High Voltage

by Karen Marie Moning

“Och, no, Sean! I was pregnant before that. Didn’t you do the math?”

  “She could have been early!”

  “She wasn’t. Kasteo taught me to shut out the pain of the world, he taught me to become strong but never—” I broke off, shaking my head violently. “Kasteo’s heart belongs to someone else. Not me. Never me. And my heart has always belonged to you. I love you, Sean, it’s always been you. Don’t you remember what we promised each other?”

  “That was then. Before I became the monster I am. You’d never have pledged such a troth to what I’ve become. I’m what raped you!”

  “If you weaken, I’ll be strong,” I said, through tears. It was the first line of the vow we’d taken together when we were young, the day we’d run off to Paradise Point by the lighthouse, dressed up as if it were our wedding day, had our own ceremony, pledging our hearts and souls together. Too much passion burns. Tenderness fuses. We’d always been tender with each other. And that passion we shared was rich and good and strong. Until a Fae prince had shattered it with lust inflated by illusion. And made me compare. Never compare. The moment you do, you destroy what gifts you possess, and your gifts are precious. “Let me be strong for you now.”

  He spun then, gave me his back, and turned to stare out at the stormy, lashing sea. “It’s too late, Kat. Far too late for that.”

  I refused to believe that. “If you get lost, I’ll be your way home,” I said softly.

  “Go away! I’m not the man you used to know. There’s nothing left of him and I have no bloody home.”

  I shook my head as I wiped tears from my cheeks. Sean was not staying lost within his ugly, horrible place in this ugly, horrible land. Nor was he leaving alone to go God knew where. The Kat I’d once been would have quailed before such a creature, that looked so much like Cruce. The woman I’d been before Kasteo wouldn’t have been able to handle the waves of pain, misery, and self-loathing gusting from Sean’s soul, slamming into me, icy spears, piercing my heart, trying to destroy my hope.

  But I’d learned, locked beneath Chester’s by Ryodan, trapped with one of the Nine. I’d learned what I needed to know in order to fix the problem I’d made by failing to heed Ryodan’s warnings in the first place. I wasn’t the woman I’d once been. And, I was angry now, too.

  Ryodan had so clearly warned me that the world destroyed soul mates. I’d not only refused to listen, I’d helped the world do it. I’d been the one to divide us. And I would, by God, put us back together.

  “If you despair, I’ll bring you joy,” I said, speaking the third line of our vows. “Do you hear me, Sean O’Bannion? Joy. You’re going to feel it again. You don’t believe it now but you will. We took those vows for a reason. We made them up together, carefully paring it down to what was most important to us. We did it because we knew the taint of our own blood was strong. We knew one day we might slip. We knew how much pressure they put on us to be like them. How treacherous and sly they were, how they liked to tempt, ridicule, and bully us. We vowed to never let one another fall without helping each other stand back up and find our way. You’re going to stand back up. You’re going to fight what’s been done to you. I’m going to fight it with you, with everything I’ve got. I vow that I will never again give you anything but truth. And one day you will take those vows with me again. And one day you will say that last line again. And you’ll bloody well mean it. And that’s what we’ll use to contain the darkness within you.”

  “It’s not that simple, Kat,” he growled. “You have no bloody clue what kind of monster you’re dealing with.”

  “You say that to the woman who was raped by one like you, and flown here by another like you. I know exactly what you are. My Sean, in trouble. But not alone. Never alone again.”

  “It’s not possible. I’ve tried. Bloody hell, have I tried! I’m not Christian. I’m not that strong. He came from a line of pure hearts. I come from a corrupt bloodline.”

  Christian had clan who loved him, who’d fought for him, fought alongside him. Sean had no one. His entire family was dead, and I’d let him slip away, into darkness. The thing I’d vowed never to do. When had I stopped believing in us? I knew the answer to that: When I’d begun to brick and mortar a wall of shame and lies between us. When Ryodan had warned me that we were in peril. “Argue for your limitations, you make them yours. Together, we’re going to argue for your possibilities. It’s entirely possible Rae is your child. If you still want that paternity test…” That might give me a foothold, get him turned back toward the world again. And perhaps the test would be positive for Sean, and perhaps it would be inconclusive, if she were Cruce’s. Perhaps whatever passed as Fae DNA didn’t register. And inconclusive wasn’t quite so troubling. Human hearts are funny that way. We let ourselves believe gentle lies. But it would be his choice this time, not me keeping the truth from him.

