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

Chapter 10

I slept fitfully and dreamed of the sad woman again.

She was trying to tell me something but an icy wind kept stealing her words each time she opened her mouth. Laughter rippled on the chilling breeze, and I thought I recognized it, but I couldn’t lift the name from my mind. The harder I tried, the more frightened and confused I became. Then V’lane was there, and Barrons too, with men I’d never seen before, and suddenly Christian appeared, and Barrons moved toward him, with murder in his eyes.

I woke up, iced to the bone, and in a state of alarm.

My subconscious had put something together that hadn’t penetrated my conscious mind: Today was Thursday, Christian was returning from Scotland, and Barrons was onto him, because of me.

I had no idea what Barrons might do to him, and didn’t want to find out. The lie-detecting Keltar was no match for. whatever my employer was. Teeth chattering, I grabbed my cell off the night table, and called the ALD. The dreamy-eyed boy answered, and told me Christian wasn’t due in until afternoon. I asked for an apartment, home, or cell number, and he said the personnel files were locked up in the department head’s office. She was gone for a long holiday weekend, and wouldn’t be back until Monday.

I left an urgent message for Christian to call me the instant he walked in.

I was about to tug the covers up, snuggle down, and try to shiver myself warm, when my phone rang.

It was Dani.

“She almost caught me, Mac!” she said breathlessly. “She didn’t leave PHI at all yesterday. She slept in her office, and I was up all fecking night, waiting for a chance to get in. Then a few minutes ago she finally went downstairs, for breakfast, I thought, and I slipped in but I couldn’t find the book you wanted. There was another one in her desk, so I took pictures of it, but I didn’t get many because she came right back, and I had to go out the fecking window and I tore my uniform and banged myself up something wicked. I couldn’t get what you asked for but I tried, and I got something else. That counts, doesn’t it? Will you still meet up with us?”

“Are you okay?”

She snorted. “I kill monsters, Mac. I fell out of a stupid window.”

I smiled. “Where are you?” I could hear horns honking in the background, the sounds of the city waking up.

“Not far from you.” She told me. I knew the intersection.

I glanced at the window. It was still dark out. I hated her being out there in the dark, regardless of her superspeed, and I doubted she had the sword. “There’s a church across the street.” It was brilliantly lit. “I’ll meet you in front of it in ten minutes.”

“But the rest of ’em aren’t here!”

“I’m just coming for my camera. Can you get the girls together this afternoon?”

“I can try. Kat says you have to pick a place where the other. couriers. won’t see us.”

I named several caf#233;s, all of which she nixed as too risky. We finally settled on a below-street pub, aptly named The Underground, that offered darts and pool tables, but no windows.

I hung up, brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, tugged on jeans, and zipped a fleece-lined jacket over my PJ top, then jammed a ball cap on my head. My blond roots were showing. I made a mental note to stop in a drugstore on the way back and grab a couple boxes of color. It was depressing enough that I had to have dark hair. I wasn’t going to cheese it up with a sloppy dye job.

It was 7:20 when I hit the pavement. The sun wouldn’t rise until 7:52 A.M. It would set at 6:26; I’ve become a bit obsessed with the precise timing of natural light, and keep a chart of it on my wall, next to the map where I track Unseelie hot spots and Book activity. I stayed to the lights as much as I could, moving from the pool cast by one streetlamp to the next, a flashlight in each hand, my spear heavy and comforting in my shoulder harness. My MacHalo was for deep night work only. If the people passing by thought it was bizarre that I was carrying lit flashlights, I didn’t care. I was staying alive. They could smirk all they wanted. A few of them did.

As I hurried down the street, I pictured myself three months ago, compared it to what I looked like now, and laughed. The businessman hurrying along next to me glanced over. He met my eyes, jerked a little, and stepped up his pace, leaving me behind.

It had rained during the night, and the cobbled streets were shiny in the predawn light. The city perched on the expectant edge of day about to explode: buses honking, taxis vying for space with commuters, people checking their watches and rushing to their jobs, other people. or things. already doing theirs, like those Rhino-boys sweeping the streets, and picking up trash.

