Out of bed we’re islands.
Ms. Lane and Barrons.
The first time he retreated into distance, it hurt. I felt rejected.
Until I realized I’d done it, too. It wasn’t just him. Our boundaries seem sewn to our clothes; we can no more put one on without the other than take them off separately.
I sometimes wonder if our passion is so obsessive and enormous that we need distance between the bonfires. I’m a moth to his flame and it frightens me how willingly I’d burn my wings off for him. Destroy the world. Follow him to Hell. It’s scary to feel like you can’t breathe without someone. That a man has so much power over you because you love him as much as, if not more than, you care for yourself.
So I fly away for a while—maybe just to know I can—and he vanishes to do whatever Barrons does for whatever reasons he does it.
I always come back. He does, too. Actions speak.
I shift restlessly and change the subject. “You invite my enemy here. That’s bullshit. ”
A Day in the Life: You search manuscripts for a spell that may not exist. You paint your nails. You clip your nails. Ah, let us not forget you examine your nails.
I scowl. “I do more than that. And leave my nails out of this. ”
You don’t visit your parents. You don’t go to the abbey. You’re barely eating, and your clothes—
I cut him off by pretending to examine my nails again. This week they alternate black diamond, white ice, black diamond, white ice. The color scheme comforts me, as nothing else in my life is so tidily delineated. I’m acutely aware of the sorry state of my recent outfits and have no desire to hear what he thinks of them. It’s difficult to care when you’re always covered with yellow dust. He’s silent so long I finally glance warily up to find him regarding me with an expression women have been on the receiving end of since time immemorial, as if I’m a species he simply can’t fathom.
Do you think I can’t protect you should you persist with your idiotic passivity?
Idiotic passivity, my ass. As today proved, activity is far more idiotic, and deadly. Is that why he arranged this meeting? To force me to be involved? “Of course not. ” I change the subject.
It’s time. He says his next words aloud and there’s a gentleness to them that undoes me. “You’re not living anymore, Rainbow Girl. ”
I melt when he calls me that. There’s something in the way he says those two words that makes it seem he’s said a thousand and they all make me glow. It says he sees the pretty-in-pink Mac I was when I first arrived, the black, kick-ass Mac I’ve become (unless covered with Unseelie fleas), plus every incarnation in between, and he wants them all.
I know I’m not living anymore. No one could be more excruciatingly aware of that fact. It’s driving me bugfuck. Passivity isn’t my nature and I’m choking on it, drowning in it, my balls held firmly hostage by a Book.
I stare up at him and tell him the words I can’t bring myself to say out loud.
I killed the Gray Woman today.
A corner of his sexy mouth lifts. “Banner fucking day. About time. ”
I also killed one of the Guardians.
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“Ah, he got in the way. ”
I have no idea what happened. I blacked out.
A human would be shocked, horrified, demand to know what happened. Barrons’s gaze doesn’t change and he asks no questions. He tallies debits and credits. “You took two lives and saved thousands. ”
Bottom line it all you want, the end doesn’t justify the means, I say silently, pissed that he elevated the conversation I don’t want to be having to a verbal level.
“Debatable. ”
I lost control of myself. It took me over and made me kill. Said I’m the car and it’s the driver. The unspoken words hang like knives in the air anyway, cutting me.
“We train harder. ”
I hate mys—
“Never say that. ”
“I didn’t,” I mutter. Not technically.
“You are what you are. Find a way to live with it. ”
“Easier said than done. ”
“Someone told you life was easy. You believed them,” he mocks.
“I just don’t see why they all have to come here. Why not hold this little powwow at Chester’s?” I change the subject swiftly.
Like a verbal dancer, he follows my lead, and I know why: as far as he’s concerned the discussion is over anyway. He has the blood of countless victims on his hands, while I’m having a hard time dealing with one. To him, this day is no different than any other: I’m possessed by a malevolent demon and I sinned. Tomorrow I’ll try again. I might sin again. I might not. But tomorrow always comes. For me and the demon. Despite my screwup, my action will ultimately save countless lives. Barrons has the thousand-yard stare and conscience of an immortal. I’m not there yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be there. I ended a life before its time today. A family man. A good man. I must find a way to atone.
