Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales 3)

"'Cause I poisoned a bunch of them. So I'm a dead man, but what good does it do to stay shut up in here while Luis tries to bargain for an extra week or two of boredom? At least I can have some fun with the time I got left." Dave grinned, but it looked more like a grimace, the skin on his cheeks pulled painfully tight. "Luis can tell me what to do all he wants, but he's going upstate this week. While the cat's away, the mouse'll finally get some play.”

Corny blinked hard, like the pressure of his eyelids could push back memories. "Wait," he said. "You murdered a bunch of faeries?”

"You think I didn't?" Dave asked.

"Hey!" Luis stood in the doorway. A Latina girl and an older woman stood behind him. "What are you doing?”

Corny circled one of Kaye's ankles with a gloved hand.

"I'll talk to whoever I want, " Dave said, standing up. "You think you're better than me, giving orders.”

"I think I know better than you," Luis said.

The girl turned toward Corny, and he saw that her arms and face were shadowed by something that looked like vines growing beneath her skin. Tiny smears of dried blood dotted where the points of thorns stuck up through her flesh.

"You don't know anything." Dave kicked a table, sending it crashing onto its side, and walked out of the room.

Luis turned toward Kaye. "If I hear—if he tells me you came anywhere near him," he shouted. "If you spoke to him—”

"Please," said the woman. "My daughter!”

"I'm sorry," Luis said, shaking his head, glancing at the door.

"What's wrong with her?" Corny asked.

"She sees these boys all the time hanging around the park," the woman told Corny. "They're pretty but they're trouble. Not human. One day they bother Lala and she insults them. Then this. Nothing in the botánica is helping.”

"You should both go wait in the other room,”

Luis said, rolling up the sleeves of his coat. "This is about to get messy.”

"I'm good here," Corny said, trying to seem unimpressed. He had several different fantasies of himself that he liked to trot out when he was feeling miserable. In one, he was the scary lunatic— the guy who was going to snap one day, get a high-powered rifle, and bury the bodies of all the people who'd wronged him, in a mass grave in the backyard. Then there was the misunderstood genius, the person whom everyone discounted but who triumphed in the end through his superior competence. And the most pathetic fantasy of all—that he had some secret mutant power he was always on the verge of discovering.

"I need her to lie down on the floor." Luis walked over to the tiny kitchen and came back with a crude knife. The woman's eyes never left the blade. "Cold iron.”

Luis actually had a secret power and was competent. That pissed Corny off. All he had was cursed hands.

"What's that for?" Lala asked.

Luis shook his head. "I won't cut you. I promise.”

The woman narrowed her eyes, but the girl seemed reassured and sank down onto the floor.

The vines squirmed under her skin, rippling as they shifted. Lala winced and cried out.

Kaye looked up at Corny and raised her eyebrows.

Luis crouched over Lala, straddling her slender body.

"He knows what to do, yes?" the woman asked Corny.

Corny nodded. "Sure.”

Luis reached into his pocket and scattered a white substance—maybe salt—over the girl's body. She bucked, screaming. The vines crawled like snakes.

"He's hurting her!" Lala's mother gasped.

Luis didn't even glance up. He threw another handful, and Lala shrieked. Her skin stretched and rippled away from the salt, up into her neck, choking her.