Zara belatedly recalled the diaphanous gown she wore beneath her cloak that revealed all, concealed nothing, and glamoured it instantly into a more solid gown, willing it to a soft, solid yellow.
Nothing happened.
The young man narrowed his eyes. “Fae? Or human?”
She yanked her cloak tightly around her body and sifted him into a different, far-off city.
He stood there, gaze fixed on her face, awaiting her reply.
She’d had no idea what fate befell queens who transferred their power before their time, and was discovering it the hard way. His question was a valid one. She wasn’t sure what she was anymore either.
She glanced at the debris on the cobbled street, spied a bottle, stooped, seized and shattered it, shoved her sleeve up and used the bit of glass on her arm. A thin line of blood formed.
Then vanished.
“You’re Fae then,” he said. “If so, you have power enough to leave this place, don’t you?”
Of course, to hell with the king’s portals he could so easily manipulate. She was free of the Silvers and could now sift. She instantly transported herself to the Isle of Morar to refine her plans.
Nothing happened.
She opted for a tiny, inconsequential bit of magic and tried to make a sudden fall of snow where only she stood.
Not a flake, not a flurry.
She knew then. The passing of the power had taken all her power, even that which was not part of the True Magic. Undoubtedly, the O’Connor possessed it now. Now she knew why queens waited until they’d nearly evaporated into that mysterious, shadowy realm to which some of the Fae went, before yielding their reign.
They became powerless. Yet remained immortal. A hellish existence.
She smiled with bitterness that would once have turned the entire city into a glacier of sufficient width and depth to spawn an ice age.
The planet was dying. The portal behind her was closed.
She was trapped.
Again.
Powerless.
She didn’t know this world. Had no idea how to survive on it.
“Come,” the man repeated, extending a strong hand. “I’ll help you.”
Zara ignored the hand but moved to join him.
JADA
I stood, at dawn, in the pouring rain in the suburb of Kilmainham, south of the River Liffey, west of the city center, staring at a nondescript area of high stone wall that ran the entire circumference of Kilmainham Gaol, enclosing the former prison-turned-museum.
The irony hadn’t been lost on me the day I’d exploded from the Silvers to find myself home in Dublin—after so many years of wandering with no idea where I was—that my gate to freedom was tucked inside a prison wall.
I remembered that night. I’d hit the ground running, drawn up short, turned and stared back at the wall, committing the location of the portal to memory.
Rule number 1 in my “Entering a Silver Handbook”: Remember the way back. You never knew when retreat might be preferable to the world you’d landed on. At times I’d had to backtrack ten worlds to discover a new direction to go.
Once I had the precise location locked down, I’d stalked away from the wall. Spying a trash Dumpster, I’d hurried over and begun rummaging in the debris.
Rule number 2.9: (2.1 was for dangerously primitive worlds, 2.2 for hostile beasts, 2.3 signs of an unknown civilization, and so on.) If the world was advanced enough to have trash Dumpsters, it usually had newspapers. Find one and read it. The sooner I acclimated to the world, the more seamlessly I could move around on it.
I’d found a balled-up rag that night—the Dani Daily.
I’d stared blankly at it then spun, staring back at the wall, able to recognize it from a distance as I’d not been able to up close, realizing Kilmainham Gaol loomed beyond the wall.
I’d turned in a slow circle, trying to process that I was home. After so many bloody years, I’d finally found the Silver that took me back to Dublin.
Now, of all times.
“Bloody hell! Bugger! Fuck you, you stupid fucking stupid fucks!” I’d leapt into the air, shaking both my fists at the distant stars.
Then I’d dropped to the ground, clutching my balled-up paper, wondering with a small part of my brain what moron had thrown away my immensely entertaining and informative news flash, while also wondering why it was still there five and a half years later, while also trying to decide with the largest part of my brain what the hell I was going to do.
I was screwed.
I’d stretched out on the ground and cried. Sobbed until I couldn’t breathe and my head was splitting. After I’d done that long enough to make myself even more miserable, I began laughing. Eventually, I went cold as ice.
So, this was how it was going to be?
We’d see about that.
I wasn’t the teen I’d been five and a half years earlier. I’d thought my childhood was challenging but my years Silverside had made my childhood seem like…well, child’s play.
I hadn’t held on to the really bad things that happened Silverside. I’d chosen to remember the good parts and chunked the rest in the oubliette. I’d already had too much baggage at fourteen, before I even leapt into the Hall of All Days, to accumulate more and leave it rattling around in my head. You’ve got to keep your brain tidy.
Things had gone downhill swiftly once I’d become invisible to my mother. I’d taught myself strict compartmentalization by the fourth month of my seventh year, when living in the cage had become unbearable, apportioning parts to me and parts to the Other, the one that was far more ruthless and self-contained than me.
I’ve always known who the Other was: me, pushed beyond enduring.
When you’re so hungry you can barely raise your head, and you aren’t sure anyone’s ever going to feed you again and you start to think maybe you should just slip away, and stop fighting it, you either let go and die or find a way to hang on that isn’t constant pain. I’d figured out how to hang on.
