She assessed the room. Every single pillow was gone.

When he belched again, a feather floated from his mouth.

"They couldn't possibly have tasted good."

"Good is relative when all you have is nothing," he said sourly.

"Soon I'll let you out. Soon you'll be free again."

"Right. And soon sentient beings will stop destroying one another and themselves. Not. We're all going to die. Alone and miserably. With lots of pain. That's the way life goes. People make promises and don't keep them. They say they care about you and forget you."

"I didn't forget you. I never forget you"

She tossed three raw fish on the bed and Shazam exploded upright, straight up in the air, bristling with excitement. He fell on the fish like they were manna from Heaven, slurping and sucking and devouring every morsel until only fine bones remained on the down comforter.

"You are forgiven," he said grandly, settling down to polish his face with spit-moistened paws.

If only she was.

22.

"But you, you're not allowed, you're uninvited..."

Jada pressed her palm to the door of Ryodan's office a full hour earlier than she'd been advised to arrive. He might think he'd ordered her to be there, but no one ordered her anymore. They worked with her or against her.

She'd refined her thoughts during her time with Shazam, the two of them deciding her next move would have to be risked, that she'd have to accept the tattoo he'd offered.

So when the door slid aside, before she even stepped in, she said, "I'll let you tattoo me."

Barrons and Ryodan both looked over their shoulders at her, and she was struck suddenly by how...inhuman they looked, their faces more savage, their movements more...animalistic and sleek, as if caught momentarily off guard, engrossed. But their masks went up the instant they saw her and then they were just Barrons and Ryodan again.

The owner of Chester's was sitting backward in a chair, watching monitors, while Barrons sat behind him, tattooing his powerfully muscled back.

Ryodan reached for a shirt, tugged it on over his head. When he stood, he and Barrons exchanged a look, then Barrons nodded at her and said, "Jada, good to see you," and walked out.

"You shouldn't cover fresh tattoos," she told Ryodan coolly. "They weep."

He stood legs wide, arms folded, silver cuff glinting, looking down at her. "How would you know anything about tattoos or weeping?"

She was five-foot-ten now, and still had to arch her neck to look at him.

"I've heard," she said. He had a tight-fitting tee-shirt on. Then again probably every tee-shirt he put on was tight because of his sheer width and musculature. She could see the delineation of each muscle in his abdomen through the shirt, the pronounced outline of his pectorals. His lats flared, his biceps were sculpted, his forearms thickly corded. For a moment she was fourteen again, looking up at him. And she finally understood and acknowledged what she used to feel. The teen had suffered an intense crush on Dancer. The superhero had been utterly infatuated with Ryodan. They'd become her world when Mac had turned her back. She'd felt safe being with Dancer. Yet Ryodan had made her feel safe.

They stood a long moment, ten feet apart, looking at each other as silence spun out.

"What changed your mind?" he said finally.

"I'm not sure I have fully changed my mind," she said, noting his second use of the interrogative in a single conversation and wondering if he really was done baiting her all the time. "How does it work?"

He sliced his head once to the left. "If you mean the mechanics of it, too bad. Bottom line is this: if you let me tattoo you and you carry the phone, I can find you if you ever get lost again."

"Details."

"There are three numbers programmed in. Mine. You call it, I answer. The second one is Barrons's number. If I don't answer for some reason, Barrons will. The third one is called IISS." He waited.

"I resent being cued. It makes me not want to know."

Tiny lines around his eyes crinkled as he threw his head back and laughed.

Jada fisted her hands behind her back. She hated it when he laughed.

"Good to see you haven't lost all your irrational prickliness," he said. "IISS stands for I'm In Serious Shit. Use it only if you are."

"What will happen?"

"Hope you never find out. But if you'd called it in the Silvers, I'd have been there."

"How quickly?"

"Very."

"What good would that have done?"

"I'd have gotten you out."

"Who can say your way would have been better? Maybe it would have taken us ten years with you leading the way."

"Doubtful. Maybe it would have taken ten days. And you wouldn't have been alone."

"Who says I was alone?"

"Do you want it or not."

"Seriously, ten days?" She assessed him remotely, wondering if it could possibly be true. This man had awed her with his unfathomable abilities and strength. She'd never forgotten how he could out-everything her, from spying a drop of condensation on a frozen sculpture she couldn't see, to freeze-framing faster, to always being able to find her no matter what. I tasted your blood, he'd said once. I can always find you.

She'd believed that. Even Silverside.

He sighed explosively and raked a hand through his short dark hair. "Ah, Dani. It doesn't work in there. Would that it fucking did."

"The tattoo?" she said, refusing to believe he'd just skimmed her mind. "Then you're not doing it. And it's Jada," she corrected. "Every time you call me the wrong name, I'll call you a wrong one. Dickhead."