I watched them surreptitiously, struck by the oddity of it. The non-sidhe-seer passerby would see only the human glamour they projected, of the still half-asleep city employee, but I saw their stumpy gray limbs, beady eyes, and jutting jaws as plain as the skin on the back of my hand. I knew they were watchdogs for higher-ranking Fae. I didn’t get why they were doing human dirty work. I couldn’t see a Fae stooping to it, Light or Dark Court. The many low-level Unseelie were chafing my sidhe-seer senses. Usually Rhino-boys don’t bother me too much, but in mass numbers they make me feel like I have an ulcer. I poked around inside my head, wondering if I could mute it somehow.

That was better! I could turn the volume down. Very cool.

Dani was leaning jauntily against a streetlamp in front of the church, bike propped against her hip. She had a painful-looking knot on her forehead; the undersides of her forearms were scraped raw, and dirty; and she’d torn holes in the knees of her pinstriped pants as if she’d gone sliding on all fours down an asphalt roof, which, she told me breezily, she had. I wanted to take her back to the bookstore, clean and bandage her up. I told my bleeding heart to get over it. If we ever ended up fighting back to back, I’d need to trust her to deal with all but critical wounds.

Dani slapped the camera into my hand with a cocky grin, and said, “Go ahead, tell me what a great job I did.”

I suspected she didn’t hear praise often. Rowena didn’t seem the type to waste breath on a job well done, when she could save it for a job badly done. I also doubted Dani got much nurturing from the other sidhe-seers. Her mouthy defensiveness made her hard to cuddle, and her sisters-in-arms had their own worries on their minds. I thumbed on the camera, glanced at the measly seven pages she’d photographed, of the wrong stuff, and said, “Great job, Dani!”

She preened a moment, then hopped on her bike and pedaled off, skinny legs pumping. I wondered if she ever used her superspeed while biking and, if she did, would you see only a flash of green whizzing by? Kermit the Frog on steroids. “Later, Mac,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll call you soon.”

I headed back to the bookstore by way of the drugstore. It was light enough to put away my flashlights. I did, then stared down at my camera, zooming in on the photos, trying to figure out what she’d gotten.

I knew better than to walk with my head down. I didn’t even dare carry an umbrella in the rain for fear of what I might bump into.

When I careened off the shoulder of a man standing near a dark, expensive car parked at the curb, I exclaimed, “Oh, sorry!” and kept right on going, blessing my luck that it had been a human I’d bumped into, not a Fae—when I realized I had my “volume” way down—and it hadn’t been a human.

I whirled, whipping my spear from my jacket, willing the people passing by—most with their noses buried in a newspaper, or on their cell phones—not to see me, as if maybe I could throw a little glamour of my own. Melt into the shadows with the other monsters.

“Bitch,” spat Derek O’Bannion, his swarthy features contorted with hatred. But his cold, reptilian gaze acknowledged my weapon and he made no move toward me.

Ironically, that weapon is the spear I stole from his brother, Rocky, shortly before Barrons and I led him and his henchmen to their death-by-Shade behind the bookstore. Capitalizing on Derek’s hunger for revenge, the LM recruited him as a replacement for Malluc#233;, taught him to eat Unseelie, and sent him after me to get the spear. I’d convinced the younger O’Bannion brother that I would kill him if he so much as blinked at me wrong, and I’d let him know just how terrible that death would be. The spear killed anything Fae. When a person ate Unseelie, it turned parts of the person Fae. When those parts died, they rotted from the inside out, poisoning the human parts of the person, and ultimately killing them. The one time I’d eaten Fae, I’d been terrified of the spear. I’d seen Malluc#233; up close and personal. He’d been marbled with decay. Half his mouth had rotted, parts of his hands, legs, and stomach had been a decomposing stew, and his genitals. ugh. It was a horrific way to die.

O’Bannion yanked open the car door, muttered something to the driver, then slammed it again. The engine turned over and twelve cylinders purred to the quiet life of understated wealth.

I smiled at him. I love my spear. I understand why boys at war name their guns. He fears it. The Royal Hunters fear it. With the exception of the Shades, who have no substance to stab, it will kill anything Fae, allegedly even the king and queen themselves.

Someone I couldn’t see pushed the rear car door open from the inside. O’Bannion rested his hand on the top of the window. He was far more riddled with Fae than he had been a week and a half ago. I could feel it.

“Little addictive, huh?” I said sweetly. I dropped my spear, pressed it to my thigh, to dissuade potential busybodies from calling the Garda. I wasn’t willing to sheathe it. I knew how fast and strong he was. I’d been there myself, and it had been incredible.

“You should know.”

