“The Book was never meant to be what it was. It was created in an act of atonement.”
“Atonement?” I echoed. “You mean for killing the queen?”
“No. The king’s atonement was to his concubine. She slipped from the Silvers and took her own life. She hated what the king had become so much that she left him the only way she could.”
I shivered, chilled by the dark tale.
“They say the king went mad and when his madness finally abated, he beheld the dark kingdom he had created with horror. In her name, he vowed to change, to become the leader of his race. But he knew too much. Knowledge is power. Immense knowledge is immense power. So long as he had it, his race would never trust him. Aware they would not let him near the Cauldron of Forgetting, and even if they did, they would destroy him the second he drank from it, he created a mystical book into which to pour all his dark knowledge. Freed of it, he would banish it to another realm where it could never be found and used for harm. He would return to his people, their Seelie King, beg their forgiveness, and lead them into a new age. The Fae would become patriarchal. The Unseelie, of course, would be left to rot in their prison.”
“So that’s what the Book is,” I exclaimed, “part of the dark king himself! The worst part.”
“Over the eons it changed, as Fae things do, and became a living thing, far different from what it was when the king created it.”
“Why didn’t the king destroy it?”
“He had made . . . how do you say it? . . . his doppelg?nger. It was his equal and he could not defeat it. He feared one day it might defeat him. He cast it out, and for much time it was lost.”
I wondered how it had come to be in the sidhe-seers’ care. I didn’t ask, because if V’lane didn’t know it had been there, I didn’t want to be the one to tell him. He despised Rowena, and might decide to punish her, and other sidhe-seers could suffer in the process. “Why does the queen want it? Wait a minute, if the queen is dead, who is Aoibheal?”
“One of many who came after, and tried to lead our race. She wants it because it is believed that, somewhere in all its darkness, the Book contains the key to the true Song of Making that has been lost to my race for seven hundred thousand years. The king was close, very close. And only with living strands of that Song can the Unseelie be reimprisoned.”
“And Darroc? Why does he want it?”
“He thinks foolishly to possess its power.”
“Barrons?”
“The same.”
“Am I supposed to believe you’re different? That you would blithely hand all that power to the queen, with no thought for yourself?” Sarcasm laced my words. V’lane and self-serving were synonyms.
“You forget something, MacKayla. I am Seelie. I cannot touch the Book. But she can. The queen and king are the only two of our race that can touch all the Hallows, Seelie and Unseelie. You must obtain it; summon me, and I will escort you to her. We alone have any hope of rebuilding the walls should they come down. Not the old woman, nor Darroc, nor Barrons. You must place your trust, as I have, in the queen.”
_____
It was dark when I returned, massaged, manicured, pedicured, and waxed. There were a dozen long-stemmed red roses wrapped in tissue paper waiting for me, propped in the alcoved entrance to the bookstore. I bent to pick them up, then stood in the lighted cubby, fumbling with the card.
Help me find it, and I will give you your sister back. Refuse and I will take what you prize most.
Well, well, all my suitors were calling. There was a disposable cell phone tucked into the leaves with a text message waiting: Yes or no?The reply number was zeroed out; I could text him back, but I couldn’t call him.
“V’lane?” came Barrons’ voice from behind me.
I shook my head, wondering what “I prized most” was, afraid to contemplate it.
I felt the electricity of his body behind me as he reached around me and took the card from my hand. He didn’t move away, and I battled the urge to lean back into him, seeking the comfort of his strength. Would he wrap his arms around me? Make me feel safe, if only for a moment, and if only a delusion?
“Ah, the old ‘what you prize most’ threat,” he murmured.
I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek.
“Such naked pain,” he whispered.
I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch. His hand tightened at the base of my skull and squeezed, and he raised me slowly to my tiptoes. I opened my eyes and it was my turn to inhale sharply. Not human. Oh, no, not this man.
“Never show it to me again.” His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.
“Why? What will you do?”
“What it is my nature to do. Get inside. It’s time for your lesson.”
After I’d received yet another failing grade, Barrons and I cruised the streets.
I’d gotten no tips from Jayne since his last call, four nights ago. I read the paper each morning. If I recognized the Sinsar Dubh’s calling card, and I was pretty sure I did, it was jumping to a new victim every night. I knew what the good inspector was doing: he was waiting for his “tea.”
