Iced

Twenty-Five

“What are you doing.”

“Why do you care?” I got belligerence stuck in my craw and I don’t even know why. Sometimes just standing next to Ryodan makes me feel that way.

“Because if there’s no point in what you’re doing, you’re wasting my time.”

“Dude, got eyes? I’m collecting evidence.” Finally! I been trying to get out for a second look at the exploded scenes for just about fecking ever but things keep coming up, like me almost getting killed. Oh, and me almost getting killed again. There’s never a dull moment in the Mega-verse. The Ice Monster would freak me out a lot more if my world hadn’t been jam-packed with monsters of all kinds since pretty much my birth: big, small, human, not.

“In Ziploc bags.”

“I think they’re Glad.”

“They look impartial to me.”

I start to snicker then stop myself. This is Ryodan. I hate Ryodan. Lying deceitful dickhead. Tricking folks into thinking he’s really nice so I look stupid. “Think my sword’s unfrozen yet?”

“No.”

I stoop and scoop. I know a thing or two about myself. I see a lot. But sometimes there are small things going on that even I miss. Ergo my impartial ziplocks. I’ll fill one at each scene. Go deep into the frigid center of the exploded debris, scoop up handfuls of icy detritus, stuff it in, and label it all neat and tidy-like. Later, me and Dancer will sift through the ziplock bags and look for clues. I pull a Sharpie from my pocket and write on the white strip “Warehouse, North Dublin.” Then I tuck it carefully away in a backpack slung over my shoulder. Collecting my ziplocks makes perfect sense to me.

“It doesn’t make sense. You could examine the detritus thoroughly right here at the scene.”

“Dude, do I ask you to explain yourself?”

“Kid, are you ever not prickly.”

I root around in the rubble, making sure I got some of everything, keeping my back to him because sometimes looking at him is more than I can stand. “Sure. Like, when I’m not around a prick. We investigating or having a conversation all personal-like? ’Cause I got business to take care of today and you’re wasting my time. It’s going to be dark soon.”

“Observations.”

“I got two. The scene blew to smither-fecking-reens and everything’s still cold.”

“Give me something I can use.”

“I wish I could, boss, but this is … well, this is a mess.” I rock back on my heels, shove hair out of my face and look up at him. The sun’s nearly level with the horizon, right behind his head, making this weird halo effect around his face — as if! I’m surprised he doesn’t smell like brimstone. He probably has a red pitchfork and hides horns under his hair. Making it weirder, the sun’s got a sparkly gold tint to it — thank you fairies for changing everything in our world — and he looks — oh, who cares how he looks? Why am I even noticing?

I look away, focusing on my investigation. We got a Fae that appears out of a slit and arrives with a lot of fog. It ices everything in its path then disappears back into another slit. Sometime after that the scene explodes. But why? That’s the big question. Why is it icing what it ices, and why does the scene explode afterward? And why does it take varying amounts of time for the different places to explode?

I feel the ground with my palm. It’s freezing. There’s a chill that hasn’t dissipated. I wonder if it ever will. Might be kind of cool if it didn’t. You could clear the ground, build a house and never need air-conditioning. It’d suck in the winter, though.

I survey the scene. Where the warehouse used to be are piles of crumbled bricks and mortar and splintered framing, with twisted girders from steel racking everywhere, some bent, some poking straight up at the sky. Chunks of Unseelie flesh are plastered to pretty much every—

I smack myself in the forehead. “Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods, they’re not moving!” I exclaim.

There’s a choking noise over my head somewhere. “Etruscan snoods?”

I glow quietly inside. Some accomplishments mean more than others. I am officially the Shit. Now and forever. “Dude, watch your question marks. I just pried one out of you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Admit it, you lost your eternal fecking composure.”

“You have an obsession with a delusion about how I end my sentences. What the fuck are Etruscan snoods?”

“Dunno. It’s just another of Robin’s sayings. Like, ‘Holy strawberries, Batman, we’re in a jam!’ ”

“Strawberries.”

“Or, ‘Holy Kleenex, Batman, it was right under our nose and we blew it!’ ”

There’s another choking noise above my head. I could go on for hours.

“Check out this one, it’s one of my faves! ‘Holey rusted metal, Batman! The ground. It’s all metal. It’s full of holes. You know, holey.’ ” I snicker. Gotta love the dudes that wrote Batman. They had to sit around cracking themselves up all the time. “Or, ‘Holy crystal ball, Batman, how did you see that coming?’ ” I look up at him.

He’s staring at me like I have three heads.

The truth dawns on me. “Holy prostrate rugs, you lied! You’ve never even read Batman, have you? Like not one single issue. You never even watched an episode on TV! That was, like, your only redeeming quality and it wasn’t even true. You been pretending we’re superhero partners and you don’t even know the first thing about Robin!” No wonder Ryodan’s no fun to hang with. I’m so disgusted I can’t stand it!

