I half-expected there to be Unseelie guards on the top floor, but either Darroc had been too arrogant to bother leaving any or, since he’d been killed, his army saw no point in protecting his hideouts anymore.
Once inside, Barrons went straight for the bedroom suite Darroc had occupied. I followed him, because it was the one place I’d not gotten the chance to search. I stood in the doorway, watching him ransack the opulently furnished room, pushing chairs and ottomans out of his way, overturning the dresser and kicking through the contents, before he turned to the bed. He ripped the blankets and sheets from it, flung the mattress from the frame, pulled out a knife, and gutted it, searching for anything hidden inside, then stopped and breathed deeply. After a moment, he cocked his head and inhaled again.
I got it instantly. Barrons has extremely heightened senses. Being in touch with your inner animal has its advantages. He knows my scent, and he couldn’t smell me on Darroc’s bed.
I knew the second he decided we’d probably done it on the kitchen table, or in the shower, or bent over the couch, or on the balcony, or maybe just had an orgy with all the Rhino-boys and guards watching.
I rolled my eyes and left him to finish searching Darroc’s bedroom by himself. He could believe whatever he wanted to believe. I hoped he drowned in images of me having sex with Darroc. He might not feel emotions about me, but he certainly had the territorial instincts of an animal. I hoped the idea of somebody else playing on his turf drove him nuts.
I hurried to the suite I’d slept in. My runes were still throbbing crimson at the threshold and in the walls. They were larger, pulsating more brightly. I didn’t linger. I’d searched the place thoroughly the other night. I grabbed my pack, hurried out into the living room, and began stuffing the photo albums of Alina into my pack. They were mine now, and when this was all over, I was going to sit down and lose myself in them for days, maybe weeks, and tell myself the happy part of her story.
I heard Barrons in the den, knocking over lamps and chairs and tossing things around. I walked in and watched books fly, papers explode into the air. He had his beast under control, but he wasn’t bothering to try to control the man. He’d swapped his torn coat for one of Darroc’s. It was too small for him, but at least it covered the rest of his shredded clothes.
“What are you looking for?”
“Allegedly, he knew a shortcut, or I’d have killed him long ago.”
“Who told you about the shortcut?” Was there anything Barrons didn’t know?
He shot me a look. “I didn’t need anyone to. Prima facie, Ms. Lane. Facts speak. Didn’t you wonder why he kept tracking it, even though he had none of the stones and would have been corrupted the moment he picked it up?”
I shook my head, disgusted with myself. It had taken me months to get around to wondering that. What a great sleuth I was.
“You think he left notes?”
“I know he did. The limits of his mortal brain posed problems for him. He was accustomed to the memory capabilities of a Fae.”
So, Barrons knew there was a shortcut, too, and had been seeking it for some time.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“They’re called shortcuts for a reason. The shorter they are, the more they usually cut. Nothing is without price, Ms. Lane.”
Didn’t I know it. I knelt and began scanning sheets of paper on the floor. Darroc hadn’t written in notebooks; he’d used thick, expensive vellum sheets and written on them in fancy calligraphy, as if he’d expected his work to one day be memorialized: documents from Darroc, liberator of the Fae, displayed like we showcase the Constitution, in a museum somewhere. I looked back up at Barrons. He was no longer throwing things; he was sorting through papers and notebooks. There was no trace of temperamental beast or angry man. He was icy, impervious Barrons again.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell him about laptops?” I muttered.
“Fae can’t use them. They fry them.”
Maybe there was something to my energy theory. As more sheets rained down, I gathered them up and examined them. Under the watchful eyes of Darroc’s guards, I hadn’t been able to snoop through his personal documents. It was fascinating stuff. This particular cache of notes was about the different Unseelie castes—their strengths, weaknesses, and unique tastes. It was jarring to realize he’d had to learn about the Unseelie, just like we had. I folded the pages and began stuffing them in my backpack. This was useful information. Sidhe-seers need to be passing it down, one generation to the next. We could put together a set of Fae encyclopedias from his notes.
When I ran out of room in my pack, I began stacking the pages up to return for them later.
Then I saw a page that was different from the rest, filled with scribbled bits of thoughts, bulleted lists, circled comments, and arrows pointing from one note to another.
