“If you betray yourself, they’ll kill you,” I warned.
“They might kill me anyway, and I won’t even see them coming.”
“Some of them are pretty horrific. They can startle you into betraying yourself.”
He gave me a tight smile. “Lady, you should see the crime scenes I’ve been on lately.”
“I need to think about it.” Eating Unseelie had many repercussions. I didn’t want to be responsible for what the good inspector might become.
“You’re the one who opened my eyes, Ms. Lane. You owe me. You get one more heads-up on the house, but after the next crime, it’s no tea, no tips.”
He dropped me a few blocks from the bookstore.
The interior lights of Barrons Books and Baubles were at the closed-for-business level when I let myself in, which was enough to keep Shades away but little more.
I moved to the counter, dropped my flashlights, and stripped off my jacket. There were some papers on it that hadn’t been there earlier. I riffled through them. They were receipts for a backup generator, a state-of-the-art security system, and a proposal for installation. The bill was astronomical. An appointment was noted for the work to begin the first week of November.
I didn’t hear him behind me. I felt him. Electric. Wild. One foot in the swamp. Never going to crawl all the way out. And I wanted to have sex with whatever he was. Where was I supposed to put that in my head? I wadded the thought up, stuffed it in my padlocked box, and tested the chains. I was going to need a few more.
I turned and we had one of those wordless conversations that were our specialty.
Nice apology, I said, but not enough.
It’s not an apology. I don’t owe you one.
Our wordless conversation ended there. We’re getting worse at them. Distrust clouds my eyes, and I can’t see past it.
“Do you have news for me, today, Ms. Lane?” said Barrons.
I thrust my hands in my pockets. “No run-ins with the Book.”
“No calls from Jayne?”
I shook my head. He could Voice me on that one, and I’d still be able to say no. He’d asked the wrong question. I took perverse pleasure in that.
“Any contact with V’lane?”
“Aren’t you Question Boy tonight? Why don’t you try judging my actions?” I said. “Speaking of which, I’ve decided I see the wisdom of your advice.”
“Has Hell frozen over?” he said dryly.
“Funny. I’m not going to ask you questions tonight, Barrons. I’m going to ask you for three actions.” It seemed my gut had come up with a plan. I hoped my instincts were sound.
Interest uncoiled like a dark snake in his eyes. “Go on.”
I reached beneath my jacket, removed my spear from the shoulder harness, and held it out to him. “Here. Take this.”
Here it was, the moment of truth. So simple. So telling.
Dark eyes narrowed; the snake in them moved. “Who have you been talking to, Ms. Lane?” he said softly.
“No one.”
“Tell me what you’re after or I won’t play your little game.”
There was no room for negotiation in his voice. I shrugged. It was past time to force this confrontation. “I’ve heard that an Unseelie can’t touch a Seelie Hallow.”
“So, now I’m not eating them,” he said, reminding me of a prior accusation I’d made against him, “I am them? You’ve quite the imagination, Ms. Lane.”
“Just take it,” I said irritably. The suspense was killing me. I knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Barrons was a Gripper. That was all there was to it.
Long, strong, elegant fingers closed around steel. He took the spear.
Astonished, certain his features would be contorted in pain, my gaze flew to his face.
There wasn’t a flicker of a lash, not the smallest shift of a muscle. Nothing. If anything, he looked bored.
He offered it back. “Satisfied?”
I refused to take it. Maybe if he kept holding it, something would happen.
He waited.
I waited.
Eventually I started to feel stupid and took the spear back. He thrust his hands in his pockets and regarded me coolly. I was deflated. Barrons wasn’t Unseelie. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how completely I’d made my case against him, and convicted him. It explained everything: his longevity, his strength, his knowledge of the Fae, why the Shades left him alone, why V’lane feared him, why the Lord Master had walked away—all of it made sense, if Barrons was an Unseelie. But he wasn’t. I’d just proved it. And now I had to go back to square one and start trying to figure out what he was all over again.
“Try not to look so disappointed. One might almost think you wanted me to be Unseelie, Ms. Lane. What’s your second request?”
I wanted him to be something. I wanted to be able to peg him and put him somewhere and quit being torn in half, one moment believing him my avenging angel, the next, certain he was the devil himself. I couldn’t live like this, not knowing who to trust. Off-kilter, I blurted, “I want you to give me the D’Jai Orb.”
“Why?”
“So I can give it to the sidhe-seers.”
“You trust them?”
“In this,” I qualified. “I believe they’ll use it for the greater good.”
“I despise that phrase, Ms. Lane. Atrocities have been committed in its name. What is the greater good but tyranny’s chameleon? For eons it has changed skins to sate the current ruler’s hunger for political and spiritual dominion.”
He had a point there. But in this case, the greater good was my whole world, as I knew it, and I wanted to keep knowing it. I clarified. “They think they can use it to reinforce the walls on Halloween.”
“Very well. I will bring it to you tomorrow night.”
I almost fell over. “Really?” Two surprises: Barrons wasn’t Unseelie, and he’d just agreed to hand over a priceless relic, asking nothing in return. Why was he being so nice? Was this his apology for last night?
