DANI: A young sidhe-seer in her early teens whose talent is superhuman speed. She has to her credit—as she will proudly crow from the rooftops given the slightest opportunity—forty-seven Fae kills at the time of this writing. I’m sure she’ll have more by tomorrow. Her mother was killed by a Fae. We are sisters in vengeance. She works for Rowena and is employed at Post Haste, Inc.
Addendum to original entry: Her kills now number nearly two hundred! The kid has no fear.
Addendum to original entry: She’s the Shit. She saved me from the LM and his minions. We’ve become like … sisters. I swore I’d never let anybody as close to me as Alina again, but I can’t help it. Beneath her toughness is a kid who melts my heart. She’s got secrets. I can sense them. And deep emotional scars from things she might never talk about. I hope one day she trusts me. The things we carry inside and refuse to talk about are the things that can end up destroying us. I can no longer even begin to count her kills. She took down an Unseelie Prince!
DARK ZONE: An area that has been taken over by the Shades. During the day it looks like your everyday abandoned, run-down neighborhood. Once night falls, it’s a death trap.
Addendum to original entry: They’ve spread all over the world, now that the walls are down. The huge one next to Barrons Books and Baubles is now empty. They moved on to greener pastures, literally. Other Unseelie are working to restore the power grids the LM took down, because they don’t like how quickly the Shades are devouring their potential prey. I’ll take all the help I can get to drive the buggers back into the darkness. It buys us more time.
DEATH-BY-SEX FAE (e.g., V’lane): A Fae that is so sexually “potent” a human dies from intercourse with it, unless the Fae protects the human from the full impact of its deadly eroticism.
Addendum to original entry: V’lane made himself feel like nothing more than an incredibly sexy man when he touched me. They can mute their lethality if they so choose.
Addendum to original entry: This caste of Fae springs only from royal lines. They can do three things: protect the human completely and give them the most incredible sex of their life, protect them from dying and turn them Pri-ya, or kill them with sex. They can sift space.
Addendum: It’s hell being Pri-ya! But I survived.
DOLMEN: A single-chamber megalithic tomb constructed of three or more upright stones supporting a large, flat horizontal capstone. Dolmens are common in Ireland, especially around the Burren and Connemara. The Lord Master used a dolmen in a ritual of dark magic to open a doorway between realms and bring Unseelie through.
DREAMY-EYED BOY: Huge question mark. Why does he keep popping up? Who is he? I first encountered him in the streets of Dublin, then in the museum while I was OOP-detecting, then discovered he worked at the Ancient Languages Department with Christian MacKeltar, and now he’s bartending at Chester’s, Ryodan’s infamous den of iniquity. When I was talking to him there, something really weird happened. I saw him in the mirror above the bar and he didn’t look the same. It scared me. Really scared me. In the mirror, his reflection spoke to me, warned me. He said not to talk to “it.”
DRUID: In pre-Christian Celtic society, a Druid presided over divine worship, legislative and judicial matters, philosophy, and education of elite youth to their order. Druids were believed to be privy to the secrets of the gods, including issues pertaining to the manipulation of physical matter, space, and even time. The old Irish Drui means magician, wizard, diviner (Irish Myths and Legends).
Addendum to original entry: I saw both Jericho Barrons and the Lord Master use the Druid power of Voice, a way of speaking with many voices that cannot be disobeyed. Significance?
Addendum: Christian MacKeltar descends from a long, ancient bloodline of Druids.
FAE (fay): See also Tuatha Dé Danaan. Divided into two courts, the Seelie or light court and the Unseelie or dark court. Both courts have different castes of Fae, with the four Royal Houses occupying the highest caste of each. The Seelie Queen and her chosen consort rule the light court. The Unseelie King and his current concubine govern the dark.
Addendum to original entry. Iron has some kind of effect on them. Weird that on the periodic table, iron is Fe.
FIONA: The woman who ran Barrons Books and Baubles before I took over. She was wildly in love with Barrons and tried to kill me by turning out all the lights one night and propping a window open to let the Shades in. Barrons fired her for it—gee, now that I think about it, getting fired for trying to kill me sure feels like underkill. She’s hooked up with Derek O’Bannion, and he’s got her eating Unseelie. I have a bad feeling that she and I aren’t done with each other.
