I'm supposed to help a woman that doesn't wanna wanna fuck me but obviously does wanna fuck me and sucks dick with the tender aggression and dedicated zeal of a wet, velvet-lined vacuum be strong enough not to fuck me when I thoroughly enjoy fucking her?

Women.

Whose bright idea was it to make them?

No wonder we got booted from the goddamn Garden.

After a few days with Eve, Adam couldn't think straight.

- I find Jo in the corridor of the server's quarters. Her eyes flare and she backs away when she sees me coming, thrusting her tray of dirty glasses out at me, like something so puny could keep me from getting what I want.

I don't do the caveman routine. It doesn't work with brunettes. It's why I hate 'em. They take work.

"You said you got a problem with your memory," I say.

She looks wary. "You mean my sidhe-seer gift?"

"Sure do, babe. You can't organize it. Wading knee-deep in mental detritus."

She gives me a look when I say "detritus" like all I could possibly know are four-letter words, and I think, Keep thinking that, babe. Lor's just a dumb blond. I'm gonna blow her messy-ass mind and when I'm done maybe it'll be clean enough in there she'll be able to see when you wanna fuck you wanna fuck.

"Lessons start tonight. After your shift."

"I'm not going to have sex-"

"Oh, yes you are. You're gonna fuck me every time I give you a lesson. Ain't no free lunches. And when I'm done you're gonna be goddamn brilliant. And then, maybe, I'm not gonna want to fuck you anymore."

She gives me a skeptical look. "How are you going to help me organize what's in my head?"

"Loci. Latin for 'places.' Mnemonic device for managing memory. Simonides, Cicero, Quintilian all used it. I'm going to teach you to build a memory palace."

"How come I've never heard of this before?" she says suspiciously.

"Probably can't find it in your mess in there. The mess that thinks you don't wanna fuck somebody you wanna fuck."

"A nicer person would offer to teach me, not bully me into trading sexual favors."

"Uh-huh. A nicer person would. And I'd hardly say it's you trading me a favor. Seems damned mutually beneficial to me. You want what you want from me, you gotta give me what I want from you. And hopefully we'll both get so sick of each other by the time it's over, we'll leave each other alone."

She narrows her eyes and I can tell the idea appeals to her. Hell, it appeals to me. The sooner I get her out of my system the sooner my life gets simple again.

"How do you know anything about this kind of stuff?"

"Honey, when you've lived as long as I have, if you don't have a filing system, you're fucked. Besides," I flash her a wolfish grin, "I needed a good way to track my chicks, skirts, and babes through the millennia. Every fuck. All in there. Every last detail."

She gets a weird look, and I think, Aw, shit, Ryodan wasn't as open with her as I thought he was, then it turns into a scoff and I breathe a little easier. "Millennia?" She laughs and says, "Yeah right." She blushes. "I'm in your memory palace."

And she's the one I'd like most to take out with the trash at this point. "Every time you come. Smell. Taste. Sound. Deal or not?"

"I'll try it once," she says. "And if I think you have anything to teach me, we'll continue."

Aw, honey, I think, we're definitely gonna continue.

- I start out simple. I tell her about the London cabbies and the test they have to take called the Knowledge. First thing about mastering any subject is understanding the mechanics of it.

Like the clit.

I've studied it exhaustively, in theory and with a butt-load of practical application. It's remarkably like a dick with a foreskin, erectile tissue, and even a tiny little shaft. But it's way better. Women got some eight thousand sensory nerve endings in it. The penis only has about four thousand. On top of that, the clit can affect another fifteen thousand nerve endings, which means a whopping fucking twenty-three thousand nerve endings exploding in an orgasm.

We definitely got the short end of the dick, er, stick.

I also know Marie Bonaparte (one sexually adventurous babe!) had her clit surgically moved closer to her vagina because she couldn't score a Vag-O. Another goddamn brunette, thinking too much, hanging out with Freud. I could've helped her with that problem without moving nothing. Once she did, it didn't work anyway 'cause she didn't take into consideration three-quarters of the clit is embedded in the woman's body and can't be moved.

Then there's the fact that this amazing little clit men got screwed out of actually grows throughout a woman's lifetime.

By menopause it's seven times larger than it was at birth and fucking-A-there's a reason older women are hot as hell in bed! Can't imagine what kinda nut I'd bust with a dick seven times this size. Not sure there'd be anyplace I could put it, so I ain't gonna bemoan that one. And clits are all different: some are little nubs, some are big, some hide, some protrude, and each one is as unique as the woman attached to it.

"Clits?" Jo says, blinking. "I thought we were talking about cabbies."

"Clits, cabbies, different means, same end. Pay attention. You're getting me off track."

"I didn't say one word about clits," she says, looking pissy.

"You were thinking about them."

She blows out an exasperated breath. "What about this test, the Knowledge? How does this have anything to do with me remembering where I put things in my head?"

"I'm getting to that. Goddamn woman, learn to take your time on the buildup. So the cabbies in London study for years, memorizing the patterns of twenty-five thousand streets, locations of some twenty thousand landmarks, and have to be able to plot the shortest distance between any two areas, including all significant places of interest along the way. Like two or three out of ten actually manage to pass the Knowledge."

"And?"

"Their right posterior hippocampus is seven percent larger than the average person's. Not because they were born that way, babe. Neuroplasticity."

She blinks at me like she's having a hard time understanding English. She mouths the word "neuroplasticity." "You know this how? Why?"

"I drove a cab for a while. Coupla months."

"In London?"

"Why the fuck do you think I'd tell you about a test I didn't take?"

