Fever 3 - Faefever (6 page)

We both knew he wouldn’t.

It had taken hours of steering him around Dublin, showing him what was in the bars, driving the cabs, and running the vendor stands, to get through to him, but I’d finally managed. I’d had to coach him the entire time on how to act, how to sneak looks and not to betray us, unless he wanted to end up as dead as O’Duffy.

Regardless of what I might think of his methods of handling me, Inspector Jayne was a fine cop, with sound instincts—whether he liked what they were telling him or not. Though he’d insisted none of it was real, he’d nonetheless employed the stealth of twenty-two years of investigative procedure. He’d regarded the mouthless, sad, wet-eyed monsters and the leather-winged gargoyles and the hulking masses of deformed limbs and oozing flesh with the perfect impassivity of a nonbeliever.

He’d slipped up only once, a few minutes ago.

I’d quickly nulled and stabbed three Rhino-boys in the dark alley we’d been using as a shortcut.

Jayne stood there, staring down at their gray-limbed bodies, absorbing the lumpy faces with jutting jaws and tusklike teeth, the beady eyes and elephant skin, the open wounds, revealing pinkish gray flesh marbled with pus-filled cysts. “You
fed
me this?” he said finally.

I shrugged. “It was the only way I knew to show you what you needed to see.”

“Pieces of these . . .
things . . .
were in those little
sandwiches
?” His voice rose; his ruddy face was pale.

“Uh-huh.”

He looked at me, his Adam’s apple convulsing, and for a moment I thought he was going to vomit but he got it under control. “Lady, you are one sick fuck.”

“Come on. There’s one more thing I want you to see,” I told him.

“I’ve seen enough.”

“No, you haven’t. Not yet.” I’d saved the worst for last.

I concluded our sightseeing tour at the edge of a new Dark Zone on the north side of the river Liffey that I’d been planning to scout, so I could ink its parameters on the map I’d nailed up on my bedroom wall. “Remember those places you couldn’t find on the maps?” I said. “The area next to the bookstore? The ones O’Duffy was checking into? This is what they are.” I waved a hand down the street.

Jayne took a step toward the darkness and I barked, “Don’t leave the light!”

He stopped beneath a streetlamp and leaned against it. I watched his face as he watched the Shades slithering hungrily at the edge of the darkness.

“And you expect me to believe these shadows eat people?” he finally said, tightly.

“If you don’t believe me, go home, get one of your kids, and send them in. See what happens.” I didn’t feel as cold as I sounded when I said it, but I had to get through to him, and to do that, I needed to hit him where he lived, bring the threat as close to home as I could.

“Don’t you ever mention my children to me again!” he shouted, turning on me. “Do you hear me? Never!”

“When this wears off,” I pointed out, “you’ll no longer know where the Dark Zones are. Your children might walk to school through one, and never come home again. Will you go looking for their piles? Will you even know where to look? Will you die trying?”

“Are you threatening me?” Big hands fisting, he bristled toward me.

I stood my ground. “No. I’m offering to help you. I’m offering you a deal. In a day, give or take a little, you won’t be able to see any of this anymore. You won’t have any idea where the danger to your family lies, and it’s all around you. I can keep you informed. I can tell you where the Dark Zones are, where the majority of the Unseelie are gathering, and how best to keep your wife and children safe. If it gets really bad, I can tell you when to get out of town, and where to go. All I want in exchange is a little information. It’s not like I’m asking you to help me commit crimes. I’m asking you to help me try to prevent them. We’re on the same side, Inspector. Until tonight, you just didn’t know what was on the other side. Now you do. Help me stop what’s happening in this city.”

“This is insane.”

“Insane or not, it’s real.” I’d had a hard time accepting that, too. The bridge connecting the sane world to this dark, Fae-infested Dublin had taken me many faltering steps to cross. “It killed O’Duffy. Will you let it kill you?”

He looked away and said nothing. At that moment, I knew I’d won. I knew he would call me the next time a crime was radioed in. He would hate every minute of it, he would tell himself he was crazy, but he would make the call, and that was all I needed.

I left Jayne at the Garda station on Pearse Street, assuring him the vision would wear off soon. As we parted, I saw the same hollow expression in his eyes I sometimes glimpsed in my own.

I felt sorry for him.

But I needed someone on the inside at the Garda, and now I had him.

Besides, if I hadn’t opened his eyes tonight and forced him to see what was going on, he’d have ended up dead in a matter of days. He’d been nosing around too much. He’d have spotted an abandoned car down some back alley and walked into a Dark Zone at night, or whoever’d slit O’Duffy’s throat to silence him would have slit Jayne’s next.

He’d been a walking dead man. Now, at least, he had a chance.

THREE

I hated him.

Oh, I’d hated my sister’s murderer before, but now I hated him even more.