Addendum to original entry: She’s working with the LM now. She knows what Barrons is. Barrons killed her before she could tell me. But she was too laced with Unseelie flesh to have died from a mere knife through the heart. Later he went to see her and gave her a message for the LM. They used to be lovers. I don’t like her at all.
FOUR STONES, THE: Translucent blue-black stones covered with raised runelike lettering. The key to deciphering the ancient language and breaking the code of the Sinsar Dubh is hidden in these four mystical stones. An individual stone can be used to shed light on a small portion of the text, but only if the four are reassembled into one will the true text in its entirety be revealed (Irish Myths and Legends).
Addendum: Other texts say it is the “true nature” of the Sinsar Dubh that will be revealed.
Addendum: We have three now. I learned they were chiseled from the walls of the Unseelie King’s fortress. They chime hauntingly, disturbingly, when placed together. I think they must make a lesser Song of Making. They are poison inside the network of Silvers because of Cruce’s curse. The Silvers reject the Unseelie King and the stones because they bear the taint of his touch. I think V’lane has the fourth.
FREEZE-FRAME: The way Dani moves. She calls it freeze-framing, as she blips from place to place so fast it gives me motion sickness. But what a tactical advantage! The kid rocks.
GLAMOUR: Illusion cast by the Fae to camouflage their true appearance. The more powerful the Fae, the more difficult it is to penetrate its disguise. Average humans see only what the Fae want them to see and are subtly repelled from bumping into or brushing against it by a small perimeter of spatial distortion that is part of the Fae glamour.
GRAY MAN, THE: Monstrously ugly, leprous Unseelie that feeds by stealing beauty from human women. Threat assessment: can kill but prefers to leave its victim hideously disfigured and alive to suffer.
Addendum to original entry: Allegedly the only one of its kind (BIG FAT NOT; SEE BELOW!) Barrons and I killed it.
Addendum to original entry: It could sift space.
GRAY WOMAN, THE: The Gray Man’s female counterpart. Saw her outside Chester’s and later inside. Unlike the Gray Man, she doesn’t leave her victims alive. A sifter. No longer consider them singularities. Could be dozens of them.
GRIPPER: Dainty, diaphanous Unseelie that is surprisingly beautiful. Grippers look like the modern media’s representation of fairies—delicate, shimmering nude beauties, with a cloud of gossamer hair and lovely features, only they’re nearly the size of a human. I named them Grippers because they “grip” us. They can step inside a human’s skin and take them over. Once they’ve slipped inside a person, I can no longer sense them. I could be standing right next to a Gripper inside a person and not even know it. For a while, I was afraid Barrons might be one. But I made him hold the spear.
GUARDIANS, THE: What the Garda have begun calling themselves under Inspector Jayne’s leadership as they fight to protect Dublin’s remaining citizens. They eat Unseelie and kick serious Fae ass.
HALL OF ALL DAYS, THE: The central hub of the Silvers. Barrons describes it as a quantum travel agency for the Fae, like an airport terminal. The walls and floor are made of pure gold, and it seems to stretch on forever. The walls are covered with billions of mirrors that are portals to other worlds, dimensions, and times. It’s a dangerous pl
ace. Time feels skewed there, not linear at all, and if you stop moving, you can get lost in memories that begin to play out around you as if they’re real. Whatever you think seems to materialize. You have to keep moving. I passed skeletons on the floor. When the Silvers were originally created, all mirrors that were a part of the network (outside the Hall) would immediately deposit you in the Hall of All Days. From there, you could choose your destination. Cross-reference Silvers.
HALLOWS, THE: Eight ancient relics of immense power fashioned by the Fae: four light and four dark. The Light or Seelie Hallows are the stone, the spear, the sword, and the cauldron. The Dark or Unseelie Hallows are the amulet, the box, the mirror, and the Book (Sinsar Dubh, or Dark Book) (A Definitive Guide to Artifacts, Authentic and Legendary).
Addendum to original entry: I still don’t know anything about the stone or the box. Do they confer powers that could help me? Where are they? Is it possible the four stones make the stone? Correction to above definition, the mirror is actually the Silvers. See Sifting Silvers or Silvers. The Unseelie King made all the Dark Hallows. Who made the light ones?
