Unlike Jayne, Sean O’Bannion had turned Unseelie and hadn’t been seen for years. Kat never offered the name of Rae’s father and we didn’t ask. She made it clear it didn’t matter: Rae was her daughter, end of subject. Whatever sidhe-seer gifts the girl possessed hadn’t yet begun to manifest. Rae certainly looked like she might be Sean’s, with raven curls, brown eyes flecked with amber, and the complexion of a Black Irishman’s daughter.
I wasn’t interesting enough without Shazam to keep the curious, energetic child’s attention today, and Rae ambled off to play as Kat opened a word document and made notes about our conversation, nudging me for as much detail as I could recall. “And this AOZ mentioned another who might come for the sword?”
I nodded.
“But no name?”
I shook my head.
She studied me a moment, then, “Do you believe the sword would be safer with a Fae?”
I said irritably, “I’m half tempted to give it to the strongest god I can find and let the races kill each other.”
Kat sucked in a breath.
I raised both hands in placation: one pale Irish, the other dark as ebony. “But I won’t. Mac’s queen.” And I’d die before I put a weapon into the hands of someone who might hurt her. She and I had been through so much together; she was the sister I’d never had. “I don’t think that’s the answer, Kat. I was able to protect it last night. If I hadn’t been, I’d be open to the possibility, especially if I could somehow get it to Mac.”
I trusted neither gods nor the Fae with one of the only two hallowed weapons capable of ending an immortal life. Any Fae who got their hands on it could amass an army and go to war against their queen, and many of them despised the human who’d been chosen as their ruler’s successor. “Perhaps the sword is right where it needs to be and this power is awakening so I can keep it safe.”
Kat said dryly, “Or perhaps it’s merely coincidental and our world’s gone as mad as it seems while we bumble about foolishly trying to ascribe patterns to chaos.”
I laughed. There was that.
“The wish, Dani. Have you any idea what AOZ meant?”
I’d tried to figure it out on the ride here, reflecting on the moment I’d picked up the spelled item. I’d responded primarily with raw emotion, secondarily with actual thought. AOZ might have sorted through a dozen half-formed desires and selected whichever one he thought might bite me in the ass the hardest. I shook my head and said grimly, “No clue. Kat, what do you think about this god business? I read the Book of Invasions a long time ago and found it to be…” I try not to insult anyone else’s beliefs. I dangle first and let them finish, see how they go about it. I’ve learned diplomacy. It doesn’t come easy to me so I like to practice when I can.
“Pure tripe?” she said with a wry smile.
“At the very least heavily redacted, with enormous poetic license taken,” I agreed. “Do you think these gods might be the reality of the stories of the ancient Fomorians, awakened by the Song?”
“It’s certainly a theory worth exploring. According to the Book of Invasions, the Fomorians battled the Tuatha De Danaan, were widely regarded as monsters, and were driven into the sea, never to be seen again. But the timetable of those events was severely condensed, to reconcile history with Christianity, forcing the entire period from creation of the world to the Middle Ages to fit within the events of the Bible. I’ve long suspected those events happened far longer ago than we can imagine. History is murky business, rewritten again and again until the original story is lost to us. That’s why it’s critical we translate our ancient scrolls. They’ll be closer to truth than anything scribed in the past few thousand years, influenced by political and religious agendas. We’ve been hearing stories from all over Ireland. People in rural areas have encountered beings they claim have Faelike powers. Were you able to sense AOZ with your sidhe-seer senses?”
I shook my head grimly. “No. My gut got nothing. My brain registered empirical evidence that made me believe he wasn’t human.”
She nodded again and rose, gathering her notes. “I’ll meet with the Shedon, pass on the news, see what they know.”
I kicked back in the chair, propped my boots on the table, grabbed the latest stack of translations and began to read.
* * *
π
“Nothing,” I muttered several hours later. “Bloody nothing.”
