Feverborn

by Karen Marie Moning

  “Despite my paper retracting the accusation, they’re hunting me, too,” Jada admitted. “We had a small mob at the abbey yesterday.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I wasn’t there. My women told them none of the accusations were true. Although they didn’t believe it, my sidhe-seers are formidable and the mob’s numbers were small. They’ll be back in greater force at some point,” she said, not certain why she was even having a conversation.

  But sliding through dawn over Dublin this morning, for the first time since she’d returned, she’d felt…something…something to do with being here, home, back, and that maybe, just maybe, everything would work out all right. She’d find a place for herself and Shazam here.

  She took the second doughnut Mac was holding out. “They’re not bad,” she admitted, eating slowly enough to taste it this time.

  “Better than protein bars. I hear music coming from the black holes. Do you hear it?”

  Jada looked at her. “What kind of music?”

  “Not good. It’s pretty awful, frankly. I couldn’t hear anything for the past few days, but once the Unseelie-flesh high wore off, it was there. Not all of them. The small ones give off a kind of innocuous hum, but the larger ones give me a serious migraine. Did you see Alina gouge something into the pavement?”

  Jada said nothing.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Mac said.

  “I did it,” Jada said coldly. “My action.”

  “I’m not saying you didn’t. I’m saying there were extenuating circumstances. Just trying to unskew your self-perception.”

  “My perception is not skewed.”

  “You have responsibility dysmorphia syndrome.”

  “You should talk.”

  “You were a child. And that old bitch was an adult. And she abused you. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I don’t need absolution.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “Why are you on my water tower again?” she said icily.

  “Best view in the city.”

  There was that. Jada crouched on the edge and looked down. “I didn’t see her gouge anything into the pavement.”

  “Then she may have lived,” Mac said slowly.

  “No. Absolutely not. Rowena never would have let me leave until she was dead. She always made me stay until the last.” She looked at Mac. “Alina’s not alive. Don’t let someone play you.”

  Then she stood and turned for the ladder.

  “If you see someone who looks like her in the streets, do me a favor and leave her alone,” Mac said. “Until I sort this out.”

  Jada stood motionless a moment, not liking anything about what Mac had just told her. Alina was dead. And if there was something out there masquerading as her, it would only bring trouble. “Do me a favor,” she said coolly.

  “Anything.”

  “Stay the fuck off my water tower in the future.”

  As she slid up into the slipstream, she heard Mac say, “When I look at you, Jada, I don’t see a woman who killed my sister. I see a woman who got hurt that night in the alley every bit as badly as Alina did.”

  Jada shoved herself up into the beauty of the slipstream and vanished into the morning.

  —

  “Breakfast?” Ryodan said when Jada entered his office.

  “Why is everyone trying to feed me this morning?”

  “Who else tried to feed you?”

  “We’re not friends,” Jada said. “Don’t pretend we are.”

  “Who shit in your coffee this morning?”

  “And you don’t say things like that. You’re Ryodan.”

  “I know who I am.”

  “What is with everyone this morning?” she said, exasperated.

  “How would I know. You haven’t told me who everyone is.”

  “Don’t talk to me. Just finish the tattoo.”

  “After you eat.” He took a silver lid off a tray and shoved a platter toward her.

  She stared at it. “Eggs,” she murmured. She hadn’t seen them in such a long time.

  And bacon and sausage and potatoes. Oh, my.

  “Try the yogurt. It has something extra in it,” he said.

  “Poison?”

  “A protein mix.”

  She gave him a cool look and shook her head.

  “Food is energy. Energy is a weapon. It would be illogical to refuse it.”

  Jada dropped into a chair across the desk from him and picked up the fork. He had a valid point. Besides, eggs. Bacon. Yogurt. There was even an orange. The aroma of it all was incredible.