“I only ate it once.” Probably wasn’t so wise to admit that just then, but I was proud of the battle I’d been winning.

“Bullshit! Nobody who’s tasted the power would give it up.”

“We’re not the same, you and I.” He wanted dark power. I didn’t. Deep down, I just wanted to go back to being the girl I used to be. I would trespass into darker territories only if my survival depended on it. O’Bannion considered embracing the darkness a step up.

I feinted a jab at him with my spear. He flinched, and his mouth compressed to a thin white line.

I wondered, if he stopped eating it now, would he revert to fully human, or, after a certain point, was it too late, and the transformation couldn’t be undone?

How I wished I’d let him walk into the Dark Zone that day! I couldn’t fight him here and now, in the middle of rush hour. “Get out of here,” I stabbed air again, “and if you see me on the street, run as fast and as far as you can.”

He laughed. “You stupid little cunt, you have no idea what’s coming. Wait till you see what the Lord Master has in store for you.” He ducked into the car, and glanced back at me, with a smile of malevolence and. sick anticipation. “Trick or treat, bitch,” he said, then laughed again. I could hear him laughing, even after he’d closed the door.

I tucked the spear in my harness then stood on the sidewalk, gaping, as he drove away.

Not because of anything he’d said, but because of what I’d seen as he’d settled back into the supple, camel-colored leather seats.

Or, rather, who I’d seen.

A woman, beautiful and voluptuous, in the way of aging movie stars from a time long gone by, when actresses had been worthy of the title Diva.

My “volume” was on high. She was eating Fae, too.

Well, now I knew: While Barrons might have killed the woman he’d been carrying out of the mirror, he hadn’t killed Fiona.

I opened Barrons Books and Baubles at eleven on the dot, with a new ’do. I’d colored it two shades lighter than Arabian Nights this time and looked closer to my age again (black hair makes me look older, especially with red lipstick), then run down the street for a quick cut, and now a few longish wedges of bang framed my face. The result was feminine and soft, completely at odds with how I felt inside. The rest of it I’d twisted up and stabbed with a hair pick. The result was flirty, casual elegance.

My nails were cut to the quick, but I’d brushed on a quick coat of Perfectly Pink, and glossed on matching lipstick. Despite these concessions to my passion for fashion, I felt drab in my standard uniform of jeans, boots, a black tee under a light jacket, with spear holstered, and flashlights tucked. I missed dressing up.

I sat back on the stool behind the cashier counter, and eyed the tiny jars of wriggling Unseelie flesh lined up there.

I’d managed to cram a lot into my morning. After the drugstore, I’d hit a corner convenience, bought baby food, dyed my hair, showered, emptied the contents, and washed the jars. Then I’d gone out again, attacked a Rhino-boy, cut off part of his arm and stabbed him, putting him out of both our miseries, and making sure he didn’t live to tell any tales of a human girl stealing Fae power. Then I’d sliced and diced the stump of arm into bite-size pieces.

If only I’d kept some handy, as I’d wanted to after feeding Jayne, Moira might not have died. If something unexpected and awful happened while I was in the bookstore, I wasn’t going to be caught unprepared this time; I wanted a dose of superpower close at hand. It wasn’t as if it would ever expire. It was the only snack I knew of with an immortal shelf life.

My hunting and gathering expedition had nothing to do with Derek O’Bannion or Fiona, or the reminder of how weak I was compared to them. It was proactive. It was smart. It was just plain, good common sense. I slid the small fridge out from beneath the rear counter and tucked several jars behind it, before sliding it back in. The others I would stash away upstairs later.

After catching myself staring at them for several minutes without blinking, I stuffed the jars in my purse. Out of sight, out of mind.

I opened my laptop, hooked up my camera, and began uploading the pages. While I waited, I called the ALD again, to make sure the dreamy-eyed boy really understood the urgency of the message I’d asked him to relay. He assured me he did.

I tended to customers for the next several hours. It was a busy morning and sales were brisk. It wasn’t until early afternoon that I got to sit down, and take a look at the pages Dani had photographed.

I was disappointed by how small they were, barely the size of recipe cards. The scribbled lines were cramped tightly together, and when I finally managed to begin deciphering the small, slanted script, I realized what I had was a pocket notebook of observations and thoughts penned in a badly butchered version of the English language. The spelling made me suspect the author had had little in the way of formal education, and had lived many centuries ago.