I was waiting for divine inspiration to strike at any moment, and show me the way, who to trust, what to do. I had no doubt Jayne would get what he wanted before I did.
I was wrong.
We’d been at it for almost six hours, driving up and down, muscling through the city in the Viper. After so many nights, I knew every street, every alley, every parking lot. I knew the location of every convenience store and petrol station that was open between dusk and dawn. There weren’t many. Crime might not be keeping the partyers at home—the drunk and lonely are hard to corral; I know that from bartending—but it was certainly sending the small-business owners and their employees packing well before nightfall.
It made me sad to see Dublin battening her hatches. Just last night, we’d discovered a two-block Dark Zone that wasn’t on my map, by driving through it. I mourned each newly darkened block as a personal loss, a few inches off my hair, a drabber outfit. We were both changing, this boisterous, craicfilled city and I.
Normally, when we went hunting, Barrons drove in case I lost control of my primary motor functions, but it had been getting more difficult to turn him away from near brushes with the Book, so I’d insisted on driving tonight.
He made a lousy passenger, barking directions I ignored, but it was better than the alternative. Last night when we’d had a near brush with the Book, I’d pretended to have an abrupt desperate need to use the bathroom—the only gas station open was one we’d fueled at, in the opposite direction—and he’d given me an unnervingly searching look. I suspected he was getting suspicious. After all, he could read the paper, too. This morning’s crime had been less than a mile from where I’d had him turn around last night. Although he didn’t know my radar had been getting stronger, I had no doubt he was going to put two and two together eventually.
And so I was driving, my sidhe-seer senses on high alert, waiting for the faintest tingle, so I could subtly turn us away, when something totally unexpected happened.
The Sinsar Dubh popped up on my radar, and it was moving straight toward us.
At an extremely high rate of speed.
I whipped the Viper around, tires smoking on the pavement. There was nothing else I could do.
Barrons looked at me sharply. “What? Do you sense it?”
Oh, how ironic, he thought I’d turned us toward it. “No,” I lied, “I just realized I forgot my spear tonight. I left it back at the bookstore. Can you believe it? I never forget my spear. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t. I was talking to my dad while I was getting dressed and I totally spaced it.” I worked the pedals, ripping through the gears.
He didn’t even try to pat me down. He just said, “Liar.”
I sped up, pasting a blushing, uncomfortable look on my face. “All right, Barrons. You got me. But I do need to go back to the bookstore. It’s . . . well . . . it’s personal.” The bloody, stupid Sinsar Dubh was gaining on me. I was being chased by the thing I was supposed to be chasing. There was something very wrong with that. “It’s . . . a woman thing . . . you know.”
“No, I don’t know, Ms. Lane. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
A stream of pubs whizzed by. I was grateful it was too cold for much pedestrian traffic. If I had to slow down, the Book would gain on me, and I already had a headache the size of Texas that was threatening to absorb New Mexico and Oklahoma. “It’s that time. You know. Of the month.” I swallowed a moan of pain.
“That time?” he echoed softly. “You mean time to stop at one of the multiple convenience stores we just whizzed past so you can buy tampons? Is that what you’re telling me?”
I was going to throw up. It was too close. Saliva was pooling in my mouth. How far behind me was it? Two blocks? Less? “Yes,” I cried. “That’s it! But I use a special kind and they don’t carry it.”
“I can smell you, Ms. Lane,” he said, even more softly. “The only blood on you is from your veins, not your womb.”
My head whipped to the left and I stared at him. Okay, that was one of the more disturbing things he’d ever said to me. “Ahhh!” I cried, letting go of both the wheel and the gearshift to clutch my head. The Viper ran up on the sidewalk and took out two newspaper stands and a streetlamp before crashing to a stop against a fire hydrant.
And the blasted, idiotic Book was still coming. I began foaming at the mouth, wondering what would happen if it passed within a few feet of me. Would I die? Would my head really explode?
It stopped.
I collapsed against the steering wheel, gasping, grateful for the reprieve. My pain wasn’t decreasing but at least it was no longer increasing. I hoped the Book’s next victim would hurry along and tote it off in the other direction, fast. Hardly sidhe-seerlike, but I had problems.
Barrons kicked open the door, stalked to my side, and yanked me out. “Which way?” he snarled.
I would have fallen to my knees but he held me up. “I can’t,” I managed to say. “Please.”