His lips brushed my cheek and I shivered. “Barrons doesn’t know?”
I shook my head, turned it away. His lips moved to my ear. “No. But I’ll tell you.”
“And you won’t tell Barrons? It will be our secret?”
“No. I mean yes. In that order.” I hate it when people pile questions on top of each other. His mouth was fire on my skin.
“Say it.”
“I won’t tell Barrons and it will be our secret.” No loss there; I hadn’t planned to tell him, anyway.
V’lane smiled. “We have a deal. Tell me.”
“After you help me.”
“Now, MacKayla, or you go in alone. If I am to accompany a Null inside sidhe-seer walls, I require payment in advance.” There was no room for negotiation in his voice.
I hated parting with any of my aces in the hole, but if I had to give V’lane a piece of information that I’d rather not give him, in order to keep Rowena from going after my back every time it was turned, so be it. I couldn’t guard against all the dangers in the city. The Fae were bad enough, but at least I could see them coming. Rowena’s minions were perfectly normal-looking humans who could get too close before I even knew they were a danger. While my instincts to lash out at a Fae were strong, my instincts to strike at a human weren’t, and I didn’t want them to get better. Humans weren’t my enemy. I needed to send Rowena and her sidhe-seers a great, big “Back Off” message, and V’lane was the perfect courier.
Still, I didn’t have to tell him everything. I pushed him away and slid out from between him and the Viper. He watched my retreat with a mocking smile. I felt better with a dozen paces between us, and began to recount select portions of what I’d seen, lying in the sour-smelling puddle. I told him that it was moving from person to person, making them commit crimes.
But I didn’t tell him the three faces the Book had presented, or the severity of the crimes, or that it was killing the carrier before it moved on. I let him believe it was passing itself off from one live human to the next. That way if he decided to try to track it, too, I’d have an edge. I needed all the edges I could get. I knew V’lane didn’t really consider humans viable life forms, and I had no more reason to trust him than I did Barrons. V’lane might be Seelie, and Barrons might keep saving my life, but I had far too many unanswered questions about them both. My sister had trusted her boyfriend right up to the end. Had she made excuses for the Lord Master, the way I’d been making them for Barrons? So what if he never answers any of my questions? He’s told me more about what I am than anyone else. So what if he kills ruthlessly? He only does it to keep me safe. I could string together half a dozen at a moment’s notice. V’lane, too: So he’s a death-by-sex Fae; he’s never really harmed me. So what if he gets off on making me strip in public places? He saved me from the Shades.
I’m a bartender. I like recipes. They’re concretes. Was the drink recipe for seduction one shot charm and two shots self-deception, shaken, not stirred?
“You remained conscious the entire time?”
I nodded.
“Still you cannot approach it?”
I shook my head.
“How do you plan to find it again?”
“I have no idea,” I lied. “Dublin has over a million people in it, and the crime rate has been skyrocketing. Assuming it stays around the city, which I’m not even sure we can assume” (this was a lie; I don’t know why I was so sure of it, but I believed the Book had no intention of leaving Dublin’s chaotic streets at the moment, nor at any time in the near future) “we’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”
He studied me a moment, then said, “Very well. You have upheld your end of the bargain. I will keep mine.”
We got in the car and headed for the abbey.
Arlington Abbey was constructed on consecrated ground in the seventh century, when a church originally built by Saint Patrick in A.D. 441 had burned down. The church, interestingly, had been built to replace a crumbling stone circle some claimed had, long ago, been sacred to an ancient pagan sisterhood. The stone circle had allegedly been predated by a shian, or fairy mound, that had concealed within it an entrance to the Otherworld.
The abbey was plundered in 913, rebuilt in 1022, burned in 1123, rebuilt in 1218, burned in 1393, and rebuilt in 1414. It was expanded and fortified each time.
It was added onto in the sixteenth century, and again extensively in the seventeenth, sponsored by an anonymous, wealthy donor who completed the rectangle of stone buildings, enclosing the inner courtyard, and added housing—much to the astonishment of the locals—for up to a thousand residents.