I skirt my irritation and get back to the important stuff. “The Unseelie parts are motionless. Dead as the humans. Look at them. Unseelie don’t die. Nothing but my sword and Mac’s spear kill them that dead. Unseelie are immortal. You can slice and dice them with human weapons, and the pieces will flop around forever. These ain’t flopping. This thing is killing them dead. And we never even noticed.” Preconceptions. They trip you up every time. When something explodes, you expect to see dead things. Maybe there’s something to my idea it’s after folks’ life force. Kind of like the Shades, sucking them empty but instead of leaving husks, it leaves the whole shell of their bodies iced. “And notice something else: none of the pieces, human or Unseelie, are rotting. Why is that?”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I know, right?”

“And you didn’t notice this before.”

I glare at him. “You didn’t either. And I tried to recheck scenes twice but you made me sit in your office while you did paperwork. The third time I was thinking about rechecking a scene, I stumbled on a fresh one and almost got exploded myself.” I stand up and walk away to get a good bird’s-eye view of the destruction. I pull out the new phone I grabbed to replace the one I smashed and snap a couple pictures. “So,” I say crossly, “where to next?”

As we head for the church where I almost died, I realize Ryodan’s been keeping me so busy asking the questions he wants answered that I never get around to asking any questions I want answered. “So, what happened to me when I got frozen that night? When I came to, Dancer was there with you and Christian. Talk about unexpected. How’d Dancer get there? Who saved me?”

“I got you out of the church or you would have died right there on the floor.”

“You’re the one who took me into the church to begin with and didn’t warn me what would happen if I touched something. You’re why I almost died, dude. So, who saved me?”

“I had to take you out slow or you would have had afterdrop.”

“Yeah, but did Dancer tell you about afterdrop? ’Cause that sounds like something he would know.”

“Why did you laugh right before you lost consciousness.”

“Death’s an adventure. I lived big. Rigor mortis makes your face stick. So, who knew how to thaw me?”

“Death’s an insult.”

“At least an affront,” I agree. “Think my sword’s unfrozen yet? Maybe we should go check.”

“You’re too young to laugh when you’re dying. And no. I don’t think your sword is unfrozen. Focus.”

“Ain’t too young for nothing.”

“In some societies that would be true. Different places. Different times. You’d be old enough to be a wife and mother.”

“That’s a horrible thought. So, Dancer saved me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“That’s how I know. Maybe we could use hair dryers to melt the ice around my sword.”

“You need to get rid of him. He’s a liability. Forget about the fucking sword. I’m taking care of it.”

I whirl on him, fists at my waist. “He’s an asset! He’s my best friend! You don’t know nothing about Dancer!”

“ ‘Nothing’ is the key word there. Because that’s what he is. Nothing. He’s just human.”

“Bull-crikey, Dancer’s the Shit!”

“He wears glasses. I bet that works out real well for him in battle. No, wait, he doesn’t battle. Never will. Too fragile. One poke with a sharp stick and his guts would spill all over the street. Sayonara, human.”

“His guts aren’t spilling anywhere. He’s supersmart and … and … and he’s super, supersmart—”

“What the fuck kind of name is Dancer, anyway.”

“—and he can build anything. He made my Shade-grenades and he made me this net of lights that charges just off me moving, and it totally outperforms the MacHalo! Besides, all Batman had was a cool costume and the best toys and the smartest ideas, and everybody knows he’s the greatest superhero of all time! Besides, I’m just human, too.”

All the sudden Ryodan’s standing one inch away from me, hand under my chin, holding my face up to his. “You’ll never be just anything. A tsunami can never be ‘just’ a wave.”

“Get off my chin.”

“I like that about you. Waves are banal. Tsunamis reshape the Earth. Under the right circumstances, even entire civilizations.”

I blink.

“You’re going to be one hell of a woman one day, Dani.”

I never knew my jaw was flexible enough to hit the pavement. My arms aren’t even long enough to pick it back up. Catch flies in it, my butt, you could drive a truck in my mouth right now. Did Ryodan just, like, compliment me? Has hell frozen over? Are birds flying backward? It makes me so uncomfortable in my own skin, I feel like skinning myself. A three-quarter moon is behind his head, and his face is all shadows. “Fecking-A, dude, I know that. Everybody knows that. I’m the Mega. As in, short for ‘Alpha and O.’ ” I shrug him off me and push past him.

He laughs. “You might have to fight somebody else for that title.”

“Get a move on,” I say crossly. I’m so behind on work I can’t stand it. “You only got me for a limited time tonight. I need to get a Daily out. Folks need to know about the Iceman.” I lock down my grid and slip into freeze-frame.

“You’re going to get the boy killed one day, Dani,” Ryodan says behind me.

“Rot in purgatory, dude. Batman never dies. Dancer won’t either.”

When we arrive at the church, I roll my eyes.

Five Seelie are standing in front of the demolished cathedral, amid rubble, shredded hymn books with pages everywhere like they rained down from heaven, chunks of organ, and miscellaneous debris. “Think my sword’s unfrozen yet?” I say, making a fist around the empty space where my sword hilt should be. I see sifting Fae, and all I can think of is how I don’t have my sword. ’Course, I have that thought pretty much every other second anyway.