After studying it for some time, I opened my own journal, and began to write down what I believed was a fair translation.

The first page picked up in the middle of a lengthy diatribe about The Lyte and The Darke—which I swiftly realized meant the Seelie and Unseelie—and how dastardly and “Evyle” they both were. I already knew that.

However, halfway through the page, I found this:

Sae I ken The Lyte maye nae tych The Darke nae maye The Darke tych The Lyte. Whyrfar The Darke maye nae bare sych tych, so doth the sworde felle et low. Whyrfar the Lyte may nae bare sych Evyle, sae The Beest revyles et.

Okay, so that sounded like the Seelie hated the Unseelie and vice versa. But not quite. There was something more here. I puzzled over it several moments. Did it mean the Seelie couldn’t actually touch the Unseelie, and vice versa? I read on.

Tho sworde doth felle thym bothe, yea een Mastr and Myst! Ay t’hae the blade n ende m’suffrin!

The sword killed both Unseelie and Seelie, up to the highest royalty. I knew that, too. So did the spear.

Sae maye ye trye an ken thym! That The Lyte maye nae tych The Beest, nr The Darke the sworde, nr The Lyte the amlyt, nr the Darke the spyr.

So may you try and know them, I scribbled my translation. The Light (Seelie) may not touch the Beast (Book?) and the Dark (Unseelie) may not touch the sword. “I get it!” I exclaimed. This was important stuff! The Seelie can’t touch the amulet, I wrote, and the Unseelie can’t touch the spear.

What it was saying was that the Seelie couldn’t touch the Unseelie Hallows and Unseelie couldn’t touch the Seelie Hallows—and that was how you could tell them apart!

I’d just found the perfect way to lay my questions to rest about whether or not Barrons might be a Gripper! If he was, he couldn’t touch the spear.

I lay my pen aside, thinking back. Had I ever seen him touch it? Yes! The night he’d stabbed the Gray Man, while I’d hung, suspended by my hair.

I narrowed my eyes. Actually, I hadn’t seen him touch it that night. When he’d returned it to me, the hilt was still stuck in my purse, with the spear protruding from it. He’d handled it through the fabric. And although he’d said he was going to wear it to the auction, strapped to his leg, I’d never pulled up his pants leg and gone looking for it. For all I knew, he might have left it laying on the desk, right where I’d placed it for him, and where I’d later reclaimed it.

Okay, but the night we’d stolen the spear, surely he’d touched it at some point, hadn’t he? I closed my eyes, replaying the memory. We’d gone underground and broken into the Irish mobster Rocky O’Bannion’s treasure chamber. Barrons had made me pluck it from the wall, and carry it to the car. He’d instructed me to break the rotting shaft from the spearhead. I’d been carrying it ever since.

I opened my eyes. Clever, clever man.

I had to put him in a position where he had no choice but to hold the spear. To take it. Touch it. I would settle for no less than skin on steel. If he were a Gripper—or an Unseelie of any kind—he wouldn’t be able to do it. It was that simple.

So how was I going to trick him into taking it?

These pages had been worth Dani’s efforts for this tidbit alone. I was glad the book on V’lane had been gone, and this had been there in its place.

I resumed reading. It was slow going but fascinating.

The author of the pocket notebook was no sidhe-seer. Its scribe was a man, or rather a young boy, who’d been so beautiful he was mocked by the warriors of his time, though loved by the lasses who’d taught him his letters.

At ten and three, he’d had the misfortune of capturing the eye of a Faery princess, while taking a shortcut through a dark and tangled wood.

She’d charmed and seduced him off to Faery, where she’d swiftly transformed into something cold and frightening. She’d kept him locked in a golden cage at court, where he’d been forced to watch the Fae play with their human “pets.” Among their games, their favorite was turning mortals Pri-ya: into creatures who begged for the touch of a Fae, any Fae—in fact, for the touch of anything at all, for the “vilest of things to be done to them, and to do foul things to each other,” according to the young scribe. These creatures had no will, no mind, no awareness of anything but sexual need. They knew neither morality nor mercy, and were as likely to turn on one another as rabid animals. The boy had found them terrifying and feared being given to what had become of his human companions. He had no way of tracking time but he watched hundreds come and go, and began a growth of manly hair, which was when the princess began once more to look his way.

