FOURTEEN

When I unlocked the front door Thursday morning to open for business—a measure of how desperately I wanted to be a normal girl in a normal world—Inspector Jayne was waiting for me.

I stepped back to let him in, closed the door, then, with a gusty sigh, ceded the absurdity of my actions, and flipped the sign back to CLOSED. I wasn’t normal and it wasn’t a normal world, and pretending wasn’t going to accomplish a thing. It was time to call yet another of my own bluffs. The bookstore lulled me with temporary comfort that I had no right to. I should be anxious, I should be afraid. Fear is a powerful motivator.

I took the inspector’s damp coat and motioned him to a seat near the fire. “Tea? Er, I mean, normal tea?”

He nodded and sat.

I brought him a cup of Earl Grey, took a seat across from him, and sipped at my own.

“Aren’t we the pair?” he said, blowing his cup to cool.

I smiled. We certainly were. It seemed a year ago that he’d dragged me down to the station. Months since he’d accosted me in the alcove with his maps. “It has downsides,” I told him, meaning eating Unseelie. He knew what I meant. It was what he’d come here for.

“Doesn’t everything?”

“It makes you superstrong, but the Fae can’t be killed, Jayne. You can’t engage them. You must be satisfied merely seeing them. If you start trying to kill them, they’ll know you know, and they’ll kill you.”

“How strong does eating it make you? As strong as one of them?”

I considered it. I didn’t know, and told him that.

“So, it might?”

I shrugged. “Regardless, you still can’t kill them. They don’t die. They’re immortal.”

“Why do you think we have prisons, Ms. Lane? We’re not allowed to kill the serial murderers, either.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “I never thought of imprisoning them. I’m not certain anything would hold them.” Except an Unseelie prison woven from the fabric of the Song of Making. “They sift, remember?”

“All of them?”

He’d made another good point. I’d never seen a Rhino-boy sift. I supposed it was possible only the more powerful Fae could do it; the princes and the one-of-a-kinds like the Gray Man.

“Isn’t it worth a try? Maybe we lowly humans can come up with a few surprises. While you do your thing, others can be doing theirs. The word in the street is that something bad is coming, soon. What’s going on?”

I told him about Halloween, and the walls, and what would happen if they came down.

He placed his cup and saucer on the table. “And you would have me go out there defenseless?”

“It has other downsides, too. I’m not sure what they all are, but one of them is that if you get wounded by one of the immortal weapons, you’ll …” I described Mallucé’s death for him. The decomposing flesh, the dying body parts.

“How many of these immortal weapons are there, Ms. Lane?”

“Two.” How far he’d come from denying missing parts of the maps to so casually speaking of dining on monsters and immortal weapons!

“Who has them?”

“Uh, me and someone else.”

He smiled faintly. “I’ll take my chances.”

“It’s addictive.”

“I used to smoke. If I can quit that, I can quit anything.”

“I think it changes you somehow.” I was pretty sure eating Unseelie was why I’d been able to get closer to the Sinsar Dubh. There was a lot about eating Dark Fae I wasn’t clear on, but something had made the Book perceive me as … tarnished, diluted.

“Lady, you’ve changed me more than an early heart attack. Quit stalling. No more tips, remember?”

For the time being, I didn’t want tips. I had no desire to know where the Book was, other than as a means of avoiding it.

“You didn’t give me a choice when you opened my eyes,” the inspector said roughly. “You owe me for that.”

I studied his face, the set of his shoulders, his hands. How far I’d come, too. Far from seeing an enemy, an impediment to my progress, I saw a good man sitting in my store, having tea with me. “I’m sorry I made you eat it,” I said.

“I’m not,” he said flatly. “I’d rather die seeing the face of my enemy than die blind.”

I sighed. “You’ll have to come back every few days. I don’t know how long it lasts.”

I went to the counter, rummaged in my purse. He accepted the jars a bit eagerly for my taste, revulsion married to anticipation on his face. I felt like a supplier to a junkie. I felt like a mom, sending her child off to face the perils of first grade. I had to do more than pack his lunch and put him on the bus; I had to give him advice.