Alina’s name was on it, along with Rowena’s and dozens of others. Scribbled next to their names were their special “talents.” There were lists of countries, addresses, and names of companies I assumed were the foreign branches of Poste Haste, Inc., the courier service that was our front. One bulleted list contained the six Irish bloodlines of our sect, plus another I’d never heard of: O’Callaghan. Was it possible there were more bloodlines than we knew about? What if another Fae got their hands on this information? They could wipe us all out!
I continued scanning and gasped. Rowena had a touch of mental coercion? Kat had the gift of emotional telepathy? How the hell had Darroc figured these things out? According to him, Jo was in the now-secret Haven! Dani’s name was also on the page, heavily underlined and punctuated with a question mark. I wasn’t on the list, which meant he’d written it before he’d become aware of me, last fall.
At the bottom of the page was a short bulleted list:
Sidhe-seers—sense Fae.
Alina—senses Sinsar Dubh, Fae Hallows, and relics.
Abbey—Sinsar Dubh
Unseelie King—sidhe-seers?
I blinked at it, trying to make sense of it. Was Darroc saying that it hadn’t been the Seelie Queen, as Nana O’Reilly had claimed, who’d delivered the Dark Book to the abbey so long ago? Had the Unseelie King himself brought it to us, because we could sense Fae, and Fae Hallows, and that made us the perfect guardians for it?
Suddenly Barrons was behind me, looking over my shoulder. “Makes you think about yourself a little differently, doesn’t it?”
“Not really. I mean, who cares who brought it to the abbey? Point is, we’re the guardians.”
“Is that what you get from his notes, Ms. Lane?” he purred.
I glanced up at him. “What do you get from them?” I said defensively. I didn’t like his tone any more than I liked the amused glitter in his dark gaze.
“It’s said the king was horrified when he realized that his act of atonement had resulted in the birth of his most powerful abomination yet. He chased it from one world to the next, for eons, determined to destroy it. When he finally caught up with it, their battle lasted centuries and reduced dozens of worlds to ruins. But it was too late. The Sinsar Dubh had become fully sentient, a dark force of its own. When the king first created the Sinsar Dubh, he was greater, and the Book was lesser. It was a repository for the king’s evil, but without drive and intent. Yet while it roamed, it evolved, until it became all the king was, and more. The creation—abandoned by its creator—learned to hate. The Sinsar Dubh began to pursue the king.” He paused and gave me one of his wolf smiles. “So what else might the dark king have created? Perhaps an entire caste that could track his greatest enemy, contain it, and keep it from destroying him? Are you going to tell me you never once considered that?”
I stared. We were the good guys. Human to the core.
“Sidhe-seers: watchdogs for the U.K.,” he mocked.
I was chilled by his words. It had been bad enough to discover I was adopted and the parents who’d raised me weren’t my biological parents. Now what was he implying? That I’d had no parents?
“That’s the biggest pile of BS I’ve ever heard.” First Darroc had suggested I was a stone. Now Barrons was proposing that the sidhe-seers were a secret caste of Unseelie.
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.”
“I am not a duck.”
“Why does it offend you so much? Power is power.”
“The Unseelie King didn’t make me!”
“The idea frightens you. Fear is more than a wasted emotion. It’s the penultimate set of blinders. If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t be a part of it, can’t control it. You may as well throw in the towel and yield to the whims of anyone with a stronger will. Do you like being helpless? Is that what you get off on? Is that why the moment I was gone you turned to the bastard that had you raped?”
“So, what are you and your men?” I countered coldly. “Another of the Unseelie King’s secret castes? Is that what you are, Barrons? Is that why you know so much about them?”
“None of your fucking business.”
He turned away and resumed his search.
I was trembling, and there was a sour taste in my mouth. I pushed the papers away, got up, and walked to the balcony, where I stood staring out at the night.
Barrons had shaken me deeply with his suggestion that the sidhe-seers were a caste of Unseelie. I had to admit that Darroc’s notes could certainly be construed that way.
And just the other night, I’d stood between two Fae armies, thinking how glad I was to be like the Unseelie, strengthened by pain, less frivolous and breakable.
Then there was that dark glassy lake in my head, that had so many inexplicable “gifts” to offer, like runes that an ex-Fae had recognized, that had given him pause, runes that the Unseelie princes had disliked intensely.
I shivered. I had a new question to be obsessed with besides what was Jericho Barrons?
What was I?