Shadowfever f-5

by Karen Marie Moning

  He burst out laughing.

  I’ve heard him laugh openly so few times that it kind of hurt my feelings that he was laughing now. “What’s funny about that?”

  “The look on your face. Life hasn’t turned out like you thought it would, has it, Rainbow Girl?”

  The name slid through my heart like a dull blade. You’re leaving me, Rainbow Girl. Then it had been laced with tenderness. Now it was merely a mocking appellation.

  “Clearly I was misled,” I said stiffly. That damned harpsichord was back, the trumpets swelled.

  When I grew up and fell in love, I asked my sweetheart, “What lies ahead? Will there be rainbows, day after day?” Here’s what my sweetheart said …

  “You don’t really believe you’re the Unseelie King, do you?”

  The trumpets warbled, the harpsichord fell silent, and the needle screeched as it was abruptly yanked from the record. Why did I even bother talking? “Where did you get that idea?”

  “I saw the queen in the White Mansion. I couldn’t think of any reason for her memory residue to be there. Occam’s razor. She’s not the queen. Or she wasn’t then.”

  “So who am I?”

  “Not the Unseelie King.”

  “Give me another explanation.”

  “It hasn’t presented itself yet.”

  “I need to find a woman named Augusta O’Clare.”

  “She’s dead.”

  I stopped walking. “You knew her?”

  “She was Tellie Sullivan’s grandmother. It was to their home Isla O’Connor asked me to take her the night the Book escaped from the abbey.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not surprised. Interesting. You knew I was at the abbey.”

  “How well did you know my moth—Isla?”

  “I met her that night. I visited her grave five days later.”

  “Did she have two children?”

  He shook his head. “I checked later. She had only one daughter. Tellie was babysitting her that night. I saw the child at her house when I took Isla there.”

  My sister. He’d seen Alina at Tellie’s. “And you think I’m not the Unseelie King?”

  “I think we don’t have all the facts.”

  I felt like crying. The day I’d set foot on the Emerald Isle, the slow erosion of me had begun. I’d arrived, the beloved daughter of Jack and Rainey Lane, sister of Alina. I’d accepted being adopted. I’d been elated to discover I had Irish roots. But now Barrons had just confirmed that I wasn’t an O’Connor. He’d been there when Isla died and she’d had one child. No wonder Ryodan had been so sure. There was nothing to identify me at all but a lifetime of impossible dreams, an oubliette of impossible knowledge, and an evil Book and a ghastly Hunter with a disturbing fondness for me.

  “What happened that night at the abbey? Why were you there?”

  “We’d gotten wind of something. Talk in the countryside. Old women gossiping. I’ve learned to listen to old women, read them over a newspaper anytime.”

  “Yet you made fun of Nana O’Reilly.”

  “I didn’t want you to go back and dig deeper.”

  “Why?”

  “She would have told you things I didn’t want you to know.”

  “Like what you are?”

  “She would have given you a name for me.” He stopped, then chewed out the next words. “Inaccurate. But a name. You needed names then.”

  “You think I don’t now?” The Damned, she’d called him. I wondered why.

  “You’re learning. The abbey was the focus of the talk. I’d been watching it for weeks, trying to devise a way in without setting off their wards. Clever work. They sensed even me, and nothing senses me.”

  “You said ‘we’d’ gotten wind. I thought you worked alone. Who is we?”

  “I do. But dozens have hunted it over time. It’s been the Grail for a certain type of collector. A sorcerer in London that ended up with copies of pages that night. Mobsters. Would-be kings. Following the same leads, we glimpsed one another now and then, gave each other a wide berth as long as we thought the other might one day provide a valuable lead, although I never saw the Keltar. I suspect the queen cleaned up after them, kept her ‘hidden mantle’ well hidden.”

  “So, you were outside the abbey?”