Addendum to original entry: See the story of the Unseelie King and his mortal concubine, as V’lane told it to me (p. 77, this journal). The king created the Silvers for her to keep her ageless and give her realms to explore. He created the amulet so she could reshape reality. He gave her the box for her loneliness. What does it do? The Sinsar Dubh was an accident.
HAVEN, THE: High Council of sidhe-seers.
Addendum to original entry: Once selected by popular vote, now chosen by the Grand Mistress for their loyalty to her and the cause. They were the only ones besides Rowena who knew what was being kept beneath the abbey. Some of them died and/or disappeared when the Book escaped twenty-some years ago. How did it happen? I’m twenty-two. Is it possible my mother was one of them?!!!
Addendum: Yes, my mother, Isla O’Connor, was one! She was, like Alina and me, immensely gifted. Must find out more!
IFP: Interdimensional Fairy Pothole. These things drive me nuts! When the walls came down on Halloween, parts of Faery splintered into parts of our world, and now, if you’re not careful, you can end up walking or driving into one abruptly and without warning. You don’t know what’s in one until you get inside. They’re hard to get back out of. Someone has been “cutting them loose” and they’ve begun drifting on the wind, making them even harder to avoid. There are IFPs inside the network of the Silvers, too. When Cruce cursed it, the collision of realms caused similarly fractured realities. According to Ryodan, IFPs are static microcosms and can be mapped. Some contain dolmens to our world. Most contain other IFPs. One can hop from world to world through them. It’s pretty much a mess.
IRON: Fe on the periodic table. Inspector Jayne discovered that it bothers the Fae. He and his men fashioned bullets from it, lined their helmets with it, and carry it all over their bodies. It can imprison nonsifting Fae. Who knows what massive quantities of it might do to a sifting Fae?
IYCGM: Barrons gave me a cell phone with this number programmed in. It stands for If You Can’t Get Me. The mysterious Ryodan answers when I call.
IYD: Another of Barrons’ preprogrammed numbers; stands for If You’re Dying.
Addendum: God, I know what it is now!
KAT: I think she’ll end up leading the sidhe-seers one day, if she lives long enough. I hope she does, because I can’t stand Rowena. She’s about twenty-five, levelheaded, smart, pure-hearted, and is the only one who has consistently kept an open mind and stood up for me. If anything happens to me, trust Kat. And Dani. If I’m dead, go to them for help.
LIBRARIES, THE TWENTY-ONE: Dani knows where they all are, even the forbidden ones, and we got into one, left Kat and her most trusted searching it, but I couldn’t get into the other one Dani took me to. Not only was it massively warded, but there was some kind of “guardian” blocking the way that just kept repeating that I wasn’t one of them and wasn’t permitted there. There’s some kind of insurmountable obstacle in the corridor. I summoned V’lane to help me. When he appeared, he hissed at me, contorted in pain, and vanished. I haven’t seen him since. I’m getting a little worried.
LORD MASTER: Darroc. My sister’s betrayer and murderer! Fae but not Fae, leader of the Unseelie army, after the Sinsar Dubh. He was using Alina to hunt it, like Barrons is using me to hunt OOPs.
Addendum to original entry: He offered me a trade: Alina back for the Book. I think he really could do it.
Addendum: Bad enough that he had me turned Pri-ya, but now he has my parents!
MACHALO: My invention. Very cool. Hot-pink and covered with lights. It’s the ultimate in fashionable Shade protection.
MACKELTAR, CHRISTIAN: Employed in the Ancient Languages Department of Trinity College. He knows what I am and knew my sister! Have no idea what his place in all this is, nor do I know his motives. Will find out more soon.
Addendum to original entry: Christian comes from a clan that once served as high Druids to the Fae and have been upholding the human part of the Fae/Man Compact for thousands of years, performing rituals and paying tithes. He knew Alina only in passing. She’d come to ask him to translate a piece of text from the Sinsar Dubh.
Addendum: He disappeared on Halloween, when the Keltars and Barrons performed the ritual to try to keep the walls up. We both had a bad night! He got sucked into the vortex that destroyed the stones of Ban Drochaid, the sacred stone circle where the Keltar Druids have performed the rites and paid the tithe to uphold the Compact for millennia. I found him trapped in the network of the Silvers.
