“Miss, is that you? I thought it was!” The man circled around, stopping in front of me. Plucking his cap from his head, he stood, clutching it in his hands, a warm smile creasing his ruddy face. “Nobody else with that sword. Top of the morn to you, m’dear! The missus keeps asking if I’ve seen you again. She’d like you to join us for supper of an evening.”
I retrieved his name from my mental files: Connor O’Connor. Some parents should be shot on naming day. After I’d visited them six months back, I’d approved Rainey placing eight-year-old Erin with the middle-aged couple who’d lost their children when the walls fell.
I managed to unclench my jaw but forcing a smile was out of the question. My bones were connected by too-tight rubber bands. Nodding tightly, I said, “That’d be lovely, thank you. I’ll drop by when I can. How’s Erin?”
“The wee lass is fine as can be. She still has the occasional bad dream, but they’re fewer and further between.”
“Wonderful. I knew she’d be happy with you.” I still couldn’t unclench my hand so I jerked a fist at the commotion. “What’s the plan here? How many stories?”
“At least half a dozen, I hear, but I’ve not seen the plans. The boss is below. You might ask him. I hear he’s got an eye for the ladies, and a beauty like you could dazzle him into telling you anything.” He winked at me.
His opinion and reality were clearly suffering massive disconnect. Answers from Ryodan? As if. Beauty like me? I had Duck Tape on my neck, a scowl embedded in every muscle in my body, and I hadn’t even brushed my hair.
“Well then, Miss Dani, I’ll be leaving you to your business but I’m hoping you’ll find time to drop by. You changed our lives, gave my missus her sparkle back, and when that woman’s happy, my world’s right as rain. There’ll always be a seat for you at our table, and my Maggie’s a fine cook.” Blushing, he tucked his chin down in a nod of sorts and ambled away.
An eye for the ladies?
That was pretty much all my brain retained.
If Ryodan was nodding from the top of his arrogant, womanizing staircase again, I was going to saw his head off. I had no idea why and didn’t care. I just would.
Hands fisted, jaw clenched, I sped across the lot in half-freeze-frame, adroitly navigating machinery and men, to the door in the ground that led to Chester’s-below and began my descent into Hell, to raise some of my own.
I feel stormy weather moving in (it’s raining men)
AS THE SHINY NEW steel trapdoor closed behind me on its shiny new hydraulic arm, I descended the (also-new) stairs that had replaced the clumsy ladder once welded to the wall.
As a teen I’d watched the See-You-in-Faery girls in their skintight short skirts paired with insanely high heels navigate that tricky ladder with a derisive snort, thinking, Please, wear panties!
The stairs were a definite improvement.
There used to be two sets of trapdoors and two ladders before you reached the foyer of Chester’s-below. That was no longer the case. The entry must have been the first thing Ryodan set his crew to modifying. The foyer was now a single mammoth vestibule, with a long, elegantly curved staircase framed in enough to use, but not yet finished, that ended on a black marble floor so highly polished it served as an obsidian mirror.
I clenched my hands so tightly I nearly broke my own fingers. He’d clearly admired the floors of my flat. And copied them.
New, colossal double doors soared twenty feet, made of thick matte black steel embellished with fantastical panels of wrought-iron twisted into complex designs, undoubtedly laced with wards ready to be activated at a moment’s notice. Ultramodern charcoal consoles inlaid with onyx and a dozen white leather and chrome chairs graced the perimeter of the foyer.
I stalked across the room and shoved the massive doors open with a scowl. I had to put my shoulder into it, which meant the average human would need to be let in from the other side. I stood between the parted doors for a long moment, breathing deep and slow, taking in the view.
Interior lights blazed the entire width and breadth of the many-terraced club and there was that duality again: CHESTER’S WAS LIT! competing with What else did that bastard copy of mine? I, too, had white leather and chrome chairs in my foyer, next to my charcoal console. I’d stolen them from some rich guy’s penthouse. I enjoyed decorating because I’d never gotten to do it before and I see things in structures and patterns, and decorating is a way of arranging things to achieve maximum visual happiness. If his kitchen had been remodeled with my counters and back splash, he was dead. Death might be brief for him, but temporary was enough to make me feel better.