“We have no way of determining what the books and scrolls are about before we begin to translate them. Most of them have no titles,” Bridget said mildly, head bent close to a tiny journal in her hands. In her late forties, streaks of gray feathered her short dark hair. The day shift of translators had settled in at the long, wide table with me shortly after I’d begun reading.
“True,” agreed seventeen-year-old Fallon, whose specialty was ancient dialects. She’d come to us five months ago, bearing a sealed letter from a sister-house in Wales beseeching us to train her, as she’d recently developed latent powers they’d no experience with. Chameleonlike, she’d begun melting into her surroundings, the strength of five men infused her petite frame, and I suspected from how quickly and silently she could move that she might one day be able to join me in the slipstream. Glossy chestnut hair swept her shoulders, framing a face wide through the cheekbones that tapered to a broad jaw before narrowing sharply to a pointed chin. Aquamarine eyes narrowed with frustration as she added, “And we suspect Rowena took the most important books. Saints know where she hid them.”
Bridget said, “The council delegated a team to begin exploring the Underneath next week. Perhaps we’ll find a stash there. Anything discovered underground will get translated first,” she assured me.
Two years I’d been waiting to hear those words—we were finally going to turn our attention to the unexplored realm beneath the fortress. Like a Janus head, the abbey was split into halves: The Upstairs, which held fascinating mysteries of the mostly nondeadly kind, and the Underneath, rumored to hold secrets too powerful, too terrible, for anyone to know. The council had long been wary of the Underneath. The Sinsar Dubh was once contained in that subterranean maze.
Rowena had forbidden anyone to enter the Underneath but I’d been there, once, years ago, tailing her past her many wards and traps, lingering to kill the Fae she’d been nibbling on for who knew how long, to increase her power and extend her life span. I’d caught glimpses of countless snaking passageways, heavily locked and warded doors, vaulting caverns, and I’d only been on a single level. I’d passed dozens of curved stone stairwells, spiraling down to seemingly bottomless pits.
I’d hungered to explore it further once she was gone, but I’d committed to our order and toed the council’s line, which was: Si vis pacem, para bellum—if you want peace, prepare for war. We’d focused on locating the most powerful sidhe-seers, testing and training them while we monitored Ireland, the world beyond.
We knew it wasn’t over and wouldn’t be so long as the wall between our world and Faery was down. Our races coexisted in a powder keg where the slightest spark could make everything blow. If Mac were unable to gain control of the immortal race, we’d be right back where we started, slaughtering each other in our quest for control of the world.
“Who’s heading the team?” I asked Bridget.
“Enyo,” she said.
I approved the choice. Born in a war zone in Lebanon, Enyo had been a soldier long before she’d found us. Smart, driven, and hungry for challenge, she was the perfect choice. I looked forward to spending time with her while we explored.
I bristled with anticipation. I would be on that team.
I glanced at the clock above the fireplace, noted the time, and shoved back in my chair to head back to Dublin for an appointment I’d made that morning, at the same time Bridget—who I’d not realized had gotten up and was now behind me—leaned over my shoulder to add another page to my st
ack for when I returned.
We collided.
Or rather, her forearm brushed my left shoulder.
Raw, high voltage exploded from my arm with a thunderous BOOM and my skin crackled with energy. There was the sudden stench of burning hair followed by popping sounds, met with a high-pitched scream that terminated as swiftly as it had begun. Then there was the racket of furniture crashing to the floor, and what sounded like one of the old, massive bookcases behind me splintering, and chilling, wet splats.
Then the stillest of silences.
Half out of my chair, I froze, hands splayed on the table.
Fallon was staring past me, mouth gaping on a silent O, eyes wide with shock and horror.
I couldn’t make myself move for a long moment, just stood there, muscles flexed to move but not obeying my command. My legs were noodles again, my hands shaking.
I’d felt the enormity of what had flared to instant life inside me. I’d seen what it had done to my bedroom wall this morning.