This same unknown donor bought the land around the abbey, and turned the enclave into the self-sustaining operation it is today. The abbey boasts its own dairy, orchards, cattle, sheep, and extensive gardens, the highlight of which is an elaborate glass-domed hothouse rumored to house some of the world’s rarest flowers and most unusual herbs.
And that was all I’d been able to find out about the place in the twenty minutes I had to surf the Internet before leaving for the destination Barrons had given me.
Today, Arlington Abbey was owned by a subcorporation of a much larger corporation that was part of the vast holdings of an even larger corporation. Nobody knew anything about its modern-day operations. Oddly, no one seemed to find that odd. I found it spectacularly odd that a country that took such loving care of its abbeys, castles, standing stones, and countless other monuments asked no questions about the most extraordinarily well preserved abbey within its boundaries. But they didn’t, and there it sat, in the middle of nearly a thousand acres, silent and mysterious and private, and nobody bothered it.
I wondered what tremendous importance this site had for sidhe-seers that they’d doggedly protected it, even under guise of Christianity, and rebuilt it each time it had been destroyed, fortifying it ever stronger until now it loomed, a forbidding fortress over a still, dark lake.
In the passenger seat, V’lane flinched and seemed to flicker.
I glanced at him.
“We will leave the car here,” he said.
“Why?”
“Those at the abbey are. bothersome. with their attempts to defy my race.”
Translation: The abbey was warded. “Can you get past their wards?”
“They cannot prevent my entry. We sift place. They cannot ward against that.”
Okay, that was disturbing, but I’d come back to it. First things first. “Barrons said you can sift time, too.” Actually, he’d said the Fae used to be able to, but couldn’t anymore. “That you can go back into the past.” Where Alina was still alive. Where I could save my sister, and this terrible future could be prevented, and we could resume our blissfully ignorant lives, unaware of what we were, happy with our family back in Ashford, Georgia, and we’d never leave. We’d get married, have babies, and die in the Deep South at a ripe old age. “Is that true? Can you go back in time?”
“At one time certain ones among us could. Even then, we were limited, but for the queen. We no longer possess that ability. We are as trapped in the present as humans.”
“Why? What happened?”
He flinched again. “Stop the car, MacKayla. I do not enjoy this. Their wards are many.”
I pulled over, and killed the engine. When we got out, I looked at him across the roof of the car. “So, wards are uncomfortable to you, but that’s all? They don’t actually keep you out?” Could he enter the bookstore anytime he wanted? Were Barrons’ wards keeping me safe from any of the Fae?
“That is correct.”
“But I thought you couldn’t get into the bookstore. Were you just pretending the night the Shades got in?”
“We have been discussing sidhe-seer wards. The magic your people know and the magic Barrons knows are not the same.” His gaze glinted like sharp steel at the mention of my employer. “Come. Give me your hand so I may sift you in. And mind your intent. If you Null me inside those walls, you will regret it. Again, MacKayla,
see the trust I grant you? I permit you to take me inside your sidhe-seer world, where I am feared and hated, and I go at your mercy. There is no other among my kind who would consider it.”
“No Nulling. I promise.” Barrons had yet another edge over the rest of us. Why didn’t that surprise me? Was that how he’d managed to conceal the Unseelie mirror from me? With deeper, darker magic than sidhe-seers knew? I couldn’t get too bent out of shape over it, however, because it meant I really was safe in the bookstore. How complex I was becoming: grateful for power wherever it could be found, provided it worked for me. “Are we clear on what I’m going to do, and what you’re not going to do?”
“As clear as your transparent desires, sidhe-seer.”
Rolling my eyes, I skirted the car and took his hand.
At home in Ashford, I have a great group of friends.
I don’t have a single one in Dublin.
The one place I thought I might make friends was at the abbey, among my own kind. Now, thanks to Rowena, that opportunity was closed to me. She’d been messing up my life since the first night I’d arrived in Ireland, when I’d nearly betrayed myself in a pub to the first Fae I’d ever seen and, instead of taking me in and teaching me what I was, she’d told me to go die somewhere else.