Urban sophistication wed to industrial muscle, Chester’s was London haute couture slumming with Irish mob in the best possible way. The club was divided into countless tiered subclubs that would soon be filled to overflowing again. When the world goes to hell, people party. They need to. Who am I kidding? I need to. It spring-cleans my brain, refreshes it like a blast of detritus-removing sanitizer. The days look brighter, saner, after you’ve spent a night pretending the world hasn’t gone mad and that you’re on top of it—especially if you finish it off on top of a worthy man, too, not that I’ve had any luck finding one of those since Dancer.
Dancer. Hole in my heart that never goes away. I miss him always, especially when I’m in a location owned by a man he and I used to conspire against together endlessly.
I’d once despised Chester’s, convicted Ryodan of catering to the wrong clientele. I see the place differently now.
As an asset.
The nightclub being reopened would give people a choice. Elyreum was the only club in town packed to the gills with dangerous thrills, its appeal the lethally exotic, sexually combustive Fae with their illusion, lies, and false offers of immortality.
But Chester’s would offer an equally seductive draw: the immortal, basely sexual, mysterious, ferociously alpha Nine. And if a few Unseelie princes like Christian MacKeltar and Sean O’Bannion started hanging around again?
Chester’s would obliterate Elyreum.
I’d even let Inspector Jayne in, he’d be a significant lure. And the more humans that came to party here, the more Fae from Elyreum would come sniffing around, drawn by the banquet of mortal prey. Why was that good?
We’d have control again.
We’d know what was going on. People get drunk and tongues wag in clubs, they reveal things they shouldn’t. The disadvantage of being banned from Elyreum was the only info I’d ever been able to obtain on the current state of Faery came from people I questioned on the streets, and few were willing to tell me a bloody thing. I’d begun to suspect my picture hung in Elyreum’s bathrooms with a block-lettered caption: DO NOT TALK TO THIS BITCH OR WE’LL KILL YOU. With the exception of Jayne, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Fae in…good grief, over a year? They were studiously avoiding me, for which I’d been grateful, given the perpetually itchy state of my sword hand.
Oh, yes, I got it now: offer to host your enemies, let them misbehave, pass no judgment. Yes, there’s a price for it, you have to watch prey get preyed upon, but—and it’s a critical but—chance favors the prepared mind; intimate knowledge of the enemy prepares. I’m all about increasing odds of success where the human race is concerned.
I saw Chester’s now as I’d never been able to see it before: a vast, complicated, ever-shifting, treacherous, necessary chessboard. The White army was definitely going to lose pawns, nothing could be done about that. But their loss might gain the Black king’s head, and checkmate the war. The moment White got distracted, trying to protect pawns, the Black army would go in for the kill and take White’s king.
I glanced down at the dance floors, to the elegant, wide, glass and chrome staircase that swept up to one of the many private, never-accessible-by-public levels of the club, where Ryodan’s glass office was located.
In spite of my pissy mood
, I smiled.
Fade and Kasteo were in position at the bottom, arms folded, legs splayed wide, two handsome, towering, scarred immortal bouncers.
The Nine were home.
I basked in the simple pleasure of that fact for a moment.
Then my smile was obliterated by a scowl. They were guarding the same notorious staircase from which the notorious Ryodan used to give his notorious nod every morning.
I knew the legend. Women never refused.
Saw. Off. Head.
I dragged my gaze from the stairs and continued scanning the club. Hundreds of laborers mulled about the interior, dismantling bars and snugs, prepping for renovations. I was pleased to see the kiddie subclub was already demolished. I couldn’t look at it without thinking of Jo. Apparently Ryodan couldn’t either. Nor, I’d bet, did Lor much like it anymore. Besides, it reminded me, too, of that day Ryodan had saved my life by shoving me on an elevator, sacrificing himself to fling my cabled car up to safety. I’d thanked him by slaughtering everyone in the kiddie subclub while he was out of commission. Done it to deliberately wreck his good name with the patrons he’d guaranteed safety within his walls.