  She ate quickly, efficiently, shoveling it down in silence, barely chewing. He was finishing her tattoo today. She was vibrating with energy, afraid he might change his mind for some reason. When she’d polished off the last crumb, she shoved the platter out of the way, yanked her shirt over her head, unbuttoned the top two buttons of her jeans and looked at him expectantly.

  He didn’t move.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Turn around,” he said. “I’m working on your back, not your front.” His silver eyes were ice.

  She turned around backward in the chair, hooking her ankles around the rear legs, resting her arms on the slatted back.

  “Relax,” he murmured as he settled into a chair behind her.

  “I’m not tense,” she said coolly.

  He ran his fingers along the two tight ridges of muscle along her spine. “This is your idea of supple. It’s a bloody rock. It’ll hurt more if you don’t relax.”

  Closing her eyes, she willed herself smooth, long, lithe. “Pain doesn’t compute.”

  “It should. It’s a warning your body needs to recognize.”

  After a few minutes of his hands at the base of her spine, she felt that peculiar languor spreading through her body and snapped, “Stop doing that.”

  “You keep tensing.”

  “I do not.”

  He traced his fingers along her spine again, delineating the hard ridges. “You want to have this argument.”

  “You’re tattooing my skin, not my muscles.” She breathed easy and slow, relaxed again. It was merely her eagerness to see the ink done, nothing more.

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was skimming her mind or not, if he meant her muscles or her eagerness. “I can relax my own muscles.”

  “Keep bitching, I stop working.”

  “You like that, don’t you—having the power to push people around?”

  “That’s why I’m giving it away.”

  She closed her eyes and said nothing. Was that how he thought of the tattoo he was etching into her skin? That he was giving his power to her? She wondered again what would happen when she called IISS. Precisely how much of a leash she would have him on, exactly how smart and powerful the great Ryodan really was.

  She hoped enormously.

  “Did you ever see anything like the black holes while you were in the Silvers?” he said after a time.

  She shook her head.

  “Talk, don’t move. This must be precise.”

  “I saw many things. Nothing like those holes.”

  “How many worlds?”

  “We’re not friends.”

  “What are we?”

  “You asked me that before. I don’t repeat myself.”

  He laughed softly. Then, “Stretch long. There’s a hollow at the base of your spine. I need it flattened.”

  She did, then one of his hands was on her hip, stretching her out even more.

  Then she felt the tip of a knife at her back, followed by a deep burn of a slice, and a sudden warm gush of blood.

  “Nearly there,” he murmured.

  Prick after prick of needles in a rapid dance across her skin.

  Time spun out in a strange, dreamy way, and she relaxed more deeply than even she was capable of achieving on her own lately. It wasn’t entirely bad, she decided. What he did to her was nearly as good as sleep.
Rebooted her engines, took her down to ground zero and fueled her up again.

  Then she felt his tongue at the base of her spine and shot out of the chair so fast she knocked it over and stumbled into the wall. She spun and shot him a furious look, rubbing an elbow that would undoubtedly be bruised. “What the bloody hell are you doing?” she snarled.

  “Finishing the tattoo.”

  “With your tongue?”

  “There’s an enzyme in my saliva that closes wounds.”

  “You didn’t lick me last time.”

  “I didn’t cut as deeply last time.” He gestured at a mirror above a small cabinet in an alcove. “Look.”

  Warily, she turned her back to the mirror and peered over her shoulder. Blood was running down her spine, dripping on her jeans, on the floor.

  “Put a Band-Aid on it.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “You’re not licking me.”

  “You’re being absurd. It’s a method. Nothing more. The wound must heal before I set the final mark. Sit the fuck down. Unless you have a good reason you don’t want my saliva closing the wound.”

  He’d removed them both from the equation with his words. Saliva. Closing a wound. Not Ryodan’s tongue on her back. Which was exactly what she should have done—seen it analytically. Many animals had unusual enzymes in their spit. She was bleeding profusely, and hadn’t even known he’d cut so deep.

