“Your Barrons prefers my apple pie,” Rainey said, beaming.
“He’s not my Barrons, and there’s no way that man eats apple pie.” Barrons and apple pie were as wrong together as … well, vampires and puppies. It was hard to even hold them in the same thought.
“But no ice cream. He hates ice cream.”
My mother knew more about Barrons’ eating habits than I did. Unless one counted all the animal scraps he’d left when he was in beast form. I knew he didn’t like the paws, and the only bones he chewed on were marrow-filled. The hearts were always gone, even if he ate nothing else.
“I hear they plan to try the ritual soon,” Jack said.
“Do they tell you guys everything?” I said, exasperated. They trusted my parents but not me? That was just wrong.
“The Keltar men talk,” Rainey said. “Their wives visit.”
“And we might pry a little.” Daddy winked. I wondered how long it would take the Keltar wives to realize all that flattering, focused attention Jack Lane could turn on at the drop of a hat that made you feel like the most special and interesting person in the world was a cover for his interrogations. That he was methodically turning them inside out, looking for admissible—and nonadmissible—evidence. He’d pulled more confessions out of his charmed, disarmed prey than any attorney in Ashford and the surrounding nine counties.
“Speaking of talk,” I said, “I have a confession to make.”
“You came to see us in January but you didn’t stay,” Rainey said. “We know. You left us a picture of Alina. We were surprised you put it in the mailbox. We might never have looked there. We found it only because your father went after a nest of wasps that had taken up residence in the milk can that holds the post.”
The simplest things elude me. “Duh. There’s no mail running.”
“They kept it up for a while, but too many postal workers were getting killed in those dimensional shifts or attacked by Unseelie. Nobody’s willing to run the routes,” Jack said.
“We found it the day that man came and abducted us,” Rainey said.
“That’s not when I left it, though.” I looked at Daddy. “I was there one night when you and Mom were out back on the lanai, talking. About me.”
Jack searched my eyes, left to right, rapidly. “I think I remember that night.”
“You and Mom were talking about how there were things you guys had never told me.” That was nice and innocuous. I knew Ryodan and Barrons were outside, listening to every word we said. I wanted to know about the prophecy but not enough to ask up front. Considering I’d just set off the wards, I was worried that if we said anything about me dooming the world, I’d get shut out of the ritual. And I needed to be there. I wasn’t going to be excluded from the big showdown. I had a part to play. A good, wholesome part. All I had to do was fly the Hunter and point at the evil Book.
“Yes,” Jack said, watching me, “we were. You always think of things you’d wish you’d said when you’re afraid you might never get another chance. We weren’t sure we’d ever see you again.”
“Well, here I am,” I said brightly.
“And we missed you so much, baby,” Jack said.
I knew he’d gotten the message.
We all got a little teary-eyed then, hugged some more, and made small talk. They told me about Ashford, who’d lived and who’d died. They told me the Shades had tried to take over (they’d known only because of the husks), then the Rhino-boys had come, but “that handsome fairy prince who is utterly infatuated with you, and you could certainly do worse than a prince, honey, and you know it, he could protect you and keep you in style and safety,” according to my mom, had arrived and saved my hometown single-handedly.
I encouraged her to gush unabashedly about V’lane, hoping it would drive Barrons and Ryodan away. Or at least nuts.
The time went much too quickly. Before I knew it, nearly half an hour had passed and someone was rapping on the glass, barking that it was quarter to twelve and my time was up.
I hugged them both on the way out and got teary-eyed again. “I’ll be back to see you again as soon as I can. I love you, Mom.”
“Love you, too, honey. Hurry back.” I clung to her for a moment, then turned to Daddy, who wrapped me in a bear hug.
“Love you, too, Mac.” Against my ear he whispered, “The crazy woman was Augusta O’Clare from Devonshire. Had a granddaughter named Tellie she said helped your mother get the two of you out of the country. You’re sunshine and light, baby. There’s not a damned thing wrong with you, and don’t you ever forget that.” He pulled away and smiled down at me. Love and pride blazed in his eyes.