  “I had no idea anything was going on inside. It was a quiet night, like any other I’d watched it. There was no commotion. No shouting, no disturbance. The Book slipped out into the night unnoticed, or bided its time and left later. I was distracted by a woman climbing out a window in the rear of the abbey, holding her side. She’d been stabbed and was badly injured. She headed straight for me, as if she knew I was there. You must get me out of here, she said. She told me to take her to Tellie Sullivan in Devonshire. That the fate of the world depended on it.”

  “I didn’t think you gave a rat’s petunia about the fate of the world.”

  “I don’t. She’d seen the Sinsar Dubh. I asked if it was still at the abbey and she said it had been but was no longer. I learned that night that the damned thing had been practically beneath my nose for the past thousand years.”

  “I thought it was always there, since the dawn of time, long before it was an abbey.” I wasn’t above prying into his age.

  “I’ve been in Ireland only for the past millennia. Before that, I was … other places. Satisfied, Ms, Lane?”

  “Hardly.” I wondered why he’d chosen Ireland. Why would a man like him stay in one place? Why not travel? Did he like having a “home?” I supposed even bears and lions had dens.

  “She said it killed everyone in the Haven. I had no idea what the Haven was at the time. I tried to Voice her, but she was slipping in and out of consciousness. I had nothing with which to stem her injuries. I thought she was my best bet to track it, so I put her in my car and took her to her friend. But by the time we got there, she was in a coma.”

  “And that’s all she ever told you?”

  “Once I realized she wasn’t coming out of it, I moved on, unwilling to let the trail cool. I had competition to eliminate. For the first time since man learned to keep written archives, the Sinsar Dubh had been sighted. Others were after it. I needed to kill them while I still knew where they were. By the time I returned to Devonshire, she was dead and buried.”

  “Did you dig—”

  “Cremated.”

  “Oh, isn’t that just convenient. Did you question Tellie? Voice her and her grandmother?”

  “Look who’s all ruthless now. They were gone. I’ve had investigators hunting for them off and on ever since. The grandmother died eight years ago. The granddaughter was never seen again.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Yes, it stinks. That’s one of many reasons I don’t believe you’re the king. Too many humans went to too much effort to conceal things. I don’t see humans doing that for any Fae, especially not sidhe-seers. No, there was something else going on.”

  “You said one of many reasons.”

  “The list is endless. Do you remember what you were like when you first came here? Do you really think he’d wear pink? Or a shirt that said I’m a JUICY Girl?”

  I looked at him. The corners of his lips were twitching.

  “I just don’t see the most dreaded of the Fae wearing a matching thong and bra with little pink and purple appliqué flowers.”

  “You’re trying to make me laugh.” My heart hurt. Thoughts of what to do about Dani, fury at Rowena, anger at myself for having misled everyone tonight—there was a knot of emotions inside me.

  “And it’s not working,” he said, as we stepped into the alcove of Barrons Books and Baubles. “How’s this?” He drew me back out into the street and cupped my head with his hands. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he tipped my head back so I was looking up.

  “What?”

  “The sign.”

  The placard swaying on a polished brass pole read: MACKAYLA’S MANUSCRIPTS AND MISCELLANY.

  “Are you kidding me?”
I exploded. “It’s mine? But you just said I was on my last chance with you!”

  “You are.” He released my head and moved away. “It can be removed as easily as it was hung.”

  My sign. My bookstore. “My Lamborghini?” I said hopefully.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. “Don’t push it.”

  “What about the Viper?”

  “Not a chance.”

  I moved in behind him. Fine, I could deal without the cars. For the moment. The bookstore was mine. I was feeling choked up. MINE with all capital letters, just like the sign. “Barrons, I—”

  “Don’t be trite. It’s not you.”

  “I was just going to thank you,” I said crossly.

  “For what? Leaving? I changed the sign because I don’t plan to be here much longer. It has nothing to do with you. What I want is nearly within reach. Good night, Ms. Lane.”

