“I do not know.”
“What can we do to fortify them?”
“I do not know. There were agreements reached between the queen and the humans she hid and protected. They must honor those agreements.”
“They have been, and it’s not working.”
He shrugged a golden shoulder. “Why do you fear? If the walls come down, I will keep you safe.”
“I’m not the only one I’m worried about.”
“I will protect those you care for in. Ashford, is it not? Your mother and father. Who else matters to you?”
I felt the tip of a blade caress my spine at his words. He knew of my parents. He knew where I was from. I despised any Fae, good or bad, knowing anything about the people I love. I understood how Alina must have felt, trying so hard to keep us hidden from the dark new world she’d stumbled into in Dublin, including the boyfriend she’d trusted. Had her heart battled her head over him? Had she sensed somewhere deep down that he was evil, but been seduced by his words and charmed by his actions?
Nah, he’d duped her. Despite his assertions otherwise, he’d certainly used Voice on her. There was no other explanation for the way things had turned out.
“I want more than that, V’lane,” I said. “I want the whole human race to be safe.”
“Do you not believe your people would benefit from a reduction in numbers? Do you not read your own newspapers? You accuse the Fae of barbarism, yet humans are unparalleled in their viciousness.”
“I’m not here to argue for the world. That’s not in my job description. I’m just trying to save it.”
He was angry. So was I. We didn’t understand each other at all. His touch was gentle but his eyes were not when he pulled me into his embrace. He took his time with my tongue. I’m ashamed to say I leaned into it, lost myself in a Fae Prince’s kiss, and came four times when he gave me back his name.
“One for each of the princely houses.” With a mocking smile, he vanished.
The aftershocks were so intense it took me several moments to realize something was wrong. “Uh, V’lane,” I called to the air. “I think you forgot something.” Me. “Hello? I’m still in Punta Cana.”
I wondered if this was his way of forcing me to use his name again, so he could replace it again. My apologies, sidhe-seer, he’d say. I have many other concerns on my mind. My ass. If his mind was as vast as he constantly claimed it was, he wasn’t entitled to memory lapses.
My spear was back. People were staring at me. I guess it wasn’t every day they got to watch a bikini-clad, spear-toting woman talking to the sky. I took a good look around and stared myself, realizing it was probably my suit, not my spear, that was most out of place. I’d been so engrossed in my conversation with V’lane that I hadn’t noticed we were on a nude beach.
Two men walked by and I blushed. I couldn’t help it. They were my father’s age. They had penises. “Come on, V’lane,” I hissed. “Get me out of here!”
He let me stew for a few more minutes before returning me to the bookstore. In a gold lamé bikini, of course.
My life changed then, took on yet another routine.
I no longer had any desire to run the bookstore, or sit in front of a computer, or bury myself in stacks of research books. I felt like a terminal patient. My bid to gain the Sinsar Dubh had not only failed, it had forced me to admit that it was hopelessly beyond my reach at the present time.
There was nothing I could do but wait, and hope that others could do their part, and buy me more time to figure out how to do mine—if it was even possible. What had Alina known that I didn’t know? Where was her journal? How had she planned to get her hands on the Dark Book?
Seven days left. Six. Five. Four.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on out there, staring me straight in the face, that I was missing. I might have gotten pretty good at thinking outside my tiny little provincial box, but I suspected there was a much larger box that I needed to think outside of now, and to do that, I had to see the box.
Toward that end, I spent my days, armed to the hilt, collar turned up against the cold, walking the streets of Dublin, elbowing my way past tourists who continued to visit the city despite the gloom and the cold and the high crime rate.