I’d endangered his chessboard. No wonder he’d been so angry with me. I’d nearly cost him the information that gave him the ability to control the Nine’s world, affect the world beyond it.
God, it seemed so long ago! It was a vastly different time.
A vastly different me.
I’d believed myself large and in charge in my teens, and I’d been out of control, indulging my desires without once considering their potential consequences. Here, in Chester’s, I’d had a brutal epiphany at fourteen, come to understand my actions had ramifications. I’d glimpsed, for the first time, the boats I’d left capsized in my wake, occupants flailing in the water as I blasted across the whitecaps of Dublin’s stormy sea.
I stood a moment, letting memories wash over me, then shook them briskly off.
I was glad to see the club reopening. I was not, however, glad to see its erstwhile owner.
I narrowed my eyes as I realized I didn’t see its erstwhile owner.
Anywhere.
Where was he? I had a bone the size of a Patagotitan’s femur to pick with him.
My hands were so tightly fisted, the nails of my right hand had drawn blood. My gloved left was cold as ice and itching ferociously.
As I pushed forward through the open doors, I felt them fall in behind me, one on each side. I didn’t even need to turn around.
Two of the Nine had been standing behind the doors on either side, and I’d not sensed them through the foot-thick steel that, I was willing to bet, was coated with the mysterious alloy Ryodan likes to use.
I certainly felt them now, an exhilarating electrical charge sizzling on every inch of my skin. But there was something more, something disturbing. That thrilling current was laced with a thing I’d not noticed when I was younger: a slow, dark, blatantly sexual burn.
They radiated masculinity, saturated the air with a palpable, primal earthiness, a promise of inexhaustible carnality. Unlike the Fae’s brutal assault on the senses, there was no compulsion here. They simply exuded erotic invitation and promise, awakening in a woman’s body a profound, inescapable awareness that an eminently fuckable man was near that could deliver the kind of sex women dream of, mind-blowing, earth-shattering, all-consuming, go-down-in-history as the best ever. And all I could think was, Holy distorting diode, please tell me Ryodan doesn’t throw this charge off now, too.
Had something about them changed? Or was something about me different? Was this what Jo had always felt around Ryodan? What other women had incessantly experienced around the Nine? Had I just been too young, too sexually inexperienced, too full of myself to feel it back then?
Possible.
I turned to see who flanked me.
On my left was the one I call Shadow, as I’ve never learned his name. Scarred and massive, towering over me by a foot, whiskey eyes burning, he watched me in silence. To my right was, holy hell—
“Lor!” The rubber bands stringing my muscles too tight vanished and my face exploded in a hundred-Mega-watt smile.
I flung myself into the tall blond man’s arms and was rewarded with an enormous, crushing bear hug as the ever-up-for-a-party Viking swept me off my feet and spun me around.
When he finally put me back down, I was still grinning like an idiot until he flashed me a wolfish smile and said, “Honey, you been running my ass ragged for two goddamn eternal years. I’m so fucking glad the boss is back. Might have time to get laid again.”
My smile vanished. “Wait, what?”
“Laid. I might get laid.”
“I heard that part. That’s a given with you. I don’t need to hear it. Two years? Running your ass ragged?”
“Watching you. Making sure you stayed out of trouble.”
I strained every tendon in my right hand by fisting it too tightly. “You’ve. Been. Here. In Dublin. For two years? Right here?”
He nodded happily. “Thought I was gonna have to save you from those slimy bastards the other night but you took care of ’em just fine, honey.”
It wasn’t penetrating for some reason, probably because the thought was so odious I was barring it entrance to my mind. “Let me get this straight: for the past two years you’ve been here in Dublin. Like, within feet of me. Tailing me. Hiding from me.” I knew he could. The Nine can outsuper me anytime. It infuriates me.
