I shook my head.
“Before it was the clover of Saint Patrick’s trinity, it was ours. It’s the emblem of our Order. It’s the symbol our ancient sisters used to carve on their doors and dye into banners millennia ago, when they moved to a new village. It was their way of letting the inhabitants know who they were and what they were there to do. When people saw our sign, they declared a time of great feasting and celebrated for a fortnight. They welcomed us with gifts of their finest food, wine, and men. They held tournaments to compete to bed us. ” She strode to the picture, snatching a pencil from the desk on the way to it. “It is not a clover at all, but a vow. ” She traced the lines of the two bottom leaves, left to right, with the eraser. “You see how these two leaves make a sideways figure eight, like a horizontal Möbius strip? They are two S’s, one right side up, one upside down, ends meeting. The third leaf and stem is an upright P. ”
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So that was why the shamrock looked misshapen! It was. The upright leaf was flatter on the left side, the stem stiff.
“Over thousands of years they’ve forgotten us, added a few flourishes, occasionally a fourth leaf, and now they think it’s a lucky clover. ” She snorted. “But we haven’t forgotten. We never forget. The first S is for See, the second for Serve, the P for Protect. The shamrock itself is the symbol of Eire, the great Ireland. The Möbius strip is our pledge of guardianship eternal. We are the sidhe-seers and we watch over Mankind. We protect them from the Old Ones. We stand between this world and all the others. We fight Death in its many guises and now, more than ever, we are the most important people on this earth. ”
I almost broke into a rousing, emotional “Danny Boy,” and I didn’t even know the words. She’d made me feel part of something huge; she’d given me chills and I resented it. I’d never been much of a joiner and it’s hard to want to join a club that’s dissed you twice. Yes, I have a long memory and hold grudges. I would do with her what I did with everyone else: Mac Lane, P. I. : I would pump her for all the information I could get. Later I would take my journal somewhere quiet, make notes, decide who to trust…sort of, or at least who to throw in with for a while.
“I suppose you have a collection of stories and records somewhere?” If so, I’d love to get my hands on it.
She nodded. “We do. We have more information on the Fae than one person could sort through in a dozen lifetimes. Some of our…less physically inclined members have been recruited to bring us into the twenty-first century. They’ve begun the laborious task of converting it all to electronic files. Our library, though vast, is coming apart at the spines. ”
“Where is this library?”
She measured me. “In an old abbey, a few hours from Dublin. ”
An old abbey. Right. I was going to kill Barrons the next time I saw him.
“Would you like to see it?”
With every ounce of my being. I wanted to say take me, show me, right now, walk me up and down those halls, teach me who I am. But I didn’t. What if she got me out there among hills and sheep and ruins, overpowered me with a coven of her faithful, and stole my spear? I understood the value of my weapon. There were only two capable of killing Fae. She had one—and countless followers who were unarmed. I had the other. Hardly seemed fair, even to me. I wasn’t interested in fair. I was interested in my own survival. “Maybe sometime,” I said noncommittally.
“Let me give you a taste of what you’re missing. ” She moved to the desk, opened a drawer, and removed a thick volume bound in leather, tied with a cord. “Come. ” She placed it on the desk, motioned me over, and opened it, handling the time-stained pages with care. “I think this entry might interest you. ” She traced her finger down the page. It was an alphabetical record of some kind, a sidhe-seer lexicon, and we were in the V’s.
I gasped.
V’lane: Prince of the Court of the Light, Seelie. Member of Queen Aoibheal’s High Council and sometimes Consort. Founder of the Wild Hunt, highly elitist, highly sexed. Our first recorded encounter with this prince took place in—
She closed the book and returned it to the desk drawer.
“Hey!” I protested. “I wasn’t done reading. When and what was the first encounter? How sure are you of those notes? Are you positive he’s Seelie?”
“The Fae prince you kept at bay in the museum was born to the Court of the Light and has been with his queen since the dawn of time. Join us, MacKayla, and we will share with you all we have. ”
“And demand what in return?”
