"Faefever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moning Karen Marie)

Chapter 8

Some of your mail missed the slot,” Dani said as she pushed open the front door of Barrons Books and Baubles, and wheeled her bike inside.

I glanced up from the book I was reading (Irish invasions again, some of the most boring research I’d ever done, except for some of the bits about the Fir Bolg and Fomorians) and, after looking behind her to make sure she was alone, smiled. Her curly auburn hair was windblown, her cheeks were flushed with cold, and she’d topped her green pin-striped Post Haste, Inc. courier uniform with a jauntily perched company cap, and her eternal I’m-bored-and-way-too-cool-for-words expression.

I like Dani. She’s different from the other sidhe-seers. I’ve liked her since the day I met her. There’s something kindred in us, besides the fact that we’re both on vengeance quests: her for her mother, and me for my sister.

“Rowena would kill you for coming here, you know.” I frowned, as a suspicion occurred to me. “Or did she send you?”

“Nah. I snuck away. I don’t think anyone followed me. You’re top dog on her shit list, Mac. If she’d sent me, she’d’ve sent me with the sword.”

I caught my breath. I never wanted to battle Dani. Not because I was afraid I might not win—although with her superhuman speed, I supposed it was possible—but because I never wanted to see that exuberant, flippant spark extinguished by my hand, or any other. “Really?”

She flashed a gamine grin. “Nah. I don’t think she wants you dead. She just wants you to grow the feck up and obey her every word. She’s waiting for the same thing from me. She doesn’t get that we are grown the feck up. We’re just not good little tin soldiers like the rest of her fluff-brained army. If you have a mind of your own, Rowena calls you a child. If you don’t have a mind of your own, I call you a sheep. Baaa,” she said, making a face. “The abbey’s so full of ’em it stinks of sheep shit on a summer day.”

I swallowed a laugh. It would only encourage her. “Stop cussing,” I said. Before she could get pissy, I added, “Because pretty girls don’t have ugly mouths, okay? I cuss sometimes, too. But I do it sparingly.”

“Who cares if I’m pretty?” she sneered, but I saw right through her. The first time I’d seen her she’d had makeup on and been in street clothes and I’d thought she was older than she was. In her uniform and without all that black eyeliner, I could see she was thirteen, fourteen at the most, and frozen briefly at that awkward stage all of us suffer for a time. I’d had a gangly period, too, where I’d been convinced the Lane genes had betrayed me, and unlike Alina, I was going to grow up ugly and have to spend the rest of my life eclipsed by my older sister while people said sadly, and never quite quietly enough, “Poor MacKayla, Alina got the brains and the beauty.”

Dani was trapped in adolescent limbo. Her torso hadn’t yet caught up with her legs and arms, and although her hormones were wreaking havoc on her skin they had yet to shape her hips and bust. Caught between child and woman was a rough place to be, and she had to fight monsters on top of it. “You’re going to be gorgeous one day, Dani,” I told her, “so clean up your language, if you want to hang out with me.”

She rolled her eyes, leaned her bike against the counter, tossed a rolled-up wad of mail on the counter, and sauntered cockily off toward the magazine rack, but not before I caught the startled, thoughtful look in her eyes. She would remember what I’d said. She would cling to it during her worst moments and it would get her through, the same way my Aunt Eileen’s promise that I would one day be pretty had gotten me through.

“Found it on the sidewalk,” she tossed over her shoulder. “Fecking postmen can’t even hit the slot.” She punctuated it with a glance that was a dare to correct her, and I might have, but she plucked a Hot Rod magazine from the stand.

Nice choice. I’d gone for the same thing at her age.

“Do you know you’re sitting on the edge of a whole neighborhood of nasty Unseelie?”

“You mean the Shades?” I said, absently flipping through the mail. “Yeah. I call it a Dark Zone. I’ve found three of them in the city.”

“You come up with the coolest names. Doesn’t it creep you out that they’re so close?”

“Creeps me out that they exist at all. Have you seen what they leave behind?”

She shuddered. “Yeah. Rowena sent me out with a team looking for some of us who didn’t make it home one night.”

I shook my head. She was too young to be seeing so much death. She should be reading magazines and thinking about cute guys. As I thumbed through the fliers and coupons, I spotted an envelope stuck in the middle. I’d seen that kind of envelope before: thick, plain, off-white vellum.

No return address.

It had a Dublin postmark, stamped two days ago.