"You took a test? And passed? You drove a cab?" She's looking at me like I'm from outer space.

"Do you know what the babes in London are like? How many wives fly in or out without their husbands from all kinds of international places? Look at me, honey. I'm a walking, talking, fucking Viking that loves to fuck. I had the run of the airport."

"Oh my God. You were a cabbie to get laid."

I wink at her. "Fun times."

"Okay," she says, shaking her head briskly, "we're done with clits and cabbies. What does this have to do with my problem? Are you saying I have to increase the size of part of my brain? How am I supposed to do that?"

"Like the clit, the brain can change. The right posterior hippocampus registers spatial encoding-"

"I'm having a real hard time with your sudden language proficiency," she says, eyes narrowed.

"Babe, I ain't dumb. I'm efficient."

She leans back in her chair, looking at me with a slow smile tugging at her lips, and she's trying not to let it happen but all the sudden she busts out laughing. "I'll be damned," she says when she finally stops laughing, and all the sudden I don't like how she's looking at me. Like she sees something I didn't want her to see. Don't ever want a babe to see. I'm suddenly wondering how smart this arrangement was.

But in for a goddamn penny and all. So I start telling her about the theory of elaborate encoding, embellishing memories and inserting them spatially, tying them to a place, and suggest she use the abbey, because it's so familiar to her. Some folks argue fictional places are superior, but when you already got a great big sprawling fortress you grew up in to use, why do more work than necessary? That's pretty much the motto of my life.

"So you're saying I encode everything I want to remember into various images and tuck them into different places at the abbey in my mind? Sounds like a lot of work," she says.

"Yeah, but you only gotta do it once. And it gets easier when you get the hang of it. You gotta trick it up. Make it funny somehow. I remember this chick, I never knew her name and I wanted to file her and the woman was a serious-ass kink, so I called her Lola, you know, the Kinks-'L-O-L-A low-la.'" I belt it just like Ray Davies, and fuck me they always did put on one helluva show. "I made her a bent paper clip resting in the fold of the sleeve on the Ray Davies statue in my study."

"Paper clip? You have a Ray Davies statue in your study? What else is in your study?"

"Don't be nosy, honey. It ain't attractive. She was twisted. Like a bent paper clip. It worked for me."

She ponders it, worrying that hot lower lip of hers that has some serious suction power. "And this really works?" she says finally.

"It's all about taking control of your inner space, babe."

She stares at me a long moment in silence. She opens her mouth and closes it again, rubbing her forehead. Then, looking like she can't even believe what's coming out of her mouth, she says, "Can we just fuck?"

I'm on her before she even finishes the sentence.

I think I just gave a whole new spin to talking a chick into fucking.

24.

"I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long..."

"You want me to hunt the woman that looks like your sister?" Barrons said.

I nodded. I was sick of not knowing what was really going on in so many areas in my life. It was bad enough that I had this thing inside me that, if it had rules, I didn't know any of them, but now there was some creepy trash-heap Unseelie out there that had managed to freeze me in helpless horror, even though my sidhe-seer senses were currently neutralized, and another unknown entity masquerading as my dead sister.

Two of those three things I could take decisive action about. Starting with the one that posed the greatest threat to my sanity.

"I want you to capture her," I clarified. "And I want you to bring her somewhere I can question her."

"You blew this off in Chester's."

I sighed. "I didn't want to say anything in front of Ryodan. You know he chews a bone until it's nothing but splinters. I didn't feel like being his bone at the time."

"Do you believe it could be Alina?"

"No. I think it's completely impossible. But I want to know what the hell it actually is."

"You told me you buried your sister. You were certain it was her. Have you changed your mind?"

"Nope. I buried her." I don't bother mentioning that I also recently exhumed her corpse and it wasn't there. I saw no point in further complicating an already complicated issue. I wanted to examine the Alina-thing first, then I'd disclose all, if necessary, to Barrons.

"I won't be able to bring her to the bookstore," he said.

I nodded. He was going to have to change from man to beast to hunt Alina, and I didn't think for a minute any Hunter would permit the creature Barrons became on its back and fly them over our private tornado. "Do you have another place nearby that's well warded?"

"The basement where you were Pri-ya is still protected."

Our eyes met and we had an intense nonverbal conversation, graphic reminders of sex, raw and aggressive, hungry and obsessive. You are my world, I'd said. Don't leave me.

You're leaving me, Rainbow Girl, he'd said, and I'd known even then I was under his skin as deeply as he was under mine.

"Is the Christmas tree still up?" I said lightly.

I left it like it was. Best fucking cave I ever lived in, his dark eyes said.

One day, we'll do it again, I sent back. I wouldn't have to fake being Pri-ya. Not with this man.

He stretched and moved, began subtly changing.

"Uh, Barrons, we have a meeting. I thought you'd go afterward."

"Ryodan canceled it," he said around teeth much too large for his mouth. "He's tattooing Dani. Jada."

"She's letting him?" I said incredulously.

"She asked."

I narrowed my eyes, mulling that over. "You were inking Ryodan. Same kind of tats you wear. I never saw those on him before." And I'd seen him naked. "Is he giving her a phone? Will he be able to find her like you found me?"

"Speaking of," he growled, twisting sideways with a series of painful-sounding crunches, "you do still carry the cell, Ms. Lane."

"Always," I assured him.

"I'll find this thing you seek, but when I return it's imperative I finish my own tattoos."

"Oh, God," I said slowly. "When you're reborn all your tats are gone. Even the ones that bind us together."

"And until I replace them, IYD won't work. That, Ms. Lane, is the only reason I wanted you to remain in Chester's the other day. Until I finish them."