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

CHAPTER 13

I sat on the edge of the sofa, rubbing my eyes. I needed sleep in the worst way, but I suffered few illusions that I was going to get any.

My encounter with V’lane and Barrons had left me too wired for words, and soon the abbey would be waking up, and I’d have a whole new set of challenges to face.

I stroked the glittering beauty of my spear.

True to form, V’lane had returned it when I’d demanded he leave. After reassuring myself with its comforting weight, I tucked it back into my shoulder holster.

I toed my old backpack over by the strap and dug around in it for my journal. I was surprised to find it. I thought someone would have confiscated it. I figured it was a pretty safe assumption both Rowena and Barrons had read it.

I rubbed the embossed leather cover, grateful to see it again, as if it were an old friend. Since Alina had been killed, I’d filled three notebooks with feelings, speculations, and plans. At first, I’d begun keeping a journal as a sort of tribute to her, a way to somehow connect to her memory.

Then I’d learned I could pour my grief into its pages, instead of hurting my parents with it. Finally, I’d discovered what my older sister had known all along: that it was an invaluable tool for sorting thoughts, clarifying and refining them, and planning future action.

God, I missed her! What I would give to sit and talk with her again! To hug her and tell her that I loved her. Since her death, I’d realized how few times I told her what she meant to me. I’d always assumed she knew, that we’d have decades together, planning each other’s weddings, having baby showers, sending our children off to school together, taking pictures at their proms: a lifetime of sisterhood. I steeled myself. No time for emotion. When this was all over, I would wallow in grief. I would make V’lane give her back to me again, in Faery. I would grant myself the balm of illusion. When all this was over, I would deserve it.

I flipped to a fresh page and began making notes of everything I’d learned recently. If something happened to me, I wanted to leave as detailed a record behind as possible for the next idiot who tried to do something about the mess we were all in.

• I can walk through wards. All of them? Or just certain ones?

• I’m immune to Fae glamour. Must test this on a Fae besides V’lane.

• Barrons can kill Fae. How? V’lane won’t tell me. Why?

• Christian is missing. Is he alive?

• The Keltar ritual failed. What did they try and what went wrong? Must learn more about Druid magic. Is it possible I can do Druid magic, too? V’lane said once that I had only begun to discover what I was. Like Dani, I need to test my limits.

• Jayne is leading a civilian army that he’s trained to eat Unseelie, protecting Dublin. There are still people in the city. Where? Should we try to move them out, to a safer place?

• Iron has some kind of effect on the Fae. What does it do, and does it work the same on every caste? How effective a weapon?

I made a second column on the page, a to-do list:

• Form troop to investigate IFPs.

• Form troop to collect iron to make weapons and bullets.

• Form troop to figure out how to make weapons and bullets.

• Get into the Forbidden Libraries. Find out: What is the Haven’s prophecy, and who are the current members? What are the five?

Someone had been sending me pages of Alina’s journal. From her notes, I’d learned that in order to do whatever it was my sister had been trying to do (I assumed stop the Book and drive the Fae from our world), she’d learned there was a prophecy known to the Haven—which was the sidhe-seer’s High Council—that said we needed three things: the stones, the Book, and the five.

I knew what the stones were: four bluish-black rune-covered rocks that, according to Barrons, could either translate parts of the Dark Book or “reveal its true nature.” Barrons had two of them in his possession. V’lane had the third or knew where it was. I had no idea where to find the fourth.

I knew what the Book was, too. That was easy.

Unfortunately, I had no idea what the five were.

I hoped the prophecy might clear things up, and I figured the best place to look for any prophecy about sidhe-seer matters was in Rowena’s Forbidden Libraries, which was why I was so determined to secure a foothold at the abbey. I didn’t care how much I pissed off Rowena. It was the support of the sidhe-seers I wanted.

I added a more immediate, personal goal to my to-do list:

• Take Dani into Dublin tonight and try to track down Chester’s and Ryodan.

IYCGM was If You Can’t Get Me on the cell phone Barrons had given me. I’d called it once. It was answered by a man named Ryodan, and we’d had a very cryptic, Barrons-like conversation. I was willing to bet my last pair of clean panties—and I was dangerously low on them—that Ryodan was one of Barrons’ eight. Both Barrons and Inspector O’Duffy had mentioned talking with the mysterious Ryodan at a place called Chester’s. I’d been meaning to track him down for months, but I’d been distracted by one crisis after another.

I had no idea what or where Chester’s was or if it even still existed in the rubble that was Dublin, but if there was an opportunity to find one of the eight men who’d stormed the abbey with Barrons to free me, I wasn’t about to pass it up. Any man who knew Barrons, any man Barrons trusted to cover his back, was someone I wanted to have a nice, long face-to-face talk with.

On the pantie note:

• Loot store tonight for new underwear.

A lot. Doing laundry wasn’t something I saw myself having time for in the near future. I raked a hand through my hair. My nails were long against my scalp. They weren’t all that had grown. I’d seen the reflection of my hairdo in a window last night. The cut was still good, but I had an inch of blond roots that made me look like a skunk.

Loot store for hair dye and manicure kit.

I planned to grab more clothes while I was at it. Whether it should matter or not, people responded to outer appearances and were motivated to certain behaviors by them. A well-groomed, attractive leader was much more influential than an unkempt one.

I made a third column: long-term major goals that would hopefully be accomplished short term, because our world was changing drastically, much too fast. These were the critical ones. They had to happen.

• Figure out how to contain the Sinsar Dubh!