MacKayla Lane c/o Barrons Books and Baubles, it said.

I ripped it open with trembling hands.

I talked to Mac tonight.

I closed my eyes, mentally braced myself, then opened them again.

It was soooo good to hear her voice! I could picture her lying on her bed, sprawled across the rainbow quilt Mom made for her years ago that’s frayed at the edges from a hundred washings, but she refuses to give it up. I could close my eyes and smell the caramel-apple pie with pecan crumb crust Mom was baking. I could hear Daddy in the background, watching baseball with old man Marley from next door, yelling at the Braves as if the batter’s ability to hit the ball depended on how loud they could shout. Home feels like it’s a million miles away, not four thousand—a mere plane ride, eight hours and I could see her.

Who am I kidding? Home’s a million lifetimes away. I want to tell her so badly. I want to say, Mac, come over here. You’re a sidhe-seer. We’re adopted. There’s a war coming and I’m trying to stop it, but if I can’t I’m going to have to bring you over here anyway, to help us fight. I want to say, I miss you more than anything in the world, and I love you so much! But if I do, she’ll know something’s wrong. It’s been so hard to hide it from her, because she knows me so well. I want to reach through the phone lines and hug my baby sister. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll never get to do it again. That I’ll die here and there’ll be a lifetime of things left unsaid and undone. But I can’t let myself think that way because—

I fisted my hand, crushing the page into a wad. “Watch the counter, Dani,” I barked, and raced for the bathroom.

I slammed the door, locked it, sat on the toilet, and hung my head between my knees. After a moment, I blew my nose and dried my eyes. Her handwriting, her words, her love for me, had slid an unexpected knife straight through my heart. Who was sending me these stupid, painful pages, and why?

I uncrumpled the page, smoothed it on my legs, and continued where I’d left off.

— if I do, I’ll lose hope, and hope’s all I’ve got. I learned something important tonight. I thought I was hunting the Book, and that would be the end of it. But now I know we’ve got to re-create what once was. We’ve got to find the five foretold by the Haven’s prophecy. The Sinsar Dubh alone isn’t enough. We need the stones and the book and the five.

That was the end of the page. There was nothing on the other side.

I stared at it until it blurred out of focus. When did grief end? Did it ever? Or did you just get numb from hurting yourself on it so many times?

Would I grow emotional scar tissue? I hoped so. At the same time I hoped not. How could I betray my love for my sister by not suffering every time I thought about her? If I stopped hurting, would that mean I’d stopped loving her a little?

How had Alina known about the Haven? I’d only recently learned of its existence and what it was: the High Council of sidhe-seers. Rowena claimed she’d never met my sister, yet Alina had written in her journal about the governing body of the very organization Rowena ran, and she’d somehow learned of a prophecy foretold by them.

What were the five? What was the Haven’s prophecy?

I clutched my head and massaged my scalp. Evil books and mysterious players and plots within plots, and now prophecies, too? Before I’d needed five things: four stones and a Book. Now I needed ten? That wasn’t merely absurd, it was unfair.

I stuffed the page in the front pocket of my jeans, stood up, freshened my face, took a deep breath, and went out to relieve Dani of her clerk duties. If my eyes were too bright when I stepped behind the counter, either she didn’t notice, or she understood a thing or two about grief, and left me alone.

“Some of the girls want to meet with you, Mac. That’s why I came today. They asked me to ask you because they figured you wouldn’t even let them in the door, and they’re freaked out that you know a prince.” Her feline eyes narrowed. “What’s he like?” Her young voice was hushed with a dangerous blend of fascination and awakening hormones.

V’lane was the sidhe-seer equivalent of Lucifer; and even if his motives in Mankind’s current predicament mirrored ours, he was to be feared, shunned, and, a deep part of me insisted, destroyed. Seelie and Unseelie alike, the Fae were our enemies. They always had been, and always would be. Why, oh why, do we find the most dangerous, forbidden men the most irresistible?

“Fae princes kill sidhe-seers, Dani.”

“He hasn’t killed you.” She shot me an admiring look. “It looked like you had him eating out of your hand.”

“No woman could have that Fae eating out of her hand,” I said sharply, “so don’t be daydreaming about it.”

She ducked her head guiltily, and I sighed, remembering what it was like to be thirteen. V’lane would have been the object of every one of my teenage fantasies. No rock star, no actor, could have competed with the golden, immortal, inhumanly erotic prince. In my daydreams, I would have wowed him with my cleverness, seduced him with my budding femininity, succeeded in winning his heart where no other woman could because, of course, in my fantasy, I would have endowed him with the heart he didn’t have.