  He vanished out the back. I don’t know what I expected.

  Actually, I do. I expected him to try to get me into bed again.

  Barrons has been predictable in his treatment of me since the day I met him. Initially he used references to sex to shut me up. Then he used sex to wake me up. After I was no longer Pri-ya, he’d returned to using references to sex to keep me on edge. Forcing me to remember how intimate we once were.

  Like everything else about him, I’d begun to count on it.

  Innuendo and invitation. Eternal as the rain in Dublin. I was the one the dangerous lion licked. And I liked it.

  Tonight, when we’d walked back to the bookstore, talking, sharing information freely, I felt something warm and new blossom between us. When he’d shown me the sign, I melted.

  Then he’d splashed ice water on me.

  For what? Leaving? I changed the sign because I don’t plan to be here much longer.

  He’d walked off without making innuendo or extending an invitation.

  He’d just left.

  Giving me a tiny taste of what it felt like. Barrons walking off, leaving me alone.

  Would he really go away for good when this was done? Vanish without saying good-bye the moment he had his spell?

  I trudged into my fifth-floor bedroom and threw myself across my bed. I usually pretend there’s nothing strange about sometimes finding my room on the fourth floor and sometimes on the fifth. I’ve become so inured to “weird” that the only thing that worries me much anymore is the possibility that my bedroom might one day disappear entirely. What if I’m in it when it goes? Will I go, too? Or be stuck in a wall or floor as it makes its grand exit, yelling my head off? As long as it’s still somewhere in the store, I feel reasonably secure with my parameters. After the way my life has turned out, if it does disappear, I’ll probably just sigh, gear up, and go hunting for it.

  It’s hard to lose the things you’ve come to think of as yours.

  Was all this going to be over soon? Sure, we’d screwed up tonight, but I wouldn’t screw up next time. We were meeting at Chester’s tomorrow to make a new plan. We had our team; we’d keep trying. Conceivably, we could have the Sinsar Dubh stowed securely away in a matter of days.

  And what would happen then?

  Would V’lane and the queen and all the Seelie leave our world and go back to their court? Would they manage to get the walls back up somehow and scrape the Unseelie blight from my world?

  Would Barrons and his eight close up Chester’s and disappear?

  What would I do, with no V’lane, no Unseelie to fight, no Barrons?

  Ryodan had made it clear that no one was allowed to know about them and live. They’d been hiding their immortal existence among us for thousands of years. Would they try to kill me? Or just leave and remove all trace of evidence that they’d ever been here?

  Could I search the world over and never find any of them again? Would I age and begin to wonder if I’d imagined those crazy, passionate, dark days in Dublin?

  How could I age? Who would I marry? Who would ever understand me? Would I live out the rest of my life alone? Become as cantankerous and cryptic and strange as the man who’d made me this way?

  I began to pace.

  I’d been so worried about my problems—who he was, who I was, who Alina’s killer was—that I’d never looked into the future and tried to project the likely outcome of events. When you’re fighting every day simply for the chance to have a future, it’s kind of hard to get around to imagining what that future might be like. Thinking about how to live is a luxury enjoyed by people who know they’re going to live.

  I didn’t want to be alone in Dublin when this was all over!

  What would I do? Run the bookstore, surrounded by memories for the rest of my life as those of us who remained painstakingly rebuilt the city? I couldn’t stay here if he didn’t. Even if he left, he’d still be here, everywhere I looked. It would almost be worse than him dying. Barrons’ residue would stalk this place as vividly as the concubine and the king lived in the White Mansion’s inky corridors. I’d know he was out there, forever beyond my reach. Glory days: achieved and gone by twenty-three, like a has-been high school football player sitting in his double-wide, chugging beer with his friends at thirty, two kids, a nagging wife, a family van, and a grudge against life.

  I slumped down on my bed.

  Everywhere I turned, I’d see ghosts.

