Free Ironside by Holly Black Page B

them.
    In the back of the store, Kaye could see the restraints, floggers, and whips. The hollow eyes of masks watched her as she threaded her way toward a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves.
    She grabbed them, paid the bored clerk with five glamoured leaves, and bit off the plastic tag with her teeth.
    Corny stood next to a marble table, fingers pressed to a stack of flyers advertising a fetish ball. The paper yellowed in widening circles, aging beneath his hands. Withering. A slow smile curved on his mouth, as though watching it gave him pleasure.
    “Stop that,” Kaye said, holding out the gloves.
    Corny started, looking at her as though he didn’t know her. Even as he slid on the gloves, he did so numbly, and then stared at his rubber-encased arms in puzzlement.
    Walking out, the shine of a pair of chromed handcuffs lined in mink caught Kaye’s eye and she picked them up, running her thumb over the soft pelt. Years of shoplifting instincts made her slip them into her pocket before she hit the door.
    “I can’t believe you jumped some guy in a bathroom,” Kaye said as soon as they’d crossed the street.
    “What?” Corny glowered. “ I can’t believe you just stole a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, klepto. Anyway, he wasn’t some guy. He was from the Seelie Court. He was one of them.”
    “One of them ? A faery? Like I’m one of them?”
    “He was there to get you. He said he was supposed to bring you to Silarial,” Corny yelled at her, and the name seemed to carry through the cold night air.
    “And for that you almost kill him?” Kaye’s voice rose, sounding shrill even to her own ears.
    “I hate to break this to you,” Corny said nastily, “but Silarial hates you. You’re the one who screwed up her plan to take over the Unseelie Court, plus you’ve been screwing her ex-boyfriend—”
    “Will you stop with the—”
    “Right, I know. Impossible quest. Look, I’m sure I could list more things about you she hates, but I think you get my point. Whatever she wants, we want the opposite.”
    “I don’t care about her or her messengers!” Kaye shouted. “I care about you, and you’re acting crazy.”
    Corny shrugged and turned away from her, looking through the window of a shop as if he were seeing some other place in the racks of clothing. Then he smiled at himself in the glass. “Whatever, Kaye. I’m right about him. They love to hurt people. People like Janet.”
    Kaye shuddered, guilt over Janet’s death too fresh for his words not to feel like an accusation. “I know—”
    Corny interrupted her. “Anyway, I got cursed, so I guess I got what I deserved, right? The universe is in balance. I got what I was asking for.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” Kaye said. “I don’t even know what I mean. I’m just freaked out. Everything’s coming apart.”
    “ You’re freaking out? Everything I touch rots! How am I going to eat food? How am I going to jerk off?”
    Kaye laughed despite herself.
    “Not to mention I am going to have to dress up in down-market fetish-wear forever.” Corny held up a gloved hand.
    “Good thing that turns you on,” Kaye said.
    A slow smile spread over his mouth. “Okay, it was dumb. What I did. At least I should have found out what Silarial wanted.”
    Kaye shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go back to Brooklyn and figure out what to do about your hands.”
    Corny pointed to a pay phone hanging outside of a bar. “You want me to call your mom’s cell? I could tell her we got kicked out of the club for being underage. I can lie like crazy.”
    Kaye shook her head. “After you beat up someone in the bathroom? I think she knows what we got kicked out for.”
    “He was hitting on me,” Corny said primly. “I had to protect my virtue.”

    Kaye let herself and Corny into her mother’s apartment with a spare key and threw herself down on the bed. Corny flopped down beside her with a groan.
    Looking up at the popcorn of the ceiling, she studied the