Here, in my white-knuckled hand, was proof that the Lord Master had used his dark powers on Alina, turned her into someone she wasn’t, before killing her: A page torn from her journal, penned in the beautiful, gently sloping hand she’d begun perfecting before I’d even learned to read.

A page so unlike Alina that it couldn’t have been more obvious he’d brainwashed her, done that Voice thing to her he’d done to me the other night in the caves beneath the Burren, when he’d demanded I give him the amulet and come with him, and I’d been unable to resist or deny him. With the power of a few mere words, he’d turned me into a mindless automaton. If not for Barrons, I would have trundled off behind him, enslaved. But Barrons, too, was skilled in the Druid power of Voice, and had freed me from the Lord Master’s spell.

I knew my sister. She’d been happy in Ashford. She’d loved being the person she was: bright, successful, and fun, idolized by me and most everyone else in town, the one whose smiling face was always in the newspaper for some honor or another, the one who did everything right.

He calls me his Queen of the Night.

“Queen of the Night, my petunia.” My sister had never wanted to be queen of anything, but if she had, it certainly wouldn’t have been the night. It would have been something festive, like Ashford’s annual Peach & Pumpkin Parade. She would have worn a shiny orange ribbon and a silver tiara, and been on the front page of the Ashford
Journal-Constitution
the next day.

I always wanted to be more like Mac.
She’d never
once
said she wished she was more like me!
When people call her lazy and selfish, she doesn’t care.
Had people really said that about me? Had I been deaf back then, or just too dumb to care?

And what she’d written about sex was definitely not my sister. Alina didn’t like it doggie-style. She’d considered it demeaning.
On your hands and knees, babe. Yeah, right,
she’d say, and laugh.
Up yours.

“See, not Alina,” I told the page.

Who had my sister killed the night she’d written this entry? A monster? Or had the Lord Master brainwashed her into killing one of the good guys for him? Who had she been going to see the next day? Had she been planning to kill her, too? Were they humans she’d been killing, or Fae? If they were Fae,
how
had she been killing them? I had the spear. Dani, a courier for Post Haste, Inc., the false front for the organization of
sidhe
-seers run by the Grand Mistress, Rowena, had the sword. Those were the only two weapons I knew of that could kill a Fae. Had Alina discovered some other weapon I didn’t know about? Of all the pages in her journal, why had someone sent me
this
page?

Most important and troubling of all:
Who
had sent it to me? Who had my sister’s journal? V’lane, Barrons, and Rowena all denied ever having met her. Might the Lord Master himself have sent it, thinking perhaps, in his twisted arrogance, that it would make me find him as attractive as my sister had? As usual, I was adrift in a sea of questions and if answers were lifeboats, I was in imminent danger of drowning.

I picked up the envelope and studied it. Plain, off-white vellum, thick and tasteful enough to have been custom-ordered; still, it told me nothing.

The address, neatly typed in generic font, could have come from any inkjet or laser printer, anywhere in the world.

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

There was no return address. The only clue it offered was a Dublin postmark, dated yesterday, and that was no clue at all.

I sipped my coffee, thinking. I’d gotten up early this morning, dressed, and hurried down from my bedroom on the top floor of the shop so I could stock the new dailies and monthlies, but I’d gotten distracted by the stack of mail piled on the counter. Three bills into it, I’d found the envelope containing the page from Alina’s journal. The pile of mail teetered; the monthlies were still boxed.

I closed my eyes and rubbed them. I’d been hunting for my sister’s journal, desperate to find it before someone else did, but it was too late. Someone else had gotten to it before me. Someone else was privy to her innermost thoughts, and had at their disposal all the knowledge she’d gained since she’d arrived on Ireland’s Fae-infested shores.

What other secrets did her diary contain, besides unflattering personal insight into me? Had she written about the location of any of the Hallows or relics we needed? Did someone else know about the
Sinsar Dubh,
and how it was moving around? Were I and my anonymous foe both hoping to track it the same way?

The phone began to ring, a local number. I ignored it. Everyone that mattered to me had my cell phone number. Seeing Alina’s handwriting, hearing her words spoken aloud in my mind, as I’d read them, had left me feeling raw. I was in no mood to talk books to a customer.

The phone finally stopped ringing, but after a three-second pause, began again.

The third time it started ringing, I picked it up, just to shut it up.

It was Christian MacKeltar, wondering what had happened to me the other night, and why I hadn’t returned any of his calls. I could hardly tell him it was because I’d been a little busy being driven to my knees by a sentient Book; watching my murderous employer tote a dead body around; serving addictive, cannibalistic tea to a homicide detective in order to turn him into my informant, then steering him around the city, forcing him to see monsters; and just now, reading up on how my sister had loved having sex with the very monster responsible for bringing the rest of the monsters through to our world.

