I hate always being right, I mutter in my head. Talking takes breath and breathing takes gas I don’t have.
I Joe-walk out of the store and nearly have a fecking heart attack when I see the Unseelie prince standing there, half in the shadows. The half-out part of him is splashed with moonlight, but the moon doesn’t glow the same way it used to before the Fae came. It’s rarely the same color from night to night. Tonight it has a silvery purple luminosity, making half of him a black silhouette, the other half lavender-metallic. He’s tattooed and beautiful and eerie and exotic, and gets my heart thumping in a way that has nothing to do with fear.
My sword flashes up. My blade is long and alabaster. I lock my elbow so my arm doesn’t wobble.
“Easy, lass.”
“Fecking stop sneaking up on me like that!” How can I not hear him? Him and Ryodan can both get the jump on me. It makes me crazy. I have superhearing. My hearing is so good that I can hear air displacement when other people move, for feck’s sake. Nobody sneaks up on me. Both of them managed to do it that night on the water tower, and Christian just did it again. Got within five feet of me without me even knowing it. “Sword. Lower.”
“Why should I do that?” He’s turning erotic, like the other UPs. My used-to-be best friend Mac calls them death-by-sex Fae because they can kill with sex. And that’s the best-case scenario. Worst case? They turn you Pri-ya like they did Mac. They leave you alive, totally addicted to sex, insatiable and out of your mind. The other UPs corralled me once, kept me between them, and did things to me I don’t like to think about. I don’t want sex to be that way. Like you’re some kind of helpless animal. I’ve had helpless animal up to my eyebrows already in my life. What Christian is throwing off isn’t a tenth of what the other UPs have, but it’s bad.
“I’ll never hurt you, lass.”
“Says the Unseelie prince.” But I lower my sword, prop it against my leg. I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to hold it up anyway.
The muscles in his face ripple, like they’re competing to shape an expression, and rage is looking like the victor, and I get the feeling calling him an Unseelie prince might just have been a tiny error of judgment on my part. Been making a few of those lately.
“Say my name, lass.”
I cover my ears and look at him like what the feck? His voice just came out as big as a house.
“Say my fucking name!” Thunder rolls in the sky. I wrap my arms around my head to mute his voice. Times like this, I hate my superhearing. I look up. There’s no storm moving in. It’s him. Influencing the weather, just like Fae royalty. I look back down. A veneer of ice coats the sidewalk around him, a shimmer of crystals dusts his black boots and frosts halfway up his jeans.
“Christian,” I say.
He inhales sharp, like something hurts in him somewhere just from me saying his name, and closes his eyes. His face ripples, goes smooth like Silly Putty just out of the egg then ripples again. I wonder if I touched it, I could mold it into shape, maybe stamp some funnies from the comic section of the newspaper on it. Cracking myself up again!
“Say it again, lass.”
If it keeps him from turning all UP on me, fine. “Christian. Christian. Christian.”
He smiles faintly. I think. Feck if I can figure out what’s going on with his face. No more than I can figure out how he keeps sneaking up—
“Holy flour chunks!” It dawns on me. “You can sift! You really are turning total UP. Like with all the superpowers. Dude! What else are you getting?”
If it was a smile, it just disappeared. He doesn’t look as happy as I’d be if I was getting all that juice. I bet his fuel tank doesn’t run out of gas. I’m so jealous I could spit. But that, too, would require energy.
He moves forward, steps from the shadows, and I see he’s carrying a box under his arm.
“I’m going to kill Ryodan,” he says.
I unwrap my arms from around my head. We’re doing normal conversational tones again. I tuck the sword beneath my coat.
“Good luck with that. You figure out how to, you let me know, okay?”
“Here, take this.” He shoves the box at me.
I fumble for it, clumsy from hunger. It’s slippery with a coating of ice. I catch it as it hits the ground. Sloppy! I recognize the color and shape now that it’s in my hands, and light up like a Christmas tree. “Christian!” I beam. I’ll say his name however many times he wants. I’ll crow it from the top of water towers. What the feck, I’ll compose a jaunty ditty for him and sing it as I whiz around Dublin!
He just handed me a whole box of Snickers! I rip open a wrapper, break the half-frozen bar in half and cram it in my mouth sideways.
When I toss my hair out of my face and look up to thank him around a mouthful, he’s gone.
Three candy bars later what just happened sinks in.
I sit on the curb, stow the candy bars away in my pockets and pack, and say, “Aw, bugger.”
Christian knew how bad I needed food. He watches me. I wonder why. I wonder how often. I wonder if he’s out there right now, looking at me from somewhere and I don’t even know it. Dude, I got an Unseelie prince spying on me. Great.
Tank full again, I swing by Dublin Castle. Three days was a long time to be out of commission. I got a job to do. A beat to walk. A superhero’s work is never done. Between patrolling my city, printing and distributing the Daily, slaying Unseelie, keeping an eye on Jo and the other sidhe-seers—and now working for Ryodan all night every night—there aren’t going to be enough hours in the day!
“Where the bloody hell have you been?” Inspector Jayne says the instant he sees me. “I’ve got Unseelie spilling out of every cage. We agreed that you would come by three times a week and slay them with the sword—and that’s barely enough as it is. I haven’t seen you in five days! Five bloody days! If you won’t take your responsibilities seriously, my men will relieve you of that weapon.”
He stares at the pucker of leather, where my sword’s tucked beneath a long coat that brushes the laces of my high-top sneakers. It’s May and almost too warm to be wearing my favorite black leather. Soon I’m going to have to sling the sword over my back and deal with everybody staring at it, coveting it. At least now lots of folks don’t know I have it. Then again my rep is starting to precede me. Jo said I was a legend!