“I am not a fool, MacKayla. You were playing Darroc. My only question is why.”
A weight slid from my shoulders. It was about time somebody believed in me. Figured it would be V’lane. “Thank you,” I said simply.
I turned around and my eyes widened appreciatively. V’lane is always a vision. He’d muted himself, donned his “human” form, but it did little to diminish his otherworldly allure. In black pants, boots, and a black cashmere sweater, with his long hair spilling down his back and his velvety skin dusted with gold, he looked like a fallen archangel.
Tonight, he was even more majestic than ever. I wondered if leading a Seelie army had given him purpose he’d lacked, if he was no longer an immortal riddled with ennui and petty desires but was becoming a true leader of his people. He would have his hands full trying to lead the Seelie court. Perhaps if Jayne and the Guardians shot and caged enough of them, they’d pull their heads out. A little hardship and suffering would do the Seelie a world of good.
“You never doubted me? Even when I was standing there in the street with the Unseelie army?”
“I know the woman you are, MacKayla. Were you Fae, you would belong to my court.” He studied me with ancient, iridescent eyes. “My army is not as discerning as I. They believe you are his ally. We will persuade them otherwise.” A smile touched the corners of his lips. “If nothing else, your claim that Barrons was dead gave you away. I saw him tonight with you at Chester’s.” He paused. “I am uncertain how you managed to deceive the Unseelie Princes. They were convinced he was dead.”
He delivered the statement so blandly that I almost missed the question, and the threat. Lacing his silken words was steel. Beneath his playfulness, V’lane was in a dangerous mood. But why? I knew he’d been at Chester’s. Had something happened after Lor had whisked me out and dumped me at the Viper? Did he know the Sinsar Dubh had also been there?
“Just a little trick I learned,” I evaded.
“Barrons was never dead? Was he … incapacitated for a time?”
V’lane and Barrons hate each other, something to do with Barrons killing V’lane’s princess a long time ago. Instinct deeper than I could fathom made me lie. “You’re kidding, right? Barrons is unkillable.”
“I would know how you deceived the Unseelie Princes, MacKayla.” There was the steel again, lacing the silk. It was not a question. It was a command.
He moved into the alcove with me, and the intoxicating fragrance of the Fae court, of jasmine and sandalwood, perfumed the delicate spice of the purple petals crushing beneath his boots. Danger stepped in with him.
I cocked my head, studying him. I suddenly knew where his anger was coming from. He was on a dangerous edge not because he thought I had managed to deceive the dark princes but because he was worried they’d known all along that Barrons wasn’t dead and had somehow managed to deceive him.
V’lane sat on the queen’s High Council. He’d been handpicked by the leader of their race to see through court intrigue to the truth of matters. And he’d failed. His inability to discern truth from lie—from an Unseelie, no less—had shaken him. I understood that. It’s debilitating to realize you can’t trust your own judgment.
However, in this case he hadn’t been wrong. Barrons really had been dead, and the Unseelie Princes hadn’t deceived V’lane. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. Not only had Barrons insisted I lie to V’lane, it seemed I was programmed with an unshakable imperative to keep Barrons’ secret.
Knowing him, he’d probably tattooed it on me somewhere.
Still, I could give V’lane some of the truth. “Remember when you said that I had only begun to discover what I was?”
His gaze sharpened and he nodded. He touched my hair. “I am pleased you restored it, MacKayla. It is lovely.”
Yeah, well, Barrons hadn’t seemed to think so. “You were right. I’ve recently become aware of a place inside me where I know things that I can’t explain knowing. I find things I don’t understand.”
He inclined his head, waiting.
“I found runes that the princes didn’t like. I used them with a combination of others to create an illusion that Barrons was dead,” I lied.
He processed my words: The Unseelie hadn’t duped him. I’d duped the Unseelie. Faint lines of tension eased in his face.
“You convinced Darroc and the princes that Barrons was dead so Darroc would believe you genuinely sought an alliance with him?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
I hesitated.
