FIVE
I flipped the sign, boldly lettered in hot pink Sharpie—Barrons Books and Baubles Summer Hours: 11 A.M. to 7 P.M., M.-F., it said—and locked the front door, feeling good about myself.
I’d just completed my first day on the new job.
Up until now, bartending had been my only marketable skill but today I’d broadened my employment horizons and could now add store clerk to my résumé. An opportunity had presented itself to make money, and I wasn’t about to let it pass me by. Barrons had offered me the job last night—unless you want to start running the cash register, Ms. Lane, he’d said.
After only one day, I could see the job was far more complex than merely ringing up the occasional purchase. There was stocking to worry about, special ordering to be done, bookkeeping to stay on top of, and spending time with patrons, helping them find things they didn’t know they wanted. The store carried some cool stuff but there were things that definitely needed changing. Some of the magazines had to go; I wasn’t about to waste my precious time chasing teenage boys away from the Male Interest racks. The Female Interest racks were seriously lacking; I planned to add more high-end fashion magazines along with some eye candy, and the store definitely needed a more festive selection of writing implements. The hot pink Sharpie was mine. BB&B offered only your basic pens plus a few prissy-looking calligraphy sets, the kind that make it take forever to write a single letter. Barrons obviously didn’t understand that shorthand—LMAO, IMHO, GFY—was the new longhand, and in a world where everything was high-speed and wireless, nobody wanted dial-up anymore.
My reasons for accepting the job were twofold: I was eventually going to run out of money, sooner rather than later; and if the Garda pushed their investigation, I could cite my job as the reason for my continued stay in Dublin. I was training to learn to run my own bookstore back in the States, I would tell them.
Fiona’s recently extended hours were absurd; there was no way I was working an eleven-hour day. Since I was in charge now, I’d made my first executive decision and chosen new hours of operation, opening late enough that I could either sleep in in the mornings or use them to take care of personal business. As far as State of the World business was concerned, I’d decided it wasn’t my problem.
Vengeance for my sister—and only blood relative, as far as I knew, but those were murky waters I wouldn’t swim in any more than I’d call home right now—was my first and only priority. Well, that and staying alive.
I’d had twenty-seven customers today, not counting the boys I’d run off, and I’d made good use of my time in between to begin putting the pictures I’d found at the Lord Master’s, the ones of Alina in and around Dublin, into the new diary I’d purloined from the collection of hand-tooled leather journals sold at BB&B.
Alina.
God, why? I wanted to shout at the ceiling. Why her? There were millions of creeps in dozens of countries across the world—why hadn’t he taken one of them? Now that I knew I was adopted, I resented God doubly. Other people had lots of relatives. I’d only had one.
Would I ever stop hurting? Would I ever stop missing her? Would I ever live another day without this gouged-out place in my soul that I was desperate to fill with something, anything? Unfortunately, it was an Alina-shaped hole and nothing else would fit it.
But…maybe vengeance would soften the edges of it. Maybe killing the bastard who had killed her would make them less sharp, less jagged, and I could stop cutting myself on them.
Pasting the pictures of Alina into my journal had made the grief of losing her feel fresh all over again. With everything that had been happening to me lately, I’d actually woken up a time or two in the morning without the instant, crushing thought: Alina’s dead; how am I supposed to get through the day? top on the list in my brain. I’d thought things like I robbed a mobster yesterday and now he’s going to kill me. Or vampires are real, whodathunk? Or I’m afraid Barrons was my sister’s boyfriend. Things like that. A week ago, I’d laid that last one to rest, much to my relief.
Now that weirdness in my life was the norm, grief and rage had resurfaced with a vengeance, on a level I couldn’t deal with.
Inside me was a Mac I’d never met before. I couldn’t dress her up. I couldn’t make her take a bath. She wouldn’t mix in pleasant society. I couldn’t corral a single one of her thoughts. My only hope was she wouldn’t suddenly sprout a mouth.
