www.flickr.com/photos/karenmariemoning. The photos are fantastic, funny, amazing. I love getting the opportunity via photos and e-mail to meet so many of you that I haven‘t met in person. Thanks for making Mac‘s adventure such a blast!
Stay to the lights.
Karen
Glossary From Mac’s Journal
*A MULET, THE: Unseelie or Dark Hallow created by the Unseelie King for his concubine. Fashioned of gold, silver, sapphires, and onyx, the gilt ―cage‖ of the amulet houses an enormous clear stone of unknown composition. A person of epic will can use it to impact and reshape reality. The list of past owners is legendary, including Merlin, Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. Last purchased by a Welshman for eight figures at an illegal auction, it was all too briefly in my hands and is currently in the possession of the Lord Master. It requires some kind of tithe or binding to use it. I had the will; I couldn‘t figure out the way. Addendum: The LM still has it, and I think he uses it to help control the Unseelie Princes. He had it with him but didn‘t try to use it on me. Why? Is he afraid it might not work on me?
BARRONS, JERICHO: I haven‘t the faintest fecking clue. He keeps saving my life. I suppose that‘s something.
Addendum to original entry: He keeps a Sifting Silver in his study at the bookstore, and when he walks through it, the monsters retreat from him, just like the Shades do. I saw him carry the body of a woman out of it. She‘d been killed, brutally. By him? Or by the things in the mirror? He is at least several hundred years old and possibly, probably, way older than that. I made him hold the spear to see if he was Unseelie, and he did, but I found out later from V‘lane that the Unseelie King can touch all the Hallows (as can the Seelie Queen) and, although I can‘t fathom why the Unseelie King wouldn‘t be able to touch his own Book, maybe that‘s exactly why Barrons thought he would be able to touch it. Maybe it evolved into something more powerful than it began as. Also, I can‘t rule out that he might be some kind of Seelie/Unseelie hybrid. Do the Fae have sex and reproduce? Sometimes … I think he‘s human … gone very wrong. Other times I think he‘s nothing this world has ever seen. He‘s definitely not a sidhe-seer, but he sees the Fae as plain as day, just like me. He knows Druidry, sorcery, black arts, is superstrong and fast, and has heightened senses. What did Ryodan mean by his comment about the Alpha & Omega? I‘ve got to track that man down!
Addendum to original entry: He admitted he killed the woman he carried from the mirror! I‘m pretty sure I figured out where that Silver goes, but I haven‘t the opportunity to try it yet. I think it connects to the underground floors beneath his garage. I stood in that garage, looking across the hood of the Hummer at Barrons, while whatever he keeps trapped down there bayed. He refused to answer any of my questions about it. (Gee, that‘s hardly a surprise.) Addendum to original entry: What he did to bring me back from being Pri-ya … I can‘t stop thinking about it. What I saw in his head, the child, the grief, it slays me. Sometimes I wish I didn‘t have to be anything but a fine beast again. That I could forget again. Everything. And just be.
*CAULDRON, THE: Seelie or Light Hallow from which all Seelie eventually drink, to divest memory that has become burdensome. According to Barrons, immortality has a price: eventual madness. When the Fae feel it approaching, they drink from the cauldron and are ―reborn‖ with no memory of a prior existence. The Fae have a record keeper that documents each Fae‘s many incarnations, but the exact location of this scribe is known to a select few and the whereabouts of the records to none but him. Is that what‘s wrong with the Unseelie—they don‘t have a cauldron to drink from?
CHESTER’S: Ryodan‘s nightclub, 939 Rêvemal Street. Former gathering place of the rich, bored, and beautiful. Like a cockroach, Chester‘s would probably survive any fallout. Since Dublin fell, it went underground and now serves an entirely new clientele. Or, rather, serves us to an entirely new clientele. Chester‘s is now the Fae hot spot for preying on humans. The Gray Woman had no interest in her waiter‘s menu, only her waiter. Ryodan lets it happen, right under his nose, watching from high in his glass aerie. Fae worshippers sacrifice themselves left and right for a chance at immortality, and I‘m pretty sure it‘s not even a real chance, just a temporary high. I‘m going to shut the place down, one way or another.
COMPACT, THE: Agreement negotiated between Queen Aoibheal and the MacKeltar clan (Keltar = hidden barrier or mantle) roughly six thousand years ago to keep the realms of mankind and Fae separate. The Highland clan of Druids has performed certain rituals and tithed every Samhain (pronounced Sow-en, also known as Halloween) to honor the Compact. The walls Queen Aoibheal erected to separate worlds weren‘t sung into existence with the Song of Making, because the Fae lost it so long ago, but were somehow rigged from a portion of the Unseelie‘s prison walls and reinforced with blood and oaths. Rigging the new walls that way seriously weakened the prison walls. When our walls came down, all the walls came down. CRUCE: A Fae. Unknown if Seelie or Unseelie. Many of his relics are floating around out there. He cursed the Sifting Silvers. Before they were cursed, the Fae used them freely to travel through dimensions. The curse somehow corrupted the interdimensional channels, and now not even the Fae will enter them. Unknown what the curse was. Unknown what damage it caused or what the risk in the Silvers is. Whatever it is, Barrons apparently doesn‘t fear it. I tried to get into the Silver in his study. I can‘t figure out how to open it.
