Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales 3)

"Will you stop with the—”

"Right, I know. Impossible quest. Look, I'm sure I could list more things about you she hates, but I think you get my point. Whatever she wants, we want the opposite.”

"I don't care about her or her messengers!" Kaye shouted. "I care about you, and you're acting crazy.”

Corny shrugged and turned away from her, looking through the window of a shop as if he were seeing some other place in the racks of clothing. Then he smiled at himself in the glass. "Whatever, Kaye. I'm right about him. They love to hurt people. People like Janet.”

Kaye shuddered, guilt over Janet's death too fresh for his words not to feel like an accusation. "I know—”

Corny interrupted her. "Anyway, I got cursed, so I guess I got what I deserved, right? The universe is in balance. I got what I was asking for.”

"That's not what I meant," Kaye said. "I don't even know what I mean. I'm just freaked out. Everything's coming apart.”

"You're freaking out? Everything I touch rots! How am I going to eat food? How am I going to jerk off?”

Kaye laughed despite herself.

"Not to mention I am going to have to dress up in down-market fetish-wear forever." Corny held up a gloved hand.

"Good thing that turns you on," Kaye said.

A slow smile spread over his mouth. "Okay, it was dumb. What I did. At least I should have found out what Silarial wanted.”

Kaye shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Let's go back to Brooklyn and figure out what to do about your hands.”

Corny pointed to a pay phone hanging outside of a bar. "You want me to call your mom's cell? I could tell her we got kicked out of the club for being underage. I can lie like crazy.”

Kaye shook her head. "After you beat up someone in the bathroom? I think she knows what we got kicked out for.”

"He was hitting on me," Corny said primly. "I had to protect my virtue."

Kaye let herself and Corny into her mother's apartment with a spare key and threw herself down on the bed. Corny flopped down beside her with a groan.

Looking up at the popcorn of the ceiling, she studied the grooves and fissures, letting her mind drift from Corny's curse and the explanation she didn't have for running out on her mother's show. She thought of Roiben instead, standing in front of the entire assemblage of the Unseelie Court, and of the way they'd bowed their heads. But that made her think of all the children they'd snatched from cradles and strollers and swing sets to replace with changelings, or worse. She imagined Roiben's slender fingers circling flailing, rosy limbs. Looking across the bed, she saw Corny's fingers instead, each one encased in rubber.

"We're going to fix things," Kaye said.

"How are we going to do that, exactly?" Corny asked. "Not that I'm doubting you, mind.”

"Maybe I could take the curse off of you. I have magic, right?”

He sat up. "You think you can?”

"I don't know. Let me get rid of my glamour so I can use whatever I've got." She concentrated, imagining her disguise tearing like cobwebs. Her senses flooded. She could smell the crusts of burnt food in the burners of the stove, the exhaust from cars, the mold inside the walls, and even the filthy snow they'd tracked across the floor. And she felt the iron, heavier than ever, eating away at the edges of her power, as clearly as she felt the brush of wings across her shoulders.

"Okay," she said, rolling toward him. "Take off a glove.”

He removed one and held out the hand to her. She tried to imagine her magic as she'd been told to, like a ball of energy prickling between her palms. She concentrated on expanding it, despite the iron-soaked air. When it settled over Corny's hands, her skin stung like she clutched nettles. She could change the shape of his fingers, but she couldn't touch the curse.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she said finally, helplessly, letting her concentration lapse and the energy dissipate. Just the attempt had exhausted her.

"That's okay. I heard about a guy who breaks spells. A human.”

"Really? How'd you hear about him?" Kaye fumbled with her pocket.

Corny turned his face away from her, toward the window. "I forget.”

"Remember the paper that girl gave me? The Fixer? There's a place to start. Fixing sounds like what we're looking for.”