“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Take a look around.”
I didn’t like the idea and told her so.
“C’mon, Mac, I’m superfast and superstrong. Nobody can touch me. I’m the one should be worried about leaving you alone, slowpoke.”
Put that way, she had a point.
“Gimme room to breathe, Mac.”
She was fidgeting from foot to foot, and the look in her eyes said she was about to whiz off whether I said okay or not. I had a sudden unwanted understanding of Rowena: How do you mother a kid who’s faster than you, stronger than you, and quite possibly smarter? “Don’t go far, and not for long, deal?”
“Deal.”
“And be careful!” Wind ruffled my hair. She was already gone.
“Who’s the kid?” The dreamy-eyed boy was back. A shot clinked to the chrome counter. I tossed it back, grimaced, gasped. Fire exploded in my gut.
“Friend.”
“Good to have in times like these.”
“How’d you find this place?”
“Same way as you, I imagine.”
“Doubt it.”
“Ever find Christian?”
He was referring to the day I’d called the ALD dozens of times, hunting for the young Scot. I’d been worried sick because Barrons had “Voiced” me into revealing that the Keltars were spying on him, and I was afraid Barrons was going to hunt Christian down and hurt him. “Yes.” I didn’t see any point in telling him I’d lost him again, perhaps permanently.
“Seen him lately?”
“No. You?”
“No. I’d like to.”
“Why?” Suspicion was me.
“Friends—good to have in times like these.”
“What do you think of this place?” Why was he here? Another pretty boy in search of immortality?
“Life and death, beautiful girl. Been about it since the beginning. Will be ‘til the end.”
“What’s your poison? You want to live forever, too?”
“I’d take some peace and quiet. A beautiful girl.” He laughed. “A good book.”
“Man after my own heart. I love a good book, too.” In the mirror above the bar, something caught my eye. I tensed. In a booth behind me, the Gray Woman was holding hands with the well-muscled, gorgeous waiter who’d earlier been flirting with the udder-thing. I could see both what she was and what she was making him see. To him, she was a Fae Princess, inhumanly beautiful, mind-numbingly sexual, gazing at him with rapt adoration.
Only I could see the open, oozing lesions with which she caressed him, with which she was sucking his life away, leaving rotting teeth, rheumy eyes, parchment-thin gray skin. She was making short work of him. He wouldn’t last the hour.
My hand went to the shoulder holster beneath my coat.
“Watch yourself, beautiful girl,” the dreamy-eyed boy said softly.
I tore my gaze away from the mirror and stared at him. He was eyeing my coat, watching my hand move beneath it. He couldn’t possibly know what I was reaching for.
“What are you talking about?”
He looked behind me. “They’re here, and … well, you’ll figure it out.”
Big hands bit down on my shoulders. There were two men behind me. I could feel them. Big, electric, powerful men.
“Pull that thing out,” a man growled, “we’ll take it from you and never give it back. First rule of house: This is neutral ground. Second rule of house: Break a rule, you die.”
“Get your hands off me,” I gritted.
“We have the kid. You want to see her again, get up.”
My eyes narrowed. How had they gotten Dani? “There’s no way you—”
“We’re faster.”
“Like Barrons?”
There was no answer.
Well, I’d found my eight, or at least two of them. And they had Dani. Sighing, I stood and glared up at the Gray Woman in the mirror, but she didn’t notice, too busy serving herself off her waiter’s well-muscled platter. My blood boiled. He was no longer remotely good-looking. Barrons had told me the Gray Man rarely took so much that his victims died. Apparently the Gray Woman had larger appetites. I revised my estimate: He had another ten minutes, at most.
The dreamy-eyed boy was reflected in the mirror below them. I stared. He didn’t look the same in the mirror. He was … blurred around the edges and … wrong, very wrong. I shivered, struck by a soul-deep chill. I tried to bring his reflection into focus. The harder I tried, the blurrier he became. The blurred shape cleared, gave me a sharp look. “Don’t talk to it, beautiful girl. Never talk to it.”
I gaped. “Her, you mean? The Gray Woman?”
“It.” He spat the word with such revulsion that I flinched.
I looked down from the mirror at the real thing, not the reflection, and suddenly I could breathe again. He was a boy. A handsome, dreamy-eyed boy. Not something I wanted to run screaming from. “What ‘it’?”
He stared at me blankly. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Now,” the man behind me growled impatiently. “Move.”
* * *
They escorted me up a wide chrome staircase, to the top floor of Chester’s. Behind a chrome balustrade, dark-glass walls lined the entire circumference of the upper floor, smooth, without doors or handles.
I glanced from one of my escorts to the other. They hadn’t spoken a word since they’d closed their hands around my upper arms and begun steering me through the crowd. Nor had I. I could feel what they were made of: leashed violence. Both looked to be in their early thirties, heavily muscled. The man on my left had hands that were badly scarred. They were massive men. There was something about their eyes that made me decide keeping my mouth shut until I had a better understanding of my situation was the wisest course of action.
I glanced down as we topped the open-tread stairs. The waiter was on the floor, dead. The Gray Woman was already looking around for a new toy. My hands fisted. We walked along the wall of darkened glass until an indefinable characteristic in the featureless surface must have indicated a door, because the man on my right placed his palm to the glass. A panel slid aside, revealing a large room constructed entirely of two-way glass, cornered by metal girders. You could see everything going on outside it. The perimeter of the ceiling was lined with small screens fed by countless security cameras. Here were the guts of the club. Nothing happened anywhere in Chester’s that wasn’t seen here.