“I don’t know. It’s up to them.”
“I need answers. Dani, I’ve seen things. Does your council know what’s going on in this city?”
Her lucent eyes flared and she gave a single violent shake of her head.
I gave her an exasperated look. “Well, tell your ‘someone’ to hurry up. Things are getting worse, fast.” I flipped my journal open again. I’m a Null, I wrote. And I know about the Lord Master and the Sinsar—
The journal was snatched from my hand and the page shredded before I could blink. She’d done it so smoothly and quickly that my pen was still poised in the air above a page that was no longer there, and I was still shaping the letter D.
Nothing normal could move that fast. She’d reacted with inhuman speed. I searched the pert, gamine face. “What are you?”
“Same as you. Latent talents awaken in times of need,” she said, watching me. “You have your talents, I have mine. Every day we learn more about who we used to be and what we are again becoming.”
“You let me catch you,” I accused. She could have outrun me in a heartbeat. Who was I kidding? This kid could probably leap small buildings.
“So?”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I was curious. Rowena sent a bunch of us out to find you, to learn where you were staying. Naturally, I’m the one that spotted you first. She made it sound like you were very powerful.” She gave me a disdainful look. “I don’t see it.”
“Who’s Rowena?” I had a hunch and didn’t like it.
“Old woman. Silver hair. Looks fragile. Isn’t.”
Just as I’d suspected, the old woman I’d met my first night in Dublin, on the receiving end of her wrath when I’d stared overlong at the first Fae I’d ever seen. Later, she’d stood by and done nothing when V’lane had nearly raped me in the museum, then followed me, insisting I was adopted.
“Take me to her,” I demanded. I’d hated her for tearing my world apart with her truth. I needed more of her truth. She’d called me O’Connor, mentioned someone named Patrona. Did she know where I came from? I almost couldn’t let myself think the next thought; it frightened me as much as it fascinated me, felt like a betrayal of my parents, of all I’d been and done for the past twenty-two years: Did I have relatives somewhere in Ireland? A cousin, an uncle, dare I think it…a sister?
“Rowena will choose the time,” Dani said. When I scowled and opened my mouth to argue, she stepped back and raised her hands. “Hey, don’t get mad at me. I’m just the messenger. And she’ll box my ears for having given you any message at all.” She flashed a sudden, brilliant grin. “But she’ll get over it. She thinks I’m the cat’s meow. I’ve got forty-seven kills.”
Kills? Did she mean Fae? What was this cocky kid killing them with?
She turned to take off on feet that might as well have been winged, and I knew I had no chance of catching her. Why couldn’t I have gotten superhuman speed? I could have used it dozens of times already.
“Mac,” she shot over her shoulder, “one more thing, and if you tell Rowena I told you, I’ll lie. But you need to know. There are no males among us. Never have been. Whatever your employer is, he’s not one of us.”
I made my way back through the Temple Bar District, with its snatches of music spilling from open windows and boisterous patrons stumbling from open pub doors.
The first time I’d ever walked into this part of the city, I’d gotten whistles and catcalls, and had enjoyed them all. I’d been the kind of girl who dressed for attention, in an eye-catching outfit with all the right accessories. Tonight, in baggy clothes and sensible running shoes, with no makeup and rain-slicked hair, my passage through the craic-filled party district went unnoticed, unremarked, and I was grateful for it. The only crowd I was interested in was the one in my head, thoughts crammed into every nook and cranny of my brain, elbowing each other out of the way to get my attention.
Up until now, Barrons had been my only source of information about what I was, and what was going on around me. But I’d just learned there was another source out there, and it was an organized one. There were other sidhe-seers battling and killing the Fae; spunky fourteen-year-olds, with superhero speed, no less.
Up until now, without even knowing her name, I’d discounted Rowena as a cantankerous old woman who probably knew a few others like us and was old enough to recall a bit of sidhe-lore. I’d never dreamed she might be plugged into a community of sidhe-seers, an active network with a council and rules, and mothers who taught their children from birth how to cope with what they were. The ancient enclave Barrons had told me about in the graveyard still existed today!
I was angry that she hadn’t invited me into that community the night we’d met, the night I’d seen my first Fae and nearly betrayed myself—would have, in fact, if she’d not intervened.
But no, far from taking me under her wing when I’d so desperately needed help, and teaching me how to survive, Rowena had chased me off and told me to go die somewhere else.
And that’s exactly what I would have done—died—if I’d not crossed paths with Jericho Barrons.
Unguided, clueless about what I was, one or another of the Unseelie monsters I would have refused to believe was real would have killed me. Perhaps a Shade would have reduced me to a papery husk the next time I’d unwittingly wandered into the abandoned neighborhood. Perhaps the Gray Man would have made shorter work of my beauty than awful hair, bad clothes, and rapidly shifting priorities were managing to do quite nicely. Perhaps the Many-Mouthed Thing would have turned his many mouths on me, or perhaps I’d have been drawn to the attention of the Lord Master and ended up his personal OOP detector, not Barrons’, and he’d have used and killed me just like Alina.
Whatever else Barrons may be—he was the one who’d saved me. He’d opened my eyes and turned me into a weapon. Not Rowena and her merry band of sidhe-seers. I’d take tough love any day over no love at all.
There are no male sidhe-seers, Dani had said. Never have been.
Well, I had news for her: Barrons could see them, he’d taught me about them, and we’d fought them side by side, and that was more than Rowena or anyone else had ever done for me.
I had no doubt she’d send for me soon. She’d had sidhe-seers out hunting for me. She knew I had one of the Seelie Hallows. That day in the museum when V’lane had forced his deadly sexuality on me, she’d seen me threaten him with the spear. When I’d finally escaped, she’d caught up with me and tried to get me to go somewhere with her. But it had been too little, too late. She’d abandoned me for the second time that day in the museum, letting me strip in public and back up like a mindless mare in heat to a death-by-sex Fae and not lifting a finger to help me. When I’d demanded to know why she hadn’t tried to do something—anything—she’d said coldly, One betrayed is one dead. Two betrayed is two dead…we cannot take risks that might betray more of us, especially not me.
She was important, this old woman. And she had information about me, about who I was. And when she sent someone for me, I would go.
But only with guarded thoughts and cautious tread.
At our third encounter, things were going to be very different: She was going to have to prove herself to me.
It was dark by the time I got back to the bookstore. I made my way down the side alley and around to the back entrance, a flashlight clutched in each hand. I noticed Barrons had boarded up the broken window in the garage.
I was not developing a full-blown obsession with the Shades. I was merely checking to make sure the status quo was still…well, quo. One of my enemies had set up a base camp right outside my back door. The least any good soldier would do was scout it on a regular basis to make sure there were no new developments.
There were no new developments. The floodlights were on, the windows were closed. I dragged the back of my hand across my brow with a sigh of relief. Ever since the Shades had gotten into the store, I’d not been able to get them off my mind, especially the big, aggressive one that had menaced me in Barrons’ parlor, and was currently moving restlessly back and forth at the edge of the darkness.
I blinked.