Addendum to original entry: I found out what the curse was! Cruce hated the Unseelie King and cursed the Silvers to keep him from entering them again, so he couldn‘t get to his concubine. Cruce wanted the concubine and all the worlds inside the Silvers for himself. But the curse went wrong and screwed everything up. Cross-reference with Silvers. CUFF OF CRUCE: A gold-and-silver arm cuff set with blood-red stones; an ancient Fae relic that supposedly permits the human wearing it ―a shield of sorts against many Unseelie and other …
unsavory things‖ (this according to a death-by-sex Fae—like you can actually trust one). DANI: A young sidhe-seer in her early teens whose talent is superhuman speed. She has to her credit—as she will proudly crow from the rooftops given the slightest opportunity—forty-seven Fae kills at the time of this writing. I‘m sure she‘ll have more by tomorrow. Her mother was killed by a Fae. We are sisters in vengeance. She works for Rowena and is employed at Post Haste, Inc.
Addendum to original entry: Her kills now number nearly two hundred! The kid has no fear. Addendum to original entry: She‘s the Shit. She saved me from the LM and his minions. We‘ve become like … sisters. I swore I‘d never let anybody as close to me as Alina again, but I can‘t help it. Beneath her toughness is a kid who melts my heart. She‘s got secrets. I can sense them. And deep emotional scars from things she might never talk about. I hope one day she trusts me. The things we carry inside and refuse to talk about are the things that can end up destroying us. I can no longer even begin to count her kills. She took down an Unseelie Prince!
DARK ZONE: An area that has been taken over by the Shades. During the day it looks like your everyday abandoned, run-down neighborhood. Once night falls, it‘s a death trap. Addendum to original entry: They‘ve spread all over the world, now that the walls are down. The huge one next to Barrons Books and Baubles is now empty. They moved on to greener pastures, literally. Other Unseelie are working to restore the power grids the LM took down, because they don‘t like how quickly the Shades are devouring their potential prey. I‘ll take all the help I can get to drive the buggers back into the darkness. It buys us more time. DEATH-BY-SEX FAE (e.g., V‘lane): A Fae that is so sexually ―potent‖ a human dies from intercourse with it, unless the Fae protects the human from the full impact of its deadly eroticism. Addendum to original entry: V‘lane made himself feel like nothing more than an incredibly sexy man when he touched me. They can mute their lethality if they so choose. Addendum to original entry: This caste of Fae springs only from royal lines. They can do three things: protect the human completely and give them the most incredible sex of their life, protect them from dying and turn them Pri-ya, or kill them with sex. They can sift space. Addendum: It‘s hell being Pri-ya! But I survived.
DOLMEN: A single-chamber megalithic tomb constructed of three or more upright stones supporting a large, flat horizontal capstone. Dolmens are common in Ireland, especially around the Burren and Connemara. The Lord Master used a dolmen in a ritual of dark magic to open a doorway between realms and bring Unseelie through.
DREAMY-EYED BOY: Huge question mark. Why does he keep popping up? Who is he? I first encountered him in the streets of Dublin, then in the museum while I was OOP-detecting, then discovered he worked at the Ancient Languages Department with Christian MacKeltar, and now he‘s bartending at Chester‘s, Ryodan‘s infamous den of iniquity. When I was talking to him there, something really weird happened. I saw him in the mirror above the bar and he didn‘t look the same. It scared me. Really scared me. In the mirror, his reflection spoke to me, warned me. He said not to talk to ―it.‖
DRUID: In pre-Christian Celtic society, a Druid presided over divine worship, legislative and judicial matters, philosophy, and education of elite youth to their order. Druids were believed to be privy to the secrets of the gods, including issues pertaining to the manipulation of physical matter, space, and even time. The old Irish Drui means magician, wizard, diviner (Irish Myths and Legends).
Addendum to original entry: I saw both Jericho Barrons and the Lord Master use the Druid power of Voice, a way of speaking with many voices that cannot be disobeyed. Significance?
Addendum: Christian MacKeltar descends from a long, ancient bloodline of Druids. FAE (fay): See also Tuatha Dé Danaan. Divided into two courts, the Seelie or light court and the Unseelie or dark court. Both courts have different castes of Fae, with the four Royal Houses occupying the highest caste of each. The Seelie Queen and her chosen consort rule the light court. The Unseelie King and his current concubine govern the dark.