Perhaps it had simply knocked her out. I hadn’t intended any harm, quite the opposite. Nor had I flung my hand as I did with Jayne, or even moved it at all.
She’d merely brushed the bare skin of her forearm against the bare skin of my shoulder.
“Fallon?” I begged with my eyes: Say it’s not true. Say she’s okay.
The Apprentice began to hyperventilate, gulping air, unable to make a sound. Shoulders shaking, tears spilled from her eyes.
I slumped back into my chair, doubled over and puked violently, retching the contents of my stomach on the floor until nothing but a thin stream of bile dribbled from my chin.
I didn’t need to look behind me to know Bridget was dead.
Secluded in a marker stone not only deadlier but much smarter, too
CONFRONTED BY EXTREME EMOTION, I box it and take action; do something, anything, whatever most immediately needs to be done.
My heart was screaming: You killed Bridget, you’re a liability, dangerous to your friends, run away and hide because you’re a monster and, as your mom liked to say so often at the end—the world would be better off if you’d never been born.
My brain said with cool efficiency: You made this mess, clean it up.
I stumbled into my chair, knocking it over, yanked it back up and locked my knees and began to collect parts and assemble them in a small, neat arrangement.
Normally, as soon as I see Rae, I catch her up in my arms. My deadly, killing embrace.
I begged every god to forgive me for killing Bridget and thanked every god that it hadn’t been Rae. Then I begged every god to forgive me for making such a distinction, as I picked up pieces with only my right hand because I had no idea what would happen if I touched them with my left, and no desire to find out.
Holding what appeared to be a fragment of the soft-spoken, effortlessly kind woman’s pale, bloody arm, I muttered, “I did this,” unaware I’d spoken aloud until Fallon snapped, “Dani, stop it. It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. And for God’s sake, stop trying to put her back together!”
I hadn’t realized I was. I carefully placed part of Bridget’s hand and three fingers to the right of the macabre puzzle I was working.
The door flew open and I spun toward it, vibrating, shivering, dangerously close to losing control and vanishing in the slipstream. I hungered to disappear, escape gazes certain to condemn. I fisted my hands at my sides, right hand dripping blood, left hand ice-cold, and forced myself to breathe in a rhythm I’d perfected Silverside when sniping hostile targets. Inflate gut, wave the breath up to my chest, breathe out. Stop breathing. Shoot. Repeat. There’s a still, silent flawless dimension that exists on the trigger of a gun, and I could live in that place. It feels good there. Unbreathing, remote, I never miss a shot.
Kat stood in the doorway.
Bridget’s pain ended as swiftly as it had begun. But mine was a mushroom cloud of toxic emotion she must have felt and come running to discern the cause. She took stock of me, assessed Fallon, squared her shoulders, and glanced left at the demolished bookcase, the bits of bone and flesh, the mangled remains of Bridget.
I gave her enormous kudos that she didn’t double over and puke, as I wiped the last bit of bile from my chin.
“What happened?” she said quietly.
“I killed—”
“Shut up, Dani,” Fallon said sharply as she moved to join me. But not too close; she stopped a few feet away. “Dani didn’t kill Bridget,” she told Kat. “Bridget bent over her left shoulder as Dani was standing up. The black part of her is dangerous and she didn’t know it.”
“How can you exonerate me? She’s dead.”
“How can you convict yourself?” Fallon retorted, eyes flashing. “It was an accident. I saw the entire thing. You had no idea she was behind you. You had no idea anything about you was dangerous.”
“I should have known.”
“How could you know?”
“It’s my arm. That makes it my fault.”
“Stop it, Dani,” Kat said quietly. “You won’t be carrying this one, too.”
Yes, I would. But saying so would only make Kat and Fallon work harder to excuse me. “Kat, what if I’d picked up Rae like I usually do?” My voice broke on the words at the same time my knees gave out. I sank to the floor, tucked my head in my arms, half expecting my own head to blow up, fighting tears. I would weep. But in private. Alone. I would dance until I was too exhausted to hold it in any longer then I would cry. And deal. Like I always do.
