“Brought her like you said, Ry.”
They pushed me inside. The panel slid closed behind me with a soft hiss. The room was dark but for the glow of LCD panels. I took a step to catch my balance. For a moment I thought I was falling, but it was an illusion created by the floor, which was also made of two-way glass. It was so dim in the room that all I could see were outlines: a desk, a few chairs, a table, and a man standing across the room, his back to me. Everything beneath the room, however, was clearly visible. It made each step feel like a leap of faith.
“Glass houses, huh, Ryodan?” The first time I’d ever called IYCGM on my cell phone, Ryodan had berated me, told me people who lived in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, implying my goals were no loftier than Barrons’. Now here he stood, surveying his world from inside one. Did he consider his own goals so pristine? I narrowed my eyes. There was another room beyond the one in which we stood, even darker. Whatever lurked in its shadows, he was watching it intently.
After a moment he said, without turning, “Why did you come, Mac?”
“Why are you feeding humans to the Unseelie?”
“There is no force at my club. Only desire. Mutual.”
“They don’t understand what they’re doing.”
“Not my problem.”
“They’re dying. Somebody needs to wake them up to reality.”
“They’re in love with dying.”
“They’re misguided, confused.”
“Not my problem.”
“You could do something about it!”
“So I should?” he said. “Does that seem a friendly crowd down there to you? It trembles on the verge of another riot, yet you would have me play moral adviser. Men have been crucified for less. I’ve seen enough train wrecks to know when the rails are locked and the brakes have failed. It’s all train wrecks down there, Mac. Only one thing holds my interest now. Potential. Barrons thinks you have it.”
His tone made it plain. “But you don’t,” I said flatly.
“You worry me.”
“You worry me, too.” I took a few more steps into the room. I wanted a better look at him. I wanted to know what he was watching. Like Barrons and my escorts, Ryodan was tall, well built. I wondered if it was a requirement to be whatever they were: no wimps allowed. He wore dark pants and a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled up on thickly muscled forearms. A silver cuff, identical to Barrons’, glinted at his wrist.
“Everyone seems to think you’re the solution, don’t they?” he said.
I shrugged. “Not everybody.” Rowena didn’t.
“Has it occurred to you that you might be the problem?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you think you keep having so many brushes with the Book, when everyone else who’s searching for it never gets a glimpse of it? Even Darroc, your illustrious master, can’t get close to it. Word is it’s been taking its own—Unseelie—chewing them up and spitting them out. But nobody who really wants it can find it. Except you.”
“I’m an OOP detector,” I reminded him. “I’m the only one who can sense it. There’s potential for you.”
“Indeed. Potential for what? Has it occurred to you that perhaps you don’t keep finding the Book—it keeps finding you?”
“What are you saying?”
“What do you think the Book wants, Mac?”
“How should I know? Death. Destruction. Chaos. Same as the rest of the Unseelie.”
“What would you want if you were a book?”
“I’m different, and that’s easy. I’d want to not be a book.”
“Maybe you’re not so different. Maybe it wants also to not be a book.”
“It has other forms. It’s the Beast, too.”
“Has the Beast ever harmed anyone? Don’t you think it would if it could? Isn’t that its nature?”
I studied his back, pondered his words. “You’re saying the Beast is only glamour. That like any Fae, it creates illusion.”
“What if its only true form is a book? One that can’t walk, or talk, or move, or do anything on its own?”
“Are you saying you think it takes people over just to have a body?”
He glanced up at the LCD screens above his head. “I don’t know what I think. I consider everything. You watch them long enough, you see what they want. Unseelie hunger, like starved prisoners, for whatever it is the Unseelie King brought them into existence lacking. What if the Book is after corporeality? A movable form it can use with autonomy? A body it can keep and control? A life of its own?”
“Then why would it kill the people it takes?”
“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe, like dolls, they break. Or maybe some part of them manages to regain control for a few moments and stop what the Book is doing to them the only way they can. Or maybe it’s biding time, waiting for just the right moment. Maybe it has the Fae ability of prognosticating possibles, delicately shaping events to achieve certain ends. Has the Book ever spoken to you?”
“Yes.”
“Barrons said it called you by name.”
I’d never told him that. He must have heard it speak to me that night. I’d thought it spoke only in my head. “So? I don’t know how it knew my name.” He liked the “maybe” game. I could play it, too. “Maybe it knows everybody’s. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but the Book repels me. I can barely get close to it. I’m too good and it’s too evil.”
“Really.” He could not have said it more dryly.
“What do you mean, ‘really’?” I said defensively.
“Good and evil are merely opposite sides of a coin, Mac. Get tossed in the air enough, it’s easy to come down on the wrong side. Maybe the Book knows something about you that makes you different. Makes it want you. Makes it think if you flipped sides, you’d be worth more to it than any of the rest of us.”
What he was saying didn’t make sense. And it was creeping me out. “Like what? And if that was the case, then why wouldn’t it have taken me already? It’s had plenty of chances.”
“Darroc bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment. Maybe you’re not primed to flip yet. Eternal life breeds eternal patience. If you lived long enough, you might feel that if today amuses, today is good. All sense of right or wrong, all morality, all value, might cease to exist.”