that her sorrow ebbed and she stood like the young, strong woman she was, not the woman handicapped by tears locked in a box deep inside her. Fully aware, as Ryodan had said, that it was impossible to seal away a single emotion. Fully aware the price of no pain was no joy.
Because if those tears ever started to flow, she’d drown.
—
Jada hurried through the abbey, books tucked beneath her arm. She had two hours before she would head to Chester’s. She’d spent the day putting up her papers and mapping black holes around Dublin. On the way back to the abbey, she’d stood outside the funnel cloud that surrounded BB&B, staring up at it, forcing herself to remain cold, logical, an arrow toward the goal. Nothing more.
They had their agenda on Earth. She had her own elsewhere.
She wanted to go back into the Unseelie king’s library but wasn’t willing to lose more time Earthside. One never knew the price of stepping through a Silver. Besides, until she spoke with Barrons, she had no way of deciding which Silver would take her into the White Mansion. Five and a half years Silverside and she’d never managed to learn a bloody thing about the mirrors that could so dispassionately give or take life.
Penetrating the funnel cloud wouldn’t be a problem. She’d mastered that magic year two, Silverside. A few well-placed wards could degrade almost any self-contained Fae storm, allowing passage.
For a month now, ever since she’d arrived back in Dublin, she’d been looking for a ward, a spell, a totem, some way to mark a Silver, embed something on its shimmering surface, something visible from both sides.
Her efforts had yielded no fruit.
Now, as she moved through the corridors of the abbey, she gathered recent news from the sidhe-seers and dispatched orders, impatient to be in her chambers, craving Shazam’s warm, irascible presence and time alone with him to analyze and refine her plans.
He was slumped in a mound of fatness and foul mood. He didn’t even lift his head when she came in.
“I brought you something,” she said, removing an oily brown paper bag from her pack. His head shot up. He was insatiably curious.
He was insatiable, period.
His whiskers trembled with anticipation and he burped.
“Have you been eating something while I was gone?” she demanded.
“What do you expect? You didn’t leave me anything.”
“Technically, you don’t need to eat.”
“Ever heard of boredom? What am I supposed to do in here all day? Make the bed I never get out of because there’s no place I’m allowed to go?”
She assessed the room. Every single pillow was gone.
When he belched again, a feather floated from his mouth.
“They couldn’t possibly have tasted good.”
“Good is relative when all you have is nothing,” he said sourly.
“Soon I’ll let you out. Soon you’ll be free again.”
“Right. And soon sentient beings will stop destroying one another and themselves. Not. We’re all going to die. Alone and miserably. With lots of pain. That’s the way life goes. People make promises and don’t keep them. They say they care about you and forget you.”
“I didn’t forget you. I never forget you”
She tossed three raw fish on the bed and Shazam exploded upright, straight up in the air, bristling with excitement. He fell on the fish like they were manna from Heaven, slurping and sucking and devouring every morsel until only fine bones remained on the down comforter.
“You are forgiven,” he said grandly, settling down to polish his face with spit-moistened paws.
If only she was.
22
“But you, you’re not allowed, you’re uninvited…”
Jada pressed her palm to the door of Ryodan’s office a full hour earlier than she’d been advised to arrive. He might think he’d ordered her to be there, but no one ordered her anymore. They worked with her or against her.
She’d refined her thoughts during her time with Shazam, the two of them deciding her next move would have to be risked, that she’d have to accept the tattoo he’d offered.
So when the door slid aside, before she even stepped in, she said, “I’ll let you tattoo me.”
Barrons and Ryodan both looked over their shoulders at her, and she was struck suddenly by how…inhuman they looked, their faces more savage, their movements more…animalistic and sleek, as if caught momentarily off guard, engrossed. But their masks went up the instant they saw her and then they were just Barrons and Ryodan again.
The owner of Chester’s was sitting backward in a chair, watching monitors, while Barrons sat behind him, tattooing his powerfully muscled