Fever - Burned Part 27

The third thing is perhaps the most stupefying.

I just saw Dani three weeks ago. She was fourteen. A c.o.c.ky, swaggering kid.

And I'm supposed to believe this grown-up, controlled, beautiful woman is the rambunctious, sparkling-eyed teenager I chased into the Hall of All Days?

"Impossible," I whisper, peering at her, searching for some trace of the effusive, laughing, brilliant, funny girl I know. The one I love.

It's not there.

If it's her, I should be relieved that she's back and alive.

If it's her, I'm so not.

This woman is about twenty and absolutely frigid. She doesn't look as if she's laughed a single day in her life.

Besides, this "Jada" has supposedly been in Dublin for a few weeks. In black leather pants, a fitted top (with a plunging neckline, and if those are Dani's b.o.o.bs life isn't fair), and black leather jacket, she looks composed and cold as a colonel. When she runs a hand over her perfect (straight, not one ounce of curl) red hair in its perfect high ponytail that swishes her waist as she moves, I catch a quick flash of silver and gold at her wrist, the only adornment she wears. It's not like she needs much. In addition to being stone-cold, she's that kind of beautiful, too, with startlingly high cheekbones and arched brows above glittering eyes. Is this really Dani's pixieish face grown up, matured from delicate with a sharply p.r.o.nounced jaw to sophisticated, sculpted, and cool?

Is it possible Dani lost years in the Hall of All Days, and returned a mere week of our time later, this much older? And immediately began collecting sidhe-seers to form a small army?

Anything is possible in post-wall Dublin, and certainly in the fickle hall. Running the sidhe-seers is precisely what a grown-up Dani would try to do. Dublin and her sidhe-seer sisters always came first to her.

Still, I don't see a trace of the "Mega" in this icy woman.

Ryodan begins to pace a slow circle around her, reminding me of the way Barrons stalked me that night he decided I had no right to something that was indisputably mine.

She stands still, completely at ease with something like him behind her back.

That seals it. It's definitely not Dani. She would never let Ryodan behind her. She would spin with him. Like I did with Barrons.

The women on the floor begin to push up, but Jada gestures to them and commands, "They'll only take you back down. Remain on the floor. I won't have any of you injured by them."

"We're better fighters than you're giving us credit for," Green Camo who outed me growls.

"These are two of the Nine I discussed with you earlier. Remain down."

Green Camo may be my enemy but I totally get the look of fury and frustration that flashes across her face. Accept that you're outgunned? Stay on the floor and don't even try to fight? What kind of life is that?

Ryodan suddenly kicks up into that way of moving that's a blur, then Jada is a blur and there's a small whirlwind of commotion in the middle of the study accompanied by a ferocious smudge of sound that could be raised voices or just plain snarling. I feel like I'm watching a cartoon featuring two Tasmanian devils, then suddenly Jada and Ryodan reappear, facing each other: he's spitting savagery, she's pure ice.

"Don't touch me again," she says with arctic frost. "Men have died for less. Even men who aren't men."

"You cut it off," Ryodan explodes. "That's why I couldn't get a lock on you last week at Chester's. You f.u.c.king cut my tattoo off. And you mutilated yourself in the process."

"I've never had a tattoo on the back of my neck."

"I didn't say it was on the back of your neck."

"That's where you touched me."

"I touched other places, too."

"And will pay for it. Sleight of hand. A diversionary tactic. Intent infuses action. You're easy to read."

"Redundant much, Dani. Should have left it at sleight of hand."

"I'm not Dani. Nor have I ever had a tattoo. But if someone thought to place a mark on me I neither wanted nor approved, I would certainly cut it out. I'm no cattle to be branded."

I rub the tattoo on the back of my skull and shoot Barrons a p.i.s.sed look. "Moo," I say frostily.

"Don't even start," he says. "It saved your life repeatedly."

"It was for your protection," Ryodan says.

"Precisely," Barrons clips.

"I don't need protection nor have I ever," Jada says. "I protect. I hunt. I am the predator, not the prey. Leave now and I will permit you to go. We will, however, meet again."

I slant a look up. "Precisely."

" 'Permit,' " Ryodan mocks. "Explain your ability to move in hyperspeed. Dani."

"If this 'Dani' is to be identified on the basis of a single attribute, one might propose anyone-even you-are this person upon whom you seem so fixated, as you, too, share that talent."

Jada is suddenly gone and I feel her touching me, patting me down at light speed, looking for the Book, finding nothing. By the time Barrons blurs into motion to blast her away, she is standing near the desk again.

Ryodan told me Dani could move fast enough to give him a run for his money. When she chose. I frown. He also said there were things Dani didn't know. Exactly what kind of things?

The women on the floor stare up, watching, awaiting the next command from their leader.

"She's not carrying it," Jada informs Green Camo.

Green Camo says, "I feel two. One where it should be. The other coming from her."

"Of this you are certain."

"Unequivocally."

"You will leave now," Jada informs Ryodan and Barrons. "But she," Jada looks at me, "will remain."

Was that a flicker in those icy emerald eyes? I narrow my eyes, staring back, searching for some hint of Dani O'Malley. It isn't there.