Tellie. It was the same name Barrons had mentioned in his phone conversation with Ryodan the morning after I’d discovered he was alive. He’d wanted to know if Ryodan had located Tellie yet and instructed him to get more people involved in the search.
“Get on with saving the world, baby.”
I nodded, lower lip trembling. I could hunt monsters. I could have sex with men who turned into beasts. I could kill in cold blood.
And Daddy could still make me cry just by believing in me.
“I won’t have her on the ground with us,” Rowena was saying fifteen minutes later. “There’s no reason for it. We’ll have our radios. She need only fly overhead, spot the Book, talk us into position with the stones, then fly off on her demon steed.” She shot me a look full of venom that said no sidhe-seer alive would ride a Hunter, and there was all the proof she needed of my treason. “The Keltar will chant and carry it to the abbey, where they will teach my girls to re-inter it. There is no purpose for her presence.”
I snorted. The air was so thick with tension, I was getting light-headed from lack of oxygen. I’d never stood in a room packed with so much distrust and aggression as I was standing in today. That Ryodan had made everyone strip and have their clothes searched before returning them at the top of the stairs had only added to their bad tempers. I knew why he’d done it. It wasn’t about new rules. It was about throwing everyone off balance, establishing from the get-go that they weren’t in control of anything, not even their person. Being naked in front of clothed guards makes anyone feel intensely vulnerable.
I surveyed the room. On the east wall of the glass room, five heavily tattooed Keltar hulked in tight pants and shirts.
On the south wall, Rowena, Kat, Jo, and three other sidhe-seers—all dressed in drab, snug pantsuits—stood at attention, minus Dani. I was surprised Rowena hadn’t brought her, but I guessed she’d decided her risks outweighed her benefits—the most risky of her flaws being that she liked me.
On the north wall, V’lane, Velvet, Dree’lia—who once again had a mouth but was wisely keeping it closed—and three other Seelie of the same caste posed arrogantly, draped in see-through short shifts, their flawless faces matched by flawless genitalia.
Barrons, Lor, Ryodan, and myself occupied the west wall, closest to the door.
Rowena glared at the five Scots lined shoulder-to-shoulder like the Falcons’ defense. “You do know how to seal it away, do you not?” she demanded.
Oozing varying degrees of hostility, they glared back at her.
The Keltar were not the kind of men a woman ordered around, especially not an old woman like Rowena, who hadn’t been bothering to exercise an ounce of diplomacy or charm since she’d been escorted, blindfolded, into one of the glass rooms on the top floor of Chester’s.
Perversion and decadence, she’d snapped the moment they’d removed her blindfold. You condone this … this … consorting? The flesh of human and Fae mix in this place. Och, and you’ll be the damnation of the human race! she’d hissed at Ryodan.
Fuck the human race. You’re not my problem.
I’d almost laughed at the expression on her face, but I wasn’t laughing now. She’d been trying to shut me out of the ritual. Acting like I was a pariah that shouldn’t even be allowed in the room where this meeting was taking place.
“Och, an
d of course we ken it.” The speaker was Drustan, the Keltar who would be picking up the Sinsar Dubh and carrying it to the abbey. According to his brother, he’d been burned on a pyre of sorts and had an incorruptible heart. I didn’t believe it for a minute. Nobody has an incorruptible heart. We all have our weaknesses. But I had to admit that the man who looked out from those silvery eyes exuded some kind of … serenity, at utter odds with his appearance. He looked like a man who would have been more comfortable centuries in the past, stomping around the Highlands with a club in one hand and a sword in the other. They all did, except for Christopher, who strongly resembled Drustan, without the throwback gene. But Drustan had presence. He had a way with words and a voice that was deep, full of command, yet gentle. He spoke more softly than any of the other Keltar, but he was the one I found myself trying hardest to hear when they were all talking at once, which was pretty much all the time.