  She picked the chair up, repositioned it and slid back into the seat. “Go on,” she said tonelessly. “You startled me. You should have told me what you were doing.”

  “I’m going to close the wound with my saliva,” he said slowly and pointedly.

  Then she felt his tongue at the base of her spine, the stubble of his shadow-beard against her skin. His hands were on her hips, his hair brushing her back. She closed her eyes and sank deep into nothing inside her. Moments later he was done. He traced a final emblem with his needles and told her she was free to go.

  She bolted from the chair and headed for the door.

  “Choose wisely, Jada,” he said softly behind her.

  She froze, hand on the panel, turned and looked at him. She had no intention of replying. But her mouth said, “Choose what wisely?”

  He smiled but it didn’t touch his eyes. That cool, clear silver gaze had always seemed to stare straight into her soul. She studied him, realizing his eyes weren’t quite as void as she’d always thought. There was something in them, something…ancient. Immortal? And patient, endlessly patient, as he moved his chess pieces around. Aware, brutally, intensely alive and on point, and she had a sudden certainty that Ryodan saw right through her.

  He knew. He’d known all along what she wanted.

  “Why else would you let me tattoo you,” he murmured.

  He’d tattooed her with full awareness of what he was doing; giving her a collar, a leash to yank anytime and anyplace she wanted, with absolutely no foreknowledge of how she might choose to use it. Why would he do that?

  And in those complex, every-shade-of-gray eyes, she thought she saw something else. Thought she heard him speak.

  When the time comes, trust will be your weakness.

  “I always choose wisely,” she said, and left.

  —

  Trinity College. Jada remembered discovering it at nine years old while taking her first ever tour of the city. The sheer number of people coming and going, laughing and talking, flirting and living, had astonished the child. She’d felt like she was on fire with life. Born of a fool’s fever, her mom used to say about her, words slurring with drink and exhaustion after another long day working two jobs, still finding time at night to take lovers. Jada knew nothing of that—the circumstances of her conception, how foolish it had been or not, and hadn’t cared. She’d only known that she was born with a fever that made everything brighter, hotter, and more intense for her.

  She’d been alone most of her life. People on TV weren’t the same as the real thing.

  Even out in the world, she’d been more isolated at nine than most grown-ups, with no clue who her father was, her mother dead. No home. Just a yellow, mom-scented pillowcase with little ducks embroidered along the edge in a house that held an iron cage she never wanted to see again.

  Trinity was college. A magical word to the child, a place she’d seen on TV, where people gathered in large numbers, smack bang in the middle of the craic-filled city, and learned fascinating things, fell in love, broke up, fought and played and worked. Had lives.

  Jada moved across the campus, deciding if Dancer tried to feed her, she would go back to the abbey. She’d had her fill of people behaving abnormally today.

  She found him in one of the lecture halls that either had already housed an inordinate amount of musical equipment, including a baby grand piano, and an entire computing lab, or he’d moved everything in there to consolidate efforts and save time walking from building to building on campus.

  He wasn’t alone. When Jada dropped down from the slipstream and walked in, he was sitting on the piano bench, close to a pretty woman, one hand on her shoulder, as they laughed together about something.

  She stopped. Nearly backed out. They looked good together. How had she failed to see what a grown man he was when she’d been fourteen? She was struck again by the idea that he’d downplayed himself for her, to hang out with the child she’d been. And now that she was grown up, he wasn’t doing it anymore.

  Were he and the woman lovers? The woman looked like she wanted to be, leaning into Dancer’s tall, athletic body, smiling up at him. His dark, thick hair had gotten long again, falling forward into his face, and she curled her hands into fists. Years ago she used to wash it for him, drape a towel around his shoulders and cut it. He’d take his glasses off and close his eyes and she’d used the privacy to stare unabashedly at his face. They’d nurtured each other in small ways. In the back of her mind, she’d harbored the vague idea that maybe one day she’d be a woman and he’d be a man and there might be something magic between them. Dancer had been the only truly good, uncomplicated person in her life.