Then she’d stood passively by while V’lane had nearly raped me in a museum.
Then she’d sent her sidhe-seers to spy on me (like I wasn’t one, too!) and finally, she’d added insult to injury—sending them to attack me and take my weapon, forcing me to harm one of my own. Not once had Rowena welcomed me. Not once had she shown me anything but disdain and distrust—for no good reason!
These women were never going to forgive me for killing one of them. I knew that, and I wasn’t here to ask them to. It’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters. It’s how you play the cards.
I was here to set the record straight.
Rowena had made a statement this afternoon. By sending her sidhe-seers after me in force, with orders to subdue me and steal my weapon, she’d said: You are not one of us and the only way you can become one of us is complete subjugation to my will. Give me your weapon, obey me in all things, and I’ll consider letting you into the fold.
I was here to make my own statement back: Screw you, old woman. To drive my point home I’d brought as my protector a Fae Prince capable of destroying them all (not that I would ever let him). If she was a wise woman, she wouldn’t mess with me again, and she’d call off her attack dogs. I already had enough people and monsters messing with me.
Darn it all, I’d wanted friends and I’d wanted them among my own kind!
I’d wanted girls like Dani, only older, to confide in, to talk to, to share secrets of our heritage with. I’d wanted to belong here. I’d wanted to learn about the O’Connors, the bloodline I was supposedly descended from, and the last living member of.
“Take me in,” I told V’lane, bracing myself to be “sifted.”
I asked V’lane why the Fae call it sifting, and he said it was the only human word that encapsulated the basics of what they do. The Fae sift the limitless dimensions, like grains of sand through their fingers, letting a little spill here, a little spill there, sorting them until they have hold of the ones they want. When they have chosen, things change.
I asked if that meant he chose the “grain” of place where he wanted to be, and moved there by the power of thought. He didn’t get the idea of moving there. According to him, neither we, nor the dimensions moved. We simply. changed. And there it was again, the two prevalent Fae concepts: stasis or change.
Sifting felt like dying. I simply stopped existing completely, then was there again. It was painless, but deeply disturbing. One moment I was outside, standing next to the Viper, in near darkness; the next, my night-enlarged pupils gorged on a blaze of lights, momentarily blinding me, and when I could see again, I was inside the brilliantly lit walls of Arlington Abbey.
Women were screaming. Many and loudly. It was deafening.
For a moment, I was afraid they were under attack. Then I understood: I was the attack. I was hearing the sound of hundreds of sidhe-seers sensing an immensely powerful Fae inside their warded walls. I’d forgotten about that tiny detail; of course they would sense V’lane, and they’d raise the hue and cry.
“Shall I shut them up?” V’lane said.
“No. Leave them alone. They’ll stop in a minute.” I hoped.
They did.
At my direction, he’d sifted us into the rear of the abbey, where I’d hoped to find the dormitories. My guess, based on the sketches I’d seen online, had been accurate. One by one, doors opened, heads popped out, mouths closed, gaped, and closed again.
A familiar head of curly red hair emerged from a nearby room. “Oh, you are so fecking dead!” Dani exclaimed. “You were in serious trouble before, but now she’s going to kill you.”
“Watch your language, Dani,” chastised the woman who appeared in the doorway behind her.
Dani rolled her eyes.
“I’d like to see her try,” I said.
The outer corners of the gamine redhead’s mouth twitched.
“How dare you come here? How dare you bring that thing in here?” demanded a pajama-clad sidhe-seer, stabbing a finger at V’lane. Another head popped into view behind her, nose heavily bandaged. I knew that woman. My fist had met her face earlier today. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying, and narrowed on me with hostility.
When he stiffened, I placed a hand on his arm, careful to harbor no Nulling intent, in a show of solidarity I hoped would defuse his aggression.