“The ones that look like Rhinos are watchdogs for the Fae. They spy, and lately, for some bizarre reason, they’ve been doing utility work. I think the ones that fly prey on children, but I’m not sure. They follow them, behind their shoulders. There are dainty, pretty ones that can get inside you. I call them Grippers. If you see one coming toward you, run like hell. The shadowy dark ones will devour you in an instant if you stumble into a Dark Zone. At night, you’ve got to stay to the lights.…” I was half hanging out the door, calling after him. “Start carrying flashlights at all times. If they catch you in the dark, you’re dead.”

“I’ll figure it out, Ms. Lane.” He got in his car and drove away.

At eleven o’clock, I was in Punta Cana, walking on the beach with V’lane, wearing a gold lamé bikini (me, not V’lane; tacky, I know; he chose it) with a hot pink sarong.

I’d released his name to the wind and summoned him shortly after Jayne had left, desperate for answers, and not at all averse to a little sunshine. I’d been thinking about the walls all night and most of the morning. The more we knew about them, the better our odds were of fortifying them. The surest bet for information was a Fae Prince, one of the queen’s most trusted, and one who’d not drunk from the cauldron for a long, long time.

First, he demanded to know the latest about the Sinsar Dubh and I told him, withholding the fact that Barrons had been with me to avoid a potential pissing contest. I told him there was no point in my continuing to pursue it right now, because I had no clue how to get close to it, and since he couldn’t, either, there was no way to get it to the queen. As I said that, a question occurred to me that was so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.

“You said the queen can touch it, so why doesn’t she come after it herself?”

“She dares not leave Faery. She was attacked recently, and it left her severely weakened. Her enemies in the mortal world are too numerous. She has fled court and sought an ancient place of refuge and protection within our realm. It is also a place of high magic. There, she believes she can re-create the Song. None but those few she trusts can enter. She must be kept safe, MacKayla. There is no other to lead in her place. All the princesses are gone.”

“What happened to them?” In a matriarchal line, that was a disaster.

“She sent them searching for the Book, along with others. They have not been seen or heard from since.”

And they thought I could do this? If Fae Princesses couldn’t hold their own against the many dangers out there, what chance did I have?

“There’s something I don’t understand, V’lane. The walls of the Unseelie prison were put up hundreds of thousands of years ago, weren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t that a long time before Queen Aoibheal erected the ones between our realms?”

He nodded.

“Well, if they existed independently once before, why can’t they now? Why will the prison walls go down, too, if the LM succeeds in bringing those between our worlds down? Why will all the walls fall?”

“The walls have never existed independently. The walls between our worlds are an extension of those prison walls. Without the Song, the queen was unable to fabricate barriers on her own. Separating worlds requires immense power. She had to tap into the magic of the prison walls, and entrust a portion of the new walls’ fortification to humans. A pact of magic inevitably yields stronger results than a solo undertaking. It was risky, but over the protests of her council, she deemed it necessary.”

“Why did the council protest?”

“When first we came here, you were like the rest of life on this world: savages, animals. But one day you developed language. One day the dog did not wag its tail and bark. It spoke. She felt that made you higher beings. She granted you rights and ordered us to coexist. It did not work but, rather than exterminating you—which two thirds of her council was in favor of—she separated us, as part of your new rights.”

It was obvious V’lane didn’t think we’d deserved any rights at all. “Sorry we wrecked your racial supremacy,” I said coolly. “It was our world first, remember?”

Snow dusted my shoulders. “You say that often. Tell me, human, precisely what do you think that establishes? That by dint of fate you happened to begin life on this planet entitles you to it? Under our care your world flourished. We made it verdant; for us Gaea bloomed. Your race has smogged it up, carved it up, concreted it up, and now you overpopulate it. The planet weeps. Your kind knows no restraint. We do. Your kind knows no patience. We are the most patient race you will ever encounter.”

His words chilled me. The Fae could take thousands of years getting around to reimprisoning their dark brethren but the human race would never survive that long. More reason why we had to keep the prison break from occurring. “What’s the LM doing that’s weakening the walls?”

“I do not know.”

“What can we do to fortify them?”

“I do not know. There were agreements reached between the queen and the humans she hid and protected. They must honor those agreements.”

“They have been, and it’s not working.”

He shrugged a golden shoulder. “Why do you fear? If the walls come down, I will keep you safe.”

“I’m not the only one I’m worried about.”

“I will protect those you care for in … Ashford, is it not? Your mother and father. Who else matters to you?”