"That I tasted your blood. It doesn't work in Faery."

"If I don't invite you into my thoughts, stay out of them. It's called respect. If you don't respect me, you don't get to know me." She stepped closer, moving to stand nose-to-nose, staring straight into those cool silver eyes that used to so intimidate her, but she would never have let him know that. They didn't intimidate her now.

He inclined his head. "Understood. I won't do it again. Much. Often, it was the only way I could stay one step ahead of you."

"Why did you think you needed to?"

"To keep you alive."

"You thought I needed a foster parent?"

"I thought you needed a powerful friend. I tried to be that. Are we still talking or are you ready to tattoo?"

"I still don't understand how it works."

"Some things require a leap of faith."

She gave him her back and swept her ponytail aside. "Have at it."

His fingers moved across the nape of her neck, at the base of her skull, lingering. She suppressed a shiver. "How long is this going to take?"

"I can't work with this spot. Too bloody much scar tissue from you cutting the last one off."

"If you tattooed me, why didn't you give me the phone then, too? What was the point of tattooing me at all?"

"We had this conversation. You wouldn't have carried it. You would have believed it was another of my infamous contracts. However, at some point I knew you would. I prepared for that eventuality."

"I'm not an eventuality. Get off my neck if it won't work."

"I'm not touching you," he said. "I touched the scar only briefly."

Still, she felt the burn of his fingers against her skin, the faint electrical charge. She spun to face him. "Where, then?"

He arched a brow. "The second best location is at the base of your spine."

"A tramp stamp?" she said incredulously.

"Its effectiveness increases bound to the base of the spine."

"And I still don't know what that effectiveness is. This could be just another one of your-"

"And that's precisely why I never tried to get you to carry the phone," he cut her off roughly. "For fuck's sake, you vanished and I couldn't find you. Do you really think I'm going to let that happen again? If you believe nothing else, concede it will work for that reason alone. I don't lose things that are mine."

She arched a brow and said coolly, "I'm not yours and never was."

"Tramp stamp or get the fuck out," he said coldly.

She stood motionless, realigning herself deep inside. This day was hands down the most brutal one she'd had since she returned. People had been clawing at her all day with their feelings and demands and expectations. She didn't know how to live in this world anymore. Didn't know how to pass through unscathed, unchanged. It was changing her. She could feel it.

"Fine," she said flatly. Kicking a chair into place, she dropped into it with her back to him, legs splayed around it, stripped off her shirt and leaned forward, resting her arms on the back, stretching long and lean.

"We don't have all night," she said finally, breaking the long silence.

"Ah, fuck," he said softly, and she knew he was looking at the scars.

23.

"Pour some sugar on me..."

I go looking for Jo, and man, that's one chick I just don't get.

She told me this morning she "doesn't wanna wanna fuck me."

How can that shit even happen in the same sentence? One wanna negating the other wanna makes no fucking sense.

Some things are simple. Leave it to a woman to point a man down a straight path then twist it into a bloody maze before he even takes two steps.

You wanna fuck somebody.

There it is.

Nothing complicated about that at all.

And if you wanna fuck somebody, why would you waste any time thinking twice about it when you could be using that time to fuck them? Do women sit around all day dreaming up bipolar-crazy-ass conversations just to make us bugfuck crazy?

She says, all serious like, Lor, you're a really sweet guy (who the bloody fuck is she talking about? I'm looking around the bed but it's only me and her) but I don't want to do this again (she announces, with her ass way up in the air, me driving into her dirty-dog-buried-to-the-hilt-and-she's-howling style). It was wrong from the get-go (what was wrong was me doing a brunette with little tits but you don't hear me complaining), and I don't want to keep compounding the same mistake (I don't point out that she seems to be enjoying the hell out of said mistake, if the sounds she's making are anything to judge by, and before she started using her mouth to say such stupid shit it was her idea to use it sucking my dick, but that's me, a paragon of restraint), so we need to stop this.

Then she drops the mother of all bombs on the parade of bombs she's already dropped and it's a wonder my dick doesn't go limp from the shrapnel. Well, actually, that's not a wonder.

Naked woman. Hard dick.

She says-and get this nut-job-crazy-bitch-ass-shit that came out of her mouth next, Lor, I might need you to help me. I might change my mind, and if I do, I need you to say no.

I stop what I'm doing, grab her by the hair, turn her head toward me and stare at her. "You're saying if you come to me later today, saying 'I want you to fuck me, Lor,' I'm supposed to say no?" I'm having a hard time with the nuances of this.

She's looking all hot and flushed and sweaty, with glazed eyes and kinda panting, and she nods and gasps, "Exactly."

I shove her head back down and get back to business. Which, I might point out, she's loving the hell out of.

Thinking the whole time, I don't get brunettes. It's why I avoid 'em. Never heard a blonde say such a fucked-up thing.