She blurs again.
She’s just Barb.
No, she ain’t! She’s—dude—what the feck is that? She’s got too many heads, too many teeth! She’s some kinda monster! And it ain’t no Shade!
It’s Barb again.
Being forced to kill us.
Behind her, a shadow climbs the wall. It’s huge! It towers, it expands, and when it laughs, my blood clots up in my veins and can’t get to my brain, ’cause it’s got so many ice chunks in it.
“Where is the Grand Bitch?” it roars. “I want her fucking heeeeeeead!”
Jo and I look at each other.
We get it.
We both know what’s got her, what’s really firing those rounds, and it gets driven home like a spike through my skull that I ain’t nearly The Shit Mac thinks I am.
Me and Jo ooze real slow back behind the table.
Just two brave little sheep.
Hiding from a book.
The Book.
The one we been hoping to find. Talking real big about locking it down again. Yeah, right, just what the feck did we think we were gonna do with it?
The nerve of it. It came here. Here, where it was trapped for so long. It must feel pretty feckin’ invincible. Pisses me off so bad I’m shaking. It came here. Gah—that’s so feckin’ wrong!
I read Mac’s journal. I know how it works. Makes folks pick it up. Me and Barb and Jo and about fifteen others went into Dublin this morning for supplies. We didn’t stick together the whole time. Split up and went off after different things.
It musta got Barb alone and made her pick it up.
I get a creepy chill that goes all the way up my spine so fast I get brain freeze when it hits my head.
Feckin’ A! The Sinsar Dubh rode back to the abbey with us this morning! Right there on our bus!
I was sitting on the same bus with the Unseelie King’s Book and didn’t even know it!
I sort through my options. I ain’t impervious to bullets. Dying today ain’t gonna do nobody no good, ’specially not me. Don’t know how to stop it. Ain’t beating myself up for that. Nobody knows how to stop it.
Don’t dare get close enough to let it take me.
Riding me, it could wipe out the entire abbey in record time.
I swallow. I’d been starting to wonder if it was looking for me. Guess it was looking to get any sidhe-seer alone, so it could take us down from the inside and gain revenge for its captivity.
They’re dying. They’re all dying out there, beyond my table. It’s killing me that they’re dying.
And I can’t come up with one feckin’ thing to do about it.
Got one chance, and it ain’t to stop it. I grab Jo and freeze-frame outta there.
Ro’s face is pale, bloodless. I ain’t never seen her like this. She looks like she’s aged twenty years in a single day. One hundred eighteen sidhe-seers were killed before Barb shot her way out of the abbey, took our bus with all our weapons, and disappeared.
A hundred more were wounded.
The Sinsar Dubh paid us a visit, gave us a little look-see, thumbed its beast nose at us, flipped us the motherfeckin’ bird of all birds.
Jo and me, we sit across the desk from Ro.
“You didn’t even try to stop it,” she finally says. She’s been letting us stew. She likes to do that. Potatoes and carrots, they turn to mush if they stew long enough. Time was, I did, too. But I don’t cook down so fast anymore.
I didn’t need to hear Ro say it. I been staring at the accusation blazing in her fierce blue eyes for the past five minutes. I don’t answer. I’m done answering her. She shoulda told us. She shoulda warned us. I never ever imagined the Sinsar Dubh could pull a stunt like that. She ain’t training us. She’s keeping us small. Afraid. Just like Mac said. What—I shoulda died so she could say, Dani tried? Feck that noise. Ain’t dying just so she can feel better ’bout things.
Jo says, “Grand Mistress, it looked like Barb was fighting it. From the information Jayne and his men gathered about the Book, we were pretty sure what that meant.”
“Och, and now you’re trusting Jayne? I teach you! I train you!”
Jo turns her face away a moment, and I remember that Barb was one of her best friends. But Jo, she surprises me with a little steel. When she turns back and starts talking again, her voice is steady. “She was going to kill herself soon, Rowena. Our first goal was to keep the Book from getting a new body. If Dani had gone near it, it could have taken a virtually unstoppable body.”
Ro cuts me a scathing glance. “Ever the liability, are you not, Danielle?”
I make a face, can’t help it. She’s always blaming me for something. Done trying to blow smoke up her ass. Sick of pretending to be things I’m not. “D’pends on how you look at it, Ro,” I say coolly. “And you’re always looking at it wrong.”
Jo sucks in a sharp breath.
I’ve gone too far, and I’m about to go farther. I don’t care. Ever since Mac disappeared, Ro’s made it plain she’d take me back into her good graces if I’d cooperate the tiniest bit. I been skirting around the subject, flirting with appeasing her just enough to keep her guessing, thinking I’ll come to heel.
But that ain’t never gonna happen.
I just watched a hundred of my sisters—so what if they’re sheep? They’re still my sisters—get butchered. And this old woman stands and glares at me? At least I own up to my sins. I go to sleep with ’em every night. Wake up with ’em every morning. See ’em in the mirror, staring right back at me. And I say, dude, get over yourself already.
“How’d the Book get loose, Ro?” I’m on my feet, sword in my hand. “Why’n’tcha ever tell us that? Cause maybe you fell asleep on the job? ’S that it?”
Her voice is tight and she’s even paler when she looks at Jo and snaps, “You will escort that child to her room now! And lock her in!”
As if that’s gonna happen. Nobody here can control me. Ever since I killed that Hunter, I been feeling like the dude that shot a giant with his slingshot. Ro can’t feck with my head like she used to.
“All I did is say what everybody’s been thinking but been too afraid to say. I ain’t afraid of you no more, Ro. I saw the Sinsar Dubh tonight. I know what I’m afraid of.” I back-kick my chair so hard it slams into the wall behind me. “I’m leaving. I’m done here.” I mean it. I really am. Used to think I was at least a little safe in the abbey, but we got Shades in the shadows, and now the Book snuck in, and fact o’ the matter is, I can make myself a safer place than this in a feckin’ Dark Zone!
’Sides, nobody here’ll even notice if I’m gone. Maybe I’ll check out Jayne, hang with the Guardians for a while.
“You will go to your room this very instant, Danielle Megan!”
Gah, I hate that name! Sissy name. Sissy girl.
“What would your mother think of you?” she snaps.
“What would my mother think of what you made me?” I snap back.
“I made you a proud and true weapon for the right.”
“Guess that’s why I feel like my sword most of the time. Cold. Hard. Bloody.”
“Ever the melodrama with you, isn’t it? Grow up, Danielle O’Malley! And sit down.”
“Feck you, Ro.”
I freeze-frame out.
The chilly Irish air blasts me, and if a couple places on my cheeks are especially cold, I ignore ’em. I ain’t crying. I never cry.
I miss my mom sometimes, though.
The world’s big.
So am I.
Dude—I’m homeless!
I swagger into the night.
Free at last.