Slipping between Unseelie horrors, I popped into a pub for a hot toddy, where I eavesdropped shamelessly on conversations, human and Fae alike. I stopped in a corner dive for fish and chips and chatted up the grill cook. I stood on the sidewalk and made small talk with one of the few remaining human newsstand vendors—coincidentally the same elderly gentleman who had given me directions to the Garda when I’d first arrived here—and who now confided in his lovely lilt that the headlines of the scandal rags were right; the Old Ones were returning. I toured the museums. I visited Trinity’s astounding library. I sampled beers at the Guinness brewery and stood up on the platform, staring out at the sea of roofs.
And I had a startling realization: I loved this city.
Even swimming as she was with monsters, deluged by crime, tainted by the violence of the Sinsar Dubh, I loved Dublin. Had Alina felt this way? Terrified of what might come, but more alive than she’d ever been?
And more alone.
The sidhe-seers weren’t returning my calls. Not even Dani. They’d chosen. Rowena had won. I knew they were afraid. I knew she and the abbey were all most of them had ever known, and that she would skillfully manipulate their fears. I wanted to storm over to PHI and fight. Call the old woman out; argue my case with the sidhe-seers. But I didn’t. There are some things you shouldn’t have to ask for. I’d given them their show of faith. I expected some in return.
I walked the streets. I watched. I made notes in my journal about the various things I saw.
Even Barrons had abandoned me, off looking into some ancient ritual he believed might help on Samhain.
Christian called and invited me out to MacKeltar-land, somewhere in the hills of Scotland, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave the city. I felt like her vanguard, or maybe just the captain going down with her ship. His uncles, Christian told me grimly, were tolerating Barrons, but barely. Nonetheless, they’d agreed to work together for the duration. His tone made it clear that once the ritual was over, there might be an all-out Druid war. I didn’t care. They could fight all they wanted once the walls were fortified.
Three days before Halloween, I found a plane ticket to Ashford outside my bedroom door. It was one-way. The flight was that afternoon. I stood holding it for a long time, eyes closed, leaning back against the wall, picturing my mom and dad, and my room at home.
October in south Georgia is fall at its finest: trees dressed in ruby, amber, and pumpkin; the air redolent with the scent of leaves and earth, and down-home southern cooking; the nights as clear as you can find only in rural America, far from the sky-dimming lights of city life.
Halloween night, the Brooks would host their annual Ghosts and Ghouls Treasure Hunt. The Brickyard would hold a costume contest, inviting the town to come as they wished they were. It was always a blast. People chose the strangest things. If I wasn’t working and it was warm enough, Alina and I would throw a pool party. Mom and Dad were always cool about it, checking into a local bed-and-breakfast for the night. They’d made no secret of the fact that they rather looked forward to getting away from us all for a romantic night alone.
I lived my trip home while holding that ticket.
Then I called and tried to get Barrons’ money refunded. The best they could do was reassign the funds, for a fee, to a future fare in my name.
“Did you think I’d run?” I asked later that night. Barrons was still wherever he was. I’d rung him up on my cell phone.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Would you have gone, if I’d made it round-trip?”
“No. I’m afraid something might follow me. I gave up the idea of going home a long time ago, Barrons. One day I will. When it’s safe.”
“What if it never is again?”<
br />
“I have to believe it will be.”
There was a long silence. The bookstore was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I was lonely. “When are you coming home?” I asked.
“Home, Ms. Lane?”
“I have to call it something.” We’d had this exchange once before, standing in a cemetery. I’d told him if home was where the heart was, mine was six feet under. That was no longer true. My heart was inside me now, with all its hopes and fears and pains.
“I’m nearly done. I’ll be there tomorrow.” The line went dead.
_____
Three o’clock in the morning.
I shot straight up in bed.
Heart hammering. Nerves screaming.
My cell phone was ringing.
“What the feck?” Dani snapped when I answered. “You sleep like the fecking dead up there! I been calling you for five fecking minutes!”
“Are you okay?” I demanded, shivering. I’d been in that cold place again. Shadowy dream remnants slipped away but the chill remained.
“Look out your window, Mac.”
I pushed out of bed, grabbed my spear, and hurried to the window.