“I have wards in my bookstore that neutralize the princes’ power while within my walls,” he reminds me.
“You’re inviting my rapists into my home. ” I toss the dual reminder that he wasn’t there to save me the night the Unseelie Princes captured me in the church, and that it’s my bookstore, without inflection, still it detonates in the room.
Abruptly the air is so charged with savagery that I feel squished into a corner on the chesterfield. Barrons saturates space when he’s in a good mood—not that I would ever really call any mood Barrons exhibits “good”—but when he’s furious, it’s hard to breathe. He throws off energy, crams the air with intensity and mass, forcing everything else to retract into itself.
“Or have you forgotten that little fact?” I want them dead. I think he should want them dead. I fondle the spear in my thigh sheath lovingly. “We could kill them together. ” I snatch my hand away hastily and busy myself plucking imaginary lint from my black Disturbed concert tee-shirt, which I’m wearing not because I’ve been enjoying their music so much but because it’s how I feel. The images the Sinsar Dubh threw at me the second I touched my spear were graphically detailed and from this afternoon.
“You will not kill them when they come here. Nor will I. ” The three words are guttural, accompanied by a thick rattle in his chest. It’s the sound of his beast trying to claw its way out of his skin. I can barely understand his last word. “Yet. ”
“Why?”
His chest expands so enormously it threatens to pop buttons on his shirt. He says nothing for a moment, face impassive, his body frozen on an inhalation. Finally his ribs relax and he exhales carefully. I admire his self-control. I want it for my own. I may be more sparing with mention of my gang rape in the future. Although I enjoy baiting this bear, I don’t enjoy his pain. Just his fire.
When he speaks again, his words are precisely enunciated. “They are a known quantity, capable of controlling the masses. I’ve watched countless civilizations rise and fall. I’ve isolated seven components necessary to achieve the future I seek. Destroy the princes at this particular moment and it won’t happen. They are currently linchpins. They will not always be. ”
The future he seeks? I want to know what Jericho Barrons plans, to be privy to his goals. I don’t ask. He shares when he’s ready and his reply was already generous for him.
And fascinating. I know what linchpins are.
When I was child, Daddy used to ride me around on his lap when he cut grass. I loved those hot Georgia days, drenched with the smell of a fresh mowed lawn, magnolia blossoms bobbing heavy in the humid, sticky air, a glass jar of sweet tea steeping on the front porch, near two ice-filled glasses topped with a sprig of mint from the garden.
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One day I “helped” Daddy change the tire on the lawn mower and he taught me about linchpins. I think I fell in love with all things with wheels that day, sprung of a golden summer hour with t
he man who can always make me feel like both princess and warrior.
A linchpin is a fastener that keeps the wheel from falling off the axle. It’s inserted crosswise directly through the axle’s end, where it stays securely in place until manually removed. The end of the pin usually has a loop of metal so it’s easy to pull out.
In a broader sense, a linchpin is a key component that holds the elements of a complicated structure together. Some theorize if you can isolate the linchpin of a social, economic, or political assemblage, you can destroy it in one fell swoop with a minute nudge or adjustment. Conversely, if you identify linchpins and protect them until you’ve achieved your desired result, you can shape the outcome. It doesn’t surprise me Barrons lives and breathes The Art of War. “I can kill them when they’re not?” I want to be perfectly clear about this.
“The instant they’re not, I will. ”
We’ll fight about who does the honors later. I’ll just have to make sure there are no humans in the vicinity when it happens.
“You could let Ryodan host this summit. At Chester’s. ”
“And have your ghoulish army in attendance?”
“You could ward the club against them. ”
He snorts. “Now I’m your personal warder. You have no idea how complicated such magic is. ”
Actually, I have a fairly good idea. He hasn’t died in a while and his chest is covered, both arms are fully sleeved, and half his back is tattooed with black and crimson protection spells. The magic in which he dabbles is dangerous. Speaking of magic, “Barrons, it’s been three weeks since Dani disappeared. Isn’t there some kind of spell you can do?”
“Ward this. Spell that. How did you navigate life before you met me?”
