Part 3 (1/2)

As I stand there a sec, getting broody-like, I feel the tip of something sharp and pointy in my back.

”Drop your sword, Dani,” Mac says behind me.

My stomach cramps and I'm instantly sick to it. What the f.e.c.k, did I conjure her with the mere power of my thoughts? Do I have another sidhe-seer talent I didn't know about, latent until now? Cripes, I hope not! I'll never get away from Ryodan! I'm always p.i.s.sed at him, which means I'm always thinking about him. As soon as I think that, I realize I got concrete proof I don't have a new superpower, because, hey, if I did, he'd be here with me right now. I decide I'm hallucinating from lack of sleep and being forced to listen to too much Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath tonight. Which is, like, half a song of either.

There's no way Mac's behind me. I'd have heard her. I have superhearing. I'd have seen the lights of her MacHalo, brightening the glow cast by mine.

”Yeah, right, like I'm actually falling for this,” I mutter. Sometimes I have an overactive imagination.

The tip digs harder into my back. I go still and draw a slow inhale. I know Mac's scent and that's it. A dry chittering starts on the rooftops, swelling into thousands of rattlesnake tails shaking, making me even more nauseated. I don't need to look to know what's up there. Oh, yeah, Mac is really behind me, bizarre entourage in tow. The few times I've seen her lately, she's had a flock of Unseelie ZEWs-Zombie Eating Wraiths is what I christened the gaunt, black-robed caste that glides on air and likes roosting on top of the bookstore-following her around like enormous, carrion crow waiting for a juicy corpse to pick clean.

Ain't gonna be mine.

I dig out a protein bar, rip it open, and cram it in my mouth for an instant rush of energy. I never avoid battle. Tuck tail and run isn't in my blood. Problem is, I only know two ways to fight: kill clean or kill messy-both of which involve killing unless I'm up against that f.e.c.k Ryodan who can pluck me from hyperspeed and kick my a.s.s ten ways to Tuesday.

There's no way I'm killing Mac. I'll take Door Number Two, a thing I never do, and run. Only for her.

I slap up a hasty mental map of the street and get my grid locked down as perfect as I can with all this snow and ice. I slit my eyes half closed in intense concentration and freeze-frame.

Nothing happens. My feet are rooted in the exact same spot, and I'm still feeling the tip of Mac's spear in my back.

My superpowers just disappeared in a moment of need for the third time. Un-f.e.c.king-real! What's the commonality? Why does it keep happening?

”I said drop your f.u.c.king sword.”

I exhale gustily. Not because I feel sorry for myself. Self-pity is wasted emotion. It merely prolongs whatever trauma you suffered by keeping it alive in your head. Dude, you survived it. Move on.

But there are some things I wish had been different like, say, Ro had never taken me to the abbey after Mom died, made me her personal a.s.sa.s.sin and taught me to kill before I got around to figuring out what I thought was right and wrong, because when you do figure out what you think is right and wrong-if it's foursquare against the things you been doing-you got some tricky minefields in your head to dodge. Guilt, regret-things I almost don't even know how to spell they're so alien to me-I about drown in them every time I look at Mac.

Fortunately she's behind me at the moment, so I don't have to think about how she looks so much like her sister, don't get smashed upside the head by visuals of the last night I saw Alina, on her hands and knees in an alley, begging me not to let her die.

”Seriously, kid, drop it. I won't say it again.”

”Not a kid. Dude.”

”Danielle.”

Gah! She knows I hate that wussy girl name! I test my freeze-framing abilities. They're still absent. There's no telling how long it'll be until they come back. Five seconds. Five minutes. Maybe five hours. I got no clue why it's happening and it's beginning to worry the c.r.a.p out of me. I turn to face her, coat back, hand on the hilt of my sword, steeling myself for a whole-body flinch, and still I jerk.

She's different from the Mac I met a year ago. Glam girl turned sleek warrior woman. She was pretty when she came to Dublin; now she's lean, strong, and beautiful. Once, she said I was pretty and that I'd grow up to be beautiful, too, one day. As if I give a rat's a.r.s.e about that kind of thing.

What is she thinking, pulling her spear on me, ordering me around? There's no way she knows I'm stuck in slow-mo. No one knows it happens to me. Cripes, if word of that got out!

She stares at me, green eyes narrowed with fury. She has every right to try to kill me. A better person might even cooperate a little out of guilt and remorse. I'm not a better person. I wake up every day with a single imperative: live. By any means necessary. The only way Death will ever get his slimy b.a.s.t.a.r.d hands on me is over my dead body.

I wonder if she has some new sidhe-seer skill I haven't heard about that makes her willing to hit me up like this, so cool and confident. My superspeed guarantees my victory in any battle against another sidhe-seer unless I make a mistake, and I don't. She isn't wearing a MacHalo, which perplexes the f.e.c.k out of me. n.o.body walks Dublin, dark. Not even me. Maybe the ZEWs on the rooftops are her private army now, defending her against the Shades and a.s.sorted nasties.

I frown when another thought occurs to me. Did she set me up for quid pro quo down to the dirty details?

Dark alley nearby-check.