  Would Dani’s ghost haunt me in the streets? Would I make that happen? Would I go that far? Premeditated murder of a girl who was little more than a child?

  You choose what you can live with, he’d said. And what you can’t live without.

  It had never occurred to me that the outcome of my time in Dublin might be a future of living in a bookstore without Barrons ever again, walking the streets filled with my—

  “Oh, feck it, she was my sister,” I growled, punching my pillow. I didn’t give a damn if we weren’t born to each other: Alina had been my best friend, my heart-sister, and that made us sisters any way I looked at it.

  “Where was I?” I muttered. Ah, yes, streets filled with my sister’s ghost, compounded by the ghost of the teenager I’d come to think of as my little sister, who’d been involved with killing my sister. Would I walk the streets with those phantoms every day?

  What an awful, empty life that would be!

  “Alina, what should I do?” God, I missed her. I missed her like it was yesterday. I heaved myself up from bed, grabbed my backpack, dropped cross-legged on the floor, pulled out one of her photo albums, and opened the sunny yellow cover.

  There she was with Mom and Dad at her college graduation.

  There we were, at the lake with a group of friends, drinking beer and playing volleyball like we were going to live forever. Young, so damned young. Had I ever really been that young?

  Tears slipped down my cheeks as I turned the pages.

  There she was on the green at Trinity College, with new friends.

  Out in the pubs, dancing and waving to the camera.

  There was Darroc, watching her, his gaze possessive, hot.

  There she was looking up at him, completely unguarded. I caught my breath. Goose bumps rose on my arms and neck.

  She had loved him.

  I could see it. I knew my sister. She’d been crazy about him. He’d made her feel what Barrons made me feel. Bigger than I could possibly be, larger than life, on fire with possibilities, ecstatic to be breathing, impatient for the next moment together. She’d been happy in those last months, so alive and happy.

  And if she’d lived?

  I closed my eyes.

  I knew my sister.

  Darroc had been right. She would have gone to him. She would have found a way to accept it. To love him anyway. We were so fatally flawed.

  But what if … what if her love might have changed him? Who could say it wouldn’t have? What if she’d gotten pregnant and there was suddenly a baby Alina, helpless and pink and cooing? Might love have softened his edges, his need for revenge? It had worked greater miracles. Maybe I shouldn’t thin
k of her as flawed but as a wrench in the works in a good way, who might have changed the outcome for the better. Who could say?

  I turned the page and my cheeks flamed.

  I shouldn’t look. I couldn’t help it. They were in bed. I couldn’t see Alina. She had the camera. Darroc was naked. From the angle, I knew Alina was on top of him. From the look on his face, I knew he was coming when she took it. And I could see it in his eyes.

  He’d loved her, too.

  I dropped the album and sat staring into space.

  Life was so complicated. Was she bad because she’d loved him? Was he evil because he’d wanted to reclaim what had been taken from him? Hadn’t the same motives driven the Unseelie King and his concubine? Didn’t the same motives drive humans every day?

  Why hadn’t the queen just let the king have the woman he loved? Why couldn’t the king be happy with one lifetime? What might have happened to the Unseelie if they’d never been imprisoned? Might they have turned out like the Seelie court?

  And what about my sister and me? Would we really doom the world? Nurture or nature: What were we?

  Everywhere I looked, I could see only shades of gray. Black and white were nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which we tried to judge things and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, were as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We could only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we could no longer see the light.

  Alina had been aiming for the right thing to do. So was I. She hadn’t made it. Would I fail? Sometimes it was hard to know what the right thing to do was.

  Feeling like the worst kind of voyeur, I reached for the photo album, pulled it back on my lap, and began to turn the page.

  That’s when I felt it. The pocket was too thick. There was something behind the photo of Darroc staring up at Alina like she was his world, coming inside her.

  I slid the photo out with trembling hands. What would I find secreted away here? A note from my sister? Something that would give me more insight into her life before she’d died?