Ironside

Corny stuck out his hand to be stamped with a sticky blue skull and walked toward the door. His heart thundered against his chest.

"What did you do to her?" he asked.

"I love this smell," Kaye said, smiling. He wasn't sure if she hadn't heard his question or if she'd just decided not to answer it.

"You have got to be kidding." The inside of the club was painted flat black. Even the piping high above their heads had been sprayed the same matte tone so that all the light in the room seemed to be absorbed by the walls. A few multicolor lights strobed over the bar and across the stage, where a band wailed.

Kaye shouted over the music. "No, really. I love it. Stale beer and cigarette residue and sweat. It burns my throat, but after the car and the subway ride, I barely care.”

"That's great," he shouted back. "Do you want to say hi to your mom?”

"I better not." Kaye rolled her eyes. "She's a bitch when she's getting ready. Stage fright.”

"Okay, let's grab a seat," Corny said, weaving his way toward one of the tiny tables lit with a red electric votive that looked like a bug light.

Kaye went to get drinks. Corny sat and observed the crowd. An Asian boy with a shaved head and fringed suede chaps gestured to a girl in a knitted wool dress and tarantula-print cowboy boots. Nearby, a woman in a moiré coat slow danced with another woman up against a black support pole. Corny felt a wild surge of excitement fill him. This was a real New York club, an actual cool place to which he should have been forbidden according to the rules of nerd-dom.

Kaye came back to the table as the other band cleared off the stage and Ellen, Trent, and the other two members of Treacherous Iota strode on.

Moments later, Kaye's mother was bent over, raking the strings of her guitar. Kaye watched in rapt fascination, the pools of her eyes wet as she chewed on a plastic stirrer.

The music was okay—candy punk with some messed-up lyrics. Kaye's mom didn't look like the faded middle-aged woman Corny had seen a couple of hours ago, though. This Ellen looked fierce, like she might lean out and eat up all of the little girls and boys gathered around the stage. Even though it made no sense, as she screeched through the first song, Corny thought he could see a lot of Kaye in her.

Watching her transformation made him uncomfortable, especially because his fingers were still stained with black dye from his own. He looked around the room.

His gaze ran over the beautiful boys and the insect-slender girls, but it stopped on a tall man leaning against the far wall, a messenger bag slung over his shoulders. Just looking at him made gooseflesh bloom on Corny's arms. His features were far too perfect to belong to a human.

Looking at that stiff, arrogant posture, Corny thought it was a glamoured Roiben come to beg Kaye's indulgence. But the hair was the color of butter, not salt, and the tilt of the jaw was not like Roiben's at all.

The man stared at Kaye, so fixedly that when a girl in pigtails stopped in front of him, he moved to the left to continue watching.

Corny stood up without really meaning to. "Be right back," he said to Kaye's questioning look.

Now that he was walking in the man's direction, Corny was no longer sure what to do. His heart beat against his rib cage like a ricocheting rubber ball until he thought he might choke. Still, as he got closer, more details added to Corny's suspicions. The man's jaw was as hairless as a girl's. His eyes were the color of bluebells. He was the most poorly disguised faery Corny had ever seen.

Onstage, Ellen bellowed into the mike, and the drummer went into a solo.

"You're doing a crap-ass job of blending in, you know that?" Corny shouted over the rhythmic pounding.

The faery narrowed his eyes. Corny looked down at his borrowed sneakers, suddenly remembering that he could be charmed.

"Whatever do you mean?" The man's voice was soft. It showed none of the anger that had been in his face.

Corny ground his teeth together, ignoring his longing to look into those lovely eyes again. "You don't look human. You don't even talk human.”

A smooth, warm hand touched Corny's cheek, and Corny jumped. "I feel human," the faery man said.

Without meaning to, Corny leaned into the touch. Desire flared in him, so sharp it was almost pain. But as his eyes drifted closed, he saw his sister's face disappearing under briny water, saw her screaming great gulps of sea as a beautiful kelpie-turned-boy dragged her down. He saw himself crawling through the dirt to bring a pulpy fruit to drop at a laughing faerie knight's feet.

His eyes snapped open. He was so furious his hands shook. "Don't flirt," Corny said. He wasn't going to be weak again. He could do this.

The faery watched him with arched eyebrows and a smile filled with mockery.

"I'll bet you want Kaye," Corny said. "I can get her for you.”

The faery frowned. "And you would betray another of your kind so easily?”

"You know she's not my kind." Corny took him by the elbow. "Come on. She might see us. We can talk in the bathroom.”

"I beg your pardon.”

"Keep begging," Corny said, grabbing the faery's arm and leading him through the crowd. A glance back told him that Kaye was preoccupied with the performance onstage. Adrenaline flooded him, narrowing his focus, making rage and desire seem suddenly indistinguishable. He swept into the bathroom. The single stall and two urinals were empty. On a dark purple wall, beside a hand-lettered sign promising decapitation to employees failing to wash their hands, hung a shelf piled with toilet paper and cleaning supplies.

An utterly unpleasant idea occurred to Corny. He had to fight not to smile.

"The thing is," he said, "that's not how human guys dress at all. It's not sloppy enough. Roiben always makes the same mistake.”

The fey man's lip curled slightly, and Corny tried to keep his face blank, as though he had missed that rather interesting tell.

"Look at yourself. Fix your glamour so that you look more like you're wearing what I'm wearing, okay?”

The faery looked Corny over. "Repugnant," he said, but unshouldered his messenger bag, leaning it against the wall.

Corny grabbed the can of Raid off the shelf. If Kaye couldn't even have a cigarette anymore, the effects of a concentrated insect poison should be impressive. He didn't need to speculate long. As the faery turned, Corny sprayed him full in the face.

The blond choked and fell immediately to his knees, glamour dropping from him, revealing dreadful, inhuman beauty. Corny reveled for a moment in the look of him convulsing on the filthy floor, then he pulled the lace out of his sneaker and used it to tie the creature's hands behind its back.

The faery squirmed as the knots went tight, trying to twist away as he coughed. Corny scrambled for the can and hit the faery with it as hard as he could.

"I swear to fucking God, I will spray you again,” Corny said. "Enough of this shit will kill you.”

The faery went still. Corny stood up, straddling the faery's body, fingering the nozzle on the Raid can. He caught his own gaze in the mirror, saw his short dyed dark hair and his borrowed clothes, how pathetic they were. They didn't make his skin any less spotty or his nose smaller or him any less ugly.

Thin, strong fingers wound around Corny's calves, but Corny pressed the sole of his sneaker against the faery's neck and squatted down over him. "Now you're going to tell me a whole bunch of things I've always wanted to know.”

The creature swallowed.

"Your name," Corny said.

The blue eyes flashed. "Never.”

Corny shrugged and slid his foot off of the faery, suddenly uncomfortable. "Fine. Something I can call you, then. And not some stupid 'me myself’ bullshit. I read.”

"Adair.”