“Maybe you didn’t do it yourself, but you sent them after her!”
“I wasn’t done with her.” There was the barest hesitation. “And I had no plans to kill her when I was.”
“Bull. She found you out. She followed you into the Dark Zone one day, didn’t she? She refused to help you anymore. And you killed her for it.” I was certain of it. I’d thought about it every night before I went to sleep, for months. It was the only conclusion that made sense of the voice mail message she’d left me, a few hours before she’d died. He’s coming, she’d said, I don’t think he’ll let me out of the country.
“You’ve felt the power of my coercion. I might have lost her willing cooperation, but I never needed it to begin with.” Imperious arrogance dripped from his voice, as he reminded me how easily he’d controlled me. No, he wouldn’t have needed her cooperation. With that terrible, will-stealing Voice, he could have made her do anything he wanted, anything at all.
My cell phone rang again.
“Answer it. Barrons hates waiting. Think about my offer.”
“How do you know Barrons?” I demanded.
The line was dead.
“Are you all right?” Barrons growled, when I answered my cell.
“Fine.”
“Was it him?”
“The great LM?” I said dryly. “Yes.”
“What did he offer you?”
“My sister back.”
Barrons didn’t say anything for a long moment. “And?”
I was quiet for an even longer moment. “I told him I’d think about it.”
Silence fell between us and lengthened. Strangely, neither of us hung up. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. I strained my ears but couldn’t hear any background noise. Either his cell phone had great noise reduction capabilities, or he was somewhere very quiet. An image flashed through my mind: Barrons, big and dark, naked against white silk sheets, arms folded behind his head, phone propped at his ear, crimson and black tattoos ranging across his chest, down his abs. Leg tangled with some woman’s.
Nah. He’d never let a woman stay the night. No matter how good the sex was.
“Barrons,” I said at last.
“Ms. Lane.”
“I need you to teach me to resist Voice.” I’d asked him this before, but he’d only given me one of his noncommittal replies.
There was another of those long silences, then, “In order to attempt that—and I assure you it will be no more than an attempt, one at which I highly doubt you’ll succeed—I’ll have to use it on you. Are you prepared for that?”
I shivered. “We’ll lay some basic ground rules.”
“You like those, don’t you? Too bad. You’re in my world now, and there are no basic ground rules. You learn how I teach you, or not at all.”
“You’re a jackass.”
He laughed, and I shivered again.
“Can we start tonight?” I’d been safe today, with the Lord Master on the phone. But if, instead of calling, he’d strolled up behind me on the street and commanded me to be silent, I wouldn’t have even been able to open my mouth long enough to release V’lane’s name.
I frowned.
Why hadn’t he walked up behind me? Why hadn’t he sent his army after me? Now that I thought about it, the only two times he’d ever tried to capture me were when I’d practically delivered myself to him, and he’d believed I was alone, almost as if I’d been an opportunity too convenient to pass up. Was the Lord Master in no hurry to get close to me? Did he fear my spear after seeing what it had done to Mallucé? I’d feared it intensely when I’d eaten Unseelie. I hadn’t wanted it anywhere near me. But with Voice he could easily strip it away. He’d wanted Alina’s willing participation, and now he seemed to want mine. Why? Because it was easier if I was willing, or was it more complicated than that? Did Voice work only to a certain extent, and there was something he needed from me that he wouldn’t be able to coerce? Or maybe—a chill of foreboding accompanied this thought—I was only a small part of his much larger plans, and he’d already made other arrangements for me, and it just wasn’t the right time yet. Maybe he was even now constructing a cage around me that I couldn’t see. Would I wake up one morning, and walk straight into it? I’d been duped by Mallucé. I’d believed him a figment of my imagination until the last.
I shoved my fearful thoughts away before they could multiply. I certainly wanted to get close to him. I was going to kill him. And his nasty trick of Voice was a barrier I was going to have to be able to get past.