His grin widened. “Uh-huh. Damn good, wasn’t I? You never caught on.”
My nostrils flared. “And why would you do such an offensive thing?”
His grin faded and he cut me a dark look. “Christ. Women. I don’t get you. I protect you, you get pissy. I don’t protect you, you get pissy. I open doors, I’m patronizing. I don’t open doors, I’m a caveman, which by the way, I am. What the bipolar fuck? Beginning to think you babes don’t have any clue what you want, or change your mind constantly just to dick with us.”
“I’m not getting pissy because you were protecting me—although I fail to see how you were, given you never once appeared or did anything to help me. I handled everything by myself and, while I’ll never argue with backup, the precise term for what you were doing is ‘snooping,’ equivalent to spying on me, against my will, undoubtedly on the orders of that interfering, domineering, dickhead. I needed a friend, Lor. Not a bloody invisible shield.”
“Boss don’t listen to nobody, honey. I told him it’d piss you off.”
I said icily, “But he didn’t care.” Don’t worry, he’d told me in the cemetery that night, I’ve taken precautions, you’ll be protected. He’d also never answered my question about whether all the Nine were leaving. He hadn’t lied. But lack of disclosure can be equally offensive.
“Oh, he cared, honey. He always cares about you. Just makes up his own mind and acts on it. Kinda like somebody else I know. You two deserve each other, two of a bloody I-know-better-than-everyone-else kind.”
“He and I are not, and will never, be peas in the Mega-pod. In his bloody dreams does he aspire so high. Where is he?” I demanded.
Deep, rich, baritone laughter rolled up from the dance floor behind me, down two levels. “Ah, Dani.”
And there it was, the voice I hadn’t heard in two long years, except in unsolicited, unwanted dreams. I shivered as it rolled through me. Same bloody charge, same instant, intense awareness of Ryodan as a shatteringly sexual man that I was getting off Lor and Shadow. Shit. I preferred that inexplicable shakiness I used to feel in my stomach as a teen to this painfully heightened awareness of the state of my own hormones and I. Was. Not. Shorting. Out. This. Time. I inhaled deep and full, slapped a hasty but formidable mental barrier around everything that had anything to do with sex. Boxed it, coated it with pure titanium. I was no longer a child, and wouldn’t act l
ike one.
“I’m right here. Kid.”
Kid. My vision hazed crimson with bloodlust and my mind sharpened to a painful degree of acuity.
Lor groaned, “Aw, hell, honey, don’t do it.”
I blinked into the slipstream, graceful as a gazelle, hungry as a lion. I know every inch of this club like the back of my hand.
My percentages had shifted. I was one measly percent glad he was back. Ninety-nine percent committed to kicking his insufferable ass.
How could you leave me when I needed to possess you, I hated you
I SLAMMED INTO RYODAN AT top speed, a grenade with the pin out, fists flying. I hit him so hard we hurtled into a marble column that shuddered satisfyingly from the impact. Then I grabbed him, hurling him away from it, and heaved him into a wall.
He wasn’t hitting me back, he wasn’t even resisting, and that pissed me off even more.
I launched myself at him again, peeled him off the wall and flung him across the room. He blasted into a pallet of lumber with such force wood exploded and went flying in all directions.
Dimly, I registered the stunned faces of the workers. Dimly, I registered that I was behaving alarmingly like I had in my youth.
I didn’t care.
“Kick up into the slipstream,” I snarled at him. He wasn’t even joining me. Just hanging down there in slow-mo Joe world where everyone could see him, letting me beat on him. It must have looked to them as if he was being hurled about the room by an irascible Tasmanian devil.
He stood, dusting off his crisp, well-tailored clothing, crossed his arms over his chest and cut me a hard, warning look. Good to see you, too, Dani.
He wasn’t even bleeding anywhere. What was I—innocuous?
I thudded down from the slipstream with thunder in my boots and snarled, “I didn’t say it was good to see you, and I don’t think it. You bastard. Kick. Up. Fight with me.”