“What’s the third thing you want, Ms. Lane?”
This one was going to be a little trickier. “What do you know about the walls between realms?”
“I know they’re paper-thin at the moment. I know some of the smaller, less powerful Fae have been slipping through the cracks, without the Lord Master’s help. The prison continues to contain the most powerful.”
His comment sidetracked me. “You know, that just doesn’t make sense. Why are the less powerful ones able to escape? I’d think it would be the other way around.”
“The walls were created from a formidable magic,” he said, “which no Fae has been able to match since. At great cost to herself, the queen wove living strands of the Song of Making into the walls of the prison, which slams the magic of the Unseelie back at them. The stronger the Unseelie, the stronger the wall; by attempting to break free, they actually join forces with their gaoler.”
Cool trick. “So, do you know why the walls are so thin?”
“Aren’t you Question Girl tonight?”
I gave him a look.
He smiled faintly. “Why are the walls so thin?”
“Because when the Compact was struck, humans were appointed to help maintain them. But those responsible for keeping them up with their rituals—the most important of which take place every Halloween—have been attacked by dark magic each time they’ve performed it over the past few years. They’ve exhausted the limits of their knowledge and power. If it happens again this year—and there’s every reason to expect it will—the walls will come down completely. Even the prison walls.”
“What does this have to do with me, Ms. Lane?”
“If the walls come down completely, all the Unseelie will get out, Barrons.”
“So?”
“You told me once you didn’t want that to happen.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s my problem.” He was looking bored again.
“This is the third action I want. I want you to make it your pro
blem.”
“In what manner?”
“They think you can help them. Can you?”
He considered it. “Possibly.”
I wanted to strangle him. “Will you?”
“Motivate me.”
“If nothing else, it’ll keep me safer. A safer OOP detector is a happier one. Happier is more productive.”
“You haven’t detected anything of use to me for several weeks.”
“You haven’t asked me to,” I said defensively.
“There’s an OOP you know I want, yet you withheld information from me about it.”
“You have that information now. What’s the problem?” Had I just sounded like V’lane?
“The problem is I still don’t have the OOP, Ms. Lane.”
“I’m working on it. I’ll be able to work faster, the safer I am. If the walls come down, every Unseelie out there will be hunting it, getting in my way. You told me once that you didn’t want more of them in your city. Was that a lie?”
“Point made. What do you want from me?”
“I want you to join them on Halloween and help them perform the ritual. And I want you to promise not to harm them.” Because of the delicate way I’d shaped our conversation, it sounded as if I was asking him to help the sidhe-seers.
He measured me a long moment, then said, “I’ll swap you an action for an action. Get me within sight distance of the Sinsar Dubh, and I’ll help your little friends.”
“Help my little friends,” I countered, “and I’ll get you within sight distance of the Sinsar Dubh.”
“I have your word?”
“You trust my word?”
“You’re an idealistic fool. Of course.”
“You have my word.” I’d deal with the problem of the promise I’d just made in the future. Right now, I needed to keep the walls up, and make sure the human race had a future.
“Then we have a deal. But your action doesn’t hinge on the outcome of mine. I will do my best to help them with their ritual, but I can’t assure you success. I know nothing of their abilities, and it’s magic I’ve not done before.”
I nodded. “I accept your condition. You’ll help them, and not harm them?”
“You trust my word?” he mocked.
“Of course not. You’re a cynical bastard. But they seem willing to.”
The faint smile was back. “I’ll help them and not harm them. Take a note, Ms. Lane: You undermine yourself as a negotiator when you permit your opponent to see emotion. Never betray emotion to an enemy.”
“Is that what you are?”
“It’s how you treat me. Be consistent and follow through on the finer nuances.” He turned away and moved toward the fire. “Who am I to assist and protect? The old witch herself?”
“It’s not the sidhe-seers.”
He stopped and went very still. “Who is it?”
“The MacKeltars.”
He was silent a long moment. Then he began to laugh, softly. “Well played, Ms. Lane.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“The best. Hop on one foot, Ms. Lane.”
Voice lessons had begun.
I had a feeling they might be brutal tonight.
TWELVE
“ ‘Even Rowena will have to believe in you, then.’ Isn’t that what you said, Kat? I did what you asked. I got the Orb. And now you’re telling me the old woman still won’t let me into her libraries?” I was so furious I nearly slammed down the phone.
“She said you’ll be welcome once the Orb has served its purpose, and the walls are standing strong.” Kat had been apologizing for several minutes, but it had done nothing to defuse my temper.
“That’s bogus and you know it! What if the walls come down anyway? I can’t help it if whatever she plans to do doesn’t work! I kept my part of the bargain.”
On the other end of the phone line, Kat sighed. “She said I had no right to speak for her in the first place. And I’m sorry I did, Mac. I didn’t intend to mislead you, please believe that.”
“What else did she say?” I asked tightly.
She hesitated. “That we were to cease all contact with you until after Samhain, and if we didn’t, then we no longer had a home at the abbey. That we could live in Dublin with you. She means it, too.”
I had a momentary flash of Barrons Books and Baubles overrun by young sidhe-seers, and the look on the intensely private owner’s face. A fleeting smile touched my lips before anger erased it. “And what did you say?”