I looked at Christian and gave him a faint smile, but his expression didn’t defrost one bit.
It was only last night that V’lane and the Keltars had succeeded in reconnecting the dolmen at 1247 LaRuhe to the Unseelie prison, then stormed the king’s fortress to retrieve him. He’d been out roughly sixteen hours and didn’t look much better than he had inside the Silvers. He was no longer a study in marble, cobalt, and jet but he was … well, it made no sense, but he gave the fleeting impression of those colors. If I looked directly at his hair, I could pick out strands of copper and even a hint or two of sun-burnished gold in the dark ponytail, but if I caught it from the corner of my eye, it looked ebony and longer than it was. His lips were pink and utterly kissable, unless I turned my head suddenly. Then for a moment I’d swear they were blue with cold and lightly frosted. His skin was golden, smooth, and touchable, but if I glanced sharply his way he would glow like backlit ice.
His eyes were changed, too. Lie detector extraordinaire, he now seemed to be looking right through everything around him, as if he was seeing the world completely different than the rest of us.
His father, Christopher, studied him when he thought Christian wasn’t paying attention. Somebody needed to tell him there was never a time his son wasn’t paying attention. Christian might seem to check out for a few moments, but if you were looking straight into his eyes, you could see that he was even more intensely focused on his surroundings—so focused that he’d gone still and seemingly absent, as if opening an inner ear that demanded absolute concentration.
“Lie,” he said now.
Drustan scowled at Christopher. “I told you to make sure he’d haud his bloody whist.”
“He’s not hauding his whist for anyone anymore,” Christian said flatly.
“What do you mean—lie?” Rowena demanded.
“They don’t know for certain that their chant will work. The old texts stored in Silvan’s tower had deteriorated, leaving them no choice but to improvise.”
“And we’re bloody good at it. We got you out, didn’t we?” Cian growled.
“It’s his fucking fault I ended up in there to begin with.” Christian jerked his head toward Barrons. “I don’t even know why he’s here.”
“He’s here,” Barrons said coolly, “because he has three of the stones necessary to corner the Book.”
“Hand ’em over and get the fuck out.”
“It’s not my fault you’re turning into a fairy.”
V’lane said stiffly, “Fae. Not fairy.”
“You knew my tats weren’t protection enough—”
“I’m not your babysitter—”
Christopher hissed, “You should have checked him—”
“For the love of Mary,” Rowena snapped. “I’ve a plague of barbarians and fools!”
“—and it wasn’t my job to tattoo you. Pack your own fucking parachute. It wasn’t even my job to try to keep the—”
Drustan said softly, “We should have checked him—”
Dageus snarled, “Doona be acting like ’twas some bloody favor you did—”
“You didn’t try to get me out of the Silvers. Did you even tell anyone I was there?”
“—but the hour grew late,” Drustan said, “and time can no longer be undone.”
“—for the human race, when you’re part of it,” Dageus finished.
“—walls up. And it was a bloody favor, though you wouldn’t know by the bloody thanks I’ve gotten, and don’t be lumping me in the same gene pool as you, Highlander.”
“Oh, shut up, all of you,” I said, exasperated. “You can fight later. Right now we have work to do.” To the Keltar, I said, “How certain are you of the parts you improvised?”
No one spoke for a moment as they finished the battle in silence, with glares and wordless threats.
“As certain as we can be,” Dageus finally said. “We’re not new to this. We’ve been the queen’s Druids since before the Compact was negotiated. We sat with them in the Old Days, when the great hill of Tara had yet to be built, and learned their ways. Plus we’ve a few other … bits of arcane lore at our disposal.”
“And we all know how well that turned out for you last time,” Barrons said silkily.
“Mayhap you weren’t helping but hindering, Old One,” Dageus growled. “We ken you’ve your own agenda. What is it?”
“Stop it, all of you!” Rowena snapped.
The tension swelled.
“Barrons and his men will place three of the stones.” I tried to get things back on track.
