I headed back to the bookstore by way of the drugstore. It was light enough to put away my flashlights. I did, then stared down at my camera, zooming in on the photos, trying to figure out what she’d gotten.
I knew better than to walk with my head down. I didn’t even dare carry an umbrella in the rain for fear of what I might bump into.
When I careened off the shoulder of a man standing near a dark, expensive car parked at the curb, I exclaimed, “Oh, sorry!” and kept right on going, blessing my luck that it had been a human I’d bumped into, not a Fae—when I realized I had my “volume” way down—and it hadn’t been a human.
I whirled, whipping my spear from my jacket, willing the people passing by—most with their noses buried in a newspaper, or on their cell phones—not to see me, as if maybe I could throw a little glamour of my own. Melt into the shadows with the other monsters.
“Bitch,” spat Derek O’Bannion, his swarthy features contorted with hatred. But his cold, reptilian gaze acknowledged my weapon and he made no move toward me.
Ironically, that weapon is the spear I stole from his brother, Rocky, shortly before Barrons and I led him and his henchmen to their death-by-Shade behind the bookstore. Capitalizing on Derek’s hunger for revenge, the LM recruited him as a replacement for Mallucé, taught him to eat Unseelie, and sent him after me to get the spear. I’d convinced the younger O’Bannion brother that I would kill him if he so much as blinked at me wrong, and I’d let him know just how terrible that death would be. The spear killed anything Fae. When a person ate Unseelie, it turned parts of the person Fae. When those parts died, they rotted from the inside out, poisoning the human parts of the person, and ultimately killing them. The one time I’d eaten Fae, I’d been terrified of the spear. I’d seen Mallucé up close and personal. He’d been marbled with decay. Half his mouth had rotted, parts of his hands, legs, and stomach had been a decomposing stew, and his genitals . . . ugh. It was a horrific way to die.
O’Bannion yanked open the car door, muttered something to the driver, then slammed it again. The engine turned over and twelve cylinders purred to the quiet life of understated wealth.
I smiled at him. I love my spear. I understand why boys at war name their guns. He fears it. The Royal Hunters fear it. With the exception of the Shades, who have no substance to stab, it will kill anything Fae, allegedly even the king and queen themselves.
Someone I couldn’t see pushed the rear car door open from the inside. O’Bannion rested his hand on the top of the window. He was far more riddled with Fae than he had been a week and a half ago. I could feel it.
“Little addictive, huh?” I said sweetly. I dropped my spear, pressed it to my thigh, to dissuade potential busybodies from calling the Garda. I wasn’t willing to sheathe it. I knew how fast and strong he was. I’d been there myself, and it had been incredible.
“You should know.”
“I only ate it once.” Probably wasn’t so wise to admit that just then, but I was proud of the battle I’d been winning.
“Bullshit! Nobody who’s tasted the power would give it up.”
“We’re not the same, you and I.” He wanted dark power. I didn’t. Deep down, I just wanted to go back to being the girl I used to be. I would trespass into darker territories only if my survival depended on it. O’Bannion considered embracing the darkness a step up.
I feinted a jab at him with my spear. He flinched, and his mouth compressed to a thin white line.
I wondered, if he stopped eating it now, would he revert to fully human, or, after a certain point, was it too late, and the transformation couldn’t be undone?
How I wished I’d let him walk into the Dark Zone that day! I couldn’t fight him here and now, in the middle of rush hour. “Get out of here,” I stabbed air again, “and if you see me on the street, run as fast and as far as you can.”
He laughed. “You stupid little cunt, you have no idea what’s coming. Wait till you see what the Lord Master has in store for you.” He ducked into the car, and glanced back at me, with a smile of malevolence and . . . sick anticipation. “Trick or treat, bitch,” he said, then laughed again. I could hear him laughing, even after he’d closed the door.
I tucked the spear in my harness then stood on the sidewalk, gaping, as he drove away.
Not because of anything he’d said, but because of what I’d seen as he’d settled back into the supple, camel-colored leather seats.
Or, rather, who I’d seen.
A woman, beautiful and voluptuous, in the way of aging movie stars from a time long gone by, when actresses had been worthy of the title Diva.
