Again, I gape. That’s me, the flapping jaw this morning.
I didn’t expect this. Not from him.
He drops his head forward in a gesture of sorrow and lets it hang a moment. Then he inclines it slowly in acceptance and respect, and I see the tension in Jo’s body ease a little when he acknowledges her as a valued loss.
I hold my breath, waiting for the bastard to nod to the next woman. The waitresses are all staring hungrily up, bristling with excitement that the boss’s bed is once again open and their lives just got so much more thrilling. Some other lucky woman is about to get her world rocked and lord it over all the other waitresses until she, too, is rejected. She won’t care. It’s a status symbol. Like the disgusting Unseelie roaches they invite beneath their skin as fat burners.
Ryodan turns from the railing and is abruptly walking directly for me.
There goes my jaw again. I might need to muzzle myself to keep it in place this morning.
I search his face, trying to read it.
“Don’t mine for gold where there is none, Mac.”
“Stay out of my head.”
“Wouldn’t be so easy to get in there if it wasn’t so empty.”
“Jackass.” I scowl at his back as he vanishes down the hall.
I’m heading up the stairs after breakfast when Barrons opens the door to Ryodan’s office and inclines his head, motioning me in. I didn’t know he was back. I suck in a breath. I wonder if we can evade Ryodan’s radar and slip off to the bookstore. For heaven’s sake, I’d take fifteen minutes. Anything would help. Part of his neck is now tattooed and I wonder what he’s been up to while I was sleeping.
A good-looking kid stands inside. Tall, lean, and lanky, with thick dark hair that hasn’t been cut in a while and beautiful aqua eyes behind glasses, I put him at about eighteen to twenty. He has a sort of brainy Canterbury scholar look, even in jeans and a blue tee-shirt. He gives me an appraising once-over as I step inside, then cocks his head as if processing some anomaly.
“Tell her what you told us,” Ryodan says to the kid, closing the door on my ghoulish procession. I don’t tell him it’s pointless. He’ll figure it out soon enough.
The kid says to me, “Who are you? And why do you smell so bad? Don’t you have showers in this place? I can hook one up for you.”
I have to unclench my jaw to answer. “I’m Mac. Who are you?”
The kid whistles soft and low. “Ah, so you’re the one who broke her heart.”
I don’t ask her-who. I don’t want to go there.
The kid goes there anyway. “Dani calls out your name when she sleeps. A lot. Sometimes Alina.”
Ryodan seems to suddenly expand and saturate the air like Barrons does. “You won’t be hearing it again. Dani sleeps at Chester’s now.”
I say nothing, keep my mask on.
“She doesn’t sleep anywhere lately, old dude. Thought we established that last time you came calling. And the first time. And the twentieth time.”
“Kid, you want to be careful around me.”
“Ditto,” the kid says mildly. “Old dude.”
“You haven’t seen her either?” I ask hastily, trying to stave off a completely unmatched battle.
“Nope,” the kid replies. “But she’s disappeared before, like I told the boss man here. And his lackeys. And his lackeys’ lackeys. I hate it when she does this.”
I almost smile. He calls Ryodan’s men lackeys. I’d like him for that alone.
Unseelie begin sifting into the office since they can’t use the door. The room doesn’t hold many, considering how wide a berth they give all three males. Not just Ryodan and Barrons, who they always steer clear of by ten feet or more, but also the boy that must be Dancer if he’s heard Dani talk in her sleep. I grow more aggravated by the moment as they cozy up to my backside. Dancer? Really? They don’t bother a teenage kid?
Barrons and Ryodan are eyeing him, too, no doubt wondering the same thing.
Dancer shrugs. “Guess they don’t like my soap. They certainly like something about you. And dude, do they stink. So, what gives with this?” he asks me. “Why do they like you so much?”
“I find that fascinating myself,” Ryodan says. “Answer the kid.”
Barrons gives him a look. “Tell her what you just told us,” he says to Dancer.
Dancer pushes his glasses up on his nose, managing to look adorably brainy and hot in a collegiate hunk way. I get what Dani sees in him. He’s pretty much perfect for her. If only he had a few superhero parts. Dani is going to be hell on a man’s self-esteem when she grows up, and while Dancer doesn’t seem to suffer in that department, in this world caring about a mere human is a liability.
“After we defeated the Hoar Frost King, I couldn’t let it rest. Something was bothering me. I get obsessive like that when facts don’t gel, or do so in a way that seems to imply impending catastrophe. Then I have to—”
Ryodan says, “Not one fucking ounce of interest in your personal problems.”
“Christ, you’re a cranky bloke,” he says to Ryodan. To me, he says, “Each of the Unseelie has a favorite food. The Unseelie that was icing Dublin and its inhabitants was devouring a specific frequency.”
Okay, that’s weird. “Why would an Unseelie feed off a sound?”
“Dani and I speculate it was trying to complete itself. That it was aware it was derived from an imperfect Song of Making and was attempting to obtain the correct elements to evolve into something else.”