“MacKayla, can we not finally trust each other?” he said softly. “What must I do to convince you? Command me, I am yours.”
I was so tired of lying and being lied to, of not trusting and not being trusted. “He knew a shortcut to controlling the Sinsar Dubh. It’s why the Book killed him.”
“It is true, then, what we heard,” he murmured. “It was not a Hunter after all.”
I nodded.
“And what is this shortcut?”
“I wasn’t able to get it out of him before he died.”
He studied me. “Deceiving the princes so thoroughly would have required immense power.” He began to say something, then seemed to change his mind and stopped. After a moment he said carefully, “These runes you used, what color were they?”
“Crimson.”
He went still, regarding me as if he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at. It made me extremely uncomfortable. Then he said, “Did they beat like small human hearts?”
“Yes.”
“Impossible!”
“Would you like me to summon them now?”
“You could, with such ease?”
I nodded.
“That will not be necessary. I accept your word, MacKayla.”
“What are they? Darroc wouldn’t tell me.”
“I imagine he was even more interested in you after he saw them. Tremendous power, MacKayla. Parasites—they graft onto anything they touch, grow, and spread like a human disease.”
Great. I remembered how they’d seemed larger in the bedroom at Darroc’s penthouse. Had I inadvertently loosed another Unseelie evil on the world?
“Used with the Song of Making, they can form an impenetrable cage,” he said. “I have never seen them myself, but our histories tell us they were employed on occasion by the first Seelie Queen for punishment and were one of the ingredients used in the walls of the Unseelie prison.”
I jerked. “How could I possibly know anything about runes used to build the Unseelie prison walls?”
“That is precisely what I would like to know.”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. More questions. They were beginning to gnaw at my sanity.
“You are weary,” he said softly. “On this night for lovers, where would you sleep, MacKayla? In a silken hammock tied between palm trees, swaying over tropical surf, with a devoted Fae lover to attend your every desire? Would you share a Fae prince’s bower? Or would you climb the stairs in a ruined bookstore to sleep alone in the building of a man who has never trusted you and never will?”
Ouch.
He touched my jaw, slid a finger beneath my chin, and tipped my face back. “What a lovely woman you’ve become. You are no longer the child that arrived here months ago. You have been tempered. You display strength and determination, conviction and purpose. But are you wise? Or are you ruled by a heart that foolishly imprinted on the wrong man? Like most humans, are you incapable of change? Change requires an admission of error. Your race devotes itself to justifying its errors, not correcting them.”
“My heart hasn’t imprinted on anyone.”
“Good. Then it may yet be mine.” He lowered his head and kissed me.
I closed my eyes and melted into his body. It was a novel change to have someone believe in me, answer my questions when I asked them, just plain be nice to me, and there was no denying his erotic allure. When his Fae name eased gently into my mouth, teasing, offering, waiting for me to invite it t
o settle, I breathed into his kiss and he breathed back. Consonants I would never be able to pronounce, with vowels comprised of delicate arias, began to pierce the meat of my tongue, causing my entire body to flush with sensual pleasure.
I inhaled the scent of Fae prince and the intoxicating aroma of spiced roses into my lungs. Not a bad Valentine’s Day kiss, not bad at all.
He took his time giving me his name, letting the impossible syllables work tenderly, slowly, into me, until at last they settled and I exploded, shuddering against him. I stood in the alcove of BB&B, kissing him long after his name was mine again.
I was still glowing when I climbed the stairs and fell across my bed.
“Dude, what happened in here?”
I leaned my broom against a fallen bookcase and turned to see Dani framed in the open door of BB&B, cramming a protein bar in her mouth. Her eyes narrowed as she absorbed the destruction. Morning sunlight shafted into the alcove, framing her auburn curls with a halo of fire. Though the day was bright, nearly windless—a whopping sixty degrees after the recent snow—I couldn’t get warm, even with both gas fireplaces on.
