I knew what the Book was, too. That was easy.
Unfortunately, I had no idea what the five were.
I hoped the prophecy might clear things up, and I figured the best place to look for any prophecy about sidhe-seer matters was in Rowena’s Forbidden Libraries, which was why I was so determined to secure a foothold at the abbey. I didn’t care how much I pissed off Rowena. It was the support of the sidhe-seers I wanted.
I added a more immediate, personal goal to my to-do list:
• Take Dani into Dublin tonight and try to track down Chester’s and Ryodan.
IYCGM was If You Can’t Get Me on the cell phone Barrons had given me. I’d called it once. It was answered by a man named Ryodan, and we’d had a very cryptic, Barrons-like conversation. I was willing to bet my last pair of clean panties—and I was dangerously low on them—that Ryodan was one of Barrons’ eight. Both Barrons and Inspector O’Duffy had mentioned talking with the mysterious Ryodan at a place called Chester’s. I’d been meaning to track him down for months, but I’d been distracted by one crisis after another.
I had no idea what or where Chester’s was or if it even still existed in the rubble that was Dublin, but if there was an opportunity to find one of the eight men who’d stormed the abbey with Barrons to free me, I wasn’t about to pass it up. Any man who knew Barrons, any man Barrons trusted to cover his back, was someone I wanted to have a nice, long face-to-face talk with.
On the pantie note:
• Loot store tonight for new underwear.
A lot. Doing laundry wasn’t something I saw myself having time for in the near future. I raked a hand through my hair. My nails were long against my scalp. They weren’t all that had grown. I’d seen the reflection of my hairdo in a window last night. The cut was still good, but I had an inch of blond roots that made me look like a skunk.
Loot store for hair dye and manicure kit.
I planned to grab more clothes while I was at it. Whether it should matter or not, people responded to outer appearances and were motivated to certain behaviors by them. A well-groomed, attractive leader was much more influential than an unkempt one.
I made a third column: long-term major goals that would hopefully be accomplished short term, because our world was changing drastically, much too fast. These were the critical ones. They had to happen.
• Figure out how to contain the Sinsar Dubh!
I nibbled the tip of my pen. Then what? During my first encounter with V’lane, he’d made it clear he felt there was only one option, that there was no one else who could be trusted with it.
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• Take the Sinsar Dubh to the Seelie Queen so she can re-create the Song of Making to rebuild the walls and reimprison the Unseelie?
I worried about that one. It wasn’t in my blood to trust anything Fae, but I wasn’t exactly flush with alternatives. I could drive myself crazy wondering what to do with the Sinsar Dubh once I’d gotten it. I decided to focus on one impossibility at a time. Get the Book, then figure out the next step.
I crossed out the last bullet and wrote another one:
• Kick their fecking Fae asses off our world!
I liked that one. I underlined it three times.
O ye of little faith … you didn’t even try.
I winced, closed my journal and my eyes. Since Barrons had left, I’d been trying not to brood over his parting comment. For the past twenty-four hours, while I’d been running around half of Ireland, I’d been replaying the events of Halloween in the back of my mind, indulging myself in an exercise in futility, torturing myself with all the choices I might have made that night that could have yielded a different outcome.
Then Barrons had gone and fired the real killer at me: I’d had a way to reach him the whole time, right there in my backpack.
I opened my eyes, pulled out my cell, and thumbed through the three numbers that had been preprogrammed into the phone when he’d given it to me. I pressed the first one—Barrons’ cell number. I knew it wouldn’t ring. It rang, startling me.
I disconnected quickly.
Mine rang.
I flipped it open, snarled at Barrons, “Just testing,” and immediately disconnected. How in the world were these cell phones working? Was service back up in certain areas?
I changed my settings to private and dialed my parents’ number so they wouldn’t know it was me, reserving the right to hang up if they answered and I couldn’t bring myself to speak. It didn’t go through. I tried The Brickyard, where I’d bartended back home. No connection. I tried a dozen other numbers, with no success. Apparently Barrons had some kind of special service.
