“How does it kill?” I’m obsessed with the many ways the Fae dole out death. I make meticulous notes in my journal on the various castes and their methods of execution.
“Death is not its goal.”
“What is?”
“It seeks the Faces of Humanity, beautiful girl. Got one to spare?”
I said nothing. I had no desire to know more. Chester’s was a Fae safety zone. On my last visit to the club, it was made abundantly clear to me that if I killed anything on the premises, I would be killed. Since Ryodan and his men already wanted me dead, tonight probably wasn’t the best night to test my luck. If I learned more about it, or the killing weight of my spear in my shoulder holster grew any heavier, I might do something rash.
“Some things can’t be killed that easy.”
I glanced, startled, at the dreamy-eyed guy. He was looking at my hand inside my coat. I hadn’t even realized I’d reached for it.
“It’s Fae, right?” I said.
“Mostly.”
“So, how can it be killed?”
“Does it need to be killed?”
“You’d stick up for it?”
“You’d stick a spear in it?”
I raised a brow. Apparently, a prerequisite for working at Chester’s was that you had to like the Fae and be willing to put up with their unique appetites.
“Haven’t seen you in a while.” He changed the subject smoothly.
“Haven’t been around to be seen,” I said coolly.
“Almost weren’t just now.”
“Funny guy, aren’t you?”
“Some think so. How you been?”
“Good. You?”
“All in a day’s work.”
I smiled faintly. Barrons had nothing on the dreamy-eyed guy’s evasive answers.
“Gone light again, beautiful girl.”
“In the mood for a change.”
“More than the hair.”
“Suppose.”
“Looks good on you.”
“Feels good.”
“May not be useful. Times like these. Where you been?” He tossed a glass into the air and I watched it tumble lazily, end over end.
“In the Silvers, walking around the White Mansion, watching the concubine and the Unseelie King have sex. But I spend most of my days trying to figure out how to corner and control the Sinsar Dubh.”
The name of the Unseelie King’s Book seemed to hiss sibilantly through the air, and I felt a breeze as every Unseelie head in the club turned toward me in unison.
For a split second the entire club was silent, frozen.
Then sound and motion resumed with the tinkle of crystal as the wineglass the dreamy-eyed guy had been tossing hit the floor and shattered.
Three stools down, the tall, gaunt thing made a choking sound and his deck of cards sprayed the air, raining down on the counter, my lap, the floor.
Ha, I thought, got you, dreamy-eyes. He was a player in all this. But who was he and which team was he playing for?
“So, who are you really, dreamy-eyed guy? And why do you keep popping up?”
“Is that how you see me? In another life, would you take me to the prom? Home to meet the parents? Kiss me good night on the stoop?”
“I said, ‘Stay close,’ ” Barrons growled behind me. “And don’t talk about the bloody Book in this bloody place. Move your ass, Ms. Lane, now.” He took my arm and pulled me from the stool.
Cards spilled from my lap as I stood up. One had slipped inside the fur collar of my coat. I removed it and began to toss it away but at the last moment stopped and looked at it.
The fear dorcha had been shuffling a tarot deck. The card I held was framed in crimson and black. In the center, a Hunter flew over a city at night. The coast was a dark border for the silver sheen of the ocean in the distance. On the Hunter’s back, between great, dark flapping wings, was a woman with a soft tousle of curls blowing around her face. Between strands of hair, I could see her mouth. She was laughing.
It was the scene from my dream the other night. How could I be holding a tarot card with one of my dreams on it?
What was on the rest of the cards?
I glanced down at the floor. Near my feet was the Five of Pentacles. A shadowy woman stood on a sidewalk, peering through the window of a pub, watching a blond woman inside who was sitting at a booth, laughing with her friends. Me watching Alina.
On Strength, a woman sat cross-legged in a church, naked, staring at the altar as if praying for absolution. Me after the rape.
The Five of Cups showed a woman who looked startlingly like Fiona, standing in BB&B, crying. In the background I could see—I bent and peered closer—a pair of my high heels? And my iPod!
On the Sun were two young women sprawled in bikinis—one lime green, the other hot pink—soaking up the rays.
There was the Death card, a hooded grim reaper, scythe in hand, standing over a bloody body, female again. Me and Mallucé.
There was one with an empty baby carriage abandoned near a pile of clothing and jewelry. One of those parchment-like husks the Shades left behind protruded from the carriage.
I ran my hands through my hair, pushing it back as I stared down.
“Prophecies, beautiful girl. Come in all shapes and sizes.”
I glanced up at the dreamy-eyed guy, but he was no longer there. I looked to my right. Mr. Tall, Pin-striped, and Gaunt was also gone.
On the bar, beside a freshly filled shot and a Guinness, another tarot card had been placed with care, facedown, black-and-silver side up.
“Now or never, Ms. Lane. I don’t have all night.”
I tossed back the shot and chased it, then picked up the card and slipped it into my pocket for later.
Barrons steered me to a chrome staircase that was guarded at the bottom by the same two men that had escorted me to the top floor to see Ryodan the last time I was here. They were enormous, dressed in black pants and T-shirts, with heavily muscled bodies and dozens of scars on their hands and arms. Both carried snub-nosed automatics. Both had faces that drew the eye but, the moment you saw them, made you want to look away.
As we approached, they swung their weapons toward me.
“What the fuck is she doing here?”
“Get over it, Lor,” Barrons said. “When I say jump, you say how high.”
The one that wasn’t Lor laughed, and Lor slammed him in the gut with the butt of his gun. It was like hitting steel. The guy didn’t even flinch.