When the Fae were no longer amused with their pets they cast them from Faery to die. In this manner, the letter of the Compact wasn’t violated. They didn’t actually kill the humans they captured. They just didn’t save them. I wondered how many had died in madhouses, or been used for exactly what they wanted, and killed by their own kind.

The boy listened to all that was said, recorded all he heard, because when the dying were discarded, their possessions went with them, and, although he’d lost hope for himself, he hoped to warn his people. (The child hadn’t known that hundreds of years would have passed by the time he was released from Faery.) He hoped something he recorded might save one of them, perhaps hold the key to one day destroying his terrifying, merciless abductors.

A chill kissed my nape. That his plan had worked meant the boy was long dead. And as he’d hoped, his notebook had found its way back to the world of Man, and eventually into the hands of a sidhe-seer, to be passed down through the centuries, and end up in Rowena’s desk. Why was it in her desk? Just some light reading at lunchtime, or was she looking for something?

I glanced at the clock. It was two-thirty, well into afternoon. I snatched up my cell phone and dialed the ALD again. There was no answer. Where had the dreamy-eyed boy gone? Where was Christian? I snapped my laptop closed, and was thinking of heading over there when my cell rang. It was Dani, and the girls were already at the pub waiting for me, so could I hurry?

When I descended the stairs into the shadowy, substreetlevel pub, I found seven women in their mid- to late twenties waiting for me, not including Dani. Two had been present the day Moira had died: the tall, gray-eyed brunette with the unwavering gaze that kept sweeping the pub—and I doubted she missed much—and the skinny, dark-eyed girl with platinum hair, heavy black eyeliner, and matching nail polish, who was rocking slightly in her chair to a rhythmic beat, although her iPod and earbuds lay on the table. The only exit was the entrance I’d come in and, with no windows, the place felt dark and claustrophobic to me. As I took my seat, I could see they were as uncomfortable as I was with our close, dimly lit surroundings. Five cell phones lay on the table, emitting wan glows. There were two Notebooks open, running on battery power, displaying bright white screens. It was all I could do not to pull out my flashlights, turn them on, and slap them down on the table, adding my share to the lot.

We nodded stiffly to each other. I got straight to the point. “Do you have unrestricted access to the library Rowena told me about?” I asked the group of women. I wanted to know just how useful an alliance between us might be.

The brunette answered, “It depends on your place in the organization. There are seven circles of ascension. We’re in the third, so we can enter four of the twenty-one libraries.”

Twenty-one? “Who could possibly use that many books?” I said irritably. I’d bet there was no handy card catalog around, either.

She shrugged. “We’ve been collecting them for millennia.”

“Who’s in the seventh circle? Rowena?”

“The seventh is the Haven itself, the High Council of. you know. ” That level gray gaze swept the pub uneasily.

I glanced around, too. There were five customers in the place. Two were shooting pool, the other three were brooding into their beers. None of them were paying any attention to us, and there wasn’t a Fae in sight. “If you don’t feel comfortable talking in a public place, why did you ask me to pick one?”

“We didn’t think you’d meet in private after what happened. I’m Kat, by the way,” the brunette said. “This is Sorcha, Clare, Mary, and Mo.” She pointed to each in turn. The skinny Goth was Josie. The petite brunette was Shauna. “That’s the lot of us,” Kat said, “though if you prove useful, and your loyalties are true, more will join us.”

“Oh, I’m useful,” I said coolly. “The question is, are you? And as for loyalties, if yours are with the old woman, I suggest you rethink them.”

Her gaze cooled to match mine. “Moira was my friend. But I saw what I saw, and you didn’t mean to kill her. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, and doesn’t mean I have to like you. It does mean I’m after doing everything I can to stop the walls from coming down, and if that means I have to join forces with the only person I know can sense the Sin—er, Book—here I am. But back to loyalties; where are yours?”

“Where any sidhe-seers should be. With the humans we’re supposed to protect.” I didn’t say what else I was thinking—in exactly this order: my family, my vengeance, the rest of the world.

She nodded. “Very good. The leader of a cause is never the cause itself. But make no mistake, we listen to Rowena. She’s been training most of since we were born. Those she didn’t teach from birth, she’s spent years gathering and educating.”

“Then why are you going behind her back, and meeting with me?”

All eight, including Dani, shifted uncomfortably and either glanced away or fiddled with something; a coffee mug, a napkin, a cell phone.