My bedroom, like the last one that Barrons trashed, is on the rear of the building, so I can watch the back alley out my window, and keep tabs on the Shades.
Dani was standing down there, in the narrow path of light between the bookstore and Barrons’ garage, cell phone propped between her skinny shoulder and ear, grinning up at me. Shades watched her hungrily from their roost in the shadows.
She was wearing a long black leather coat that was straight out of a vampire movie, and much too big through the shoulders. As I watched, she slid something long and alabaster and shiningly beautiful out from under it.
I gasped. It could only be the Sword of Light.
“Let’s go kick some fairy ass.” Dani laughed, and the look in her eyes was anything but thirteen years old.
“Where’s Rowena?” I dropped my PJ bottoms and thrust a leg into jeans, teeth chattering. I hate my Cold Place dreams.
“Ro’s away. She left on a plane this afternoon. Couldn’t take the sword with her. I snuck out. You wanna talk or you wanna come slay some Unseelie, Mac?”
Was she kidding? This was a sidhe-seer wet dream. Instead of sitting around, thinking, talking, researching—I could get out there and do something! I thumbed off my phone, layered two T-shirts beneath a sweater and a jacket, tugged on boots, grabbed my MacHalo on the way out and strapped it on, wishing I had one for her, too. No matter; if we ended up in the dark somewhere, I’d stick to her like sidhe-seer glue.
We took down eighty-seven Unseelie that night.
Then we lost count.
Chapter 15
I spent most of the day before Halloween cleaning up after the prior night’s festivities. Unlike the aftermath of fun back home in Georgia, the remnants of a rollicking good time in Dublin weren’t sticky plastic cups, crusts of half-eaten pizza, and cigarette butts dropped in beer bottles, but dead monsters and body parts.
Problem: when you kill a Fae, they cease projecting glamour, and contrary to pop culture’s inane belief, the corpses do not disintegrate. They remain here, in our world, perfectly visible to all. In the pleasure of the kill, I forgot the corpses. So did Dani. It’s not like they suddenly become visible to me when they die. They’re always visible to me.
I learned from the morning news about the discovery of “movie props displayed in gruesome fashion around Dublin,” rubbery monsters from the set of some “in-production horror movie, arranged as a prank, and people mustn’t be alarmed, but call the Garda; they’ve designated manpower to clean. er, pick them up.”
My phone was ringing before the spot was over. It was Rowena. “Clean them up, you bloody imbecile!”
I was eating breakfast. “They just said the Garda are taking care of it,” I muttered around a mouthful, mostly to irritate her. I’d been thinking the same thing. I needed to tidy up, and quickly. I was ashamed of myself for not realizing what I was doing.
“Did you leave a trail of bodies that can be traced to you?”
I winced. Probably. “I didn’t know you cared, Ro,” I said coolly.
“Was Dani with you last night?” she demanded.
“No.”
“You did all that by yourself?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How many?”
“I lost count. Over a hundred.”
“Why?”
“I’m sick of doing nothing.”
She was quiet for several moments, then, “I want you at the abbey for the ritual tomorrow.”
I almost choked on a bite of crusty muffin top. That was the last thing I’d expected her to say. I’d been bracing for a lengthy accounting of my many failings, and had been contemplating hanging up before she had the chance to begin. Now I was glad I hadn’t. “Why?”
There was another long silence. “There is strength in numbers,” she said finally. “You are a powerful sidhe-seer.” Whether I like it or not remained unsaid, but floated in the air.
Like the MacKeltars, she wanted all the power that she could get at her disposal.
I’d been thinking of crashing it anyway. I felt drawn to fight with them. If they were making a stand, I wanted to be there. I didn’t feel drawn to join the MacKeltars the same way. I guess blood tells. Now I had an invitation. “What time?”
“The ceremony begins precisely one hour after sunset.”