“Kid, you’re a broken record.”

“Well, it might be.”

The Seelie are talking, and although they know we’re here, they completely ignore us. I ignore them, too. Despite them being so beautiful I have to pry my eyeballs off their faces. I’m not making the same mistake I made with V’lane. Getting sucked in by how gorgeous they are. Thinking they’re any different than the Unseelie. Just because they’re gold and velvet and iridescent-eyed and hunky. Christian’s hunky too. He keeps dead women by his bed.

I’m feeling major juice coming from at least one of them but they’re muting it. That worries me. Fae don’t mute themselves unless they’re up to no good, trying to pretend to be something they’re not to make us less worried when we should be really, really worried. “Fecking Fae. I wish they’d all just go away.”

“Then what would we do for excitement.”

I snicker. He’s got a point. I pull out my phone and snap a picture of the scene, planning to get my ziplock out next, skirt the fairies and go to work.

All the sudden there’s a disturbance in the air in front of me. It takes a sec for the dust to settle in my brain. One of the Fae just tried to sift over to me to do who-knows-what. Ryodan beat it to its destination and they collided. The Fae looks like a pissed cat, eyes narrowed, spine twitching, iridescent eyes flashing fire. I’ve seen this one in Chester’s. He has a taste for human women and the stupid sheep are nuts about him, with his tight leather pants and open shirts and sleek golden hair and skin.

Ryodan’s standing between it and me, legs spread, arms folded. He’s a mountain. Nothing’s getting past him that he doesn’t want past him. It pisses me off I need him there. With my sword, no Fae would dare bum-rush me! I’m used to more respect than this. This bites.

The Fae says all stiff-like, “His highness does not permit his likeness to be captured in small human boxes. The runt will give me the box.”

Runt? Moi? I’m at least five-foot-three with my tennis shoes on! “I’m not a runt. I’m young and still growing. And we call them cameras, dickhead.”

“Whose highness,” Ryodan says.

“Ours. Yours. All he suffers to live. Give me the box or the runt dies.”

“You just try,” I say. “Better fairies than you have. Worse ones, too. They all tasted delicious. With catsup. And mustard. And a side of onion rings.”

“Should have left it at catsup,” Ryodan says. “Less is more sometimes, kid.” To the Fae, he says, “Queen Aoibheal.”

“Was never our true queen. She is gone. We have a new leader. Our sacred light, King R’jan.”

“The Fae are matriarchal,” Ryodan says.

“Were. We have decided it is time for a new rule. If not for the flaws of a woman, so many of our race would not have died, and still be dying. If not for her idiocy, the abominations would not have been freed. She was not even Fae,” he sneers. “She began her life as one of you! The indignity of it, to have been ruled by a mortal masquerading—”

“Enough, Velvet,” R’jan says. “We do not explain ourselves to humans. Kill the runt and bring me the box.”

“I’m not a runt.” My hand closes where my sword hilt used to be.

“Missing something, runt?” one of the courtiers standing with the new “king” says and they all laugh. Guess everybody has seen the fecking Wanted posters. I take a mental snapshot of its face and mark it for death. Someday, somewhere, fairy.

Velvet was just getting started airing his grievances. “She forced us to grant humans rights to which they were never entitled. No more. It is a new rule. A new age. We are no longer weakened by a weak queen.”

“I said ‘enough,’ ” R’jan says. “If I must tell you again it will be the last thing you hear for ten thousand years. You will not enjoy where you pass them.”

I give R’jan a conspiratorial wink. “You going to give him a ‘time out,’ dude?”

Velvet looks horrified. “If you are fool enough to address King R’jan, you will do it thus and in no other manner! ‘My King, Liege, Lord, and Master, your servant begs you grant it leave to speak.’ ”

“Wow. Totally delusionary there.”

“Good luck with that,” Ryodan says. “She doesn’t beg to speak, or do anything else. You can lock her up, down, and sideways and it’s never going to happen.”

I beam at him. I had no idea he thought so highly of me.

Then he’s gone. So is Velvet.

I stand there a little uncertain because Ryodan didn’t telegraph a single intention before he and the Fae disappeared. I’m not even sure who took who. Or if one took off and the other chased. All I know is both of them are gone.

I shift from foot to foot, looking at R’jan and his remaining three cohorts, and he looks at me and I try to think of something to say. Best I come up with is: “So, why are you guys here, anyway?”

“Kill the runt,” R’jan says.

I yank out two candy bars and cram them in my mouth, wrapper and all, and give them a superstrength chew that makes the wrapper explode so I can swallow some chocolate and get a rush fast, because I’ve got no sword and who the feck knows where Ryodan went. I crunch, swallow, spit out the wrappers, and lock down my grid to freeze-frame when all the sudden Ryodan’s back.

He’s standing right in front of R’jan.

“In these streets,” he says so cool-like I almost expire from the sheer coolness of it, “I’m King, Liege, Lord, and Master. You are the ‘it.’ ”

Then he dumps Velvet’s dead body at his feet.