Me-check.

Hungry Unseelie-check.

I get a mental snapshot of me dying just like Alina. It's practically glowing on Mac's pupils.

I want to tell her revenge is a devil you don't want to wors.h.i.+p. In destroying your enemy you become it.

You will take the girl to an alley on the south side of the River Liffey. Unseelie will meet you there. Sometimes I still hear Ro's voice in my head even though we burned her body and dumped the ashes in the sea. Not like a true haunt, just ghosts of memories still swimming down deep in my subconscious where I keep most of what I did for her when I lived at the abbey.

Why? I want to ask her, but she touches my forehead with something that's wet and smells bad, and mutters words I don't know, then I can't talk.

I know you're in there, I hear Ro saying, as if from a great distance. Remember the h.e.l.l you endured. You're the one I want.

I don't know what she's talking about. I'm right there. Looking at her. Even though it feels like from a million miles away.

Och, child, she says, I couldn't have raised you better myself to fragment you into usable pieces. When I found you when you were five I knew G.o.d had forged the beginning of a very special weapon. Just for me.

Old bat couldn't even keep track of my age. I was eight when she found me almost dead in a cage. Only time in my life I ever waited to die. Counting my breaths. Wondering which would be the last. There was a whole week back there I couldn't remember, just gone. From the day Ro took me in, I began losing hours and then I'd be somewhere else and wouldn't know how I'd gotten there. And there was usually something I didn't like seeing. Other times I was seeing it all happen except not in control, stuck in the sidecar of the motorcycle, where I couldn't steer or hit the gas. There was never a brake when things got weird like that. I was always just along for the ride, glued to the seat. Like the night I killed Mac's sister. Second worst thing I ever did and I relive it in nightmares, down to the last excruciating detail. Sometimes I wondered if the crazy old bat had been able to choose to let me see the things she sent me to do, or s.h.i.+eld me from them.

If I dwelled on that thought I'd go nuts. Hate eats the hater. Ro messed with me enough while she was alive. She's dead now, and if I let her keep f.e.c.king with me, it'll be my own fault and she'll win. Even from her watery grave, she could steal hours, days, weeks of my life. Sometimes when really bad things happen, you put them in a box and never look at them again because they'll cost you the rest of your life. Some wounds never heal. You excise the savaged flesh and become the next thing.

”Drop your sword and I'll put down my spear,” Mac says.

”Yeah, right. Then what? You order your creepy little army of Unseelie to drag me down that alley and eat me? No, let me guess: We head back to BB&B, make hot chocolate, hang out and talk?”

”That's the general idea. Minus the bookstore and hot chocolate. And they're not my creepy little army.”

”Like, talk about what? Me killing your sister? And they sure look like your creepy little army to me. Go everywhere you do.” f.e.c.k, it's good to see her. I missed seeing her. I was always scanning every room, every street, hoping to see her. Dreading it.

She flinches. ”Maybe you could try not to say it that way. And I said they're not.”

”Why shouldn't I? It's what happened,” I say defiantly. f.e.c.king pointless. She's never going to see it any other way. My fingers tighten on my sword. ”I killed your sister. There it is. Fact. Dude. Never gonna change. I. Killed. Alina. You came to Dublin hunting her murderer. Here I am.” I raise a hand and wave it around just in case she's missing the point, overlooking me somehow.

”Dani, I know you're-”

”You don't know nothing about me!” I cut her off hard and fast. I hate sentences that begin with my name followed by the claim-indubitably erroneous-that the speaker knows something about me. Those kinds of sentences rank right up there with the ones that begin with You know what your problem is? That's always a doozy. Talk about a trick question. Nothing worth hearing ever follows that preface. I snarl, ”You hear me? I said you don't know nothing! Now get the f.e.c.k out of my way and take your creepy little groupies with you!”

”No. This ends. Here. Tonight. And I said. They're. Not. Mine.” She cuts a look up and mutters, ”They stalk me. I haven't figured out how to get rid of them. Yet.”

Instantly I want to be on the Dublin News-Channel-X investigative team, ask probing questions, get immersed in solving a thrilling mystery with Mac, but those days are gone and about as likely to come back as dinosaurs. I look at her, and she's giving me this totally fake I'm-not-going-to-kill-you look that's supposed to lure me close enough to get killed. But her fingers sure are tight on the hilt of her spear. And she's balanced real light on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet like I am. I know that stance. It's preattack. Face says one thing. Body says another. I listen to the body. Keeps me alive.

She's wearing boots with low heels, fas.h.i.+onable, stupid shoes for ice. It doesn't matter how new and improved MacKayla Lane is, part of her will always be as pink and girly as the nails on the hilt of her spear.

I'm wearing sneakers.

Even slow-mo I'm faster than she'll ever be in those boots. There's no way Mac'll throw her spear at me. No more than she would put it down in a show of good faith. She's like me with my sword. We don't let them out of our hands. Not willingly. Well, I did it tonight for a Highlander who's mostly Unseelie Prince but I got no f.e.c.king clue why. The only unknown are those ghastly Unseelie on the rooftops-are they or aren't they here to kill me?

One way to find out.