I felt the tip of a blade caress my spine at his words. He knew of my parents. He knew where I was from. I despised any Fae, good or bad, knowing anything about the people I love. I understood how Alina must have felt, trying so hard to keep us hidden from the dark new world she’d stumbled into in Dublin, including the boyfriend she’d trusted. Had her heart battled her head over him? Had she sensed somewhere deep down that he was evil, but been seduced by his words and charmed by his actions?

Nah, he’d duped her. Despite his assertions otherwise, he’d certainly used Voice on her. There was no other explanation for the way things had turned out.

“I want more than that, V’lane,” I said. “I want the whole human race to be safe.”

“Do you not believe your people would benefit from a reduction in numbers? Do you not read your own newspapers? You accuse the Fae of barbarism, yet humans are unparalleled in their viciousness.”

“I’m not here to argue for the world. That’s not in my job description. I’m just trying to save it.”

He was angry. So was I. We didn’t understand each other at all. His touch was gentle but his eyes were not when he pulled me into his embrace. He took his time with my tongue. I’m ashamed to say I leaned into it, lost myself in a Fae Prince’s kiss, and came four times when he gave me back his name.

“One for each of the princely houses.” With a mocking smile, he vanished.

The aftershocks were so intense it took me several moments to realize something was wrong. “Uh, V’lane,” I called to the air. “I think you forgot something.” Me. “Hello? I’m still in Punta Cana.”

I wondered if this was his way of forcing me to use his name again, so he could replace it again. My apologies, sidhe-seer, he’d say. I have many other concerns on my mind. My ass. If his mind was as vast as he constantly claimed it was, he wasn’t entitled to memory lapses.

My spear was back. People were staring at me. I guess it wasn’t every day they got to watch a bikini-clad, spear-toting woman talking to the sky. I took a good look around and stared myself, realizing it was probably my suit, not my spear, that was most out of place. I’d been so engrossed in my conversation with V’lane that I hadn’t noticed we were on a nude beach.

Two men walked by and I blushed. I couldn’t help it. They were my father’s age. They had penises. “Come on, V’lane,” I hissed. “Get me out of here!”

He let me stew for a few more minutes before returning me to the bookstore. In a gold lamé bikini, of course.

My life changed then, took on yet another routine.

I no longer had any desire to run the bookstore, or sit in front of a computer, or bury myself in stacks of research books. I felt like a terminal patient. My bid to gain the Sinsar Dubh had not only failed, it had forced me to admit that it was hopelessly beyond my reach at the present time.

There was nothing I could do but wait, and hope that others could do their part, and buy me more time to figure out how to do mine—if it was even possible. What had Alina known that I didn’t know? Where was her journal? How had she planned to get her hands on the Dark Book?

Seven days left. Six. Five. Four.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on out there, staring me straight in the face, that I was missing. I might have gotten pretty good at thinking outside my tiny little provincial box, but I suspected there was a much larger box that I needed to think outside of now, and to do that, I had to see the box.

Toward that end, I spent my days, armed to the hilt, collar turned up against the cold, walking the streets of Dublin, elbowing my way past tourists who continued to visit the city despite the gloom and the cold and the high crime rate.

Slipping between Unseelie horrors, I popped into a pub for a hot toddy, where I eavesdropped shamelessly on conversations, human and Fae alike. I stopped in a corner dive for fish and chips and chatted up the grill cook. I stood on the sidewalk and made small talk with one of the few remaining human newsstand vendors—coincidentally the same elderly gentleman who had given me directions to the Garda when I’d first arrived here—and who now confided in his lovely lilt that the headlines of the scandal rags were right; the Old Ones were returning. I toured the museums. I visited Trinity’s astounding library. I sampled beers at the Guinness brewery and stood up on the platform, staring out at the sea of roofs.

And I had a startling realization: I loved this city.

Even swimming as she was with monsters, deluged by crime, tainted by the violence of the Sinsar Dubh, I loved Dublin. Had Alina felt this way? Terrified of what might come, but more alive than she’d ever been?

And more alone.

The sidhe-seers weren’t returning my calls. Not even Dani. They’d chosen. Rowena had won. I knew they were afraid. I knew she and the abbey were all most of them had ever known, and that she would skillfully manipulate their fears. I wanted to storm over to PHI and fight. Call the old woman out; argue my case with the sidhe-seers. But I didn’t. There are some things you shouldn’t have to ask for. I’d given them their show of faith. I expected some in return.