I thumbed up IYCGM and pressed it.
“Mac,” a male voice growled.
“Just testing,” I said, and hung up.
I scrolled to IYD.
My phone rang. It was IYCGM. I answered it.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Ryodan said.
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Test the third one. ”
I didn’t bother asking how he knew. Like Barrons, he was on top of my every thought. “Why not?”
“There’s a reason it’s called If You’re Dying. ”
“What’s that?”
“So you use it only if you’re dying,” he said dryly.
Also, like Barrons, I could go around in circles with him forever. “I’m going to call it, Ryodan. ”
“You’re better than that, Mac. ”
“Better than what?” I said coolly.
“Lashing out because you hurt. He’s not the one who hurt you. He’s the one who brought you back. ”
“Do you know what his idea of bringing me back was?” I snapped.
There was a smile in Ryodan’s voice. “I volunteered for the job. He didn’t seem at all touched by my offer. ” The smiled faded. “Don’t lose yourself in anger, Mac. It’s gasoline. You can burn it as fuel, or you can use it to torch everything you care about and end up standing on a scorched battlefield, with everybody dead, even you—only your body doesn’t have the good grace to quit breathing. ”
Deep inside, his words resonated. I was straddling a fine line and I knew it. But there was a part of me that wanted to go over the edge. Wanted to scorch the battlefield. Just to watch the damned thing burn.
“Stay focused, Mac. Keep your eyes on the prize. ”
“What the bloody hell is the prize?”
“We work together. Take back our world. We all win. ”
“What are you, Ryodan?”
He laughed.
“What are the nine of you?” I pressed. He said nothing. “I’m going to call it,” I threatened. “‘Bye now. ” I didn’t hang up.
He stopped laughing. “I’ll kill you myself, Mac. ”
“No, you won’t. ”
“Woman,” he said, and his voice was suddenly so hard and cold and ancient-sounding that the fine hair at the nape of my neck lifted and prickled all the way down my spine, “you don’t know the first thing about me. The Mac that would call IYD when she’s not dying isn’t the Mac I’ll protect. Choose carefully. Choose wrong, and it will be the last choice you ever make. ”
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“Don’t you threaten—” I held the phone away from my ear and stared at it disbelievingly.
He’d hung up. On me. The only one who could track the Book. This season’s MVP! And I hadn’t even gotten around to asking him what Chester’s was and where to find it!
My hair gusted, raised straight up in the air around my face in a tangle. Sheets flapped on the furniture. The flames of the fire flared, crackled, then nearly went out.
Dani stood in front of me, guzzling orange juice and cramming her mouth with what looked like Little Debbie cakes.
“We got trubs, Mac. Ro’s at the bus, and so’s half the abbey. Shit’s hittin’ the fan big-time. S’time to go,
” she mumbled around a mouthful. She sniffed the air and looked crestfallen. “Dude, they were both here? Why’n’t’cha call me?”
If Ro and half the abbey were at the bus, “trubs” were troubles. I was exhausted. I was wired. I was as ready as I was going to be. I stood and shoved my cell phone into my pocket. “You have super hearing. Why didn’t you hear them?”
“S’not that good. ”
My eyes narrowed. “You really can smell that they were here?” What I’d give for her supersenses.
She nodded. “I’m gonna give one of ‘em my virginity one day. ” She preened.
I was momentarily dumbstruck. I couldn’t begin to enumerate all the things that were appalling about that possibility. “We so have to talk,” I finally managed. I added pointedly, “Danielle. ” Her gamine grin faded and I hated to see it go, so I added, “I don’t know why you don’t like it. It’s such a pretty name. ” I knew why. Her toughness was all she had.
“Ow. Sorry I duded you. Man. ” She held out her hand.
“No, thanks, I’m walking. ”
She snickered, grabbed my arm anyway, and we were gone.
It was complete chaos, and Rowena wasn’t having an ounce of success taking control of the situation.