  A tremor ran through his body, ruffling his wings. He said nothing for a long time, then, “What are the odds?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” I told him flatly, stung by the thought he believed I might have taken other lovers. “There’s never been anyone but you and—against my will—him. You’ve never met Rae, Sean. You should. She’s lovely, with your hair and eyes. Fun-filled, good and loving. That doesn’t sound like Cruce to me. Still, she has one of two fathers: you or him, either way she has an Unseelie prince for a da. Cruce is dead.” I hoped. “You’re not. Wouldn’t you rather my daughter, and quite possibly yours, as well, grow up knowing you as her father, not him?”

  He turned then and looked at me, with a glimmer of emotion in his eyes, and I inhaled sharply. Deep within, I could feel a faint, weak stirring of hope. For two long years no one had come for him. Perhaps he thought I knew where he was, what he was doing, and had chosen not to come.

  “I had no idea where you were, or what had happened to you,” I said, fanning the flame of that hope. “I thought you didn’t care anymore. I thought you’d left because you despised me. I missed you, Sean. God, I missed you more than words can say.” I closed my eyes as a fresh burn of tears stung them. How many times had I imagined me and Rae walking the fields near the abbey with Sean? Being a family, no matter whose child she was. Cooking a meal of fresh-caught fish, watching the stars come out, tucking her in, making love until dawn.

  “Give us one more chance, Sean,” I begged. “Please, say you’ll try.”

  There is a castle on a cloud

  SOME DAYS DUBLIN IS so beautiful it slays me, and this morning was one of those days, as Ryodan and I hurried down cobbled streets toward Barrons Books & Baubles.

  An overnight, driving rain had left puddles as still and glassy as mirrors on the pavement, reflecting buildings and shops and sky. Everything was glistening wet, scrubbed clean, gilded by streaks of sunshine slicing through clouds. It was one of those startlingly crisp mornings, done in vivid grays and blacks and silvers, splashed with colorful flowers blooming in planters and trees dotting the curbs.

  Ryodan had asked me to narrow down the time frame of the bookstore’s disappearance but I wasn’t able to give him better than a two-week window. It had been that long since I’d last passed by before discovering it gone, which meant it may have vanished two weeks before, or that same day, the day before he’d shattered my door.

  We crisscrossed the lots repeatedly, searching for clues. Staring down, gazing up, poking in the few bits of debris rolling like tumbleweeds across concrete.

  Aside from an impression of unnatural distortion, there wasn’t a single enlightening bit of evidence to be found. The mystery of Barrons Books & Baubles had donned the equivalent of “that woman’s” battle dress.

  “I’ve got nothing,” I told Ryodan a few minutes later, when we met up where the stately, transomed front entrance had once been.

  “This makes no sense,” he murmured as a text alert sounded on his phone. He removed it from his pocket, read it and frowned. Another al
ert went off and he grabbed my heavily sleeved and gloved arm while reading it and began tugging me across the lot toward the alley.

  “What? Where are we going?” I demanded.

  “Just come.”

  “You don’t have to drag me,” I growled.

  “I’m not so sure about that.” He was dashing me along so quickly I barely had time to register where we were heading, but I did and dug my heels in instantly. “Oh, no, hell no! I am not losing time again.” My city needed me now, not months or years later. Shazam needed me.

  He gave a sharp jerk and I went stumbling forward, plunging into the wall behind Barrons Books & Baubles, into that precise portal I’d once entered so long ago then spent endless years Silverside, trying to get back home.

  I squished into the wall. Then I was the wall. Then I squirted out on the other side, into the infamous White Room, which still lacked tired starlings, where I stood, scowling ferociously at ten enormous mirrors, one of which had so nefariously dumped me into the ancient, inimical Hall of All Days a lifetime ago.