“Close the door, will you?” I said. I’d dreamed of the Cold Place all night. Repeatedly, I’d been jarred to near-waking by some fright—a slip into a treacherous drift, a nameless terror stalking me—but each time the nightmare had sucked me back down.
I’d scaled icy cliffs, searching for the beautiful, sad woman, calling out, certain I would find her just over the next ridge. But at the crest of each summit, the only thing I’d found were dozens of hourglasses, with fine black sand rapidly trickling to the lower half. I’d raced from one to the next, frantically turning them over, but they’d kept emptying again in seconds.
Moments before I’d awakened for the final time, I realized the reason I couldn’t find her was because I’d waited too long. Time had been of the essence and I was too late. She was gone. Hope, like the fine grains of trickling black sand, had vanished, too.
I’d blown it.
I’d showered and dressed, failure weighing heavy on my bones. Desperate to make progress, to see accomplishment of any kind, I’d attacked the debris in the demolished bookstore with a broom and a vengeance. I’d been at it for hours, beating sawdust and splinters from Barrons’ rugs, sweeping broken glass into neat piles.
Dani swaggered in and closed the door. “V’lane said you wanted to see me. Don’t know what for, but seeing I ain’t too busy this morning, figured I’d give you a listen. But it better be different kinda stuff, ’cause last time I saw you, you weren’t talking like no friend of mine.” She preened. “He brought me chocolate. Dude—like I’m his Valentine or something. Me and him, we had a talk. Told him I’m almost fourteen and I’m gonna give him my virginity one day.”
I groaned. She’d actually told him that? Before I’d sent him for her, I’d made him swear to turn off the lethal eroticism. “We’re going to have a long discussion about your virginity and V’lane, as soon as things calm down.”
“News flash, Mac, they ain’t never calming. World is. What it is. This is life now.” Despite her casual swagger, her flippant tone, her eyes were cold. Wary.
Tough words. Tougher truth to swallow. I never would. “It’s not staying this way, Dani. We’re not going to let it.”
“What can we do ’bout it? World’s too big. ’Sides, ain’t so bad. ’Til you go and get all pissy. Thought you and me were, like, peas in the Mega pod and there ain’t no other veggies on the plate. Then you go playacting you’re humping the Lord Monster. Pissing me off.” She shot me a glare crammed full of the words she would never say: You abandoned me. Left me alone. I’m here, but this better be good. She pulled an apple out of her pocket and began munching it.
Last night, before V’lane left, I’d asked him to find her this morning and tell her Barrons had never been dead, that I’d been undercover, and I was sorry for the deception. But no apology-by-proxy could replace the real thing. She needed to hear it from me. And I needed to say it.
“I’m sorry, Dani. I hated hurting you.”
“Dude, get over yourself. Didn’t hurt me. It’d take way more than that. Figured you were PMS’ing. No big. Just wanted to hear you say you were a dick.”
“I was a dick. And it may not have bothered you, but it drove me crazy. Forgive me?”
She jerked and gave me an uncomfortable look. The precocious, gifted teen had been treated one of two ways at the abbey: ordered around or ignored. I doubted anyone had ever bothered to apologize to her for anything.
“Saying you’re a dick was ’nuff, already, jeez. Getting all touchy-feely like a grown-up. Gah!” She stepped around the wreck of the cashier’s counter and tried to flash me a grin, but it came out lopsided. “So, what gives? Mini-tornado blow through?”
“Lose the coat,” I evaded. I could hardly say, After I killed Barrons, he was so pissed off at me that he trashed the bookstore.
“Right. Forgot.”
She shrugged out of it, left it in a puddle of black leather on the floor. Beneath it, she had on skintight black low-ride jeans, a tight sweater, and black high-tops. Her green eyes sparkled.
“With the Book hitching rides, hiding on people, guess we’re all going to be dressing like skanks for a while, huh? Skintight or skin. Dude, everybody’s everything’s gonna be hanging out, and some o’ those fat chicks at the abbey are gonna gross my eyeballs right outta my head. Muffin tops and camel toes, gah!”