When Dani stopped, I headed straight for the front of the bus. Biting back the urge to puke, I climbed up on the bumper and hauled myself onto the hood, where I stood, looking down.
Hundreds of sidhe-seers stared back at me, with expressions ranging from disbelief that we’d dared return, to curiosity and excitement, to fear and blatant distrust.
If I’d been an attorney like my daddy, the bus would have been my opening argument and—filled to overflowing as it was with dead Unseelie and automatic weapons—it would certainly be swaying the jury. The sidhe-seers had opened the doors and begun unloading it. Guns were piled on the lawn, between dead Fae. I doubted they’d ever seen so many of our enemy up close and personal, sequestered as Rowena kept them. They couldn’t seem to take their eyes off them, poking at them with their toes, turning them this way and that, examining them.
Initially, I’d planned to fill the back of the Range Rover with dead Unseelie heads, to show the sidhe-seers what effect a mere two of us could have in a single night out on the town. But then we’d learned about iron, and raided Barrons’ stash of guns, and we’d had to swap rides.
Dani blew the bus horn to silence the crowd. When a few short bursts did nothing, she laid on it, making it impossible to hear. Finally, there was silence.
Rowena pushed from a small cluster of sidhe-seers, moved to the front of the bus, and glared up at me. “Get down from there this instant,” she demanded.
“Not until I’ve had my say. ”
“You have no right to a say. You stole the spear and sword and left this entire abbey unprotected last night!”
“Oh, please,” I said dryly, “like it’s being protected with you keeping the Hallows to yourself, doling them out on rare occasions. What could you do if the Fae came for them? And we didn’t steal them. I took back what was mine to begin with and gave Dani what should have been hers all along. Then we put them to the use they were meant for—killing Fae. ” I gestured behind me. “In case you didn’t notice, a lot of Fae. ”
“Return them to me now,” Rowena demanded.
I shook my head. “Not a chance. Dani and I did more last night to strike at our enemy than you’ve ever let these women do, and not because they can’t but because you won’t permit it. We’re supposed to See, Serve, and Protect. You told me we were born for it. That in the old days, when we arrived at a village, they feasted and offered us the finest of all they had, because we were their honored, revered guardians. We protected them. We lived and died for them. You don’t let these women be guardians. You’ve made them afraid of their own shadows. ”
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“I obviously have a higher opinion of them than you do. You will get down from there this very instant. You do not lead these women. You never will. ”
“I’m not trying to lead them. I’m showing them their options. ” It was a lie, but a white one, and my heart was in the right place. I would lead them. One way or another. I raised my eyes from Rowena and addressed the crowd. “Does your Grand Mistress encourage you to explore your heritage? Does she help you hone your skills? Does she tell you anything about what’s going on? Or does she keep things all hush-hush with her secret council?” I paused heavily to emphasize what I was about to say next. “Do you know that iron hurts the Fae? That there are civilian troops—your average everyday humans in Dublin—who are actively hunting the Unseelie, doing our job, protecting the people who are still alive, shooting them with bullets of iron? Dani and I ran into a battalion of fifty last night. They were firing at the Hunters, driving them out of our city, while you slept behind the walls of this abbey. While you hid in safety, abandoning them to their fate. Is that who you are? Is that who you want to be?”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then a deafening cacophony of voices. Dani laid on the horn again. It took a full minute to silence them this time.
Kat stepped forward. “How are humans hunting them? They can’t see them. ”
“Most of the Fae no longer hide behind glamour, Kat. You’d know that if she ever let you leave. They feel invincible, and why wouldn’t they? There are no sidhe-seers getting in their way, stopping them. But we can change that. ”
“If we start hunting them, won’t the Fae just start concealing themselves with glamour again?”
I nodded. “Sure, it’ll get more dangerous. And we’ll need every special sidhe-seer talent we’ve got. ”
“Then the humans will no longer be able to fight them,” she worried. “They won’t be able to reinforce us. ” Fear underscored her words, and I understood it. How could a mere few hundred sidhe-seers with only two weapons hope to defeat an army of Unseelie?
