“I’m not sure you could be any more full of yourself.”
I cut him a smug look. “I’m willing to try.”
Ryodan laughs. The instant he does, I flash back to what I saw on level four the other night. He was laughing then, too. The look on the woman’s face and the noise she was making when he did that thing he was doing— Gah! Old dude! Gross! What’s wrong with me?
He’s looking at me hard.
It makes me want to blink out of existence.
Ryodan looks at people different than anybody else I know. Like he has X-ray vision or something and knows exactly what’s happening inside people’s skulls.
“No mystery there, kid. If you live long enough, you do know what they’re thinking,” he says. “Humans are predictable, cut from patterns. Few evolve beyond them.”
Huh? He did not just answer my thought. No fecking way.
“I know your secret, Dani.”
“Got no secrets.”
“Despite all the swaggering you do, you don’t want anybody to see you. Not really see you. Invisa-girl. That’s who you want to be. I wonder why.”
I flip him off with both hands and freeze-frame with everything I’ve got.
It works this time! Fecking-A, it’s good to be me! Wind in my hair! Mega on the move! Leaps tall buildings in a single bound!
Well, maybe that last part’s a little exaggeration, but still …
Zoooooooom! I freeze-frame through the streets of Dublin. When I slam into the next wall, it knocks me out cold.
TWO
“Ice ice baby”
Since I sleep like the dead, I come to hard. It doesn’t matter whether I’ve fallen asleep or been knocked out. I’m always broody at first because I can’t shake off slumber as fast as most folks. My dreams get tangled up with the real world and it takes a while for them to melt away, like icicles dripping off gutters in the morning sun.
Not this time.
I come up from unconsciousness like a live wire: flat on my back one second, the next on all fours, then I’ve got my sword at Ryodan’s throat.
He knocks it away. It flies out of my hand and crashes into the wall of his office.
I lunge after it and crash into the wall myself, but who cares? My sword’s in my hand again. I spine up to the wall, blade straight out in front of me, never taking my eyes off him, waiting for him to try to take it from me again. It’s going through his heart if he does.
“We can do this all day if you like,” he says.
“You knocked me out,” I say through clenched teeth. I’m spitting mad, my face is throbbing and my teeth hurt. It’s a wonder I have any left.
“Correction. I got in your way. You knocked yourself out. I told you to watch where you’re going.”
“You’re faster than me. That means you’re supposed to yield right of way.”
“Like we’re cars. Cute. I don’t yield. Ever.” He hooks a foot around a chair and kicks it toward me. “Sit.”
“Feck you.”
“I’m stronger than you, faster than you, and lack the human emotion that drives you. That makes me your worst nightmare. Sit. Or I’ll make you sit.”
“I can think of a couple worse,” I mutter.
“You want to play games. I don’t think you’ll like mine.”
I think it over. I’m worried because of earlier, when I stalled. What if it happens again and he figures it out? I’m double worried because he knocked me out cold, mid freeze-frame. It’s obvious I can’t escape if he doesn’t want to let me go. I’m in Chester’s, on his turf, with all his men in the vicinity. Even if Barrons is around, he’s not going to help me. I’m pretty sure TP has him hating me now.
I take stock of the room. I’ve never been in his office before. LED screens serve as cove moldings, lining the entire perimeter of the ceiling, flashing from one zone to the next. From here Ryodan watches everything. I’m in the guts of his club.
“How’d I get here?” There’s one possible answer. I’m just trying to buy more time to orient myself. Gingerly I touch my nose, feel the tip. It’s alarmingly bulbous and squishy.
“I carried you.”
It makes me so mad I almost can’t breathe. He knocked me out, picked me up like a sack of potatoes, toted me through the streets of Dublin and hauled me through the middle of all the skeevy folks and fairies that hang at Chester’s, probably with everybody staring at me and smirking. I haven’t been helpless for a long time.
Fact: he could do it again if he felt like it. Over and over. This dude standing in front of me could chain me down worse than anything my mom or Ro ever did to me.
I decide the wisest thing is to humor him until he lets me leave. Then I’ll eat everything I can get my hands on, test myself, make sure I’m working right, hole up somewhere safe and lie low for a while. I’ll spend my time in hiding, working on getting faster and stronger, so I never have to put up with a moment like this again. I thought these kinds of days were gone for good.
I sit.
He doesn’t look all smug like I would have. He gives me … like a look of approval or something.
“Don’t need your approval,” I say irritably. “Don’t need anybody’s.”
“Stay that way.”
I scowl at him. I don’t get Ryodan at all. “Why am I here? Why’d you bring me to Chester’s? Get to the point. I got stuff to do. Busy schedule, you know. I’m in demand.”