Shadowfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  He stopped at the far end of the hall in front of a smooth wall of glass that was heavily painted with smoky runes and pressed his palm to the panel. As the door slid aside, I looked down and saw that the floor was covered with more runes.

  “If you tire of Barrons. ” His cold eyes fixed on my face. “Assuming you survive. ”

  I shot him a look of mock astonishment. “Will wonders never cease? Lor’s idea of a proposition. Somebody catch me while I swoon. ”

  “Charm takes energy better spent fucking. I prefer a club over the head. ” He turned and began to walk away.

  I rolled my eyes and, squaring my shoulders, stepped over the runes.

  Or rather I tried to step over the runes.

  They repelled me violently, and every alarm in the building went off.

  “I’m not carrying the Book! You saw me naked. Get off me!”

  Lor’s arm was around my throat, crushing my windpipe. A bit more pressure and I’d pass out from lack of oxygen.

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  “What happened?” Ryodan demanded, storming up.

  “She tripped the wards. ”

  “Why is that, I wonder, Mac?”

  “Get this prick off me,” I said.

  “Let her go. ” Barrons had joined Ryodan in the hall. “Now. ”

  Ryodan looked at Barrons and something passed between them, and I realized they’d been expecting this. They’d known at some point I would demand to see my parents. The only reason Ryodan had let me up was to subject me to this test. But what had it proved?

  “Doesn’t change anything,” Barrons said finally.

  “No,” Ryodan agreed.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “The wards recognize you as Fae,” Barrons said.

  “Impossible. We all know I’m not. It must be picking up that I’ve eaten Fae. ”

  “You’ve eaten Fae?” Adam sounded disgusted.

  “Do you recognize her? You looked at her oddly when she passed,” Lor said.

  “Only that she’s Fae-touched,” Adam replied. “Somewhere in her bloodline. Royal. Don’t know the house. Not mine. ”

  They were all staring at me. “You guys should talk. None of you is human. Well, maybe Cian and Drustan, but there’s that whole chosen-by-the-queen, trained-as-her-Druids thing. So don’t be staring at me like I’m the freak du jour. Maybe any sidhe-seer would set it off. Supposedly the UK had a hand in making us. I never set off the alarms at the abbey that were designed to keep Fae out. ”

  Or had I? Each time I’d gone there, I’d been found remarkably quickly. Then there was the blond woman who’d barred the corridor with her implacable You are not permitted here. You are not one of us. What wasn’t I? A sidhe-seer? A Haven member? A human?

  “I want to see my parents,” I said coolly.

  Barrons and Ryodan exchanged a look again, then Ryodan shrugged. “Let her. Set them up in the room next door. ”

  “Mac!” Jack exclaimed, rushing me the moment I stepped in the door. “Oh, God, we’ve missed you, baby!”

  I disappeared into a bear hug that smelled of peppermint and aftershave. They say scent is the strongest memory association we possess. The smell of my daddy’s hug peeled away the months like calendar pages tossed into a trash can.

  I wasn’t Fae, I wasn’t possibly the Unseelie King, I wasn’t going to doom the world. I was safe, protected, right, loved. I was his little girl. Always would be.

  “Daddy!” I pressed my nose to his shirt. “And, Mom,” I choked out, burying my face in her shoulder. The three of us clung to one another, hugging like there was no tomorrow.

  I pulled back and looked at them. Jack Lane was tall, handsome, and composed as ever. Rainey was smiling radiantly.

  “You guys look fantastic. And, Mom, look at you!” There was no trace of grief or fear in her gently lined face. Her eyes were clear, her fine features glowing.

  “Doesn’t she look great?” Jack said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Your mom’s a changed woman. ”

  “What happened?”

  Rainey laughed. “Living in a glass room with the queen of fairies might have something to do with it. Then there’s the music coming up through the floors at all hours. And let’s not forget all the naked people dropping by. ”

  Dad growled.

  I smiled. I’d wondered how my parents were handling that. Mom was getting a crash course in bizarreness. “Welcome to Dublin,” I told her.

  “Not that we’ve gotten to see much of it. ” She shot a pointed look at the glass, as if she knew exactly where Ryodan was standing. “Anytime now would be nice. ” She glanced back at me. “Don’t get me wrong. I had a difficult time when we first got here. Your father had his hands full. But one morning I woke up and it was as if all my fears had melted away while I slept. They never came back. ”

  “Because so much was weird that fear didn’t have any place anymore?” I asked.

  “Exactly! None of the rules that I’d lived by for so long applied. Things were so far outside my box, I had to either go crazy or throw the box away. I’m excited to be alive in a way I haven’t felt since you girls were little, since before I began to worry about you and your sister all the time. Now the only thing I’ve been worried about was when I might get to see you again, and here you are and you look amazing, and, Mac, I love your hair! The shorter look is perfect on you. But you’ve lost weight, honey. Too much. Are you eating? I don’t think you’re eating. You can’t be eating enough and be so thin. What did you have for breakfast?” she demanded.

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  I looked at Daddy and shook my head. “Is she still making cheese grits and pork chops for breakfast? Are they letting her in the kitchen here?”

  “Lor sneaks her in every now and then. ”

  “Lor?”

  “He likes her hoecakes. ”

  I blinked. Lor snuck my mother into the kitchen to make hoecakes?

  “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. N
obody’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. ”

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  “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, and 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.

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  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 woul
d 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. ”