steel girders. He’ll be crushed. Not that I care. “What about you?”
His smile is fanged. Creeps me out. “What, kid, you care?”
He slams the doors closed with his bare hands and I swear he gives the thing a push from below.
I shoot up into Chester’s.
THREE
“When the cat’s away …”
Under normal circumstances I’d have snooped through Ryodan’s office, but my day hadn’t been normal and I was in a pissy mood.
Two things were on my mind: get as far away from Ryodan as possible while he was busy dying (hopefully), and kill as many Fae inside Chester’s as I could on my way out.
The club “proper” was unprotected. Hoo-fecking-rah.
His dudes had whizzed past me so fast my hair shot straight up in the air five, six, seven times, minus Barrons, who doesn’t much leave TP’s side. No doubt they were heading down to the iced level, to save their boss. Keep him from being crushed. With any luck, the whole club would collapse into a pile of rubble and kill them all.
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Somehow I doubted it.
They were like Barrons. I wasn’t even sure they could be killed. If so, it was probably only by a single weapon, hidden inside an invisible box, on an invisible planet, with an atmosphere that would burn up any living thing instantly, like a gazillion light-years away.
But I knew a few things that could be killed.
And my sword hand has a permanent itch.
Slaying Unseelie gives me a rush that’s almost as intense as freeze-framing. The only thing missing is TP at my back, but I know if I ever have TP at my back again, she’ll be trying to shove a spear through my heart.
Supercharged on adrenaline and anger, I slice and dice my way through the subclub that bugs me the most: the one where the waitresses dress like school kids, in short, pleated plaid skirts and white socks, and crisp white blouses with starched collar points.
Kids. They’re the worst victims of the fall. There are so many of them hiding in the streets, with no clue how to survive.
At Chester’s, grown women are dressing like kids to trade favors for pieces of Unseelie flesh, the latest drug on the market. It has epic healing powers, and temporarily gives humans extra strength and stamina. I hear it makes sex really intense, too. The things people are willing to do for a quick high—eat pieces of our enemies’ flesh! Makes me want to knock heads together.
So I do.
I get a few good elbow jabs in on the waitresses, too. Half of them are those stupid See-You-in-Faery chicks who chirp the stupid phrase at each other every time they part, like going to Faery is something to aspire to instead of something to avoid like ten variations of the black plague.
They should be out in the streets, helping us fight and rebuild our world. Instead they’re in here, consorting with the enemy, selling themselves for a shot at immortality. I don’t buy that bunk. I think the Unseelie made that part up—that if you eat enough Unseelie flesh, eventually you become immortal, too, and you can hang with them in Faery all social-like.
I slay every last one of the Fae in the kiddie subclub, ignoring the waitresses screaming at me to stop. Some people just don’t know what’s good for them.