My “volume” was on high. She was eating Fae, too.
Well, now I knew: While Barrons might have killed the woman he’d been carrying out of the mirror, he hadn’t killed Fiona.
I opened Barrons Books and Baubles at eleven on the dot, with a new ’do. I’d colored it two shades lighter than Arabian Nights this time and looked closer to my age again (black hair makes me look older, especially with red lipstick), then run down the street for a quick cut, and now a few longish wedges of bang framed my face. The result was feminine and soft, completely at odds with how I felt inside. The rest of it I’d twisted up and stabbed with a hair pick. The result was flirty, casual elegance.
My nails were cut to the quick, but I’d brushed on a quick coat of Perfectly Pink, and glossed on matching lipstick. Despite these concessions to my passion for fashion, I felt drab in my standard uniform of jeans, boots, a black tee under a light jacket, with spear holstered, and flashlights tucked. I missed dressing up.
I sat back on the stool behind the cashier counter, and eyed the tiny jars of wriggling Unseelie flesh lined up there.
I’d managed to cram a lot into my morning. After the drugstore, I’d hit a corner convenience, bought baby food, dyed my hair, showered, emptied the contents, and washed the jars. Then I’d gone out again, attacked a Rhino-boy, cut off part of his arm and stabbed him, putting him out of both our miseries, and making sure he didn’t live to tell any tales of a human girl stealing Fae power. Then I’d sliced and diced the stump of arm into bite-size pieces.
If only I’d kept some handy, as I’d wanted to after feeding Jayne, Moira might not have died. If something unexpected and awful happened while I was in the bookstore, I wasn’t going to be caught unprepared this time; I wanted a dose of superpower close at hand. It wasn’t as if it would ever expire. It was the only snack I knew of with an immortal shelf life.
My hunting and gathering expedition had nothing to do with Derek O’Bannion or Fiona, or the reminder of how weak I was compared to them. It was proactive. It was smart. It was just plain, good common sense. I slid the small fridge out from beneath the rear counter and tucked several jars behind it, before sliding it back in. The others I would stash away upstairs later.
After catching myself staring at them for several minutes without blinking, I stuffed the jars in my purse. Out of sight, out of mind.
I opened my laptop, hooked up my camera, and began uploading the pages. While I waited, I called the ALD again, to make sure the dreamy-eyed boy really understood the urgency of the message I’d asked him to relay. He assured me he did.
I tended to customers for the next several hours. It was a busy morning and sales were brisk. It wasn’t until early afternoon that I got to sit down, and take a look at the pages Dani had photographed.
I was disappointed by how small they were, barely the size of recipe cards. The scribbled lines were cramped tightly together, and when I finally managed to begin deciphering the small, slanted script, I realized what I had was a pocket notebook of observations and thoughts penned in a badly butchered version of the English language. The spelling made me suspect the author had had little in the way of formal education, and had lived many centuries ago.
After studying it for some time, I opened my own journal, and began to write down what I believed was a fair translation.
The first page picked up in the middle of a lengthy diatribe about The Lyte and The Darke—which I swiftly realized meant the Seelie and Unseelie—and how dastardly and “Evyle” they both were. I already knew that.
However, halfway through the page, I found this:
Sae I ken The Lyte maye nae tych The Darke nae maye The Darke tych The Lyte. Whyrfar The Darke maye nae bare sych tych, so doth the sworde felle et low. Whyrfar the Lyte may nae bare sych Evyle, sae The Beest revyles et.
Okay, so that sounded like the Seelie hated the Unseelie and vice versa. But not quite. There was something more here. I puzzled over it several moments. Did it mean the Seelie couldn’t actually touch the Unseelie, and vice versa? I read on.
Tho sworde doth felle thym bothe, yea een Mastr and Myst! Ay t’hae the blade n ende m’suffrin!
The sword killed both Unseelie and Seelie, up to the highest royalty. I knew that, too. So did the spear.
Sae maye ye trye an ken thym! That The Lyte maye nae tych The Beest, nr The Darke the sworde, nr The Lyte the amlyt, nr the Darke the spyr . . .