“I won’t have her on the ground with us,” Rowena was saying fifteen minutes later. “There’s no reason for it. We’ll have our radios. She need only fly overhead, spot the Book, talk us into position with the stones, then fly off on her demon steed.” She shot me a look full of venom that said no sidhe-seer alive would ride a Hunter, and there was all the proof she needed of my treason. “The Keltar will chant and carry it to the abbey, where they will teach my girls to re-inter it. There is no purpose for her presence.”
I snorted. The air was so thick with tension, I was getting light-headed from lack of oxygen. I’d never stood in a room packed with so much distrust and aggression as I was standing in today. That Ryodan had made everyone strip and have their clothes searched before returning them at the top of the stairs had only added to their bad tempers. I knew why he’d done it. It wasn’t about new rules. It was about throwing everyone off balance, establishing from the get-go that they weren’t in control of anything, not even their person. Being naked in front of clothed guards makes anyone feel intensely vulnerable.
I surveyed the room. On the east wall of the glass room, five heavily tattooed Keltar hulked in tight pants and shirts.
On the south wall, Rowena, Kat, Jo, and three other sidhe-seers—all dressed in drab, snug pantsuits—stood at attention, minus Dani. I was surprised Rowena hadn’t brought her, but I guessed she’d decided her risks outweighed her benefits—the most risky of her flaws being that she liked me.
On the north wall, V’lane, Velvet, Dree’lia—who once again had a mouth but was wisely keeping it closed—and three other Seelie of the same caste posed arrogantly, draped in see-through short shifts, their flawless faces matched by flawless genitalia.
Barrons, Lor, Ryodan, and myself occupied the west wall, closest to the door.
Rowena glared at the five Scots lined shoulder-to-shoulder like the Falcons’ defense. “You do know how to seal it away, do you not?” she demanded.
Oozing varying degrees of hostility, they glared back at her.
The Keltar were not the kind of men a woman ordered around, especially not an old woman like Rowena, who hadn’t been bothering to exercise an ounce of diplomacy or charm since she’d been escorted, blindfolded, into one of the glass rooms on the top floor of Chester’s.
Perversion and decadence, she’d snapped the moment they’d removed her blindfold. You condone this … this … consorting? The flesh of human and Fae mix in this place. Och, and you’ll be the damnation of the human race! she’d hissed at Ryodan.
Fuck the human race. You’re not my problem.
I’d almost laughed at the expression on her face, but I wasn’t laughing now. She’d been trying to shut me out of the ritual. Acting like I was a pariah that shouldn’t even be allowed in the room where this meeting was taking place.
“Och, and of course we ken it.” The speaker was Drustan, the Keltar who would be picking up the Sinsar Dubh and carrying it to the abbey. According to his brother, he’d been burned on a pyre of sorts and had an incorruptible heart. I didn’t believe it for a minute. Nobody has an incorruptible heart. We all have our weaknesses. But I had to admit that the man who looked out from those silvery eyes exuded some kind of … serenity, at utter odds with his appearance. He looked like a man who would have been more comfortable centuries in the past, stomping around the Highlands with a club in one hand and a sword in the other. They all did, except for Christopher, who strongly resembled Drustan, without the throwback gene. But Drustan had presence. He had a way with words and a voice that was deep, full of command, yet gentle. He spoke more softly than any of the other Keltar, but he was the one I found myself trying hardest to hear when they were all talking at once, which was pretty much all the time.
I looked at Christian and gave him a faint smile, but his expression didn’t defrost one bit.
It was only last night that V’lane and the Keltars had succeeded in reconnecting the dolmen at 1247 LaRuhe to the Unseelie prison, then stormed the king’s fortress to retrieve him. He’d been out roughly sixteen hours and didn’t look much better than he had inside the Silvers. He was no longer a study in marble, cobalt, and jet but he was … well, it made no sense, but he gave the fleeting impression of those colors. If I looked directly at his hair, I could pick out strands of copper and even a hint or two of sun-burnished gold in the dark ponytail, but if I caught it from the corner of my eye, it looked ebony and longer than it was. His lips were pink and utterly kissable, unless I turned my head suddenly. Then for a moment I’d swear they were blue with cold and lightly frosted. His skin was golden, smooth, and touchable, but if I glanced sharply his way he would glow like backlit ice.
