Fever 3 - Faefever (16 page)

I shoved him forward as hard as I could. V’lane glided instantly back.

Barrons jerked a furious look over his shoulder at me.

I smiled. I don’t think many women push Barrons around.

“What games are you playing,
sidhe
-seer?” V’lane hissed.

The Fae Prince feared Barrons. I tried to process that thought but I’m not sure I succeeded.

“Can you still feel the Book?” Barrons asked, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

“Yes, where has it gone?” demanded V’lane. “Which way?”

“You wasted too much time arguing,” I lied. I still had a faint tingle. It had stopped somewhere. “It passed beyond my radar a few minutes ago.” I wasn’t sure either of them believed me, but what could they do?

Actually, it occurred to me, they both could do something really nasty to me if they felt like it: Barrons could use Voice, force me to tell him the truth, and make me hunt it, and if I understood a death-by-sex Fae’s thrall, V’lane could amp up the sex thing and steer me around like a horny little divining rod.

So, why weren’t they? Because they really
were
decent guys with decent motives, albeit very screwed-up personalities? Or because they didn’t want each other around when they used me to track it, and neither could think of a way to get rid of the other at the moment?

Were we all letting it get away, to keep each other from getting it? Wow. I used to have a hard time with high school geometry. Life was way more complicated than math.

“Move,” Barrons said. “Get on the bike.”

I didn’t like his tone.

“Where will you go, Ms. Lane, if not with me or him? Back home to Ashford? Will you strike out on your own? Get a flat? Will your father have to come pack up after you, like you cleaned up after your sister?”

I turned and began walking. He followed me, close enough that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. “He’ll sift you,” he said in a low growl, “if you give him the chance.”

“I don’t think he’ll risk getting within twenty feet of you,” I said coolly. “And you didn’t have to remind me that my sister’s dead. That was a cheap shot.”

I got on the Harley.

Go with V’lane and be punished for violating our bargain?

I’d take my chances with Barrons. For now.

EIGHT

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

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.

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?