“Allegiance, obedience, commitment. For that we will give you a home, a family, a sanctuary, a noble cause, and put all the lore of the ages at your disposal. ”
“Who was Patrona?”
She smiled faintly, sadly. “A woman for whom I once had tremendous hopes, killed by the Fae. You’ve the look of her. ”
“You said I looked like an O’Connor. Are there O’Connors in your organization? People I might be related to?”
She tilted her head and gave me that look down her nose, with a vaguely approving air. “You spoke to your mother. Very good, I wasn’t certain you would. And?”
My jaw locked. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her she’d been right. “I want to know who I am, where I came from. Can you give me that?”
“I can aid you in your search for truth. ”
“Are there or aren’t there O’Connors in your organization?” Why didn’t anyone ever give me a straight answer?
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A shadow crossed her face. She shook her head. “The bloodline died out, MacKayla. If you are an O’Connor, or an offshoot of that branch, you are the last. ”
I turned away, deeply affected. I hadn’t realized how strongly I’d been nurturing the hope of blood relatives until it was summarily executed with a few words.
Her hand was gentle on my shoulder, although I knew it was made of iron. “We are your kin, MacKayla. ”
“Were the O’Connors killed by Fae, too?”
“You’re in a doorway, child, one foot in, one foot out. Make up your mind. That door may close. ”
I turned and looked at her. “Where is the Sinsar Dubh?”
“Och, now isn’t that the question. ”
“Do you have it?”
“You are asking questions only The Haven have the right to know. I will not answer them. ”
“Who are The Haven?”
“Our Council, over which Patrona once presided. Are you a Null?”
“Yes. ” She’d shifted gears so swiftly I’d answered without hesitation. I employed her tactic and fired right back at her, “What are the Fae that slip inside humans and don’t come out again?”
She sucked in a breath. “You’ve seen such a creature?”
I nodded.
“What do they look like?” I told her and she said, “Sweet saints, the one Dani described to me, the day she met you! So that’s what it does. I’ve heard rumors such Unseelie exist. We don’t know what they are, and have no name for them. ”
“I couldn’t see it once it was inside her. ”
“It went beyond your sidhe-seer vision? You mean it wore humanity as a glamour, and you were unable to penetrate it?” She looked as troubled as I felt. “Did you kill it?”
“How could I, without killing the girl?”
Rebuke blazed in her eyes. “So, you left it walking around out there, looking like a human? How many humans will die now because you were too good to take a single life? Will you carry those deaths on your conscience, sidhe-seer? Or will you pretend not to own them? She was no longer human the moment that Fae stepped inside her!”
I both understood her point, and found it abhorrent. “First of all, you don’t know that. And second, I can’t just walk up to a perfectly innocent girl and kill her. ”
“Then turn that weapon over to someone who can! When you let her walk away, you didn’t reject the
blood of a life on your hands, you accepted the blood of dozens. It will kill. That’s what the Unseelie do. ”
“It’s all black and white to you, isn’t it?”
“Gray is but another word for light black. Gray is never white. Only white is white. There are no shades of it. ”
“You scare me, old woman. ”
“You scare me, child,” she retorted. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, the rebuke was gone. “Come to the abbey. You’ve already met Dani. Meet more of your sisters. Learn about us. See what we do and why. We are not monsters. The Fae are. This is a war that is only going to get worse. If we do not meet their ruthlessness with unwavering resolve and equal ruthlessness, we will lose. Those who do not act react. Those who react die sooner. ”
“Do you know about the Lord Master and his plans for freeing all the Unseelie?”
“I won’t answer any more of your questions until you make a choice. We have no renegades among us. I permit none. You are with us, or against us. ”
“There are shades of gray, Rowena. I’m neither with nor against. I’m learning and deciding who to trust. Instead of bullying me, convince me. ”
“I’m trying. Come to the abbey. ”
I wanted to. But on my terms, when and how I felt safe, and currently I couldn’t imagine that situation. “I’ll be in touch. ”
“Every moment you waste is a moment you might die alone out there, instead of banded with your sisters where you would be safe, MacKayla. ”
“I’ll take that chance. ”
As I walked out, she called, “Why couldn’t Dani find you for a month?”