His eyes were changed, too. Lie detector extraordinaire, he now seemed to be looking right through everything around him, as if he was seeing the world completely different than the rest of us.
His father, Christopher, studied him when he thought Christian wasn’t paying attention. Somebody needed to tell him there was never a time his son wasn’t paying attention. Christian might seem to check out for a few moments, but if you were looking straight into his eyes, you could see that he was even more intensely focused on his surroundings—so focused that he’d gone still and seemingly absent, as if opening an inner ear that demanded absolute concentration.
“Lie,” he said now.
Drustan scowled at Christopher. “I told you to make sure he’d haud his bloody whist.”
“He’s not hauding his whist for anyone anymore,” Christian said flatly.
“What do you mean—lie?” Rowena demanded.
“They don’t know for certain that their chant will work. The old texts stored in Silvan’s tower had deteriorated, leaving them no choice but to improvise.”
“And we’re bloody good at it. We got you out, didn’t we?” Cian growled.
“It’s his fucking fault I ended up in there to begin with.” Christian jerked his head toward Barrons. “I don’t even know why he’s here.”
“He’s here,” Barrons said coolly, “because he has three of the stones necessary to corner the Book.”
“Hand ’em over and get the fuck out.”
“It’s not my fault you’re turning into a fairy.”
V’lane said stiffly, “Fae. Not fairy.”
“You knew my tats weren’t protection enough—”
“I’m not your babysitter—”
Christopher hissed, “You should have checked him—”
“For the love of Mary,” Rowena snapped. “I’ve a plague of barbarians and fools!”
“—and it wasn’t my job to tattoo you. Pack your own fucking parachute. It wasn’t even my job to try to keep the—”
Drustan said softly, “We should have checked him—”
Dageus snarled, “Doona be acting like ’twas some bloody favor you did—”
“You didn’t try to get me out of the Silvers. Did you even tell anyone I was there?”
“—but the hour grew late,” Drustan said, “and time can no longer be undone.”
“—for the human race, when you’re part of it,” Dageus finished.
“—walls up. And it was a bloody favor, though you wouldn’t know by the bloody thanks I’ve gotten, and don’t be lumping me in the same gene pool as you, Highlander.”
“Oh, shut up, all of you,” I said, exasperated. “You can fight later. Right now we have work to do.” To the Keltar, I said, “How certain are you of the parts you improvised?”
No one spoke for a moment as they finished the battle in silence, with glares and wordless threats.
“As certain as we can be,” Dageus finally said. “We’re not new to this. We’ve been the queen’s Druids since before the Compact was negotiated. We sat with them in the Old Days, when the great hill of Tara had yet to be built, and learned their ways. Plus we’ve a few other … bits of arcane lore at our disposal.”
“And we all know how well that turned out for you last time,” Barrons said silkily.
“Mayhap you weren’t helping but hindering, Old One,” Dageus growled. “We ken you’ve your own agenda. What is it?”
“Stop it, all of you!” Rowena snapped.
The tension swelled.
“Barrons and his men will place three of the stones.” I tried to get things back on track.
“He will give them to my sidhe-seers,” Rowena said sternly. “We will place the stones.”
Barrons gave her an incredulous look with the subtle arch of a brow. “In whose fucking reality do you think that’s going to happen?”
“You have no business being involved.”
“Old woman, I don’t like you,” Barrons said coldly. “Be careful around me. Be very, very careful.”
Rowena closed her mouth, perched her glasses on her nose, and pursed her lips.
I looked at V’lane. “Did you bring the fourth stone?”
He looked at Barrons. “Did he bring his three?”
Barrons bared his teeth at V’lane.
V’lane hissed.
The Keltar growled.
And so it went.
Forty-five minutes later, when we all stalked from the room, two of the walls were shattered and the floor was cracked.
But we’d nailed down the nuances of our plan.
I would fly a Hunter over the city and locate the Sinsar Dubh, radioing back the location.