I walked the streets. I watched. I made notes in my journal about the various things I saw.

Even Barrons had abandoned me, off looking into some ancient ritual he believed might help on Samhain.

Christian called and invited me out to MacKeltar-land, somewhere in the hills of Scotland, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave the city. I felt like her vanguard, or maybe just the captain going down with her ship. His uncles, Christian told me grimly, were tolerating Barrons, but barely. Nonetheless, they’d agreed to work together for the duration. His tone made it clear that once the ritual was over, there might be an all-out Druid war. I didn’t care. They could fight all they wanted once the walls were fortified.

Three days before Halloween, I found a plane ticket to Ashford outside my bedroom door. It was one-way. The flight was that afternoon. I stood holding it for a long time, eyes closed, leaning back against the wall, picturing my mom and dad, and my room at home.

October in south Georgia is fall at its finest: trees dressed in ruby, amber, and pumpkin; the air redolent with the scent of leaves and earth, and down-home southern cooking; the nights as clear as you can find only in rural America, far from the sky-dimming lights of city life.

Halloween night, the Brooks would host their annual Ghosts and Ghouls Treasure Hunt. The Brickyard would hold a costume contest, inviting the town to come as they wished they were. It was always a blast. People chose the strangest things. If I wasn’t working and it was warm enough, Alina and I would throw a pool party. Mom and Dad were always cool about it, checking into a local bed-and-breakfast for the night. They’d made no secret of the fact that they rather looked forward to getting away from us all for a romantic night alone.

I lived my trip home while holding that ticket.

Then I called and tried to get Barrons’ money refunded. The best they could do was reassign the funds, for a fee, to a future fare in my name.

“Did you think I’d run?” I asked later that night. Barrons was still wherever he was. I’d rung him up on my cell phone.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Would you have gone, if I’d made it round-trip?”

“No. I’m afraid something might follow me. I gave up the idea of going home a long time ago, Barrons. One day I will. When it’s safe.”

“What if it never is again?”

“I have to believe it will be.”

There was a long silence. The bookstore was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I was lonely. “When are you coming home?” I asked.

“Home, Ms. Lane?”

“I have to call it something.” We’d had this exchange once before, standing in a cemetery. I’d told him if home was where the heart was, mine was six feet under. That was no longer true. My heart was inside me now, with all its hopes and fears and pains.

“I’m nearly done. I’ll be there tomorrow.” The line went dead.

_____

Three o’clock in the morning.

I shot straight up in bed.

Heart hammering. Nerves screaming.

My cell phone was ringing.

“What the feck?” Dani snapped when I answered. “You sleep like the fecking dead up there! I been calling you for five fecking minutes!”

“Are you okay?” I demanded, shivering. I’d been in that cold place again. Shadowy dream remnants slipped away but the chill remained.

“Look out your window, Mac.”

I pushed out of bed, grabbed my spear, and hurried to the window.

My bedroom, like the last one that Barrons trashed, is on the rear of the building, so I can watch the back alley out my window, and keep tabs on the Shades.

Dani was standing down there, in the narrow path of light between the bookstore and Barrons’ garage, cell phone propped between her skinny shoulder and ear, grinning up at me. Shades watched her hungrily from their roost in the shadows.

She was wearing a long black leather coat that was straight out of a vampire movie, and much too big through the shoulders. As I watched, she slid something long and alabaster and shiningly beautiful out from under it.

I gasped. It could only be the Sword of Light.

“Let’s go kick some fairy ass.” Dani laughed, and the look in her eyes was anything but thirteen years old.

“Where’s Rowena?” I dropped my PJ bottoms and thrust a leg into jeans, teeth chattering. I hate my Cold Place dreams.

“Ro’s away. She left on a plane this afternoon. Couldn’t take the sword with her. I snuck out. You wanna talk or you wanna come slay some Unseelie, Mac?”

Was she kidding? This was a sidhe-seer wet dream. Instead of sitting around, thinking, talking, researching—I could get out there and do something! I thumbed off my phone, layered two T-shirts beneath a sweater and a jacket, tugged on boots, grabbed my MacHalo on the way out and strapped it on, wishing I had one for her, too. No matter; if we ended up in the dark somewhere, I’d stick to her like sidhe-seer glue.

We took down eighty-seven Unseelie that night.

Then we lost count.