Addendum to original entry. Iron has some kind of effect on them. Weird that on the periodic table, iron is Fe.
FIONA: The woman who ran Barrons Books and Baubles before I took over. She was wildly in love with Barrons and tried to kill me by turning out all the lights one night and propping a window open to let the Shades in. Barrons fired her for it—gee, now that I think about it, getting fired for trying to kill me sure feels like underkill. She‘s hooked up with Derek O‘Bannion, and he‘s got her eating Unseelie. I have a bad feeling that she and I aren‘t done with each other. Addendum to original entry: She‘s working with the LM now. She knows what Barrons is. Barrons killed her before she could tell me. But she was too laced with Unseelie flesh to have died from a mere knife through the heart. Later he went to see her and gave her a message for the LM. They used to be lovers. I don‘t like her at all.
FOUR STONES, THE: Translucent blue-black stones covered with raised runelike lettering. The key to deciphering the ancient language and breaking the code of the Sinsar Dubh is hidden in these four mystical stones. An individual stone can be used to shed light on a small portion of the text, but only if the four are reassembled into one will the true text in its entirety be revealed (Irish Myths and Legends).
Addendum: Other texts say it is the ―true nature‖ of the Sinsar Dubh that will be revealed. Addendum: We have three now. I learned they were chiseled from the walls of the Unseelie King‘s fortress. They chime hauntingly, disturbingly, when placed together. I think they must make a lesser Song of Making. They are poison inside the network of Silvers because of Cruce‘s curse. The Silvers reject the Unseelie King and the stones because they bear the taint of his touch. I think V‘lane has the fourth.
FREEZE-FRAME: The way Dani moves. She calls it freeze-framing, as she blips from place to place so fast it gives me motion sickness. But what a tactical advantage! The kid rocks. GLAMOUR: Illusion cast by the Fae to camouflage their true appearance. The more powerful the Fae, the more difficult it is to penetrate its disguise. Average humans see only what the Fae want them to see and are subtly repelled from bumping into or brushing against it by a small perimeter of spatial distortion that is part of the Fae glamour.
GRAY MAN, THE: Monstrously ugly, leprous Unseelie that feeds by stealing beauty from human women. Threat assessment: can kill but prefers to leave its victim hideously disfigured and alive to suffer.
Addendum to original entry: Allegedly the only one of its kind (BIG FAT NOT; SEE BELOW!) Barrons and I killed it.
Addendum to original entry: It could sift space.
GRAY WOMAN, THE: The Gray Man‘s female counterpart. Saw her outside Chester‘s and later inside. Unlike the Gray Man, she doesn‘t leave her victims alive. A sifter. No longer consider them singularities. Could be dozens of them.
GRIPPER: Dainty, diaphanous Unseelie that is surprisingly beautiful. Grippers look like the modern media‘s representation of fairies—delicate, shimmering nude beauties, with a cloud of gossamer hair and lovely features, only they‘re nearly the size of a human. I named them Grippers because they ―grip‖ us. They can step inside a human‘s skin and take them over. Once they‘ve slipped inside a person, I can no longer sense them. I could be standing right next to a Gripper inside a person and not even know it. For a while, I was afraid Barrons might be one. But I made him hold the spear.
GUARDIANS, THE: What the Garda have begun calling themselves under Inspector Jayne‘s leadership as they fight to protect Dublin‘s remaining citizens. They eat Unseelie and kick serious Fae ass.
HALL OF ALL DAYS, THE: The central hub of the Silvers. Barrons describes it as a quantum travel agency for the Fae, like an airport terminal. The walls and floor are made of pure gold, and it seems to stretch on forever. The walls are covered with billions of mirrors that are portals to other worlds, dimensions, and times. It‘s a dangerous place. Time feels skewed there, not linear at all, and if you stop moving, you can get lost in memories that begin to play out around you as if they‘re real. Whatever you think seems to materialize. You have to keep moving. I passed skeletons on the floor. When the Silvers were originally created, all mirrors that were a part of the network (outside the Hall) would immediately deposit you in the Hall of All Days. From there, you could choose your destination. Cross-reference Silvers. HALLOWS, THE: Eight ancient relics of immense power fashioned by the Fae: four light and four dark. The Light or Seelie Hallows are the stone, the spear, the sword, and the cauldron. The Dark or Unseelie Hallows are the amulet, the box, the mirror, and the Book (Sinsar Dubh, or Dark Book) (A Definitive Guide to Artifacts, Authentic and Legendary). Addendum to original entry: I still don‘t know anything about the stone or the box. Do they confer powers that could help me? Where are they? Is it possible the four stones make the stone?