“Clarify.”

“There wasn’t any noise. Nothing. You’d think the ice on all those Unseelie might have popped or cracked a little like ice does when it settles because they were warm before they got iced but they didn’t. When we walked, our shoes didn’t sound right on the pavement. When we talked it was … flat. It was worse than flat. There was a feeling to the silence. A really bad feeling.”

“Elucidate,” Ryodan says.

“I just did. I think you mean speculate.”

Lor snorts. Ryodan gives me a look. Don’t even know why I bother answering him sometimes. Maybe I like to hear myself talk. I’ve got a lot of interesting things to say. “You know how sound is really movement, and vibration is what makes noise? Which is, like, total contradiction to its effect on things because when the world went dead quiet, it was still moving while making absolutely no noise. But what I’m saying is, after it departed, things never got back to normal. It’s like things weren’t vibrating all the way. Or maybe the sound waves weren’t bouncing off things the way they should. Or maybe the things the waves were bouncing off weren’t right.”

“Narrow it down.”

I shrug. “Got insufficient data to form conclusive deductions.”

“How long from the time it appeared to the time it disappeared.”

“That was the weird thing. It felt like it was happening in slow-mo but I figure two seconds from start to finish. It came. It iced. It vanished.” Sometimes I don’t have the most accurate sense of time because I’m in a kind of in-between fast-mo and slow-mo and don’t even realize it, which makes things around me seem to be happening more slowly. I’m pretty sure when it came, I was so wound up I was half freeze-framing. I look at Lor, who nods.

“Two to three seconds at most, boss. The fog rushed out, the thing came, the fog sucked back in and it was gone.”

“I assume it was Fae,” Ryodan says.

“Unequivocally,” I say.

“You’re a sidhe-seer. That means you should be able to get a read on it like Mac did with the Sinsar Dubh.”

“I could to a degree.”

“Intelligence.”

“Enormous sentience. Stupefying.” I wish I’d felt the Unseelie king. I’d have something to compare it to.

“Emotion.”

“None discernible. No malevolence. I got the impression destruction was a by-product, not a goal.” I notice everyone’s looking at me funny. “Dude,” I add and flash my best street-urchin grin at the room in general. “Fecking-A, was it ever cool!” Got to watch my tendency to geek out when I get excited.

“You think it had a goal.”

“There was … I don’t know … purpose to what it was doing. I could feel it. Some Fae feel simple when I focus on them with my sidhe-seer sense. They’re dumb, acting on instinct, capable of random destruction. Then there are things like Papa Roach, that Fae that breaks down into little parts,” I remind him, in case he missed that especially scintillating edition of my Dani Daily. “Papa feels … structured. It has plans. So does the Ice Monster. But there’s a big difference between Papa and the Ice Monster. Papa has a beady little mind. This thing is … vast in construct and purpose.”

“Motive.”

I sigh. “No clue. Just that it had one.”

“No idea why it chose that place, or why it ices things.”

“None,” I say. “It didn’t even touch anything, as far as I could see. It just kind of hovered above it all. Unless the fog is like its fingers or something and it sucks folks’ life force up with it and inadvertently ices them in the process. No way around it, I need more time with it. Got to feel it out longer.”

Jayne starts cursing and says nobody is going to be spending more time with it because it’s too dangerous, and even Lor looks disturbed by the idea of another encounter with the Iceman. Which reminds me …

“Why were you afraid?” I say. “I didn’t think anything scared you dudes.”

Lor gives me a cool look, like I didn’t see what I saw, and says, “What are you talking about, kid? Only thing I was worried about was how pissed Boss was going to be if the thing killed you.”

Bull. I know these dudes. They don’t care about anything but themselves and he was freaked, which means it was a threat to him somehow. I want to know how. I want to know what Ryodan’s Kryptonite is. I know a few universals like: he who can destroy a thing controls it. Not that I get off on destroying things but when you get backed against a wall, coming out with both guns blazing is pretty much your only choice. I want enough power to void a contract, enough to quit my job, permanent-like. I’m ready for retirement. I want enough leverage to get Jo out of the kiddie subclub, assuming she ever wants to leave.