“Gotcha, boss.”
A few minutes later I’m sitting with an ice pack on half my face, squinting around it to fill out Ryodan’s stupid application. I’m almost done and ready to sign when I get the strangest feeling in my hand, the one holding the page.
It’s my left hand, my sword hand, the one that turned black a little while ago, the night I stabbed a Hunter through the heart and killed it. Or rather, the night I thought I killed a Hunter. Truth is, I’m not actually sure I did but I’m not about to print a retraction. The public needs to believe in certain things. When I went back to take pictures of it for The Dani Daily to show folks it was gone, completely. Not a trace remained. Not a single drop of black blood anywhere. Barrons says they can’t be killed. After the incident I thought I was going to lose my hand. My veins turned black and my whole hand went cold as a block of ice. I had to wear a glove for days. Told the sidhe-sheep I got poison sumac. Rare around these parts but there used to be some. Don’t know if the Shades ate it all. Wonder if they did, if they got itchy bellies inside.
Now it’s all tingly and weird. I study it, wondering what might go wrong with me next. Maybe stabbing the Hunter did something to me. Maybe that’s why I stalled. Maybe there are worse things on the horizon.
That is so not me! Optimism is me. Tomorrow’s my day. You never know what grand adventures wait around the next corner!
“Kid, you going to sit there all day daydreaming, or sign the fucking thing.”
That’s when I see it. I’m so stunned my mouth opens, and hangs there catching flies for a minute.
I almost signed it!
He must have been sitting over there, laughing his butt off inside, congratulating himself.
My head snaps up. “So, what exactly does the spell in the border of this thing do?” I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen a lot of spells. Ro was a pro at them. Some really nasty ones. Now that I’m seeing it, I can’t believe I missed it. Cleverly tucked into the ornate black border are shimmering shapes and symbols, slithering, in constant motion. One of them is trying to crawl off the page and onto my lap.
I wad it up and throw it at him. “Nice try. Not.”
“Ah, well. It was possible you would sign. It was the simplest solution.”
He’s completely unperturbed. I wonder, does anything shake him up, make him lose his cool, get hot about something, scream and yell? I can’t see it. I think Ryodan glides through life in the same coolly amused mood all the time. “What would it have done to me if I’d signed it?” I ask. Curiosity. I have it in spades. Mom swore it was going to be the death of me. Something’s got to be. There are worse things.
“Some secrets—”
“Yeah, yeah, blah blah, participating and all that bunk. Got it.”
“Good.”
“Didn’t want to know anyway.”
“Yes you did. You can’t stand not knowing things.”
“So, what now?” We’re at an impasse, him and me. I suspect his “application” was really a contract. A binding contract, the kind that knits up your soul and tucks it in someone else’s pocket. I heard of them but never believed they were real. If anybody had a way to sew up a soul in a business deal, it would be Ryodan. Jericho Barrons is an animal. Pure lawless beast. Not so Ryodan. Dude’s a machine.
“Congratulations, kid,” he says. “You passed my first test. You may just get the job yet.”
I sigh. “This is going to be a long day, isn’t it? You serve lunch around here? And I’m going to need more ice.”
A door I didn’t even know was there in the glass wall of his office opens, revealing a glass elevator.
Chester’s is way bigger than I thought. As we ride the elevator down, I’m riveted by the view.
And a little worried.
That he’s letting me see so much means that whether I signed his stupid application or not, he thinks he has me buttoned up.
Ryodan’s glass office isn’t the only place he can watch things. It’s the tip of the iceberg, and, dude, I do mean iceberg, as in megatons of stuff hidden beneath the surface. The central club part of Chester’s—the interior half, a dozen levels the public sees—is barely a tenth of it. That main part where everybody hangs out and dances and makes deals with the devil is constructed inside a much larger structure. Ryodan and his dudes live behind the walls of that club in what’s beginning to look like a vast underground city, from where I am. All the walls are two-way glass. They can go to any level, by elevator or catwalk, and watch anything that’s happening at any time. Serious thought went into designing this place. There’s no way they built it all since the walls fell last Halloween. I wonder how long it’s all been here, beneath the polished, glitzy, glamorous Chester’s that used to exist, hot spot for movie stars and models and the überrich. I wonder if, like our abbey, their underground world has been beneath a changing exterior for millennia.
I couldn’t be more impressed. It’s so brilliant I’m jealous. This is snooping elevated to a whole new techno-nerd level of expertise.
“Like what you see, kid.”
I pick at my cuticles, pretending to be bored.
The elevator stops and the doors swish open. I figure we must be at least half a mile beneath Dublin.
First thing that hits me is the cold. I pull my coat tighter but it doesn’t do a lot of good. Love the look of leather. Hate the insulation of it.