“He’s so beautiful,” she said wistfully. “He’s like an angel.”

“Yep,” I agreed flatly. “The one that fell.” My words did nothing to change the expression on her face. I could only hope she never saw him again. I could see no reason that she would. At some point, in the near future, she and I were going to have a long talk about life. She was overdue. I almost laughed. I’d been overdue too. Then I’d come to Dublin. “Tell me more about this meeting they want, Dani.” What were they after?

“After you left that night, everybody got into a huge fight. Rowena sent everybody back to bed, but once she left, it started up again. Some of the girls wanted to hunt you down and get even. But Kat—she was with Moira that day—said that you didn’t mean to do it, and it would be wrong, and a lot of girls listen to her. Some of ’em aren’t happy with Rowena. They think she keeps too tight a rein on us. They think we should be out in the streets, doing what we can to stop what’s going on, instead of just biking past it every day, watching. She almost never lets us go out to kill.”

“With only one weapon, I can see why.” I hated agreeing with the old woman, but I concurred on that score.

“She keeps the sword herself. She doesn’t like to be without it. I think she’s afraid.”

I could understand that, too. Last night, after I’d gotten on the bike and we’d sped off, I’d checked for my spear. Despite his obvious displeasure with me, V’lane had kept his word and returned it at parting.

I showered with it strapped to my thigh.

I slept with it in my hand.

“We could fight, Mac. Maybe we can’t kill them without the sword, but we sure could kick some fecking ass, and maybe they’d think twice about settin’ up shop in our city. I could save dozens of people every day, if she’d just let me. I see ’em walking down the street, holding hands with a human”—she shuddered—“and I know that person’s gonna die. I could save them!”

“But the Unseelie you stopped would only move on to another victim, if you didn’t kill it, Dani. You’d be saving one person to sentence another.” I’d thought this through myself. I felt the same things. We were hopelessly outnumbered with only two weapons.

Her mouth twisted. “That’s what Rowena says, too.”

Ugh. I was not like Rowena. “In this case, she’s right. Diverting them isn’t enough. We need more weapons. More ways to kill them, and I can’t give up my spear, so if they’re using you to bait some kind of trap. ” I warned. “I didn’t kill Moira. It was an accident. But I won’t let anyone take my spear away.”

“They’re not trying to trap you, Mac. I swear. They just want to talk to you. They think there’s stuff happening that you don’t know about, and they think you might know some stuff we don’t. They want to trade info.”

“What do they think I don’t know?” I demanded. Was there some threat I was unaware of? A new, even worse enemy out there, gunning for me?

“If I tell you anything else, they’ll get mad at me, and half the abbey’s usually mad at me. I’m not pissing off the other half. They said they’d meet on neutral ground, and that you could choose where. Will you do it?”

I made a show of considering it but my mind was already made up. I wanted to know what they knew, and desperately wanted access to their archives. Rowena had given me a glimpse into one of their many books about the Fae the day Dani had taken me to meet her at PHI. She’d shown me the first few sentences of an entry about V’lane, and I’d been itching to get my hands on it ever since, and finish the rest of it. If information about the Sinsar Dubh existed, it was a good bet the sidhe-seers had it, somewhere. Not to mention my hope that somewhere in the abbey were answers to my questions about my mother, and heritage. “Yes. But I’ll need a show of faith.”

“What do you want?”

“Rowena has a book in her desk—”

Dani stiffened instantly. “No fecking way! She’d know! I’m not taking it!”

“Not asking you to. You have a digital camera?”

“Nope. Sorry. Can’t do.” She folded her arms.

“I’ll loan you mine. Photograph the pages about V’lane and bring them to me.” My plan would serve the dual purposes of getting me more information, and proving that she was willing to defy Rowena for me. It would also make her read about the object of her misguided fantasies, and hopefully cure her of them.

She stared at me. “If she catches me, I’m dead.”

“Don’t let her catch you, then,” I said. Then I softened, “Do you think you can do it, Dani? If it’s really too dangerous. ” She was only thirteen, and I was pitting her against a woman with years of wisdom and experience, ruthless intentions, and a spine of steel.

Her lambent eyes gleamed. “I’m superfast, remember? You want it, I’ll get it.” She glanced around the bookstore. “But if things get really bad, I’m coming to live with you.”