The corridor was now filled with sidhe-seers in various stages of undress. Not because of V’lane, but because it was after midnight and I’d woken them. Apparently, he was proving true to his word. Not a single sidhe-seer was undressing. I didn’t feel the ghost of a sexual tingle. Nonetheless, they were all staring fixedly at him.
“I didn’t dare come here without Prince V’lane.” The use of his title pleased him; I felt muscle slide smoother beneath his skin. “Rowena sent six of you after me today.”
“I saw the ones that returned,” the pajama-clad woman snapped. She glanced over her shoulder at her bandaged roommate, then back at me, her gaze frigid. “Those that lived were badly beaten. There’s not a scratch on you. Not a single bruise.” She paused, then spat, “Pri-ya.”
“I am not Pri-ya!”
“You travel with a Fae Prince. You touch him freely, of your own accord. What else could you be?”
“Try a sidhe-seer who’s working with a Fae Prince in order to help Queen Aoibheal find the Sinsar Dubh so she can fix the mess we’re all in,” I said coolly. “V’lane approached me on the Seelie queen’s behalf, because I can sense the Book when it’s near. I’ve been—”
She gasped. “You can sense the Sinsar Dubh? Is it near? Have you seen it?”
Sidhe-seers up and down the corridor turned to each other, exclaiming.
“Can’t any of you sense it?” I glanced around. The faces turned toward me reflected astonishment. It mirrored my own. I’d thought surely there would be others like me. One or two, at least.
Dani shook her head. “The ability to sense Fae objects is extremely rare, Mac.”
Her roommate said stiffly, “The last sidhe-seer with that ability died a long time ago. We’ve not been successful at breeding those bloodlines.”
Breeding those bloodlines? The soft Irish lilt didn’t soften the words a bit. They were cold. Made me think of white coats and labs and petri dishes. It was no wonder I was so highly sought after. No wonder Barrons was so determined to keep me alive, and I had a Fae prince playing lapdog, and the Lord Master hadn’t yet launched a full-scale attack against me. They all needed me alive. I was Tigger. I was the only one.
“You killed Moira!” the woman in the door across the hall accused.
V’lane regarded me with acute interest. “You killed one of your own?”
“No, I didn’t kill Moira.” I a
ddressed the sidhe-seers, who were all regarding me with open hostility, with the exception of Dani. “Rowena killed Moira when she sent her after me to beat me up and take my spear.” The woman had a name: Moira. Did she have a sister, too, who was now mourning her like I grieved for Alina? “I’m just as horrified by what happened today as you are.”
“Sure you are,” someone scoffed.
“She doesn’t even say she’s sorry,” another spat. “Just comes in here with her fancy Fae guard and blames our leader. I’m surprised she didn’t bring a Hunter along, too.”
I’d give them an apology if they wanted one. “I’m sorry I unsheathed my spear and was holding it. I’m even sorrier she decided to lunge for me right then. If she hadn’t, she’d be alive.”
“If you hadn’t refused to give us the spear, she would, too,” someone called.
“The spear isn’t yours,” another woman cried. “Why should you have it? There are only two weapons that kill Fae. More than seven hundred of us share the sword. You have the other. Do what’s right. Give it to those who were born and bred to have it!”
Others concurred.
Born and bred, my petunia. As if I were something less! “I’m the only one who can sense the Book, and I have to be out there every night, hunting for it. Do you have any idea what Dublin’s like right now? I wouldn’t survive a night without it. Besides, I’m the one who risked my life to steal it.”
My accuser sniffed and turned away, folding her arms. “Stealing. Working with a Fae Prince. Killing one of our sisters. You are not one of us.”
“I say she is, and she just got off to a bad start.” Dani said. “She didn’t have anyone to help her figure things out. How would you guys have done in the same situation? She’s just trying to survive, like we all are.”
I smiled. I’d once asked her the same thing and she’d acted all snotty and perfect, but apparently she’d gotten my point. I admired her courage, defending me like that. Barely thirteen or fourteen, and she had the balls of a bull. It was also the longest run of sentences I could recall hearing her string together, unplugged by a single cussword.
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