Ironside by Holly Black Read Free Book Online

part of Brooklyn her mother claimed was still Williamsburg, but was probably actually Bedford-Stuyvesant, the traffic grew less congested. The roads were riddled with potholes, the asphalt cracked and pitted. The streets were deserted and the sidewalks heaped with banks of dirty snow. Only a few cars were parked on the sides of the road, and as soon as Corny pulled up behind one, Kaye opened the door and stepped out. It was strangely lonely.
    “You okay?” Corny asked.
    Kaye shook her head, leaning over the gutter in case she vomited. Lutie-loo’s tiny fingers dug into Kaye’s neck as the little faery tried to keep perched on Kaye’s shoulder. “I don’t know which part of feeling like shit is from riding for two hours in an iron box and which part is from a wicked hangover,” she said, between deep breaths.
    Bring me a faery that can tell an untruth.
    Corny shrugged. “No more driving for the whole visit. All you have to do now is put up with riding on the subway.”
    Kaye groaned, but she was too tired to smack him on the arm. Even the streets stank of iron. Beams of it propped up every building. Iron formed the skeletons of the cars that congested the roads, clogging them like slow-moving blood through the arteries of a heart. Gusts of iron seared her lungs. She concentrated on her own glamour, making it heavier and her senses duller. That managed to push away the worst of the iron sickness.
    You’re the only thing I want.
    “Can you walk?” Corny asked.
    “What? Oh, yeah.” Kaye sighed, shoving her hands into the pockets of her purple plaid overcoat. “Sure.” Everything felt as if it were happening in slow motion. It took effort to concentrate on anything but the memories of Roiben and the taste of iron in her mouth. She pressed her nails into the flesh of her palm.
    It is a weakness. My affection for you.
    Corny touched her shoulder. “So, which building?”
    Kaye checked the number she’d written on the back of her hand and pointed to an apartment complex. Her mother’s apartment cost twice as much as one they’d lived in three months ago in Philadelphia. Ellen’s promise to Kaye that she’d commute to New York so they could stay in New Jersey had lasted until the first huge fight between Ellen and her mother. Typical. But this time Kaye hadn’t moved with her.
    They walked up the steps to the apartment entrance and leaned on the button. A buzzer droned and Kaye pushed inside, Corny right behind her.
    The door to Kaye’s mother’s apartment was covered in the same dirty maple veneer as the others on the eighteenth floor. A gold plastic nine stuck to the wood just beneath the peephole. When Kaye knocked, the number swung on its single nail.
    Ellen opened the door. Her hair was freshly hennaed the same rootless red as her thin eyebrows, and her face looked freshly scrubbed. She was wearing a black spaghetti-strapped tank and dark jeans.
    “Baby!” Ellen hugged Kaye hard, swaying back and forth, like the number on the door. “I’ve missed you so much.”
    “I missed you, too,” Kaye said, leaning against her mother’s shoulder heavily. It felt weirdly, guiltily good. She imagined what Ellen would do if she knew that Kaye wasn’t human. Scream, of course. It was hard to think beyond the screaming.
    After a moment, Ellen looked over Kaye’s shoulder. “And Cornelius. Thanks for driving her up. Come on in. Want a beer?”
    “No thanks, Ms. Fierch,” Corny said. He carried his gym sack and Kaye’s garbage bag of overnight things into the room.
    The apartment itself was white-walled and small. A queen-size bed filled up most of the room, pushed up against a window and covered in clothing. A man whom Kaye didn’t know sat on a stool and strummed a bass.
    “This is Trent,” Ellen said.
    The man stood up and opened his guitar case, settling his instrument delicately inside. He looked like most of the guys Ellen liked: long hair and the stubbly beginnings of a beard, but unlike most, his