I also popped into the annoyingly bright, annoyingly modern Bane’s bookstore (I refused to give it three B’s, it didn’t deserve them) and left with a bag of books: Ireland’s Legends; A Concise Summary of the Book of Invasions; When Druids Walked the Earth; Giants and Kings of Ireland; An Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology, plus two of my favorite iconic graphic novels in pristine condition: Batman’s Arkham Asylum, and Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
I was headed back to my flat to hunt for Shazam, as I’d grown increasingly concerned about his recent, long absences, when my back pocket vibrated with a text alert.
I swear to God my ass knew who it was from.
I’d received multiple texts today, from Rainey, Kat, a few of my friends and “birds” checking in. But this one was different. It practically bit my ass through my jeans.
Ryodan.
His words in my back pocket.
Even those had fangs.
Scowling, I whipped it out, tidily boxed recent events threatening to erupt in my skull.
PICK YOU UP AT EIGHT. WEAR A DRESS.
My eyebrows climbed my forehead and vanished into my scalp.
Seriously? Furious thumbs flew over the keys as I typed Barrons’s words from a few years ago. He’d been right.
All caps make it look like you’re shouting at me.
His reply came so swiftly, I swear he’d already had it typed and ready.
I was. You never listen otherwise.
“Wear. A. Dress,” I fumed, steam building in my head. I know Ryodan and he knows me. Which meant he knew telling me to wear a dress would pretty much guarantee I’d choose anything but a dress.
But…you have to take things a little further with that man because that’s how he thinks, always looking ahead. Since he knew telling me to wear a dress would make me choose something else—and he also knew I was fully aware of how his manipulative brain worked—he knew I’d ultimately decide to wear the bloody dress just to prove I wasn’t being manipulated by him. So, he’d get me in a dress either way.
This was a complete clusterfuck. How did I win? By wearing a dress or not?
I now fully and completely understood why That Woman had gone into battle with Sherlock naked.
The only way I could win was by not being there to be picked up at eight. My screen flashed at that precise instant with a new text from him.
This isn’t about us. Our city is in trouble. Be there.
“Oh, screw you,” I growled. Right, provoke my innate, highly dysmorphic sense of personal responsibility.
I shoved my phone back in my pocket, resisting the urge to mute further texts. I wouldn’t let him make me let my city down by not being there if someone in need texted me.
I was storming back to my flat to demand Shazam’s presence (and counsel!) when I saw one of them: a bird with a broken wing, maybe two.
I sighed, and circled back to a food vendor, placed my order, rearranging priorities, watching her from the corner of my eye where she huddled on a bench outside a pub, trembling and pale, badly bruised.
I didn’t know her story and didn’t need to. I knew the look. This was a pervasive problem: the disenfranchised could be found on nearly every corner of every street in every city in our world.
Their stories were some version of this: their families/children/lover got killed when the walls fell and they lost their job; they watched their siblings/friends/parents get seduced and destroyed by Seelie or Unseelie; the worst of humans had preyed on them.
Glassy-eyed, sludge-brained, terrorized, once victimized, they were prey magnets.
Not everyone was as lucky as me. Not everyone had a hard life, so when the going gets tough, they don’t know how to get going.
“Here. Eat.” I offered the woman the sandwich I’d just bought. She was young, too pretty to go unnoticed, thin.
Trembling, she raised her head and looked at me. Shock glazed her eyes, fear blanched her skin to snow. She made no move for the wax-paper-wrapped food, and if she didn’t take it soon I might fall on it myself. It was one of my favorites, a hot, breaded fresh-caught fish and tartar sauce delight nestled in a sesame bun, with chips, dripping grease.