Shadowglass by Erica Hayes Page B

to anyone who’ll listen. Indigo’s trick is to tune in. It makes him such a useful thief.
    Right now it makes him impatient. He digs deeper, in that iron-free space between air molecules, and faint motes of life glitter in the emptiness like a lost fairy girl’s diamond choker: A pin, dropped on the carpet and lost. The dim coil of a tap spring, a strip of bright chrome on a shower recess. Flickers of cheap gold on a circuit board, an intricate brass hinge, silvery flecks in the skin of a discarded photograph. A scatter of lead crystal, soft golden chains, a gold quartz watch, a platinum ring.
    He swallows, dismissing it all. He’s not interested in random plunder. He’s here for only one thing, and he listens harder, scouring the fae-bright ether for the itching stink of a rusted round hellball.
    He doesn’t find it. Gritty sweat stings his burnt palm. Too much clutter. He’ll have to look the old-fashioned way. Folding damp silvery wings, he pads lightly out into the dark corridor, ears pricked for movement even though he knows Kane’s not here. If Kane were here, he’d be caught already.
    Smooth off-white walls, an unused bathroom, the dry smell of vacuumed carpet leading to other rooms, empty, distant, stuffy with loneliness. Light spills up the curved white stairs, tall shadows angling, the rubble-flecked iron rail stabbing bright in his senses like a trail of fire. Down, on a draft of cool air that tingles beneath his wings, to mahogany floors lined with steel nails, receding like runway lights under the screaming tungsten filaments of halogen lamps.
    The black television reflects him in a mosaic of glass and shimmering silicon transistors. The sick ache of overstimulation grips his skull. His stomach chews listlessly at what’s left of the cobalt-laced fish he swallowed for dinner, and nausea climbs his guts to crouch in his throat like an oily toad. Metalsense makes him sick. He tries to focus on the cool blue titanium bangle shining around his wrist. Light, inert, comforting, it’s the metalfae equivalent of a seasickness bracelet, but it’s never enough. If he doesn’t switch off soon, it’ll get messy.
    But he still can’t smell the mirror. There’s no rust here, not in this vapid façade of an apartment, almost as fake as Indigo’s own.
    Down a fresh-painted corridor, mercifully synthetic. He ghosts past a lead-spattered oil painting that glares in his eyes, and an old gilt-framed mirror backed with mercury sickens him with the stink of his own blood.
    Kane’s bedroom. Dim, cool, charcoal’s acid tang drifting from neat white sheets. Metal clamors from the master bathroom, sharp chrome edges knifing his sinuses. No rust. No mirror. He swivels to leave, but gentle silver twinkles on his tongue like sherbet.
    There, under the bed. Almost hidden by folded linen. He bends to slide one claw over knotted woolen carpet and hooks out a woman’s shimmering diamond bracelet. Snapped, the silver wrenched apart, the clasp still holding.
    He holds it to shadowed light, tiny rainbows prisming, and a faint fruity scent waters his mouth. Strawberries, tainted raw with alcohol. His memory somersaults back to last night, Ice laughing on his lap with diamonds tumbling around her slender wrists. The same wrists that trailed those sweaty diamonds around Kane’s neck and crushed them into his hair when she came.
    Indigo drags the shimmering chain over his tongue, just to be sure. Sweetness flares like fruit juice from rough facets, delicious icing on the cake of fine silver. His blood sparkles. It’s her.
    Ice was here. The mirror’s gone. Given her incorrigible jackdaw fingers, probably not a coincidence. Brave, quirky, cute little Ice. He wishes he’d been there to see it. He smiles darkly to think of her, and distrust of his own motives burns his bones.
    He should leave her alone. No certainty she’ll know anything. Kane could simply have the horrid thing with him. And for all he knows, she’s working for