I wanted to know what Rowena knew, so I watched her carefully when I told Kat, “Humans have found a way to open their eyes and see the Fae as we do. ”
The crowd gasped. When Rowena’s expression didn’t change at all, I knew it was just one more weapon, like the sword and the spear, that she’d withheld from the women. “You knew!” I exploded. “You knew all along! And in the past two months, you never once considered using it to help defend our planet!”
“‘Tis old lore, and forbidden,” Rowena hissed. “You’ve no idea of the consequences!”
“I know what the consequences are if we don’t do it! We’ll lose our planet, piece by piece! Two billion are already gone, Rowena. How many more will you let die? How many lives do you consider expendable? It was our duty to protect the Sinsar Dubh! We didn’t. Now it’s our duty to fix this mess!”
“You knew there was a way to make the average human safer and you didn’t tell us?” Kat stared at Rowena. “All those families around the countryside that we’ve promised to protect and have lost, we could have taught to protect themselves?” Her eyes filled with tears. “For the love of Mary, Rowena, I lost my Sean and Jamie! I could have made them able to see the Unseelie? They could have defended themselves?”
“What she’s not telling you,” Rowena spat, “is that in order to see them, they must eat the living, immortal flesh of the dark Fae. ”
Sidhe-seers gasped; some made choking noises. I understood that perfectly. Even when I’d been battling a growing addiction to it, it had still been revolting.
“What she’s not telling you,” Rowena continued, “is that eating it has unspeakable consequences! It’s addictive, and once a human begins they can’t stop. It changes the person. What would you expect cannibalizing the flesh of our dark enemy to do? It corrupts their very soul! Och, and is that the sentence you would have inflicted upon your innocent brothers, Katrina? Would you have seen them damned rather than dead?” Her voice rose, strong with fury. “What she’s not telling you, and should be if we’re di
scussing dark secrets being withheld, is that it was she who taught these humans to eat it, and she—”
“Who has eaten it herself,” I announced, before she could. “And you can kick the addiction. I did. ” Score one for Rowena. As I suspected, she’d read my journal. I tried to rapidly mentally review it, to anticipate where else she might try to pull the rug out from under me. I’d poured my heart and soul into those pages. “Rowena says it changes you. I’m not so sure about that. Judge for yourself whether I’m ‘damned,’” I told them. “Judge for yourself whether the humans in Dublin who are fighting our war for us are truly any different for having done what was necessary to survive. Or continue blindly taking Rowena’s word for things. If I’m so damned, why am I the only sidhe-seer out there on the front lines doing something?”
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“Hey. ” Dani was suddenly on the hood of the bus, beside me. “What am I? Chopped liver?”
“Surf and turf,” I assured her. “Top-shelf whiskey. ”
She grinned.
“Because she wants the Book herself,” Rowena accused, “that’s why she’s out there. So she can take power for herself. ”
“Oh, balls,” I scoffed. “If that were true, I would have allied myself with the Unseelie long ago. The LM would never have had to turn me Pri-ya. ”
“How do we know you’re not still?” Rowena demanded.
“I can walk,” I said dryly. “Pri-ya,” I told the women, “is a terrible thing to be. But not only did I recover from it, I’ve acquired some kind of immunity to sexual glamour. V’lane no longer has any death-by-sex Fae impact on me now. ”
That got their attention.
“Look, you can face what’s out there and get stronger for it, or you can stay behind these walls and take orders until our planet is beyond saving. You want to talk about damned? Our entire race is, if we don’t do something about it!”
The women exploded again and turned to one another, talking frantically. I’d definitely stirred them up. I’d given them more information in a few short minutes than their Grand Mistress had in years. I’d made them feel more empowered than she’d ever let them feel.
Rowena gave me an icy look and turned to study her protégées.
She made no move to silence them, nor did I. I preferred they work themselves up even more. Then I would cut in and tell them my plans. Form troops and assign tasks.