“Oh no, you’re not.” I said, trying not to smile. She was such a teenager.

“Why not? It looks cool to me. No rules, either.”

“I’d drown you in rules. All kinds of rules. No TV, no loud music, no boys, no magazines, no snacks or soda, no sugar, no—”

“I get it, I get it,” she said sourly. Then she brightened. “So, I can tell ’em you’ll meet?”

I nodded.

Dani watched the counter for me, while I ran upstairs and got my Kodak. I changed the settings so it would take the highest resolution photos possible, and told her to make sure she got the entire pages, so I could download them onto my computer, zoom in on the images, and read. I told her to call me as soon as she had them; we’d set a place and time to meet.

“Be safe, Dani,” I said, as she wheeled her bike out the door. There was a storm brewing in the streets of Dublin, and I didn’t mean those dense black clouds currently crawling across the rooftops. I could feel it. Like a bad moon really was rising, and even worse trouble was on the way. Ever since I’d danced to that song the other night, I hadn’t been able to shake it from my head. It was such boppy, happy-sounding music to be accompanied by such grim predictions.

She glanced back over her shoulder at me. “We’re kinda like sisters, aren’t we, Mac?”

A knife twisted in my gut. There was such a hopeful look on her face. “Yeah, I guess we are.” I didn’t want another sister. Ever. I didn’t want to worry about anyone but me.

Still, I did the closest thing to praying I knew how to do, and whispered a silent invocation to the universe to watch over her, as I closed the door.

The dark clouds creeping over the city exploded, thunderheads crashing, raindrops biting with October’s chill teeth, flash-flooding the pavement, gushing down the gutters, overflowing the grates, and sweeping all my customers away.

I cataloged books until my vision blurred. I made myself a cup of tea, turned on the gas logs, cozied up to the fire, and paged through a book on Irish fairy tales, hunting for truth in the myth, while picking at a lunch that was the UK equivalent of Ramen noodles. I haven’t had much of an appetite since I ate Unseelie. Not for food, anyway.

Last night Barrons and I hadn’t said a word to each other all the way back to the bookstore. He’d dropped me at the front and watched me walk in. Then, he’d given me a smile that was all teeth and nastiness, and driven straight into the Dark Zone, managing to say “Fuck you, Ms. Lane,” without even bothering to open his mouth. He knows how much his refusal to tell me why the Shades don’t eat him irks me.

I want to be so fearless. I want to be so bad and tough that all the monsters leave me alone.

I tugged Alina’s journal entry from my pocket and read it again, more slowly this time.

Her worst fear had come true, and here I was, left alone with a lifetime of things unsaid and undone. I’d never gotten that hug. I knew I needed to push past the emotional punch and focus on the Haven’s prophecy, the five, and the new questions her journal entry raised, but I was detoured by memories. There’d been so many nights that I’d sprawled on my bed, talking to Alina on the phone. Mom was always making good stuff, filling the house with the mouth-watering aroma of yeast, caramel cream sauces, and spices. Dad was always yelling at the Braves with old man Marley during baseball season. I would have prattled aimlessly about boys and school and my idiotic complaints about whatever I used to complain about, believing the whole time she and I were immortal.

What a shock when life ends at twenty-four. Nobody’s ready for it. I missed my rainbow quilt. I missed my mom. God, I missed—

I stood, crammed the page back in my pocket, and pruned my dark thoughts in the seedling stage before they could sprout. Depression gets you nowhere but tangled in an overgrown garden that can choke the life out of you.

I moved to the window and stared out at the rain. Gray street. Gray day. Gray rain, splashing grayly on gray pavement. What was that Jars of Clay song on my iPod? “My world is a flood. Slowly I become one with the mud.”

As I stared, unblinking into the grayness, a brilliant shaft of sunlight splintered the rain, directly in front of me.

I looked up, seeking its source. The beam pierced the dark clouds, a radiant lance shot down from heaven, forming a perfect golden circle on the dreary, drenched sidewalk, inside which there was no rain, no storm, just sunshine and warmth. I thumbed a Tums from my pocket. My tea and noodles were abruptly an unpleasant stew in my stomach.

Speaking of the sidhe-seer’s equivalent of Lucifer.