I nibbled the tip of my pen. Then what? During my first encounter with V’lane, he’d made it clear he felt there was only one option, that there was no one else who could be trusted with it.

• Take the Sinsar Dubh to the Seelie Queen so she can re-create the Song of Making to rebuild the walls and reimprison the Unseelie?

I worried about that one. It wasn’t in my blood to trust anything Fae, but I wasn’t exactly flush with alternatives. I could drive myself crazy wondering what to do with the Sinsar Dubh once I’d gotten it. I decided to focus on one impossibility at a time. Get the Book, then figure out the next step.

I crossed out the last bullet and wrote another one:

• Kick their fecking Fae asses off our world!

I liked that one. I underlined it three times.

O ye of little faith … you didn’t even try.

I winced, closed my journal and my eyes. Since Barrons had left, I’d been trying not to brood over his parting comment. For the past twenty-four hours, while I’d been running around half of Ireland, I’d been replaying the events of Halloween in the back of my mind, indulging myself in an exercise in futility, torturing myself with all the choices I might have made that night that could have yielded a different outcome.

Then Barrons had gone and fired the real killer at me: I’d had a way to reach him the whole time, right there in my backpack.

I opened my eyes, pulled out my cell, and thumbed through the three numbers that had been preprogrammed into the phone when he’d given it to me. I pressed the first one—Barrons’ cell number. I knew it wouldn’t ring. It rang, startling me.

I disconnected quickly.

Mine rang.

I flipped it open, snarled at Barrons, “Just testing,” and immediately disconnected. How in the world were these cell phones working? Was service back up in certain areas?

I changed my settings to private and dialed my parents’ number so they wouldn’t know it was me, reserving the right to hang up if they answered and I couldn’t bring myself to speak. It didn’t go through. I tried The Brickyard, where I’d bartended back home. No connection. I tried a dozen other numbers, with no success. Apparently Barrons had some kind of special service.

I thumbed up IYCGM and pressed it.

“Mac,” a male voice growled.

“Just testing,” I said, and hung up.

I scrolled to IYD.

My phone rang. It was IYCGM. I answered it.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Ryodan said.

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Test the third one.”

I didn’t bother asking how he knew. Like Barrons, he was on top of my every thought. “Why not?”

“There’s a reason it’s called If You’re Dying.”

“What’s that?”

“So you use it only if you’re dying,” he said dryly.

Also, like Barrons, I could go around in circles with him forever. “I’m going to call it, Ryodan.”

“You’re better than that, Mac.”

“Better than what?” I said coolly.

“Lashing out because you hurt. He’s not the one who hurt you. He’s the one who brought you back.”

“Do you know what his idea of bringing me back was?” I snapped.

There was a smile in Ryodan’s voice. “I volunteered for the job. He didn’t seem at all touched by my offer.” The smiled faded. “Don’t lose yourself in anger, Mac. It’s gasoline. You can burn it as fuel, or you can use it to torch everything you care about and end up standing on a scorched battlefield, with everybody dead, even you—only your body doesn’t have the good grace to quit breathing.”

Deep inside, his words resonated. I was straddling a fine line and I knew it. But there was a part of me that wanted to go over the edge. Wanted to scorch the battlefield. Just to watch the damned thing burn.

“Stay focused, Mac. Keep your eyes on the prize.”

“What the bloody hell is the prize?”

“We work together. Take back our world. We all win.”

“What are you, Ryodan?”

He laughed.

“What are the nine of you?” I pressed. He said nothing. “I’m going to call it,” I threatened. “‘Bye now.” I didn’t hang up.

He stopped laughing. “I’ll kill you myself, Mac.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Woman,” he said, and his voice was suddenly so hard and cold and ancient-sounding that the fine hair at the nape of my neck lifted and prickled all the way down my spine, “you don’t know the first thing about me. The Mac that would call IYD when she’s not dying isn’t the Mac I’ll protect. Choose carefully. Choose wrong, and it will be the last choice you ever make.”

“Don’t you threaten—” I held the phone away from my ear and stared at it disbelievingly.

He’d hung up. On me. The only one who could track the Book. This season’s MVP! And I hadn’t even gotten around to asking him what Chester’s was and where to find it!

My hair gusted, raised straight up in the air around my face in a tangle. Sheets flapped on the furniture. The flames of the fire flared, crackled, then nearly went out.

Dani stood in front of me, guzzling orange juice and cramming her mouth with what looked like Little Debbie cakes.

“We got trubs, Mac. Ro’s at the bus, and so’s half the abbey. Shit’s hittin’ the fan big-time. S’time to go,” she mumbled around a mouthful. She sniffed the air and looked crestfallen. “Dude, they were both here? Why’n’t’cha call me?”

If Ro and half the abbey were at the bus, “trubs” were troubles. I was exhausted. I was wired. I was as ready as I was going to be. I stood and shoved my cell phone into my pocket. “You have super hearing. Why didn’t you hear them?”

“S’not that good.”

My eyes narrowed. “You really can smell that they were here?” What I’d give for her supersenses.

She nodded. “I’m gonna give one of ‘em my virginity one day.” She preened.

I was momentarily dumbstruck. I couldn’t begin to enumerate all the things that were appalling about that possibility. “We so have to talk,” I finally managed. I added pointedly, “Danielle.” Her gamine grin faded and I hated to see it go, so I added, “I don’t know why you don’t like it. It’s such a pretty name.” I knew why. Her toughness was all she had.

“Ow. Sorry I duded you. Man.” She held out her hand.

“No, thanks, I’m walking.”

She snickered, grabbed my arm anyway, and we were gone.