MALLUCé: Born John Johnstone, Jr. On the heels of his parents’ mysterious death, he inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, disappeared for a time, and resurfaced as the newly undead vampire Mallucé. Over the next decade, he amassed a worldwide cult following and was recruited by the Lord Master for his money and connections. Pale, blond, citron-eyed, the vampire favors steampunk and Victorian Goth.
MANY-MOUTHED THING, THE: Repulsive Unseelie with myriad leechlike mouths, dozens of eyes, and overdeveloped sex organs. Caste of Unseelie: unknown at this time. Threat assessment: unknown at this time, but suspect kills in a manner I’d rather not think about.
Addendum to original entry: Is still out there. I want this one dead.
Addendum to original entry: Dani bagged the bastard! Could he sift space? Which ones can and can’t?
NULL: A sidhe-seer with the power to freeze a Fae with the touch of his or her hands (e.g., me). While frozen, a Nulled Fae is completely powerless, but the higher and more powerful the caste of Fae, the shorter the length of time it stays frozen.
O’BANNION, DEREK: Rocky’s brother and the Lord Master’s new recruit. He wants his brother’s spear back, and he wants to kill me for killing his brother. I should have let him walk into the Dark Zone that day.
Addendum to original entry: He’s eating Unseelie and has hooked up with Fiona, who’s also eating it!
Addendum: Did the Book get him, or was all of what happened that night an illusion?
O’BANNION, ROCKY: Ex-boxer turned Irish mobster, and religious fanatic. He had the Spear of Destiny* in a collection hidden deep underground. Barrons and I broke in one night and stole it. His death was the first human blood on my hands. The night we robbed him, Barrons turned out all the exterior lights around the bookstore. When O’Bannion came after me with fifteen of his henchmen, the Shades devoured them right outside my bedroom window. I knew Barrons was going to do something. And if he’d asked me to choose between them or me, I’d have helped him turn the lights out. You never know what you’ll be willing to do to survive until you get backed into a corner and see what explodes out of you.
OOP: Acronym for Object of Power; a Fae relic imbued with mystical properties. Some are Hallows, some aren’t.
OOP DETECTOR: Me. A sidhe-seer with the special ability to sense OOPs. Alina was one, too, which is why the Lord Master used her.
Addendum to original entry: Very rare. Certain
bloodlines were bred for this trait. Rowena’s sidhe-seers say they’ve all died out.
ORB OF D’jAI: No clue, but Barrons has it. He says it’s an OOP. I couldn’t sense it when I held it, but I couldn’t sense anything at that particular moment. Where did he get it and where did he put it? Is it in his mysterious vault? What does it do? How does he get into his vault, anyway? Where is the access to the three floors beneath his garage? Is there a tunnel that connects buildings? Must search.
Addendum to original entry: Barrons gave it to me so I could give it to the sidhe-seers, to use in a ritual to reinforce the walls on Samhain.
Addendum: Barrons swears it was spiked when he got it. Found entry to the floors beneath his garage—through the Silver in his study!
O’REILLY, KAYLEIGH: One of my mother’s friends and also part of the Haven. Something bad happened, and I think my mom and Kayleigh tried to stop it. I think that’s when the Book escaped.
O’REILLY, NANA: Nearly a hundred years old, lives by the sea in County Clare, knew my mother! My mother’s name is Isla O’Connor. I could say that a thousand times. My mother grew up with Nana’s granddaughter, Kayleigh. I think Nana knows what happened when the Book escaped. I need to question her again. Preferably without Kat standing guard.
PATRONA: Mentioned by Rowena, I supposedly have “the look” of her. Was she an O’Connor? She was at one time the leader of the sidhe-seer Haven.
Addendum: Patrona was my grandmother!
PHI: Post Haste, Inc., a Dublin courier service that serves as a cover for the sidhe-seer coalition. It appears Rowena is in charge.
Addendum: After the Book was lost, Rowena opened branches of this courier service all over the world in an effort to track and reclaim it. It was very clever, really. She has bicycle couriers serving as her eyes and ears in hundreds of major cities. The abbey/sidhe-seers have a very wealthy benefactor who funnels funds through multiple corporations. I wonder who it is.
PRI-YA: A human addicted to Fae sex.
Addendum: God help me, I know.
Dreamfever_The Fever Series Page 35