No, I was quite certain all of that would only alienate a man I was hoping might prove a valuable source of information.

So I offered him a colorful bouquet of lies, and made a new date with him for tonight.

_____

By the time I left to go see Christian, Barrons still hadn’t put in an appearance, and I was glad. I wasn’t ready to face him yet.

As I locked up the bookstore, I scanned the Dark Zone. Three Shades toed the edge of the light. The rest slithered and slid in the shadows. Nothing had changed. Their prison of darkness still held.

I turned briskly to my left and headed for Trinity College, where Christian worked in the Ancient Languages Department. I’d met him several weeks ago, when Barrons had sent me to pick up an envelope from the woman who ran the department. She hadn’t been there, but Christian had.

Then we’d run into each other a second time, a week ago, in a pub, where he’d stunned me by telling me he’d known my sister, and even knew what she and I were. Our conversation had been rudely interrupted by Barrons, who’d called to warn me Hunters were in the city, and told me to return to the bookstore. I’d been planning to call Christian the next day and find out what else he knew, but on my way home, I’d been cornered by Hunters and abducted by Mallucé and, needless to say, I’d had my hands a little full battling for my life. Then, the other night, the debilitating appearance of the
Sinsar Dubh
had prevented us from meeting again. I was anxious to find out what he knew.

I pushed my curls back from my forehead and fluffed them with my fingers. I’d dressed up again tonight, wound a brilliant silk scarf through my hair and tied it, letting the brightly colored ends trail over my shoulder, and drape softly in my cleavage. I was nothing if not determined; at least twice a week I would wear bright, pretty clothes. I was afraid if I didn’t, I’d forget who I was. I’d turn into what I felt like: a grungy, weapon-bearing, pissy, resentful, vengeance-hungry bitch. The girl with long blond hair, perfect makeup, and nails might be gone, but I was still pretty. My shoulder-length Arabian-night hair curled flatteringly around my face, complementing my green eyes and clear skin. Coupling red lipstick with my darker ’do made me look older, sexier than I used to.

I’d chosen clothes tonight that hugged my curves and showed them to their best advantage. I was wearing a cream skirt, with a snug yellow sweater in honor of Alina (beneath a short, stylish, cream raincoat that concealed eight flashlights, two knives, and a spear), high heels, and pearls. Dad said the day they’d picked us up from the adoption agency, Alina had been dressed like a sunbeam, and I’d been a rainbow.

Alina.

Her absence in my life was so painful that it was a presence. Grief still kicked me awake in the morning, kept me company all day, and crawled into bed with me at night.

Dublin was a constant reminder of her. She was here in every street, in the face of every young coed who had no idea what was walking right alongside her, masquerading as human. She was laughing in the pubs, and dying later in the dark.

She was all the people I couldn’t save.

I skirted the busy
craic
-filled streets of Temple Bar and headed straight for the college. Last night I’d walked through the heavily trafficked tourist zone that boasted over six hundred pubs, but tonight I was in no mood to be reminded that there were only two known weapons that could kill Fae and hundreds, if not thousands, of Unseelie in the city. My encounter with the
Sinsar Dubh
had sobered me. The sheer evilness of the thing had served as a grim reminder that, although I might have recently triumphed in an against-all-odds type of situation and walked out of it stronger, there was worse in store for me yet.

When I arrived at the office that housed the staff of the Ancient Languages Department, Christian met me at the door, looking young, hip, and hot in faded jeans, rugged boots, and a sweater, his long, dark hair pulled back at his nape in a leather thong. He gave me a charged, appreciative look, making me glad I’d taken care with my appearance. A woman likes to know her efforts are paying off.

He took my arm and suggested we go somewhere else. “They’re discussing the budget,” he advised in a deep, husky brogue, adjusting his stuffed backpack over a well-muscled shoulder.

“Don’t you need to stay?”

“Nah. Only full-timers have to suffer the meetings. I’m part-time.” He flashed a killer smile that made me stand up straight. Christian was the kind of good-looking that hit you over the head, made you keep stealing second and third glances at him: the five-o’clock shadow on the strong jaw, the broad shoulders, the flawless dark skin, and the striking tiger-eyes. There was an easy grace to his long-limbed body that hinted at maturity beyond his years. “Besides, it’s not a place I’m comfortable talking, and we’ve a great deal to talk about, lass.”

I hoped that meant someone was finally going to tell me something useful about my sister. He led me to a windowless study room off a vending area in the nearly deserted basement of the building. We settled into folding metal chairs, beneath the hum of fluorescent lights, where I imagined Alina might have sat and studied a time or two. I wasted no time asking Christian how he’d met her. I wondered if he’d been one of the boys she’d dated when she’d first come over, before she’d been brainwashed by the Lord Master. I sure would have. In another life. A normal one.