“Funny,” I said. But I wasn’t laughing. Fae-induced nausea coupled with an impossible illusion spelled one thing: V-l-a-n-e. The only thing missing was a frenzy of Fae lust, and I braced myself for it. His name piercing my tongue suddenly tasted sweet as honey, felt smooth and supple and sexy in my mouth. “Go away,” I told the illusory shaft of sun, focusing my sidheseer center on it. It didn’t evaporate.

Then V’lane was standing in it, but he wasn’t Fae, and he wasn’t the biker man. He was a version of himself I’d never seen before: he looked human, and he was definitely muted. Still, he was inhumanly beautiful. He was wearing white swim trunks that contrasted perfectly with his gold skin, and flaunted his flawless body. His hair slid like silk over his bare shoulders. His eyes were amber, warm with invitation.

He’d come to punish me. I knew that. And still I wanted to step outside, splash through the rain and join him in his sunny oasis. Hold his hand. Run away for a while, maybe to Faery, where I could play volleyball and drink beers with a perfectly convincing illusion of Alina. I stuffed that thought back in my padlocked box and checked the chains. They weren’t holding so good today.

I will attend to you later, he’d said last night. You broke our bargain. There is a price for that.

“Leave me alone, V’lane,” I called through the window. It echoed off the glass back at me, and I wasn’t sure he heard. Maybe he could read lips. Suddenly the windowpane separating us was gone. Drops of wind-driven rain needled my face, my hands.

“You are forgiven, MacKayla. Upon reflection, I realized it was not your fault. You were not responsible for Barrons’ interference. I do not expect you to be able to control him. To demonstrate my understanding, I have come, not to punish you, but to give you a gift.”

His “gifts” all had strings attached, and I told him so, with a tongue that tasted of nectar.

“Not this one. This is for you and only for you. I will gain nothing from it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I could have harmed you long before now if I wished.”

“So? Maybe you’re just putting it off. Sucking me in for the grand finale.” I brushed rain from my face, and pushed my hair back. It was simultaneously curling and drooping, becoming an unmanageable mess. “You can put the window back anytime.”

“I took your hand and accompanied you into the halls of my enemies, trusting you not to Null me. Return the honor, sidhe-seer.” The temperature was dropping. “I gave you my name, the means to summon me at will.” The rain turned to sleet.

“Not inspiring trust with your little display of temper.” A strong gust of wind dumped a sudden bucket of rain on me.

“Oh! You did that on purpose!” I dragged a sleeve across my face, mopping at it. It didn’t help. My sweater was soaked.

He didn’t deny it. Just cocked his head, studied me. “I will tell you about the one you call Lord Master.”

“I don’t call him Lord Master and never will,” I bristled. I battled the urge to leap out the window, grab him, and demand to know whatever he knew.

“Would you like to know who he is?”

“You said you’d never heard of him when I told you about him.” I studied my nails, knowing if he knew how badly I wanted the information, he’d make it harder to get. Probably try to trade it for sex.

“I have learned much since then.”

“So, who is he?” I said, in a bored voice.

“Accept my gift.”

“Tell me what your ‘gift’ is first.”

“You have no plans for the afternoon.” He glanced at the flooded street beyond his warm, sunny oasis. “You will have no customers. Will you sit in your chair and pine for lost things?”

“You’re pissing me off, V’lane.”

“Have you ever seen the Caribbean Sea? There are hues in those waves that nearly vie with Faery.”

I sighed. No. I’d dreamed of it, though. Sun slanting off water was one of my favorite things in the world, whether it was swimming-pool-blue or shades-of-tropic. During the winter in Ashford, I used to go to the local travel agent’s office in town and thumb through the pamphlets, dreaming of all the exotic, sunny places the husband I hadn’t met yet was going to take me. Part of the reason I was so depressed in Dublin was from simple lack of sun. My time in the subterranean caves beneath the Burren had sapped me. I not only love sun, I need it. I think if I’d grown up in the colder, drearier North, I’d have been a completely different person. Sure, the sun comes out here, but not nearly as often as it does in Georgia, and not the same way. Dublin doesn’t get those months of long, blissfully blazingly hot summer days, crowned by a sky so blue it hurts to look at, and a sultry heat that warms you to the core. My bones are cold here. So is my heart.

A few hours in the tropics, plus information about the Lord Master?

The rain slanting in through the windowless hole pricked my skin with the icy spines of a dozen porcupines. Would he really forgo retaliation against me for breaking our bargain? I was in no position to shut the Seelie prince out of my life. Whether I trusted him or not, I needed to be on decent terms with him, and if he really was offering me a Get Out of Jail Free card, I’d be crazy not to take it. I couldn’t cower in the bookstore from him every time he showed up. I was going to have to confront him on unwarded ground eventually.