I’d played around in my brain and taught myself to partition it. I don’t know if that’s exactly what happens on a subconscious level in cases of dissociative disorder, but once I began consciously doing it, it became difficult to stop.
It was easier to be the Other. Safer to be the Other.
Especially at the end.
The Other killed my mom.
I killed my mom.
I know those two statements are the same thing.
Ryodan thinks I don’t but I’ve always known. There are parts of my brain not even he can get into.
And even knowing that I had to do it—that I would have died if I hadn’t—didn’t make it any easier for me to deal with. I missed her. I hated her. I loved her. I hated myself. I missed her. Moms, even bad ones—and she’d been a good one once—are sacred. They’re the taproot from which we grow.
Ro, the old bitch, figured out how to push me into that state, even when I didn’t want to go. And once I was free, I’d never wanted to be the Other anymore.
I’d learned during my first few weeks free of my cage that one of my mom’s many “boyfriends” during that last year had introduced her to the needle. It wasn’t wine that had changed her so drastically at the end. It was heroin. A drug had turned her into someone else, someone she’d never have chosen to be.
I’d added that bastard to my kill count, too. He’d been passed out with a needle in his arm, flirting with death anyway. Treasure your life. Or die.
Adaptability is survivability. When Ryodan said that to me, I knew he understood. I’d felt an instant kinship with him. I’d taken one look into those cool, clear silver eyes and known he’d had to do things no person should have to do. And he was okay with it.
He’d found the way to be okay with it.
Silverside, I’d carefully picked out the finest characteristics of me and my Other and merged them. Ironically, Silverside had been easier in some ways. Me, my imagination, and I had created The Daredevil Delights of Dani
and her Shaz-tastic Sidekick Shazam! We’d even had our own theme song:
Shaz the mighty fur-beast lived up in the air,
Watching all of Olean, grouchy as a bear.
Dani the Mega O’Malley loved that rascal Shaz,
And battled dragons every day while Shaz covered her ass.
Oh, Shaz the mighty fur-beast…
And so on.
I’d come to this spot near the wall many times since my first night back on Earth, and stood just like this, staring up at the gray stones.
Each time I’d come here to think. Sometimes I’d tossed things through. Once, a big, battered steel trashcan. I’d spray-painted words on it before casting it through: I SEE YOU, YI-YI. I SWEAR I’M COMING. And each time I’d ended up trying as hard as I could not to think, and especially not feel.
Now, I sank down to the sodden grass, leaned against the wall, pulled out my cellphone and thumbed up a song, in a rare masochistic mood.
As little Jackie Paper cruised turquoise seas on boats with billowed sails, watching for far-off pirate ships from Puff’s enormous tail, I thought about everything I’d done in my life and all the things I’d lost, and I thought about Dancer and how I was going to lose him, too, at some point, and I had absolutely no control over it, and when the song got to the part where it talked about dragons living forever but not so little boys, I rolled over onto my side, curled up into a ball and let the grief come.
I cried and cried and made so much snot you’d think we were made of snot, like ninety percent snot and maybe ten percent bones, and who knew what the hell held us together at the end of the day that kept us from just melting into a puddle of snot?
I knew what the song was about. I’d always hated it. Mom had played it for me when I was a kid, singing and dancing around the kitchen, and I remember just looking up at her and thinking, Is she NUTS?
What a horrible song! Why would anyone want to listen to it?
I knew it was about losing the magic. The wonder and innocence. Losing the belief in fairy tales because we’re crushed beneath the weight of responsibility and the perverse expectations of the world. I knew how good I felt inside as a little kid. I knew how bad my mom felt inside grown up. I could see what growing up did to you and didn’t like it one bit.
That was the day I knew I was smarter than my mom. The day she played me “Puff the Magic Dragon.” And it didn’t make me feel happy or important, or like, gee, wow, I’m really smart.
It made me feel lost.
If my mom wasn’t smarter than me, and I was dependent on her, who was going to take care of us? I’d pretty much decided it was up to me to take care of her.
Then I woke up in a cage and knew we were in a world of shit.
Mega brain. I was born with it. Don’t know how. Don’t know why. Maybe Ro had something to do with it, but if she did, she’d been messing with my mother before she ever even had me. Knowing Ro, she probably made me in some kind of test-tube experiment, mixing humans with an exotic Fae she’d trapped, and who knows, maybe part of a Hunter along with eye of newt and toe of frog, fertilizing my mom in vitro.
I have no idea why I came out like I did.
But I like it most days. I like it all days.
Except for days like today. Which I haven’t had another one of since, well, since the night I found myself back in Dublin, and that other night, when I was eight. I guess three really shitty days in twenty years isn’t too bad. Oh, and the night Mac found out I’d killed Alina. Four days. Whoops, the day the Unseelie princes took my sword. Okay, five days. Still not bad. I watch other people. Some of them cry over a Hallmark card commercial. Every time one comes on.
I scrubbed my eyes with my fists then feathered my fingers out over my sinuses, which were now completely clogged with snot.
That’s what you got for crying.
A headache. And I was so hungry I could eat a horse, saddle and all.
And my damned hair was curling again. All this blasted humidity.