It was Dani who finally broke the silence. “We used to guard the Book, Mac. It was ours to protect. We lost it.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You lost it?” I’d been blaming the Fae for the mess we were in, for making Darroc human, but the sidhe-seers were complicit, too? “How did you lose it?” Then again, knowing what I knew of it, how had they contained it to begin with? How had any sidhe-seer gotten close to it? Weren’t they all repelled by it, like me?

“We don’t know,” Kat said. “It happened twenty-some years ago, before any of us came to the abbey. Those who lived through those dark days share little detail about them. One day it was there, hidden beneath the abbey, then it was gone.”

So that was why Arlington Abbey had been continuously rebuilt and fortified ever stronger—because beneath it they’d been protecting the greatest menace known to Man! How long had it been there, hidden in ground, guarded by whatever was held sacred by each age? Since it had been a shian? Before even that?

“Or so we’ve heard,” she continued. “Only the Haven knew it was there to begin with. The night it vanished, they say terrible things happened. Sidhe-seers died, others disappeared, and rumors flew, until the entire abbey knew what had once been hidden beneath their very feet. That was when Rowena formed PHI, and opened branches all over the world, with couriers out in the streets, listening for even a vague rumor of it. She’s been trying to track it since. For many years, there was no account of it, but recently it surfaced, right here, in Dublin. There are many of us who fear it was our predecessors’ failure to contain it that has caused the problems we’re having now, and only by getting it back do we have any chance to fix them. If you can sense the Book, Mac, then you really are our best hope, like. ” She trailed off, as if reluctant to say the word aloud. She stared into her coffee but I saw what she struggled to hide: pure, raw fascination. Like Dani, she was smitten. She cleared her throat. “Like the Fae you brought that night said.” She wet her lips. “V’lane.”

“Rowena says you’re dangerous,” Josie said hotly, raking a black-nailed hand through a fringe of pale bangs. “We told her you could sense it but she doesn’t want you to go after it. She says if you find it, you won’t do what’s right, that you want revenge. She says you told her that your sister was killed in Dublin, so she did some checking, and your sister was a traitor. She was working with him, the one who’s been bringing all the Unseelie through.”

“Alina wasn’t a traitor!” I cried. Every occupant in the place turned to look at me. Even the bartender dragged his attention from the small TV behind the bar. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Alina didn’t know who he was,” I said, carefully modulating my voice. “He tricked her. He’s very powerful.” How had Rowena found out about Alina’s involvement with the LM?

“So you say,” Kat said softly.

Those were fighting words. I rose from my seat, hands splayed on the table.

She rose, too. “Easy, Mac. Hear me out. I’m not accusing you, or your sister. If I truly believed you traitors to our cause, I wouldn’t be here. I saw the look on your face when Moira—”She broke off, and I saw deep, unspoken grief in her eyes. They’d been close. Still, she was here, trying to connect with me, because she believed it was best for our cause. “We’re not here to speak of the dead but to plan for the living,” she continued after a moment. “I know that things are not always what they seem. We learn that from birth. But you can see the bind we’re in. We need you, but we don’t know you. Rowena is against you and, while we normally support her in all things, her attempts to recover the Book have failed. She has tried many times. We need results, and time is of the essence. You asked Dani for a show of faith, and she gave you it. Now we’re asking you to return the favor.”

I bit back an instinctive refusal. “What do you want?” I’d vowed never to prove myself to the old woman, but these women were not Rowena. I badly wanted to be invited to the abbey again. They were the only people I knew who were like me. I’d been banned from the only club I’d ever wanted to join. With V’lane’s name on my tongue, I wouldn’t be at their mercy at the isolated fortress. If things took a threatening turn, he’d be there to rescue me the moment I opened my mouth.

“Can you sense all Fae objects?”

I shrugged. “I think so.”

“Have you heard of the D’Jai Orb?”

When I nodded, she leaned forward and said urgently, “Do you know where it is?”

I shrugged. I’d been holding it in my hands a little over two weeks ago, but I had no idea where it was right now, only that it was in Barrons’ possession. “Why?”

“It’s important, Mac. We need it.”

“Why? What is it?”

“A relic from one of the Seelie Royal Houses that contains some kind of Fae energy that Rowena believes can be used to reinforce the walls. We need it fast, before Samhain.”

“Sowen. What’s sowen?”

“If you can get the Orb and bring it to us, we’ll tell you everything we know, Mac. Even Rowena will have to believe in you then.”