  I blinked. The White Room had changed. It was no longer a completely blank, featureless room. Someone had redecorated, or, like everything else in the world, it had been treated to a magical upgrade.

  Ornate white moldings crowned the walls, melting into a lavishly transomed ceiling from which a dozen chandeliers hung, glittering like ice in the sunlight. The walls were wainscoted from floor to ceiling with ornately embellished panels. The floor was glossy white marble. The mirrors, however, were exactly the same, hanging without visible means of support, some twirling lazily within elaborate frames, others motionless, in thin, welded chain-link borders. A few of the looking glasses were black as night, some milky, others swirling with unnerving shadows.

  They’d once again been shuffled.

  I really hated this room.

  When Ryodan appeared beside me, I said crossly, “I am not going back into the White Mansion. Or the hall. I don’t care what your reasons are.”

  “Barrons texted. He wanted us off site quickly so we’d stop drawing attention to it.”

  “Barrons!” I exclaimed. “Where is he?”

  “We’re going to him now.”

  I inhaled deeply, girding myself. I was all in, wherever he was, but I had unpleasant memories of this place. Going through a mirror and getting lost for years. Coming out chased by the Crimson Hag and killing Ryodan and Barrons. More recently, going in to save Mac, returning to an entirely different Dublin and a deeply angry Dancer. I’d lost weeks I hadn’t gotten to spend with him and, bloody hell, if I’d known our time together was going to be so short—well, the truth was I’d still have gone in, because it was necessary and that’s what I do. Still, I’d lost so much time in my life.

  “We won’t be losing time now,” Ryodan said. “We’re using a different stack of Silvers that bypass the White Mansion completely.” When he pushed into the third mirror from the left, a Silver I’d never entered before, I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and plunged in behind him.

  After a long, twisting, unpleasant stretch of myself through whatever the Silvers are made of, I stumbled out—I swear the mirrors do that on purpose to you, to keep you off balance—into the heart of Barrons Books & Baubles.

  I just stood there a moment, glowing quietly, Harry Potter reunited with Hogwarts. I was in my magical place again where I’d once felt, so long ago—for the first time ever—that I might just belong somewhere. The place holds a sacred, mystical ambience for me. I love BB&B. Love, love, love it. It smells of high adventure bound in leather casings, crammed on shelves waiting to be freed, of Mac’s peaches and cream candles, of Barrons’s fine furnishings and wool rugs, and the spice of my kind of danger. The sounds of this store are music to my soul, the tinkling of the front doorbell, which I intended to bang at least once while I was here, the soft hiss of the gas fire in an enameled hearth, the quiet hum of the fridge behind Mac’s counter.

  Mac. I couldn’t wait to talk to her. I had so much to tell her, so much to ask.

  I turned slowly, drinking it all in, the elegant furnishings, the way the sun slanted through the leaded glass windows, my beloved, belled door, the strings of colored lights draping the bookcases, the stockings hung on the mantel, the tall, decorated Christmas tree in the corner—Wait, what? Had we lost time after all? It wasn’t December!

  “Why the bloody hell do you have a Christmas tree up, Barrons?” Ryodan growled behind me.

  I spun and caught my breath, smiling. Jericho Barrons is one of the few constants in my world. Other things might change, but Barrons never does. He’s impervious, immutable, a giant, obdurate stone of a man that not even water can carve. Like Ryodan.

  His nostrils flared and a tiny muscle worked in his jaw. “I don’t. That was Mac’s idea. At least it’s not pink this time.”

  A flash of movement caught my eye on a tall bookcase behind him. “Uh, Barrons, why is there a lemur in your store?”

  His face could not have gone darker. “Mac’s idea, too.”

  “What are you feeding him?” Was he feeding him? The little guy looked awfully lean to me.

  “If I could catch the furry fuck, I’d throw him out the bloody window. He’s been shitting everywhere. You have black flames on your face, Dani. What has Ryodan been doing to you? He knows better than to tattoo the face when there’s body left.”

  He shot Ryodan a questioning look then, and something passed between them I didn’t understand. Ryodan jerked his head once, Barrons nodded. They were having an utterly private conversation.