She was a bloodthirsty, primitive little savage.
And she hated pink.
I dug in my heels. “No way. I’m not going in there. I draw the line at grave-robbing, Barrons.”
“It’s not your pen.”
“Huh? Whose is it?” What pen? I’d thought we were talking about crumbling gravestones, hallowed ground, and theft that was a crime against the tenets of church and man. We’d finished our discussion about pens on the way over, along with my plans for ordering new, cooler ones. He’d listened to me prattle in what I suspect was bemused silence. I get the feeling few women chat Barrons up.
And I’m paying you how much for running my bookstore? was all he’d finally asked. At the last minute, I’d tacked a little on to the sum I’d decided upon earlier. When he agreed, I almost whooped with joy except he’d stopped the Viper at that moment, and I’d taken my first good look around.
We were on the outskirts of the south side of Dublin, on a narrow lane, right next to a very dark, very old cemetery. The last time I’d been in a cemetery had been for Alina’s funeral.
I closed my hands around the cold iron bars of the main entrance and swept a brooding glance over the headstones.
“The pen is a metaphor, Ms. Lane. Drawing lines isn’t your prerogative. It’s mine. You’re the OOP detector. I’m the OOP director. You’ll walk the cemetery. I’m particularly interested in the unmarked graves behind the church but make a thorough search of the building and the grounds, as well.”
I sighed. “What exactly is it I’m looking for?”
“I don’t know, perhaps nothing. This church was built on the site of an ancient meeting circle once presided over by the Grand Mistress of the sidhe-seers herself.”
“In other words,” I muttered, “it’s probably a wild-goose chase.”
“Remember the cuff V’lane offered you?”
“Is there anything you don’t know?”
“Legend has it there are multiple cuffs, each with a different purpose. Legend also has it that, in ancient times, sidhe-seers collected every Fae relic they could get their hands on, and if it proved indestructible, secreted it away where they believed Mankind would never find it. Some say when Christianity came to Ireland, sidhe-seers encouraged the building of churches in specific places, even funded them, perhaps to keep their secrets safely buried on consecrated ground. Laws governing the digging up and relocating of remains are rigidly enforced.”
It sounded plausible to me. “These sidhe-seers, were they like a club or something, back in the day?”
“As much as they could be. Times were very different then, Ms. Lane. Communication between enclaves took weeks, sometimes months, but in times of threat, they gathered in preappointed places and performed ritual magic. This was one of them.”
“Where did all the sidhe-seers go? You said there are more of us out there?”
“When the Fae withdrew from our realms, the world no longer had any use for sidhe-seers. A once vaunted position became obsolete. Those accustomed to being highly valued lost their purpose overnight. In time, sidhe-lore was forgotten. Over the centuries, talents went fallow. As for where the ones who remain are, the next time you’re out, look around. Watch. When you see something from Faery, look not at the Fae, but the crowd to see who else is watching it. Some know what they are. Some are on medication for psychological disorders. Some betray themselves to the first one they see and are killed by it. It’s how I knew what you were. I saw you watching the Shades.”
Psychological disorders? I tried to imagine seeing the monsters I’d recently encountered as a child, having no explanation for them, and realizing no one else could see them. I would have told my mother. She’d have been horrified, taken me for counseling. And if I’d told the counselor the truth? Drugs—a lot of them. I could see it happening all too easily. How many sidhe-seers were out there, too sedated to care what was going on in the world? “So this Grand Mistress, she ran things?”
He nodded.
“Is there still one today?”
“One would expect the bloodline that directed the sidhe-seers for millennia to have maintained the lore.”
That was one evasive answer I wasn’t willing to accept. “What does that mean? Do you or don’t you know if there is one, and if so, who is she?”
He shrugged. “If there is one, her identity is tightly guarded.”
“So, there’s something you don’t know. Amazing.”
He smiled faintly. “Do your thing, Ms. Lane. You might be criminally young, but the night is not.”