I shrug. “It’s kind of like realizing you married Bewitched. Except not in the married sense,” I add hastily. “But you know what I mean. Why break your back vacuuming when a saucy twitch of the nose can clean the whole house?”
“My nose has never twitched, saucily or otherwise. And that was an utterly absurd premise. The only price for using magic was compounded human stupidity. Humans consistently engender chaos without violating alchemical principles. ”
“Oh, my God, you watched—”
“I did not. ”
“Yes, you—”
“Did not. ”
“You just said—”
“Inescapable pop culture. ”
“Oh, you so watched it. ” I imagine this big, barbaric man stretched out on a tangle of silk sheets, naked, one arm behind his head, watching the comic antics of Darrin and Samantha Stephens on a large flat-screen TV. The idea tickles me, turns me on somehow. It’s so anachronistic, it makes me want to hunt down old DVDs, stretch out beside him, and lose myself in a simple show from a simpler time when the only price for magic was compounded human stupidity. Laugh together, do something mindless and fun. Then of course do something else mind-blowing. I’d love a few long rainy carefree days in bed with this man.
“Repetition of an erroneous assertion fails to alter reality. And you know we can’t track her in Faery. That’s why she went. ”
Great, now I’m hearing the theme song from Bewitched in my head. It’s always a hard one to get out. “When she gets back, I want somebody tattooing her. The instant she gets back. ”
“Bloody hell, after all the grief you gave me. Have you forgotten our tattoos haven’t worked right since the walls fell? Give it time. We’ll find her. At the moment the most pressing matter on our agenda is this meeting. ”
The meeting. I shift restlessly and my amusement vanishes just like that. “Are you sure we can’t move it somewhere else?”
“It happens here. You will attend. ”
He asks little of me and gives much in return. I can’t imagine the world without him and don’t want to. Once, I almost destroyed it because I believed him gone forever.
“Aye aye, master,” I mutter crossly.
He smiles faintly. “You’re learning, Ms. Lane, you’re learning. ”
Katarina McLaughlin, Rowena’s replacement as headmistress of the abbey, is the first to arrive.
The slim brunette’s patient gray gaze searches mine the instant I open the door, reminding me why I’ve been avoiding her. Her talent is emotional telepathy and I have no idea how deep she can go. In nightmares, she peels me like a pearly onion and reveals the rotted inner bulb.
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I hold my breath while she completes her inspection. Does she sense the malevolence of the Sinsar Dubh? The guilt of my afternoon murder?
“How are you, Mac? We’ve not been seeing much of you lately. ” You weren’t at the abbey, defending us, is the message I think I read unspoken in her eyes and am shamed by it. But I’ve been a little paranoid lately so I’m probably wrong.
I breathe a little easier. “Good, Kat. You?”
“Why weren’t you at the abbey the night we battled the Hoar Frost King? We could have used your support, and that’s for sure,” she says in her soft, Irish lilt.
There it is, the knife through my already perforated heart. Nice to know I wasn’t being paranoid, after all. Leave it to Kat to be so direct.
“Barrons and I were in the Silvers. I didn’t get word until it was over. I’m so sorry, Kat. ”
Her sharp gaze moves from my left eye to my right and back, and she slowly nods. “It’s as well. We lost many of our sisters that night. We can’t afford to lose you. Speaking of losing—have you seen Dani? She’s not been by the abbey since we defeated the Hoar Frost King. I’ve had girls out searching but they’ve found no trace of her and I’ve not seen a single of her papers. It’s as if she’s simply vanished. ”
I don’t bat a lash. “I thought she was staying with you. ”
“We were arguing that night about where she should live. I believed she was trying to make a point by staying away, but the longer she’s gone the more I worry. These are dangerous times, even for her. Would you mind keeping an eye out? And if you see her, tell her she’s sorely missed. I want her to come home. ”
“Of course. ” I want her to come home, too.