“Put the window back.” I wasn’t going to be blamed by Barrons for another missing window, or risk that big nasty Shade out back getting in.

“Do you accept my gift?”

I nodded.

When the pane was back, I went to the counter, swapped my soaking cardigan for a dry jacket over my damp shirt, and bent to extract the spear from my boot and holster it beneath my arm. It was gone.

Apparently the bookstore being warded only kept him out. It didn’t keep him from performing his tricks in or on the store itself. I made a mental note to discuss this problem with the intractable owner and keeper of the wards. Surely with all his secrets and inexplicable abilities Barrons could do better than that.

I flipped the sign to CLOSED, locked up, splashed through the puddles, stepped into the sun and, when V’lane offered his hand, nullified my intent to Null, and laced my fingers with his.

I was in Canc#250;n, Mexico, sitting in a disappearing-edge swimming pool, on a bar stool that was actually under the water, watching palm trees sway in a sultry breeze against the unmistakable aqua splendor of the Caribbean Sea; drinking coconut, lime, and tequila from a scooped-out pineapple, with the salt spray of breaking surf and sun kissing my skin.

Translation: I’d died and gone to heaven.

Dublin, the rain, my problems, my depression: All of it had vanished in the blink of a Fae Prince’s sift.

My bikini today, courtesy of V’lane, was leopard print, three embarrassingly tiny triangles. A gold belly chain, inset with amber, draped my hips. I didn’t care how nearly naked I was. The day was blindingly bright and beautiful. The sun was warm and healing on my shoulders. The double shots of Cuervo Gold in my drink weren’t hurting, either. I was glowing golden inside and out.

“So? Who is he? You said you’d tell me about the Lord Master,” I prompted.

His hands were on me then, rubbing suntan oil into my skin that smelled of the coconut and almond, and for a short time I forgot that I even had a tongue that could ask questions.

Even when he’s fully muted, there’s magic in a death-by-sex Fae’s hands. They make you feel like you’re being touched by the only man who could ever know you, understand you, give you what you need. Illusion, deception, and lie, perhaps, but it still feels real. The mind may know the difference. But the body doesn’t. The body is a traitor.

I leaned into V’lane’s touch, moving under his strong, sure strokes, purring inwardly while he petted me. His iridescent eyes burned a shimmering shade of amber, like the gems on my belly chain, grew sleepy, heated, promising me sex that would blow my mind away.

“I have a suite, MacKayla,” he said softly. “Come.” He took my hand.

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I murmured, and pulled away. I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“I despise girls. I like women. They are infinitely more. interesting. Girls break. Women can surprise you.”

Girls break. I had no doubt he’d broken more than a few in his time. I’d not forgotten the book in Rowena’s study that credited this very Fae with being the founder of the Wild Hunt. The thought jarred me back to reality. “Who is he?” I asked again, scooting to the farthest edge of my bar stool. “Stop touching me. Honor your promise.”

He sighed. “What is it you humans say? All work and no play—”

“—might just keep me alive,” I finished dryly.

“I will keep you alive.”

“Barrons says the same thing. I’d prefer to be able to do it myself.”

“You are a mere human, a woman at that.”

I felt my jaw jut. “Like you said. Women can surprise you. Answer my question. Who is he?” I motioned the bartender for a fresh pineapple—hold the tequila—and waited.

“One of us.”

“Huh?” I blinked. “The Lord Master is Fae?”

V’lane nodded.

Although I’d gotten a Fae read off the Lord Master the two times we’d met, I’d also gotten a human read, similar to what I sensed in Malluc#233; and Derek O’Bannion. I’d thought the Fae part was because the Lord Master ate Fae, not because he was Fae. “But I don’t sense full Fae from him. What’s the deal?”

“He is no longer. He who calls himself the Lord Master was formerly a Seelie known as Darroc, a trusted member of the queen’s High Council.”

I blinked. He was Seelie? Then what was he doing leading the Unseelie? “What happened?”

“He betrayed our queen. She discovered he was working secretly with the Royal Hunters to overthrow her, and return to the old ways, and old days in which no Fae bowed to an insult of a Compact, or had any use for humans other than passing diversion.” Alien, ancient eyes studied me a moment. “Darroc’s special diversion was playing with human women for a long, cruel time, before destroying them.”