  She must have made some small noise because he suddenly glanced over his shoulder and his face lit up.

  “Jada, come in. I want you to meet everyone.”

  She moved forward, wondering what was going on. They’d always been a team. Just the two of them. She’d never seen him with anyone else. Ever. She hadn’t even known he had friends.

  He was striding toward her, long-legged, good-looking, full of youthful enthusiasm and energy. The pretty woman wasn’t far behind him, hurrying to catch up. Glancing between Dancer and Jada with a guarded expression.

  “Good to see you,” he said, smiling.

  “You have no intention of feeding me, do you?” She thought she’d better get that out of the way first.

  He raised a brow. “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Okay then, no. Jada, this,” he swept an arm around the woman’s shoulders and pulled her forward, “is Caoimhe Gallagher. She was working on her doctorate in music theory before the walls fell. She and”—he gestured toward the bay of computers where a young man with brilliantly colored hair was hunched before a screen—“Duncan, were living in one of the dorms.”

  Jada studied the woman he’d called “Keeva,” wondering if she was one of the O’Gallagher clan endowed with sidhe-seer blood. If so, she belonged at the abbey.

  “Aye, and there’s Squig and Doolin,” Caoimhe said, offering her a hesitant smile and pointing down the line of screens. “Brilliant with math, not much for the talking. We’d no clue they’d taken up in the old library. More than a few of us managed to survive, hiding here on campus.”

  Dancer said, “I found them shortly after I started working in the labs. Apparently I was making a lot of noise.” He grinned. “Caoimhe’s been helping me refine some of my theories about the black holes, what made them, what might fix them. Wait till you hear some of her ideas about music and what it really does. She’s
got perfect pitch and her ear is bloody unreal!”

  Jada looked at the woman’s ears but saw nothing of note.

  “I hum it, she can play it,” Dancer clarified. “I give her frequencies to work with, and she makes songs out of them.”

  “I hadn’t realized others were working with us,” she said coolly.

  “Unless someone drops the bloody Song of Making in our lap, Jada, we can’t do it alone,” he said. “C’mon. Let me show you around.”

  —

  She left Trinity half an hour later, seeking solitude.

  In the past, Dancer had a way of subtly recharging her, making her feel pretty much perfect. But today she’d realized he made a lot of people feel that way.

  His “crew” saw him the same way she did: superbrainy, unpredictable, funny, high-energy, attractive.

  She’d liked having him all to herself. It was confusing to watch him interact with people he’d known for a while, realizing he had a life that hadn’t included her.

  While she’d a life that hadn’t included him, she’d believed she was his entire world.

  Today she’d wondered if it had been Caoimhe he’d watched Scream with, that night she wasn’t around. Wondered if, when he’d disappeared for days in the past, he was off with these friends she hadn’t known he’d had, laughing and working and implementing plans.

  Back then she’d appreciated that he hadn’t held on to her too tightly. But she’d also assumed his life had kind of stopped happening when she wasn’t around. That he’d gone—alone—to one of his labs, where he thought about her the entire time and invented things to help her. Her self-preoccupation had been so intense, she’d believed when she wasn’t present in certain parts of the world, those parts of the world were put in a jar on a shelf until she returned.

  Not so. His life had gone on while she’d kept him at bay, determinedly dodging anything that hinted at a restraint.

  She remembered Mac telling her once that the reason grown-ups mystified her was because she wasn’t factoring their emotions into her equations. She’d never understood how careful Dancer had been around her so she wouldn’t startle and run. Apparently so cautious he’d kept their friendship completely separate from the rest of his life and friends.

  There’d been nine in all that she’d met, working on various matters related to their problem. Some were studying the hard science of the holes, others searching for the softer Fae lore, and those, like Caoimhe, working with Dancer one on one, teaching him everything they knew about music, speculating with him as she once had. It was jarring to an extreme, but then the whole day had been.