Iced, стр. 56

I give him a suspicious look. He’s probably lying. And he knows perfectly well I won’t risk finding out.

Rainey gives me a warm smile. “Dani, she’ll be so glad to see you! She’s been looking for you for weeks.”

I’m sure she has.

I lock down my mental grid to freeze-frame, make like folks on Gunsmoke and get the feck out of Dodge.

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?”