“What price?” Sean says.
“I said, precisely, Katarina, that I’d had difficulty staffing lately, my servers kept dying, and your Sean was good enough to fill in. I also told you he was free to go. Both were true. From the first. When he decided to thieve on my turf, I fired him.”
His tone makes it clear how lucky she is that he didn’t kill him. I wonder why he didn’t kill him. No one takes from Ryodan and survives … unless the cool-eyed manipulator has a long-term goal that makes him willing to suffer the poor fool’s existence as Barrons does the princes.
“You pigs talk and talk and say nothing of interest to us. Too many of you here. Not enough of us. Or slaves,” Rath says. “We demand more Unseelie at this table.”
“Find another prince and we might take it under advisement,” Ryodan says dryly. Cruce is locked down and the Crimson Hag has Christian. In other words, never going to happen.
R’jan says nothing. If any of the Seelie Princes remain, he wants no competition for the Fae throne.
Sean says, “Why is Katarina here?”
I say, “As headmistress of the sidhe-seers, she’s the front line of human defense and protection.” I don’t add: and she sits on Cruce and keeps watch so he doesn’t get out. I really hope she hasn’t confided that to him. They say every person with whom you share a secret will inevitably share it with at least one more, that it grows in exponential leaps and bounds until the entire world knows what you wish it didn’t.
Sean assesses me. “Why are you here?”
Ryodan replies, “She has her uses. Any more fucking questions, take them up with Barrons. You don’t like who sits at this table, figure out how to get rid of them. But be careful, it’s not hard to figure out how to get rid of you. Human.”
Kat snaps, “You will leave him alone.”
I glance at her but she’s trying to send a silent message with her eyes to Sean. Unfortunately, he’s now staring too fiercely at Ryodan to notice.
She exhales gustily and I echo it.
The males at this table are ruthless. The only way Sean can hope to compete in business with them is to be equally ruthless. As the princes adopted a degree of civility to optimize their survival, Sean will have to adopt a degree of barbarism to optimize his.
Leaving me to wonder the same thing I know Kat’s thinking: how much of the man she loves will remain?
6
“I’m going be that n-n-nail in your coffin”
JADA
The woman moves through dark streets, thick with fog blown off the sea. Dusk cloaks her in mist and shadow as if she’s a secret the night has sworn an oath to protect. Moonlight illuminates wet cobblestones and rain-streaked windows but glances off her as if deflected by an invisible cloak.
Like the Shades, she’s a smudge in the darkness.
Born of long and unforgettable habit, she avoids the pale yellow pools of streetlamps.
Better to see than be seen.
Being heard is another thing. Sound skitters and reverberates, and unless one is a highly skilled hunter, it’s difficult to secure the target in one’s crosshairs by noise alone.
She can do it. She’s as infamous as the legendary Queen’s Huntsman. She’s never missed her mark.
Her enemy isn’t so skilled. The one she seeks tonight is sloppy, blinded by gluttonous appetite, but to lure it she’s not enough. She needs an attractive, sexually viable man.
Stiletto heels that gleam silver kick gusts of fog into lacy, sharp-edged patterns as she strides through Temple Bar toward Chester’s nightclub, where she will select her bait. She’s dressed to kill, weapons concealed: gun strapped to her thigh, knives flush to her skin, a sexy chain of a belt that distracts the male eye as it swings at her hips, a lethal garrote. The ricochet of her shoes on pavement is loud, deliberate. She knows she’s difficult to see and at the moment desires to be accessible.
Immediacy is efficiency.
Contempt for death is her way of life.
Nothing touches her.
To be touched is weakness.
As she turns down an alley, mist swirls back from long, bare, lightly oiled legs, the edgy hem and neckline of a black spandex dress, the supple body of a dancer, long hair pulled back in a high ponytail, the serene face of a stone-cold killer, before enveloping her again.
She’s beautiful.
It’s a weapon.
She has suffered the worst the world has to offer.
And thrived.
She’s compiled a list of names.
And will hunt them one by one.
When at last the fog parts upon the face of her enemy, she will have no mercy.
This world had none for her.
7
“This night could almost kill you”
LOR
“Who am I?” the blonde kneeling between my legs demands.
I need to come so fucking bad my teeth hurt.
I know the answer she wants. She wants me to call her “mistress.” Like she’s the Dom. She’s already tried to get me to say it twice, sneaking it in like she thinks I won’t notice because of the mind-blowing stuff she’s been doing with her lips and tongue and that flawlessly executed glide of teeth so few women ever master when giving head.
She’s wasting her time. It’s never going to happen. There isn’t a submissive bone in my body. I’m alpha to the motherfucking core.
I pull her head from my groin and grin down at her. Hot, horny blondes are a dime a dozen at Chester’s. Riots may have sacked Dublin last Halloween and a killer freeze might have shut the city down for a while, but it’s rebounding fast. People have been flooding in, resettling both sides of the River Liffey, drawn by the thaw, restored power, and supplies, but most of all by the endless parade of sexually insatiable Fae that pack the bars and dance floors of 939 Rêvemal Street every night of the week, hunting human lovers. The hottest, most deadly nightclub in Dublin is bigger, better, and badder than ever: Chester’s is Sin Central—if you want it, we got it.