“He will give them to my sidhe-seers,” Rowena said sternly. “We will place the stones.”
Barrons gave her an incredulous look with the subtle arch of a brow. “In whose fucking reality do you think that’s going to happen?”
“You have no business being involved.”
“Old woman, I don’t like you,” Barrons said coldly. “Be careful around me. Be very, very careful.”
Rowena closed her mouth, perched her glasses on her nose, and pursed her lips.
I looked at V’lane. “Did you bring the fourth stone?”
He looked at Barrons. “Did he bring his three?”
Barrons bared his teeth at V’lane.
V’lane hissed.
The Keltar growled.
And so it went.
Forty-five minutes later, when we all stalked from the room, two of the walls were shattered and the floor was cracked.
But we’d nailed down the nuances of our plan.
I would fly a Hunter over the city and locate the Sinsar Dubh, radioing back the location.
Barrons, Lor, Ryodan, and V’lane would close in with the four stones, while the Keltar began the binding spell to seal its covers so it could be moved.
Drustan would pick it up.
Barrons, Rowena, Drustan, V’lane, and I would ride together in Barrons’ Hummer to the abbey (because no one trusted V’lane or any other Fae to sift him with the Book there and wait for everyone else to arrive).
Rowena would drop the wards, and all of us who were in the room today would enter the underground tomb that had been created eons ago to contain the Sinsar Dubh.
Dageus would complete the binding spell that would seal its pages closed and—according to their lore—turn the keys in the locks, which would silence it in a vacuum of eternal awareness, alone forever. A hellish thing, to be sure, he’d said grimly.
And something he’d seemed to know a thing or two about.
There’s no reason for her to be there, Rowena had continued to protest, giving me the gimlet eye, even as they were blindfolding her and the sidhe-seers. Ryodan didn’t want them seeing his club or knowing the back way in.
There’s no reason for you to be there, either, old woman, Barrons had said. Once you drop the wards, we don’t need you.
You’re not necessary, either.
You think only Dageus should go in, with Drustan and the Book? I’d said acerbically.
She’d fumed the entire way out.
As I stepped into the overcast afternoon, I shivered. All trac
e of spring had vanished. The day was dark as dusk again, heavy with rain. Tomorrow night we would meet at O’Connell and Beacon.
And, with luck, by dawn the next day the world would be a safer place.
In the meantime, I was desperate for some downtime away from all the men in my life. I needed a girl’s night and the comforts of normalcy.
I turned to V’lane and touched his arm. “Can you find Dani for me and ask her to come to the bookstore tonight at eight?”
“Your wish, my command, MacKayla.” He smiled. “Shall we spend tomorrow at the beach together?”
Barrons moved beside me. “She’s busy tomorrow.”
“Are you busy tomorrow, MacKayla?”
“She’s working on old texts with me.”
V’lane gave me a pitying look. “Ah. Old texts. A banner day at the bookstore.”
“We’re translating the Kama Sutra,” Barrons said, “with interactive aids.”
I almost choked. “You’re never around during the day.”
“Why is that?” V’lane was the picture of innocence.
“I’ll be around tomorrow,” Barrons said.
“All day?” I asked.
“The entire day.”
“She will be naked on a beach with me.”
“She’s never been naked in a bed with you. When she comes, she roars.”
“I know what she sounds like when she comes. I have given her multiple orgasms merely by kissing her.”
“I’ve given her multiple orgasms by fucking her. For months, fairy.”
“Are you still fucking her?” V’lane purred. “Because she does not smell like you. If you are, you are not marking her enough. She is beginning to smell like me. Like Fae.”
“Unbelievable,” I heard Christian mutter behind me.
“She toops them both?” I heard Drustan ask.
“And they permit it?” Dageus sounded baffled.
I looked between V’lane and Barrons. “This isn’t even about me.”
“You’re wrong about that.” Barrons reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “You know how to find me if you want me.” He was walking away.
“More nifty acronyms?”
He was gone.
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series 5-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever Page 157