"She," Barrons growls, "is not remaining anywhere but with me."

"Maybe I want to stay here with them," I say, not meaning a word of it. "At least the sidhe-seers only tried to kill me. Not steal pieces of my mind."

"I didn't steal anything. I merely kicked it beneath a rock until you could deal with it. It's not my b.l.o.o.d.y fault it took you so long. Had I wished to excise it completely I could have."

"It's not your right to excise anything. Temporarily or permanently."

"Take her below," Jada orders the women.

"Don't push me," I warn.

"You'll go willingly or you'll be dragged. I don't understand how you have become another Sinsar Dubh nor do I care. I've seen stranger things."

I shoot a glance at Ryodan and am surprised to see he appears completely unfazed to learn that I am the Sinsar Dubh walking, or rather, about to be running.

"It's unnecessary to understand how an animal became rabid to put it down," Jada continues. "You'll be dealt with accordingly."

"Good luck with that," I say coolly.

My inner copy is perversely silent. I know why. It's waiting to see what I'm willing to do. That's a big fat nothing. It's going to have to protect itself, offer me something I can use free of price.

Nice bluff, MacKayla, it purrs. Try again. You will never let them lock you up and you know it.

You will never let them lock us up, I retort silently. I will not kill these people. Give me crimson runes. I'll only use them on the others, not you. I swear.

You will kill everyone and destroy everything around you in order to survive. It's the way you're wired. I know. I'm the wiring.

I recite feverishly: And the Raven never flitting still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door ...

"Look around you. You can't even control one Book. How do you think to control two," Ryodan says.

Jada/possibly Dani says coolly, "In fis.h.i.+ng for information, one might advocate the use of interrogatories."

Ryodan laughs. "Ah, Dani, there you are. You can run. But you can't hide."

"If by that you mean this Dani person to whom you so erroneously and tediously refer also remarked upon your deliberate omission of proper punctuation as a psychological tactic intended to subtly coerce, the logical conclusion is merely that multiple women find your methods transparent," she delivers in a cool rush.

If Jada wasn't currently threatening me, I'd like her for that one. I should run but I'm stuck on this train wreck channel, trying to decide if Jada could possibly be Dani, trying to silence my inner demon o'er whom the lamplight isn't streaming so well. It's goading me, scaring me, telling me they're going to imprison me and no one will care. No one will save me.

Barrons won't let that happen.

Barrons took your memory, the Sinsar Dubh reminds. He's mercenary to the big, bada.s.s core. You are not the exception to his self-serving rules. There are no exceptions.

"You signed a contract I keep in my office," Ryodan says to Jada. "Drop by, I'll show it to you."

"I signed nothing. But if I had, a coerced oath endures only as long as the coercer holds greater power. There's no power greater than mine in this room."

Ryodan says softly, "Holy strawberries, Dani, we're in a jam."

I look at him like he's sprouted two heads. Holy strawberries? In a jam? Even Barrons looks stumped.

He continues, "But don't worry. Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods-you really butchered that one, by the way-I've got it in the bag. How about this one: holy borrowing bibliophile, let's book."

Jada's eyes narrow almost imperceptibly.

"Ah, but I couldn't possibly have heard that one, could I. Unless I was there when you didn't know it. As I've always been there. Dani. I know what's wrong. And we're going to fix it."

"My name is Jada and there's nothing wrong with me. I'm superior in every way."

Now she sounds like Dani.

"I tasted your blood. I know your f.u.c.king soul. I felt you in Chester's and I felt you tonight."

"Like you, I have no soul. Like you, there are ledgers to be balanced. You're in the red. Unlike you, I don't sit at a desk and endlessly shove papers around."

"You talk as if you know me."

"So I've heard. If you tasted someone's blood against their will, it is likely that person will kill you for it."

"Bring it on. Dani."

"Jada."

"You think this keeps you safe. You think you don't feel."

"There are ledgers. Those I kill. Those I reward."

"There are legends. You used to be one."

She says coolly, "I am legend."

"Dani's a legend," Ryodan says. "Not you."

"This Dani appears to matter to you."

"Always."

"Perhaps you had a funny way of showing it."

"How would you know."

"I've heard."

"You've heard, my a.s.s. I know you. I saw you when Dani was ten. Jada. You looked right back at me. We fought that night. I won her back from you and I will again. I've seen you other times as well. You may wear a woman's body now but it belongs to Dani. You have no right to be here."

I gape at Ryodan. Is he saying what I think he's saying? Not only did Dani leave and come back older, but she came back someone else? There's a word for it ... I rummage for what remains scattered around my brain from the entry-level psychology course I took ... aha! Dissociative disorder. Is he saying she's fragmented? And he knew this? No way. I would have seen it. Wouldn't I?

Jada trains her emerald gaze on me. "She is who doesn't belong here. Faulty logic imprisons one Sinsar Dubh while the other is permitted to roam Dublin. It is what it is regardless of the vessel."

"Oh, you should so talk," I snap. "Dani."

"I. Am. Jada."

"Whoever the f.u.c.k you are," Barrons growls, "you're not touching Mac."

"Well, you're not touching me either," I growl up at him.