“I’m hoping you’ll drop by the abbey sometime, Mac. Spend a night with us, or a week if you’ve the mind. I’ve been wanting to hear the tale of how you managed to bring the Sinsar Dubh to us. ” She pauses then adds, “There’s another thing I’d like to be discussing with you, if you’ve the time. About Cruce. Seeing how you know more about Fae princes than any of us. ”
“His cage is holding, right?” That’s another of my recurring nightmares. Cruce gets out, somehow turns me Pri-ya again, and I run off with him to another world where we get down to populating it with little book-babies. Seriously. Books with feet and arms that cry all the time and want some kind of milk I don’t have. My dreams have been beyond warped lately.
“Of course. ” She pauses again. “But there are other concerns I’d prefer to discuss in private. If you’ll just come to the abbey, you’ll see what I mean. This thaw … I thought when the fire-world threatening our home was gone … och, but then it didn’t and it turns out it wasn’t …” She trails off and for an instant her composure slips.
I glimpse an unexpected uncertainty in her and think, Oh no, not her, too. Coming into sudden power can do funny things to you if you care deeply about the world around you, and we both do. It’s like suddenly getting a Murcielago LP 640, V-12 with a testy clutch when you’re used to a six-cylinder Mercedes. You drive badly at first, jerky on the gas and brake, don’t trust your own feet, sometimes even rear-end the folks in front of you when you try to start from a stop, until you get a feel for it. Or, like me today, crash into a wall and decimate whatever’s in the way.
“Kat, what’s wrong at the abbey? What’s going on?”
“You’ll just have to—” She glances past me. “Barrons. ”
“Katarina. ”
I feel his energy behind me, sexual, electric. Every cell in my bo
dy comes alive when he’s near. He moves past us, into the alcoved entry of the bookstore, and I shiver with desire. My need for sex seems directly proportionate to how much emotion I repress, and I’m repressing violently today. When I first came to Dublin, I talked and probed and poked into everything, splashed my feelings all over the place, like the rainbow colors of my wardrobe. Now I wear black and let almost nothing I feel show.
Until Barrons undresses me. Then I explode. I vent the fire and fury of everything I feel on him and he blows it right back at me, a hot, dangerous sirocco that levels and reshapes, and it binds us in a sacred place that needs no sun in the sky, no moon or stars. Just us.
The bell tinkles as he opens the door. I love that sound and imagine it chimes Welcome to Mac’s home each time it rings.
“The Unseelie Princes will be coming back with him,” I warn Kat as I watch him go.
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“And one Seelie Prince who is fool enough to claim to be king,” Barrons growls as the door closes behind him.
“Can he really control them?” Kat asks.
She’s visibly nervous. I don’t blame her. The Unseelie Princes are deadly. The two joining us today rode the Wild Hunt in ancient times with two others of their kind, and became renowned far and wide as the fabled Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Cruce is War. I suspect Christian is becoming Death, which means Pestilence and Famine are soon to be my houseguests. Lovely. “He says he can keep them neutralized inside the store. ”
Kat says flatly, “You do realize he’s not there, right?”
“Excuse me?” The man is certainly “there” enough for me. All six feet three of him and two hundred forty-five pounds of dense, solid, rough-and-ready muscle.
“Barrons. He’s like Ryodan. I feel nothing when I reach for either of them with my gift. It’s more than a void of emotion, there is no existence there. The space they occupy is blank. ”
“Maybe they can block you. Erect a shield around themselves. Barrons knows wards like nobody’s business. ” Okay, he seriously needs to teach me that trick. I’m blocking with everything I’ve got, yet I suspect if Kat decided to probe me, I’d be in a world of trouble.
“I can also discern the presence of wards, Mac. Nothing just walked out that door. A complete absence of anything recognizable as life. ”
“Perhaps their wards are beyond our perception. ” I want to get off this topic of assessing people with her gift. I don’t want her to think about doing it to me. “Kat, I’d love to come to the abbey. How’s next weekend?” I’ll find some excuse or another to no-show. I take her arm and begin gently steering her back and up the stairs, to the tables Barrons arranged for the meeting. “Hey, would you like something to drink? I’ve got soda, sweet tea, and water. I even brought some milk back last time I went through the Silvers,” I lie. Barrons brought it from Chester’s and I feel a little guilty getting so many perks. But not too guilty to drink it.