“About fifty between the three.”

“Humans or Fae?”

“Humans.”

“All humans?”

He nods.

I let out a low whistle. Fifty more people dead. The human race just keeps getting hammered with blow after blow. “Then why do you care? It didn’t happen on your turf. Nothing of yours was damaged or destroyed.”

“I have other reasons for wanting it stopped.”

“Like what? You move fast like me. You can outrun anything. You can steal more stuff to replace what got iced. So what’s the deal?” What motives does a dude like him have?

“The walls between our realms were destroyed on Halloween. Since then things have changed. Human laws of physics are no longer laws, they’re wishful thinking. It’s possible parts of Faery are manifesting spontaneously, bleeding through into our reality. It’s possible it’s happening randomly, instantly, and without warning. I didn’t see surprise on anyone’s face at either of my properties. Put the big picture together, even for people who can move like you and me.”

I snap up straight to full attention, both feet on the floor, not liking that at all. “You mean if it happened in the place I was standing, I’d be alive one second, dead the next. I wouldn’t even know it. I’d just be gone!” My hands fist. I’m so freaked I want to fight something right now.

“Exactly. Instant death. No warning. No awareness. I don’t know about you, but that offends the fuck out of me.”

No blaze of glory, no epic battle! I’d die a totally meaningless death. Worse, I wouldn’t even get to experience it. How much would that suck, to go through my whole life waiting to die, and then not even know it happened? I think Death is like the final stage of a video game. And if what Ryodan is saying is true, and I get iced, I’ll never reach that final stage. I’ll get wiped right out of existence on the second-to-last level. I want to play that last level when it’s time. I want to taste it all, even the dying.

I’m suddenly one hundred and ten percent invested in solving this mystery. Fifty more folks dead coupled with the possibility of a completely meaningless death is powerful motivation. You don’t get a big write-up in the history books unless you go out in a big way. I crunch thoughts and regurgitate them. “Well, first of all, the humans in your subclub were a little preoccupied with things like getting tortured and dying so it’s understandable if they didn’t notice that they were about to die in some other unexpected and surprising way, and second, I can’t say for certain what surprise looks like on an Unseelie’s face but I got a great idea: I’ll go downstairs and kill a few right now and we’ll collect some empirical data.” I don’t bother to mention I already hunted and killed half a dozen different kinds this morning after I left but I still couldn’t decide what their expressions meant. Their faces just don’t work like ours.

When he doesn’t bother to dignify my dig with a response, I say, “Three new places?” What if the “bleeding through” starts to speed up? There could be dozens of iced spots soon. Assuming that’s what’s happening, how the feck are we going to stop it?

“All iced last night within a few hours of each other. Two of them have already exploded.”

I shoot to my feet. “Dude, we got to get to the third, before it goes, too!”

TWELVE

“Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long”

I slo-mo Joe it across Halfpenny Bridge.

We didn’t learn a single new thing at the latest ice sculpture. Like the others, it blew shortly after we arrived. I freeze-framed out of there through flesh-colored shrapnel I pretended wasn’t parts of fingers and faces I’d failed to save.

The new places that got iced have nothing in common that I can see. There were two of those small underground pubs that’ve been springing up all over the city, and a fitness center where three people were frozen doing yoga in the middle of a bunch of crystal bowls. How weird is that? People doing yoga in times like these!

So far I’ve got an underground club at Chester’s, a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, two inner-city small pubs, and a fitness center. Humans, Unseelie, and Imperial guards all at some places but not others, so whatever’s happening doesn’t appear to be targeting a certain person like Ryodan or group of victims. It’s looking more like a random, spontaneous event with each scene I see.

I’m trudging, which I don’t usually do, because I’m thinking hard and when I’m thinking hard plus freeze-framing I run into things a lot. My bruises are fading and sometimes I try to be my normal-colored self for like a whole day. I’m too wired for sleep. I get like that sometimes and can’t do anything about it but ride it out. I need something to do or I’m going to drive myself nuts.