“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.