I didn’t need to consult the calendar hanging in my bedroom upstairs to know the sun would rise tomorrow at 7:23 A.M. and set at 4:54 P.M. Nature rules me in ways she never used to. I can’t wait for the long, bright days of summer again, and not just because of my love of the sun. These short, dreary days of fall and winter frighten me. December 22, the Winter Solstice, will be the shortest day of the year, at seven hours, twenty-eight minutes, and forty-nine seconds of daylight. The sun will rise at 8:39 and set at 4:08. That gives the Shades fifteen hours, thirty-two minutes, and eleven seconds to come out and play. More than twice as much as humans get. “When will we know for sure it worked?”
“Shortly after we open the orb,” she said, but she didn’t sound certain of that. It was unsettling to hear doubt in Rowena’s voice.
“I’ll think about it.” That was a lie. I’d most definitely be there. “What’s in it for me?”
“That you ask such a thing only reinforces my opinion of you.” She hung up.
I finished my muffin and coffee, then headed out to sweep up breadcrumbs, and keep the monsters from my door.
I stuffed Unseelie corpses in trash Dumpsters, hid them in abandoned buildings, and even managed to shove two into a concrete pour on a construction site when the workers took a coffee break.
I dragged the ones closest to the bookstore into the nearby Dark Zone. Even in broad daylight, it was hard for me to make myself go in there. I could feel Shades in all directions, the pulsating darkness of their voracious, terrible hunger. Where did they go? Were they wedged in tiny dark crannies of the bricks, watching me? Did they slither off underground? Were they piled up in dark corners inside the decrepit buildings? How small could they get? Might one be hiding in that empty soda can, at just the right angle to avoid the light? I’d never been a kick-the-can girl, and wasn’t about to start now.
The streets were oddly empty. I would find out later that record numbers of people called in sick the last two days before Halloween. Fathers took long overdue personal days. Mothers kept their children home from school, for no good reason. I think you didn’t need to be a sidhe-seer to feel the taut, expectant hush in the air, to hear the distant drumming of dark hooves on a troubled wind, moving closer, closer.
Closer.
I sliced, diced, and bottled a new stash of Unseelie while I was out. I’d expected Jayne days ago, but decided maybe the effects lasted longer in ordinary humans.
On my way back to the bookstore, I stopped at the grocery to grab a few items, then popped into a bake
ry and picked up the order I’d placed yesterday.
Then I stood under the spray of a steaming hot shower, naked but for the thigh sheath I’d taken to wearing so I could give myself better than a one-handed hair washing, and scrubbed away the taint of dead Unseelie.
By midnight, Barrons hadn’t shown up and I was feeling pissy. He’d said he’d be here. I’d planned for it.
By one, I was worried. By two, I was certain he wasn’t going to show. At three-fifteen, I called him. He answered on the first ring.
“Where the hell are you?” I snapped, at the same time he snapped, “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been waiting for hours,” I said.
“For what?”
“You said you’d be here.”
“I was delayed.”
“Maybe you could have called?” I said sarcastically. “You know, picked up the phone and said ‘Hey, Mac, I’m running late.’ ”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then Barrons said softly, “You’ve mistaken me for someone else. Do not wait on me, Ms. Lane. Do not construct your world around mine. I’m not that man.”
His words stung. Probably because I’d done exactly that: structured my night around him, even played out in my head how it was going to go. “Screw you, Barrons.”
“I’m not that man, either.”
“Oh! In your dreams! Allow me to put this into words you taught me yourself: I resent it when you waste my time. Keys, Barrons. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. The Viper’s in the shop.” And I missed it like I missed my long blond hair. We’d bonded, the Viper and I. I doubted I’d ever get it back. It had been heavily damaged from its high-speed trip down the sidewalk and, if I knew Barrons as well as I thought I did, he’d sell it before he’d drive it again, no matter how flawlessly it was repaired. I kind of felt the same way. When you spend that much money, you want perfection. “I need a car to drive.”
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