An image of Alina’s body as it had looked lying on the morgue table rose up in my mind. “Have I told you how much I hate him?” I hissed. For a moment I couldn’t say any more, couldn’t even think past him hurting my sister and leaving her to die. I breathed deep and slow, then said, “So, what, you threw him out of Faery and dumped him on us?”

“When the queen uncovered his treason, she stripped him of his power and immortality, and banished him to your realm, condemning him to suffer the brevity and humiliation of a mortal life, and die—the cruelest sentence for a Fae, crueler even than ceasing to exist by immortal weapon, or. simply vanishing the way some of us do. To die was insult to injury. Mortal indignity is the greatest indignity of all.”

He was so arrogant. “Was he a prince?” A death-by-sex Fae like V’lane? Was that how he’d seduced my sister?

“No. But he was old among our kind. Powerful.”

“How can you know that, if you’ve drunk from the cauldron?” I pointed out an obvious bit of illogic. A side effect of extreme longevity, V’lane had told me, was eventual madness. They dealt with it by drinking from the Seelie Hallow, the cauldron. The sacred drink wiped their memories clean, and let them start over with a brand-new Fae life, and no memory of who they’d once been.

“The cauldron is not without flaws, MacKayla. Memory is. how did one of your artists say it? — persistent. It was fashioned to ease the onus of eternity, not leave us blank. When we drink from it, we emerge speaking the first language we knew. Darroc’s is mine: the ancient one, from the dawn of our race. In such a way, we know things about each other, despite the divestiture of memories. Some attempt to plant information about themselves for their next incarnation to find. The Fae Court is an unpleasant place to be, stripped of ability to discern friend from foe. We prolong drinking as long as possible. Tatters from earlier times sometimes remain. Some must drink twice, three times, to be cleansed.”

“How can I find Darroc?” I asked. Now that I knew his name, I would never call him anything but that, or a mocking “LM” again.

“You cannot. He is hiding where even we have been unable to track him. He slips in and out of Unseelie through portals unknown to us. We are hunting him, the other Seelie princes and I.”

“How can a mere human elude you and move in and out of Fae realms?” I goaded. I was angry. They’d made this mess. They’d dumped Darroc into our realm because they’d been having problems, and it was my world that was suffering, my sister who’d been killed because of it. The least they could do was clean up after themselves, and fast.

“My queen did not strip his knowledge from him, an oversight she now regrets. She believed he would die quickly. It is why we did not suspect him of being the one behind the trouble in your realm. Once human, Darroc had no immunity against the many illnesses that plague your kind, and those who live as gods tend to underestimate the brutality of the herd when they walk among it.”

“He’s not the only one who underestimated something,” I said frostily. Herd, my petunia. With so much inhuman power at their fingertips, they certainly were humanly fallible, and we humans were the ones paying for it.

V’lane ignored the jibe. “We believed if he did not contract a mortal illness, he would anger a human with his arrogance, and become one of your violent crime statistics. Contrary to our expectations, since Darroc has been mortal, he has acquired immense power. He knew where to look, and how to get it, and he has always had allies among the Royal Hunters. He promises them freedom from the Unseelie prison where they are stabled; a promise no other Fae would make. Hunters cannot be trusted.”

“And other Fae can?” I said dryly.

“Hunters go beyond all bounds.” Here V’lane momentarily flickered, as if struggling not to revert to another form. “They have taught Darroc to eat the flesh of Fae to steal Fae power!” He paused, and for a fleeting moment, the temperature plunged so sharply that I couldn’t draw a breath and the ocean, as far as I could see it, iced. Abruptly, all was normal again. “He will die very slowly when we find him. The queen may make him suffer immortally for it. We do not savage our own.”

I looked away hurriedly and stared out at the sea, owning the same sin, feeling it flashing in incriminating neon letters on my forehead: FAE EATER. Darroc had taught Malluc#233;, Malluc#233; had taught me, and I’d taught Jayne. I had no desire to suffer immortally, or otherwise. “What can I do to help?”

“Leave it to us to find Darroc,” V’lane said. “You must do as the queen has charged you and find the Book. The walls between our realms are dangerously thin. If Darroc succeeds in bringing them down, the Unseelie will escape their prison. Without the Sinsar Dubh, we are as powerless to reimprison our dark brethren as you. Once loose, they will consume your world and destroy your race.”

He paused before adding grimly, “And, quite possibly, mine.”