High Voltage (Fever #10)(59)

He went motionless, waiting. When I didn’t continue, he goaded, eyes glittering, “Come on, Dani, say it. You know you want to. You’re dying to. Fling that fucking gauntlet at me.”

    “You. Don’t. Deserve. Me,” I said with icy satisfaction.

He smiled with some unfathomable, feral light in his eyes. The bastard actually smiled. Who does that when you insult them? Then he completely changed the subject.

“No one told you because you had a great deal on your plate at the time.” He didn’t say a word about Dancer but he didn’t have to because instantly, another ghost popped into filmy existence between us.

Dancer. Jo. Fog tendrils curling about their transparent, forever-lost-to-us bodies.

So much loss.

I wasn’t in the mood for any more.

I’m all about the things that stay.

My city. My people who need me. Shazam. Kat. Enyo. The ones who don’t go tearing off on lengthy walkabouts without you, without a word of explanation.

I pulled a Ryodan and completely changed the subject. “Have you heard from Barrons?”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment and I was perversely pleased to see him having as hard a time shifting gears as I’d been having. Then, “Not a word in two bloody years. I have no fucking idea where he is.”

I looked at him, stunned. He’d been as cut off from news of them as me? He didn’t know where Barrons was? I’d imagined Ryodan sitting somewhere, receiving constant updates from everyone. In control as always, monitoring the world. Where the hell had he been?

“What else, Dani?”

“The old gods are back. No idea how many or who. Humans are abducting adults, paralyzing them and taking them through mirrors to an unknown location for reasons unknown.” He’d said “nutshell” version so I was keeping it brief.

    “While you save the children left behind,” he murmured. “Getting them settled into new homes. Lor told me that part.”

“Where was Lor watching me from when AOZ and Jayne tried to take my sword?”

“Across the street. He couldn’t hear a bloody word of the conversation. Fill me in.”

I gave him the highlights, omitting the wish part because that was my business, not his, and I was still trying to figure out which wish AOZ had decided to grant that hadn’t yet bit me in the ass.

“Rumor is, Jayne’s being hunted,” Ryodan told me when I’d finished, “the Fae put a steep bounty on his head. He hadn’t been seen in a long time until he showed up in your flat. Some say he’s gone into deep hiding with his mortal family, trying to protect them. Perhaps he wanted your sword for Mac, perhaps for himself.”

“What does Lor say about the Fae?” Despite his claim that he wasn’t getting laid, I had no doubt he’d been at Elyreum, unable to resist a party or seducing blondes with his lethally effective caveman charm.

Ryodan cut me a dark look. “Mac gave us the same mandate she gave you: no interference. We obeyed. He’s not been inside Elyreum, and from what he says, the Fae don’t come out.”

“The Nine obeyed Mac?” I said incredulously.

“Barrons. Motherfucking shield.”

I laughed softly. “Oh, how that must chafe.”

“Which is why,” he said, as we finally pulled away from the curb and began to drive through Dublin, “two years later, we don’t know a single thing about our enemy. According to Lor, those humans that enter the club are tampered with. He interrogated a few, said they come out either unwilling or unable to discuss anything they’ve seen. Her mandate should have come with an expiration date. It didn’t. Now that the bookstore is missing, along with Mac and Barrons, we’re enforcing an expiration date. Tonight.”

    Surely, he didn’t mean…“Where are you taking me?”

He flashed me a wolf smile, all teeth and hunger. “Elyreum.”

Yes! Adrenaline cold-cocked my heart! This wasn’t a date. It was a mission. I’d been aching to do this for a small eternity. Dying to stalk into their club and rattle their world. Let those bastards know we were watching and waiting, and it wasn’t over.

“You do realize, I’m carrying the sword they all want.”

“Bloody hell, yes, I do,” he said, with unconcealed relish.

We drove in silence for a time and he turned the music back up right as Miley Cyrus was singing, Don’t you ever say, I just walked away, I will always want you.

“Wrecking Ball.” I often felt like one. His taste in music was starting to freak me out. I wanted to know if we were listening to the small, local volunteer-run station or an iPod he’d loaded with personal choices. I wanted to know if he was, like, sending me subliminal messages. He had just walked away. Period. End of subject. No song lyrics could change that.

There was no commercial interruption when the song ended but that wasn’t a tell; nobody advertises anymore. I keep waiting for some kind of underground renegade radio station to pop up that offers both music and biting social commentary, but none has. I’d start one myself if I had more time but I no longer get to do a lot of the things I’d like to do. I have astounding taste in music, it runs the gamut all over the place, the product of watching endless discontinued and frequently retro TV shows.