I rolled over, yanked out my last silvery pod and was about to drink it when I thought twice, wiped my nose, tried to scrub rain from my face, but it just kept drenching me, and ate two protein bars instead. The pod was the last thing I had from Silverside. I couldn’t give it up.
I stretched out on my back, soaked to the skin, propped my feet up on the wall and stared up through the rain at the stones. I knew a thing or two about losses: slow, steady erosions became landslides. Turning the hill into a muddy, shapeless mess. You had to figure out how to keep the things that mattered to you.
“Shazam,” I told the wall. “I’m coming back for you. I swear it.”
I said the same words each time I came here.
And each time, I thrust all emotion away, eventually pushed to my feet, squared my shoulders and headed straight back to the crushing weight of responsibility and perverse expectations of the world.
But one day I wouldn’t.
MAC
After the others left the bookstore and Barrons vanished into his study where I could hear him moving around, I dimmed the interior lights to a soft amber glow, nuked myself a cup of hot chocolate, and curled up on the Chesterfield near the fireplace. Beyond exhausted, I longed to stretch out and sleep for days, but I wasn’t yet ready for this auspicious day to end.
With my recent sins firmly locked in a box, I took a moment to sit down and absorb with elation that this was the day I’d defeated the Sinsar Dubh.
There was no longer another sentience inside me, plotting, planning, manipulating, and deceiving, terrifying me with endless possibilities of the horrific things it might make me do. I’d done them. It was over. And although I’d done damage, I hadn’t K’Vrucked the world.
I was free.
Finally alone in my body, I could feel the difference—and it was incredible.
Back when I was a kid, growing up, in Ashford, Georgia, alien, vividly detailed sounds and images had often popped into my head for no reason I’d been able to discern.
I’d hummed along with music I’d never heard before. I’d suffered nostalgia induced by mental images of stunning, opulent chambers and exotic lands I’d never seen and didn’t believe existed. I’d gotten such frequent visions of a naked, beautiful woman staring at me with passion and lust that I’d finally begun to wonder if I was repressing lesbian tendencies.
But now all of the Unseelie King’s memories were gone and I felt infinitely lighter, clearer. And not a lesbian.
I no longer had to second-guess every thought and feeling I had.
At least, at the moment, I didn’t.
Although part of me hoped the True Magic came bundled with the ex-queen’s memories and knowledge, as that would make it so much easier to figure out, another part of me really hoped it didn’t.
Still, if I suddenly began getting bleed-through of intrusive, alien thoughts, at least I’d know where they were coming from, and I didn’t think for a minute they’d be as hard to deal with as the Sinsar Dubh had been.
During my brief interrogation by the sentience on the world with three moons, I’d realized how appropriate the appellations Light Court and Dark Court were for the Seelie and Unseelie. The king’s memories had always held some kind of shadowed murkiness, a masculine darkness. They’d been visceral, blunt, cast in harsh shades of icy blues, bleached whites, and inky blacks.
The presence I’d encountered today was the polar opposite: brilliant as a sun, radiant, gentle, feminine, and the flowers on the vast mound had been every color of the rainbow plus countless more. I’d felt right there. Good. Part of something Nature herself embraced.
I wondered at the origins of the Fae. Wondered how the Seelie could be so emotionless and icy when the Magic I’d felt today was so warm and welcoming. I wondered if the True Race had always been the way they were now, or if something had happened to change them.
Then I wondered no more because Barrons entered the room and my body quickened with interest, desire, anticipation, lust.
He passed behind me, lightly touched my hair, and headed for the door. “Get some sleep. You need it,” was all he said.
I opened my mouth to ask where he was going then remembered all the reasons I never asked Barrons that question and said instead, “Jericho.”
He stopped walking instantly, turned, and stared at me through the low light. “Mac.”
“Do you have to go?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you?”
His dark gaze was inscrutable. “Because this is what we do. You and I. Leave each other alone.”
Whuh. I went still, processing what he’d just said. I’d heard it completely differently than he’d said it. I’d heard: You, Ms. Lane, have always set the pace, the ground rules, determined the way we behave with each other. I toe your motherfucking line.
I opened my mouth to shape the question, And if I’d like to change that? Then realized the cowardice inherent. It was hypothetical, fishing, seeking reassurance, shifting the weight of any decision or commitment back to him. It was refusing to put myself on the line by actually telling him what I wanted from our relationship.
“I’d like to change that,” I said carefully. “I think it would be nice if we spent more time together.” I cringed because it sounded far hokier hanging in the air all naked and exposed like that than it had in my head. Now he would mock me, toss some pithy comment my way, or join me on the Chesterfield, thinking I wanted to have sex.
He did none of those things, merely inclined his dark head, shadows swirling in his ancient obsidian eyes. “What do you have in mind?” he said softly.
Softly. There was danger here.
And much more.
The moment stretched between us, pregnant with possibility, reminding me of another moment, in what felt like another lifetime, when I’d believed we won the day and defeated the Sinsar Dubh by laying it to rest beneath the abbey. I’d been drunk on victory, buoyed by the sure knowledge that our battle had been fought and was over for good.