“I said I didn’t think we should have to choose, or shut out a sister sidhe-seer when times were as dangerous as these, and I didn’t understand why she despised you so much. And she said she can see moral decay as clearly as she can see the Fae, and you’re …”
“I’m what?”
Kat cleared her throat. “Rotten to the core.”
Unbelievable! My rate of moral decay was about as high as my tooth decay—I didn’t have a single cavity. The woman hated me. She’d disliked me since the first, and my visit with V’lane had only made things worse.
I eyed the Orb, resting on the counter in a box padded with bubble-wrap. I was glad I’d refused to turn it over until I’d secured an invitation to return to the abbey from the Grand Mistress herself. “Then she can’t have the Orb,” I said flatly.
“She said that was what you’d say, and that it proved her point. She said you’d choose your pride over saving our world from the Fae,” said Kat.
What a clever, manipulative old bat! She’d had decades to perfect her politics. Until a few months ago the only politics I’d ever worried about were the two waitresses who always pretended they’d had terrible nights so they wouldn’t have to tip me out, as if my flair for swift, exceptional drink-making had played no part in their financial success.
“I told her she was wrong. That you care about us, and about the world. She’s being unfair, Mac. We know that. But we … well, we still need the Orb. We may not be able to get you inside the abbey, but we’ll … uh …” her voice dropped to a near-whisper, “we’ll help you as much as we can. Dani said she thinks she can get more pages from the book. And we might be able to slip a few others out, if you tell us what you’re looking for.”
My hand curled and uncurled. The spear felt heavy in my harness. “I need to know everything there is to know about the Sinsar Dubh. How you guys got it in the first place, how you were keeping it contained and where. I want to know every rumor, legend, and myth that has ever been told about it.”
“Those books are in the forbidden libraries. Only the Haven has access!”
“Then you’ll have to figure out how to break in.”
“Why don’t you ask, er … you know … him … to sift you in?” Kat said.
“I don’t want to involve V’lane in this.” I’d considered that already, and the mere thought of him in the same room with all those books about his race made me cringe. Arrogance alone might make him destroy them. Humans have no right to know our ways, he would sneer.
“You don’t trust him?”
His name was bittersweet, invasive on my tongue. “He’s Fae, Kat! He’s the ultimate in self-serving. We may be after the same goal of keeping the walls up, but to him humans are just a means to an end. Besides, the entire abbey would know we were there, and I’d be looking for a needle in a haystack, without enough time and seven hundred sidhe-seers closing in.” It was a bad idea, all the way around. “Do you know who the members of the Haven are, and if any of them might be persuaded to help?”
“I doubt it. Rowena selects them, for their loyalty to her. It didn’t used to be that way. I heard we used to vote on the council members back in the day, but after we lost the Book, things changed.”
Talk about tyranny. I really wanted to know what had happened twenty years ago, how the Book had been lost, who was to blame. “I also need to know about the Haven’s prophecy, and the five.”
“I’ve never heard of either,” Kat said.
“See if you
can dig up something. And anything about the four translation stones, too.” I had a lot of questions I needed answered. Not to mention all the ones about where I’d come from. But for now, those were going to have to wait.
“Will do. What about the Orb, Mac?”
I stared broodingly at it. If I toughed it out until Halloween, and refused to let Rowena have it, might she relent and share information with me? I doubted it, but even if she did, what would that accomplish? What good would information serve at such a late hour? As the old woman had said, time was of the essence. I needed information now.
If the walls crashed, would the LM send every Unseelie in existence out hunting for the Book? Would the streets of Dublin run so thick with dark Fae that no sidhe-seer would dare enter them, not even me?
We couldn’t let things get that far. The walls had to stay up.
Maybe having the Orb in advance would help Rowena perfect the ritual she planned to perform. Between the sidhe-seers, Barrons, and the MacKeltars, surely they could get the ritual right one more time, and buy me until next Halloween—an entire year—to figure things out. I swallowed my pride. Again. I was really beginning to resent the greater good.
Besides, there was an abbey full of sidhe-seers as worried as I was. I wanted them to know I was firmly on their side. Just not their leader’s.”I’ll drop it by PHI sometime tomorrow, Kat,” I said finally. “But you guys owe me. A big one. Several big ones. And tell Rowena it’s a darn good thing one of us is grown-up enough to do the right thing.”
_____
At seven o’clock Saturday evening, I was sitting in the front conversation area of the bookstore, legs crossed, foot kicking air impatiently, waiting for Barrons.
Your problem, Ms. Lane, he’d said last night, after he’d handed me the Orb, is you’re still being passive. Sitting around, waiting for phone calls. Although Jayne wasn’t an entirely bad idea—
Jayne was a brilliant idea and you know it.
—time is not on our side. You must be aggressive. You promised me a sighting. I want it.
What do you suggest?
Tomorrow we hunt. Sleep late. I’ll be keeping you up all night.
I’d shrugged off a thrill of unwanted sexual awareness at his words. No doubt Barrons could keep a woman up all night. Why night? Why not hunt the Book during the day? Where did he go? What did he do?
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