Oberon’s cold stare locked on Adan for a few moments, and then his face relaxed. “Very well,” he said, and looked at me. “It appears I misjudged the situation. Domino, I beg forgiveness for my ill-considered accusations. It has been a difficult night.”
“Unnecessary but accepted, King. Adan has it right— Mobley is the bad guy. There’s no profit in turning against each other. I figure that’s why he sent the demon here and not to Terrence’s bedroom some night.”
Oberon inclined his head, deeply enough that it was almost a bow. “The question is, then, what do we do about it?”
“The bad news is the conflict between Terrence and Mobley has escalated,” I said. “The good news is, the political niceties just got flushed and the gloves are off. Mobley is an easy problem to solve.”
“You sure, D?” Terrence asked. “Motherfucker summoned a demon. I don’t know where he got the juice. Don’t know where he got the chops. It ain’t nothing I could do.”
“And if he summoned one,” Adan said, “we have to assume he can do it again.”
“Okay,” I said, “let’s work that angle. How the fuck did he do it?”
“There are rituals, of course,” said Oberon. “But I hadn’t thought there was yet enough magic in the world to sustain the Fomoire—nor for a man like Mobley to call one.”
“I got a taste of the juice. I can try to reconstruct the ritual.” That still wouldn’t explain where Mobley got the craft or the juice to pull it off, but it was a start.
“That sounds real good, D,” said Terrence, “but Mobley ain’t even our only problem. Zombie motherfuckers is getting out of control.”
Oberon shrugged. “Our concern is the Fomoire, not the zombies.”
“How do you figure?” I asked. “Looks to me like the zombies are everybody’s problem.”
“You may have noticed,” the king said, “that my people are immune to this plague.”
“I have a theory about that,” Adan said. “The zombies are created when souls are unable to leave the body after death.”
“So why are the sidhe immune?” I asked.
“We don’t have souls,” Titania said.
Awkward. I felt like I’d just told an off-color joke in mixed company.
Oberon chuckled. “There’s no reason for discomfort, Domino. It’s not a matter of lack or misfortune. We are creatures of spirit wrapped in a thin veil of flesh. You are flesh that imprisons a small measure of spirit. Neither better nor worse, only different.”
“Okay, so the Seelie Court won’t go zombie,” I said. “That’s good. But it’s still bad news for you if the rest of the city does.”
Oberon didn’t say anything and the expression on his face made it clear he didn’t entirely agree. Was it possible he viewed a Los Angeles without humans—living ones, anyway—as an opportunity?
“She’s right, husband,” Titania said. “We need them.” The “for now” at the end of the sentence was no less obvious for being unspoken.
“Yeah,” I said, “you need us. Oh, and let’s not forget the moral tragedy of the whole fucking human race being wiped out by fucking zombies. Maybe we should consider that, too.”
Oberon and Titania looked at each other and then back to me. They smiled in unison. “Of course,” they said.
“We are your friends, Domino,” the king said. “We wish you no harm. But our first obligation is to our own people. We would expect no less of you.”
“I’m overwhelmed, King. Thing is, I need your help with the zombies. Someone has to contain this thing and your people are obviously better suited to it than mine. I send my soldiers out to herd zombies, some of them are going to end up swelling their ranks. I don’t like the math. Eventually, I’m out of soldiers and I’ve got more zombies than ever.”
“And what of the Fomoire?”
“We can deal with Mobley. Anton and his crew should keep them busy for a while. Terrence, you help them out. Hit that motherfucker with everything you’ve got. There will have to be a reckoning with Simeon Wale at some point, but not now. We need him.”
“Consider it done, Domino.”
“In the meantime, I’ll try to figure out how Mobley called the demon and what’s causing the zombie plague. Adan, I’d like your help with that.”
He nodded. “I think they may be related.”
“How so?”
“The king is right—there shouldn’t be enough magic to pull the Firstborn into this world and keep them here. Not yet. The dead rising, though…the normal rules are breaking down. Whatever’s causing it, there are consequences to something like that. The walls are falling. It would make a summoning much easier.”
“A Critical Metaphysical Instability,” I said, and Adan cocked an eyebrow at me. “Never mind. But I’ll bet you’re right.”
“I don’t like the idea that your attention will be divided between the zombies and the Fomoire, Domino,” Oberon said. “If Mobley is capable of summoning more of the Fomoire into this world, nothing is a higher priority. Not even a zombie plague.”
“My attention won’t be divided—not for long. I need to break down the spell because I tasted the juice. Once that’s done, I’ll give you and Terrence what I’ve got and you can deal with it.”
The king smiled and bowed his head. “That is acceptable to us.”
I’m so happy for you. “Okay, this sounds like a plan,” I said. “Terrence and his outfit go stone-cold gangster on Mobley. The Seelie Court cowboys up on the zombies. Adan and I run down the summoning spell and then look for whatever’s putting Death out of business.”
There were nods all around the table and the council broke up. Adan and I sat together in silence after the others had left. He reclined in his chair, drinking wine from a crystal goblet, lost in thought. I knew what was coming—the Talk—and I really wasn’t in the mood. The way I saw it, whatever happened between us at the party had happened, and that was all there was to it. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what had happened—Oberon had slipped us all a magic roofie when we walked in the club.
But I just knew Adan felt the need to talk it over. I could see he was thinking about it, the way he sat there, staring at his goblet and turning it in circles on the table. The only question was what type he’d turn out to be. There was the annoyingly sensitive “we’ve got to share our feelings” type. Or he could be the irritatingly analytical “we’ve got to dissect this and figure out exactly what it means” type. If I was really unlucky, he could turn out to be the nice guy “I’ll pretend I’m not needy and then stalk you” type. I hated that type.
Adan sighed and shook his head, and then looked up at me. Here it came. “I just have to know,” he said, “did we have a foursome with those piskies?”
I laughed, choked and felt wine flood my nasal passages. Adan started laughing, too, and that made it worse. I hooted and howled, my eyes watering and my stomach clenching painfully. I finally managed to catch a little breath and gasped, “The guy, Jack, had to be a full nine inches.” Adan doubled over and started slapping the table, and I lost it completely. All the pain, and fear, and horror of the demon attack and the zombie plague that threatened to tear the city apart from the inside out—all of it just