  Years ago I’d have ignored them. I didn’t this time. I wondered if I could push in, like I had at Elyreum. I stared into Ryodan’s eyes, letting mine shift out of focus, and thought about the tattoo he’d inked at the base of my spine. About his blood and mine intermingled and the dangerous power of such spells, the inadvertent connections they forged. I emptied my brain of thought, expanded my senses and—wham!

  —don’t bloody have any idea. Think she’s turning into a Hunter.

  Shock and a deep undertow of sorrow. Christ, of all the things you guessed, that was never one of them. What are you doing here? She didn’t call IISS, or I’d have known. You aren’t supposed to be here.

  I know.

  How did you get back?

  I told you, no bloody clue. One moment I was there, the next I was—

  “Stop that!” They both snarled at once.

  I staggered from the force with which they’d ejected me from their thoughts.

  You were only in his head, not mine. Barrons shot me a dark look. I felt you in his head and you heard me there so don’t get all cocky about it.

  I arched a brow, feeling pretty cocky anyway. I’d pushed into Ryodan’s impenetrable head. Damn.

  Aloud, I said, “Where are we and how did you know we were in the lot?”

  “I glanced out the window.”

  Stymied, I was headed for the door to accomplish two objectives: bang that bell and see where we were, when Barrons thundered, “Don’t open it!”

  I cut him a startled look and went to the window instead. I stared, blinked, stared again. BB&B was resting in the middle of fluffy white clouds, with a narrow view through them to the empty lots below. It was sunny up here, gloomy below. I pressed my cheek to the window and thought, Holy Romulan cloaking device, the store was invisible from the outside! “Good grief, we’re in the movie Up. What did you do? How did you float BB&B?” If I’d walked out the door, I’d have plunged. “Don’t you dare toss that poor little lemur out,” I added worriedly.

  “I didn’t float it. Mac did.”

  I glanced around, dying to see her. This was turning out to be a banner day. Ryodan, Barrons, and Mac; my lions, tigers, and bears had returned. “Where is she?” I asked eagerly.

  “That’s what we need to discuss,” Barrons said griml
y.

  * * *

  π

  The Fae had never had any intention of accepting Mac as their new queen, Barrons told us as we gathered in the rear seating area of the bookstore on Mac’s favorite Chesterfield sofa.

  Infuriated by the discovery that their past queen, who’d forcibly removed them from the human realm long ago, had begun her existence as a human, compounded by the discovery that their trusted Seelie prince, V’lane, was actually an Unseelie prince, the Light Court had gone hardcore purist. Only a Seelie would be permitted to lead in the future, only a Seelie would become the next royalty. Thus committed, they’d put a high price on Jayne’s head, determined to kill him so the next prince born would be one of their own.

  “There are now two Light Court princes that are full-blooded Fae,” Barrons told us. “They conceal their presence from you.”

  “One,” I corrected. “I killed one last night.”

  Barrons arched a brow. “You ignored Mac’s decree.”

  “We had no choice. You left and never sent word. We had no idea if you were even still alive,” I said flatly.

  “No thanks to the Fae. They demanded she come to court, rolled out the bloody red carpet. For a few days they played nice, feigning willingness to accept her. Gratitude that she’d repaired the world and destroyed the Unseelie. But their ancient powers were being reinvigorated by the Song. After four days in Faery, meeting with every caste, giving Mac no time to try to learn how to access the power the queen passed to her, the attacks began. Forty-two attacks on her life in twelve hours,” he growled, dark eyes flashing.

  “They came after her even though she has the spear and you at her side?” I said incredulously. “Are they nuts?”

  “Stealth attacks in large numbers, trying to separate us. They were willing to die to see one of them take her place. We needed time. A queen who can’t use her power is no queen at all. We returned to Dublin, I stacked Silvers, and took her to a chamber I know in the White Mansion; the first room the Unseelie King built for his concubine, long before the White Mansion came to be. A chamber where time moves so slowly it doesn’t even crawl. A day in our world is decades there. Best guess, she’s been sitting in that room for nearly a century.”