I thought about lying but decided to let the chips fall where they may. “Because I was in Faery with V’lane,” I said, as I stepped through the door.
She hissed, “If you are Pri-ya and he has put you up to infiltrating us…”
“I am no one’s puppet, Rowena,” I said without looking back. “Not his. Not Barrons. Not yours. ”
FOURTEEN
I settled into the tufted leather seat of the high-backed snug, or booth as we call them back home in the States, and ordered a beer and a shot.
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For the first time since I’d come to Dublin, I felt curiously at peace, as if a critical game piece had been placed on the board today, and the match was finally, fully under way.
On one side of the board was the Lord Master. He was bad. He was bringing Unseelie through. He planned to destroy our world.
On the other side of the board was me—tiny little hand waving here, a dot the size of a pencil tip on an aerial shot of the planet. I wanted vengeance for my sister and I wanted the Fae to get the feck, as Dani would say, out of our world. I was good.
There were three other major players on the board: V’lane, Barrons, and Rowena.
They all had one thing in common: They wanted me.
One was a Fae. One was an unknown. One was—I was pretty sure, though she’d not said and I’d not asked—the Grand Mistress of sidhe-seers.
They all had their private agendas and secrets.
And I had no doubt all three of them would lie to me as smoothly and easily as they’d put a knife through each other’s backs.
I pulled out my journal and began writing.
I started with V’lane. According to Rowena, he’d been telling me the truth. He was a Seelie prince, a member of the queen’s High Council, and working on her behalf to stop the Unseelie from entering our world and taking it over. That seemed to place him on my side of the board, the good side, which was a little hard to swallow because I knew that he was ruthless and would manipulate me to the brink of death to achieve his ends, in addition to trying to have potentially lethal sex with me along the way.
He was at least one hundred and forty-two thousand years old, probably substantially older. I wasn’t sure it was possible for him to understand how a human felt about anything, therefore the damage he might do to me, even if he was trying to abstain from damaging me, was immense.
Barrons was next. Indisputably self-serving, could he be the most treacherous of the three? When Rowena had mentioned the abbey, a few hours from town, then said that Dani had been looking for me at the bookstore for the past month, I’d known instantly that Barrons must have followed the young girl and tracked her, or Rowena herself, back to the abbey at some point.
My abbey.
Then he’d had the gall to try to make me do a drive-by, no doubt to see if the Sinsar Dubh was perhaps secreted away beneath the abbey grounds—after all, who better to stand guard over a book of dark Fae magic than a horde of sidhe-seers who could see any and all of the monsters that might try to come after it?—without ever saying, Oh, by the way, I found the headquarters of sidhe-seers while you were gone and I bet they might be able to tell you something about yourself. No, there would be no voluntary sharing of useful information with me.
Barrons walked among Shades and came to no harm. Barrons could see the Fae; he knew about Druids; he had abnormal strength and speed; and although it had taken me some time to admit it to myself, what stared out at me from behind those jet eyes didn’t seem thirty years old. Was he a human who’d somehow learned to cheat time? Was he Fae and I couldn’t sense it? If so, how powerful a Fae was he, that he could out-glamour a sidhe-seer? Was it possible one of those diaphanous Fae had slipped inside him and taken over what used to be Barrons? I discarded that thought the instant I had it. I didn’t believe anything, not even a Fae, could take over Jericho Barrons.
Fiona had disappeared after attempting to harm his OOP detector. An inspector who’d been snooping into his business was killed. People that interfered with Jericho Barrons had a convenient way of vanishing or dying. Still…I had no proof he’d done anything nefarious in either of those cases.
He didn’t seem to want more Unseelie in our world. Nor, however, did he seem to have any interest in trying to save our world. Was he really so mercenary and ambivalent? Did he genuinely want the book just to sell it to the highest bidder?
