Burned, стр. 62

I stand staring dumbly, then realize my chance to leave without risking exposure is leaving. As I race through the door after him he changes back into a man as quickly as he became the beast.

A naked man.

I close my eyes.

Well, most of the way.

29

We’re halfway down the hall and I’m hot on his heels, wondering how Ryodan manages to change so swiftly from beast to man, when it takes Barrons a full minute or two to complete the transformation. Then I move on to wondering exactly where Ryodan plans to go naked, thinking maybe I’m about to see the man’s private quarters, which I’m admittedly anticipating, when my hair suddenly shoots straight up in the air, blasted by a brisk wind.

I know that gust of wind.

It’s Dani, passing me in freeze-frame.

Ryodan recognizes it, too. She’s got balls exploding in here when she knows he’s around.

We spin instantly to follow her (me much more slowly, I’m beginning to despise my lack of speed compared to theirs) and I barely get out of the way in time to keep from being flattened by a very large, very naked man.

I skid back into the office a split second before the door hisses closed.

The room appears to be under siege by an army of poltergeists. Drawers are flying open, papers exploding everywhere.

I’m stunned to see Lor’s body is already gone. I knew they vanished when they died, I just didn’t know how quickly it happened. It’s as tidy as the way vampires “poof” on Buffy, which I never watched before in my life until a few months ago when I got obsessed with paranormal TV shows, as if I might glean useful clues from them. I frown. But Barrons’s corpse didn’t vanish that quickly in Faery the day Ryodan and I killed him. Then again, that shouldn’t surprise me, nothing works the way you expect it to in Faery.

“If you’re looking for the contract,” Ryodan says, “I put it away where you won’t find it. Give me Dani back and I’ll tear it up.”

Jada materializes in the middle of the study, cool and remote as ever. She has a long curved knife strapped in a sheath to one of her thighs, a Glock tucked in the front of her waistband, an automatic machine gun slung over a shoulder, pushed behind her back, and rounds of ammo draped across her chest. She looks fierce, savage, stunning.

Dani used to sport bruises from freeze-framing. Looks like Jada got that under control. The way she moves that sleek, long-legged body, grace could be her middle name. In black leather pants, combat boots, and a black tee, long auburn hair swept up high in a sleek ponytail, she reminds me of Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, her face chiseled-porcelain beautiful, strong and icy. Besides a thin silver chain belt, her only other adornment is a silver and gold cuff. I stare fixedly at it, trying to remember where I’ve seen it before. Or one very similar to it.

Her gaze sweeps down over Ryodan’s nude body, a muscle flexes in her jaw. She yanks her gaze back up and trains it on his face.

I press back against a wall, studying her, grateful she’s no longer freeze-framing. It’d be far too easy to get smashed if they both start doing that Tasmanian devil thing again.

My heart sinks.

Jada is Dani.

There’s no question in my mind. I can see the teenager in the woman’s face now. It’s there in her bone structure, in the way she carries herself, in the fiery hair she must flat-iron every time she washes it or gets rained on (which means she must be flat-ironing constantly, considering how much it rains in this city).

I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.

Actually, yes I can. Not only did I have no reason to expect Dani to abruptly age four or five years in a few weeks, the years from fourteen to nineteen or twenty are enormously transformative. Ugly ducklings become swans, sometimes swans lose their youthful beauty and become ducks. Fourteen to twenty is the most transfiguring rite of passage a man or woman completes, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I press a hand to my chest, as if it might somehow ease the pain in my heart.

I did this.

I chased her through the portal and she lost years in there, where whatever she had to do to survive forced what was once a temporary split to become permanent, burying Dani pretty much the same way the Book would like to bury me.

I have to get her back. Unfortunately the only thing Jada wants to do to me is lock me up next to Cruce.

“The one that signed that contract is no longer here to honor it.” Jada’s gaze takes an involuntary dip over Ryodan’s body again and her face tightens. I get that. His body is surreal, powerful, perfect. I see his kinship to Barrons now. Criminy. He’s not hard — yes, I’m frigging looking, and I’m not about to feel bad about it because you try not looking at a hot, naked man standing in front of you when you’re twenty-three, perfectly healthy, and full of a lot of aggression you’d like to vent. I think men don’t realize women think dicks are beautiful. Not all dicks. But some men get the mother lode, just the right length and thickness covered with beautiful olive-toned, velvety skin that has a luscious pink undertone and makes the head of their dick look like a succulent lollipop, and since Ryodan is totally waxed or lasered or trimmed recently—

I catch myself about to audibly clear my throat. I glue my eyes to his face, where they will remain until I leave this room, so help me God. I’m staring at Barrons’s brother naked. It makes me feel vaguely unfaithful somehow.

Ryodan stalks across the room, stops a few feet from her, close enough to unnerve, not so close that she won’t — if there’s as much red-blooded woman in her as I think there is — have as hard a time keeping her eyes locked on his face as I am.

Great, now I have to not look at his ass. With a distant part of my brain I admire that Jada/Dani doesn’t comment on Ryodan’s nudity, ask where his clothes are or demand he put some on. Ignoring it makes it irrelevant. No man wants his nudity to be irrelevant.

“One would think you wouldn’t bother to come looking for it, then.”

“It offends in letter only, not verse.”

“You know it has power. Over even you. Should I choose to exercise it.”

“Should you choose to exercise it, you’ll die more quickly than I currently plan.”

“You admit you’re Dani, then.”

“It would be inefficient for me to continue to deny that which we both know was once true. ‘Was once’ are the key words there. Dani is dead.”

“You’ve got that wrong. You’re the one who’s dead.”

“I’m alive. She was never as alive as me. She was in constant pain. I terminated it.”

“By terminating all emotion.”

“I feel.”

“Bullshit. The currency of life is passion, and as with any coin, it has two sides: pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow. Impossible to slip a single side of that coin into your pocket. You take all or nothing.”

She cocks her head and says coolly, “Perhaps we are alike, you and I, and I prefer my pockets empty.”

“My pockets are far from empty.”

“Says the man whose face is etched by neither laugh nor frown lines. Feeling nothing is called traveling light. It’s called freedom.”

“It’s called being dead inside. You will return her to me.”

“I won’t. She was too stupid to live.”

“Is,” he corrects. “And she’s not. She’s the one who’s smart enough to live. You merely survive.”

“One of us must. You were no help. You lost her the instant she stepped through the portal and entered Faery. You didn’t save her. She waited, thinking you were different from those who used and betrayed her. She believed you would find her, come charging to her rescue. That belief was as misplaced as the monsters we faced were deadly. The day came she finally lost her faith in you, and I was there as I’ve always been there when she needed me, and she was grateful. I saved her. Not you. You failed her. Failed as in: did not accomplish the specified, desired objective; performing inadequately or ineffectively; neglecting to honor promises, implied or contractual—”