“Get buckets of hot soapy water and trash bags,” Kat instructed Fallon. “Bring mops, Enyo, and a few of the Adepts.”
I glanced up and watched Fallon leave with a sharp stab of pride. An Apprentice, she’d not fallen apart. She’d lost it for a moment, then become the warrior that was needed.
Kat closed the door behind her, moved into the room and sank to her knees a few feet from me. “I’d take you in my arms and comfort you but we seem to have a wee bit of a problem.”
“A wee bit?” I mocked darkly. “I just killed an innocent woman. A good woman with a good life ahead of her. Done. Gone. End of story. Thanks to me.”
“I know some of what Rowena did to you.”
I stiffened. I know a truth—most people can’t handle the truths of my life. The sidhe-seers perform surgery on our world with anesthesia when at all possible, employing a deft technique. I hack out the cancerous spots, in brutal fashion, armed with whatever weapon is handy. The way I was taught. The way I did it the first time. I began lying young. Made compartments to store them all in, to keep track. Lying is a pain in the ass. It complicates the brain, mandates the creation of more files, consuming valuable space.
“She kept a hidden cache in her suite. When I stayed there, I discovered a collection beneath a floorboard. Some were maps of the abbey, which will prove useful as we explore beneath. There were two journals.”
I narrowed my eyes, searching her gaze. How much did she know?
“Pawns are not to blame for the actions of kings. Children are not to blame for the atrocities of adults. You know now that your arm has become dangerous. That information was gained at a terrible price. But,” she said in a voice that was laced with steel, “do not damage yourself further than the world already damaged you. You’re becoming something powerful. Don’t abort that birth because of an accident. We live in a time fraught with peril, abilities we don’t understand, changes occurring so quickly it’s impossible to keep up. Put this in one of your vaults. War is coming. We’ve both been feeling that dark wind blowing down on us for a long time. Soldier up. This new gift of yours may be precisely the thing we need to tip the balance of the future in our favor.”
I knew Bridget’s death was an accident. I’d never have harmed her, and I didn’t know it was dangerous to touch me. But this was different than “t
he actions done by me against my will.” This had happened due to my carelessness. I’d assumed something about my arm with no basis for that assumption. I’d assumed I was safe to be around. I wasn’t and let’s be brutally honest here, I’ve never been to one degree or another; that’s why my mom locked me in a cage in the first place. That’s why I miss my crew so much. They aren’t human. They’re much less breakable.
Kat whispered, “Och, so much pain.” She was silent a moment then said sternly, “And that’s the damage that was done to you unfairly. Your mother gave up. Instead of fighting, she panicked. It wasn’t you. It was her. Don’t let those voices win. You’re not the wrong one or the bad one—”
“When did you become a bloody mind reader?”
“I’m not.” She paused then said carefully, “Kasteo taught me a few things.”
I said incredulously, “Kasteo? The one that speaks to no one?” I knew she’d worked out with him at Chester’s, but he’d taught her other things, too? I’d give my right arm for lessons from one of the Nine. Preferably, my left at this point, if someone would take the damned thing.
“Accept what happened. Grieve. But do it gently. You would never have harmed Bridget. You can’t undo it. Logic dictates you incorporate the lesson and move on.”
Same advice and absolution I’d have given to another. Same grace I never permit myself. A life ended. Because of me. Christ. Her last breath was the one she’d breathed as she’d stood behind me. She had a boyfriend. She had dreams. “The others will blame me.” I’d be walking corridors of condemnation again.
“Some will. Especially those who envy your gifts, and there are many. Living legends have long been targets for small minds. You won’t listen to them. You’ll let it roll off you and continue doing all you can to help our world and our people. Such is the price of power. Great power comes at great price. And you, Dani, my love, have always been strong enough to pay it.”