Then there was the question of how he planned to touch it, assuming we found it. The Sinsar Dubh was so evil it corrupted anyone who came in contact with it. Did he believe he could tattoo protection spells into his skin that would permit him to touch it without it corrupting him? Could he?
I rubbed my forehead and tossed back my shot. It burned all the way down my throat. I thumped my chest with my fist and drew a scorched breath.
The only thing that was certain about Jericho Barrons was that nothing was certain. With far more questions than answers, I couldn’t place him on either side of the board.
With V’lane tentatively on the good side, and Barrons on the sidelines, next was Rowena. What a piece of work. Rowena should have been someone I could position firmly on my side of the game, and in terms of single-mindedly opposing the Unseelie and the Fae in general, I could. The problem was I didn’t feel I could in terms of my welfare.
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I knew V’lane and Barrons both wanted me alive, and had the ability to keep me in that condition. However, I wasn’t so sure about Rowena. If she believed there was someone more qualified—and more malleable than I—to honor her holy triumvirate of See, Serve, and Protect with my spear, to what lengths might she go to take it from me? If humans met Fae ruthlessness with equal ruthlessness, how were we different from them? Didn’t there have to be some defining factor? Was I really supposed to walk up to a human woman and kill her because a Fae had stepped inside her, without first trying to see if there was some way to get it out? Tonight when I went to sleep would I dream about the deaths I’d caused by letting her walk away?
Thinking about Rowena sucked. I added a little note with an asterisk: if she isn’t the Grand Mistress, who is?
I moved on to making notes about the minor players like Mallucé, who’d been working for, and two-timing, the Lord Master. Ac
cording to Barrons he’d still not been seen or heard from during the month I’d been gone, which I decided meant the vampire’s memorial service had been for real, and he really was dead. If he’d survived what Barrons and I had done to him, he would have been back among his worshippers long before now. I wondered if the Lord Master had someone new serving his purposes. I brushed Mallucé off the board. One down!
I decided the McCabes, O’Bannions, and sundry collectors of Fae artifacts weren’t part of the game. Only those seeking the Sinsar Dubh or working for someone who was merited their own square.
I accorded all the Unseelie in our world pawn status. It seemed their primary purpose was to indulge their twisted appetites, spy on humans, and create general chaos. To keep things stirred up while the Lord Master pursued his private agenda, and when he’d ultimately achieved his ends, serve him. If there was any single Unseelie more significant than another, either I hadn’t yet encountered it, or was too dense to see it.
I paused with my pen above the page, wondering about the players behind the scenes, as yet unseen.
The Seelie Queen, I wrote. According to V’lane she wanted the Sinsar Dubh, but why? Did she need it to recontain the Unseelie? Were there spells in there that governed their darker brethren? What was the Sinsar Dubh, really? I knew it was a book of black magic authored by the Unseelie King, but what did it do? What did everyone want it for? Did each player have a different desire/use for it? What spells and enchantments were scribed in its pages that were so heinous they could corrupt anyone who came in contact with it? Could words and symbols wield such power? Could mere scribblings on parchment unmake a person’s moral fiber? Weren’t we made of sterner stuff?
I was in no hurry to find out. My two brushes with the Dark Book had pushed me beyond pain into unconsciousness, left me weak as a baby and wishing desperately that I’d never found my way onto this game board.
Where was the Unseelie King in all this?
Did he signify or was he an absentee landlord?
If my book of dark magic had gone missing, you could bet your petunia I’d be out there looking for it. Was he? Why hadn’t he tracked me down, too? Everyone else had. How had his book gotten away from him in the first place? For that matter, indulging myself in perfect paranoia—which, in the world I inhabited, seemed perfectly reasonable—had it gotten away from him? What if it was nothing more than bait at the end of a very long fishing line? If so, what was he fishing for? Was the Lord Master himself a pawn, being moved about by a much darker, unspeakably ancient hand? Was the playing board bigger than I could see? Were we all pawns of something much larger than we knew?
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