I bit my lip, trying not to laugh. That was Dani. Not an ounce of tact. Like the world around her, she was what she was, no holds barred. “Not everybody has superspeed metabolism,” I said drily. And what I wouldn’t give for it. I’d eat chocolate for breakfast, pastries for lunch, and pie for supper.
She polished off the apple and tossed it into a pile. “Looking forward to seeing Barrons, though,” she said enthusiastically. “You? Nah, guess you don’t care. You seen him naked for, what, like—months, din’t’cha?”
There were times I seriously wished she’d bar some of those holds. I was suddenly in a basement again, watching Barrons walk naked across the room, telling him he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
I changed the subject hastily. “What’s going on at the abbey? I know you left, but what were things like before you did?”
Her face darkened. “Bad, Mac. Real bad. Why? You thinking of going back? Gotta tell you, don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Good idea or not, I had no choice. According to Nana, when the Sinsar Dubh had escaped the abbey twenty-some years ago, my mother was Haven Mistress. According to Ryodan, the entire Haven had been wiped out that night, with the exception of my mom.
Nana had called me Alina.
According to Ryodan, Alina was the only child Isla ever had. Not only would trying to interrogate Ryodan be an exercise in futility, given how tight-lipped he was, but he was currently dead and I had no idea for how long.
That left Nana or the abbey.
The abbey was closer, and the occupants weren’t nearly a century old and prone to nodding off in the middle of a sentence.
The original members of the Haven might all be dead, but some of my mom’s peers had to be alive still, even after the Book’s recent massacre. Others, besides Rowena, had known my mother. Others knew something—if only rumors—about what happened that night.
And there were those libraries I needed to get into. The ward I’d not been able to pass, the one that had given even V’lane fits. Speaking of which, I’d forgotten to ask him about what had happened to him that day when I’d summoned him to the abbey. I made a mental note to follow up.
I was also toying with the idea of confronting Rowena and trying to force truth from her. I wondered if the power of mental coercion Darroc believed the old woman possessed was a match for the power I’d recently discovered in myself. One of the things holding me back from testing it was that I knew if I did, I’d not only be burning a bridge, I’d be torching the ground I stood on with all sidhe-se
ers. Whether or not they agreed with Rowena’s decisions, the majority of the sidhe-seers were intensely loyal to her. Another thing holding me back was that I wasn’t sure where that power came from and was reluctant to betray anything the Grand Mistress might use against me. Besides, what if all the runes I had were parasites of some kind that could inflict further damage on our world?
Still, there was another weapon at my disposal I could try. I’d become proficient at Voice and could easily explain it away as a Druid art Barrons had taught me.
“I need answers, Dani. You with me?”
“Ro’ll blow a gasket if she catches us,” she warned. Her eyes sparkled, and she was beginning to blur with excitement.
I smiled. I loved this kid. We were okay with each other again. One more pain in my heart was gone. “Oh, she’s definitely going to catch us. I intend to have a few words with that old woman.” If things went south, I’d keep my power in check and let Dani whiz us out, or I’d summon V’lane. “Want to come along?”
“You’re kidding, right? Wouldn’t miss this gig for the world!”
22
Even with Dani whizzing us in at superspeed, they found us in the south wing in less than three minutes.
Ro must have laid new wards, to sense us and tip her off if we entered the abbey. I wondered how she did it, if it was like witchcraft and required a pinch of hair, blood, or nail. I could too easily see the old woman standing over a bubbling cauldron, dropping items in, stirring away, cackling with delight.
However she’d accomplished it, a group of sidhe-seers led by Kat confronted us at the intersection of two corridors before we were even halfway to the Forbidden Library I’d broken into the last time I was here. I’d left a group searching it while I tried to get past a holographic guardian down yet another seemingly “dead-end” hall in the abbey.
Like us, they wore snug clothes no Book could hide under. I imagined that, between the Shades and the Sinsar Dubh’s visit, things were pretty tense at the abbey.
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