High Voltage (Fever #10)(57)

I still found it highly suspicious that he’d been listening to my song, and told him so.

“For fuck’s sake, Dani, it’s not your song. I like Heart. They’re two dynamic, sexy women.”



My eyebrows climbed my forehead. “You know Heart? You’ve met them?”

“They used to come into the club sometimes, back in the day. Who do you think ‘Magic Man’ is about?”

I gaped. “No way. Your eyes are silver.”

“Lor.”

“His eyes are green, not blue. And I read a Rolling Stone interview that said it was about Mike Fisher.”



“Protecting Lor’s identity.”

“She’s a brunette.”

“Occasionally he breaks his own rule. Ann Wilson was a woman worth breaking it for. He had a thing with Joan Jett for a while, too.”

“Seriously. ‘Magic Man’ is about Lor?”

With a hint of irritation, he said, “According to him, yes. He says ‘Crazy on You’ is, too. He was hard to live with for a while. That was back when he was hanging out with the Kinks.”

“Holy Hall of Fame, Lor was immortalized in classic rock and roll!” I couldn’t keep the note of envy from my voice. Okay, envy liberally dripped from each word. But, criminy, what a tribute! I mean, sure it was only about how good he was in bed, but music lived forever!

Ryodan laughed softly. “Ah, Stardust, I’ve no doubt you’ll be immortalized in far more important ways.”

I stiffened. “Why did you call me that?” That was what my mom used to call me, a lifetime ago, during the hot minute she’d loved me.

“Seems fitting. Tell me the state of the world in a nutshell.”

He’d done it again, changed the subject so quickly I floundered a moment, trying to shift gears. “I’m sure Lor updated you,” I said tightly. He’d left for two years and I’d known nothing about him at all. But he’d been getting constant updates about me.



“I knew nothing of your life either. He was left in play to keep you alive, nothing more, and although he updated me when I got back, his mind isn’t yours. I want the Mega-brain analysis.”

I beamed. Since he put it that way. “We’re poised on the brink of our greatest war yet. If Mac fails to gain the Fae court’s loyalty, if they succeed in killing her—and they don’t need the sword to do that, locking her away in the Unseelie prison would eventually kill her, too—once they seize her power they’ll either eradicate us from the face of this planet or enslave us. If they’ve locked her in the Unseelie prison as Cruce did to Aoibheal, every moment we waste could be ushering her one step closer to death.” That was a fear that kept me awake at night: Mac in trouble, needing me and, out of blind respect for her wishes, I was doing nothing. Two years of silence had turned into an endless, gnawing worry in the pit of my stomach.

“You’ve not heard from Mac at all?” He sounded stunned.

“Not a word since you left.”

He cursed softly. “Christ, she said she’d stay in touch. What about Rainey? I know you see her. Has she heard from her daughter?”

“I stopped asking her nearly a year ago. It upset her. I suspect if she’d heard, she’d have told me.”

“Any theories on where the bookstore went?”

I offered five: “Mac and Barrons moved it for some reason. Someone else took it. The Silvers inside were changed by the Song and swallowed it up into a Fae realm. An IFP devoured it and moved on.” I couldn’t resist adding a Douglas Adams theory, “It got fundamentally fed up with being where it was.”



“The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.”

“I loved that book.”

“The airport that blew up.”

I nodded. Ryodan read books. The kind I liked.

“I think we can rule that one out.”

“I’m okay with that.”

Suddenly, it felt like old times. Light banter, easy comradery. “Examine the scene tomorrow, Robin?” I said lightly.

He cut me a look. “As if I’d wear that suit. Sherlock. BBC version.”

My eyes narrowed. “I am so not Watson.”

“I’d pegged you more as ‘that woman.’?”

I nearly preened. That woman was badass; sexy and lethal and one of the few to ever give the epic detective a run for his money. She’d stormed into conflict with the penultimate deductive brain wearing the most daring and formidable battle dress of all—nudity, from which he’d been able to draw not a single clue about her person or intentions. My near-preen turned into a scowl as I considered the rest of her story. “No way. Sherlock broke her code. You be ‘that woman.’?”

“Sherlock broke her code because she refused to admit that she wanted him. If she’d been honest about it, if she’d acted on it, there’d have been a different code—one he might not have been able to break. Instead of ‘Sherlocked,’ it would have been wisely nonsensical and undecipherable.”

That he had a valid point pissed me off even more. “Your point is that if she fucked him she might have been thinking more clearly? Do you know how insulting that is?”

“If the shoe fits.”