V’lane’s eyelids lowered halfway and he looked to the side. It was a human look, secretive, contemplative, as if he were sorting through a wealth of information, trying to decide how much, if anything, to share. “What do you know of it, MacKayla?”
“Virtually nothing,” I said. “What’s . . . in it . . . that everyone wants so badly?” It was hard to think of it as a book, with an “it” for information to be “in” when scored into my mind was the dark shape of the Beast, not pages at all.
“What did it look like when you saw it? A book? Ancient and heavy, bound by bands and locks?”
I nodded.
“Have you seen the creature it becomes?” He absorbed my face. “I see you have. You neglected to tell me that. ”
“I didn’t think it was important. ”
“Everything that concerns the Sinsar Dubh is important. What legends do humans tell of our origins, sidhe-seer?”
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It was a sure sign he was displeased when he called me by title, not name. I told him what little I’d learned from the Irish Book of Invasions.
He shook his head. “Recent history, grossly inaccurate. We have been here far longer than that. Do you know the history of the Unseelie King?”
“No. ”
“Then you do not know who he is. ”
I shook my head. “Should I?”
“The Unseelie King was once the King of the Light, the Queen’s consort, and Seelie. In the beginning, there was only Seelie. ”
He had me. I was riveted. This was true Fae lore straight from a Fae. Stuff I doubted I’d ever find in the sidhe-seer archives. “What happened?”
“What happened in your Eden?” he mocked. “What always happens? Someone wanted more. ”
“The king?” I guessed.
“Ours is a matriarchal line. The king held vestigial power. Only the queen knew the Song of Making. ”
“What’s the Song of Making?” I’d heard of it from Barrons and seen references in the books I’d been reading but still didn’t know what it was.
“Impossible to explain to your stunted consciousness. ”
“Try,” I said dryly.
He gave me one of his affected shrugs. “It is life. It is that from which we come. It is the ultimate power to create, to destroy, depending on how it is used. It sings into existence . . . change. ”
“As opposed to stasis. ”
“Exactly,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed, “You mock me. ”
“Only a little. Do Fae really only understand those two things?”
A sudden, icy breeze buffeted the terrace and tiny crystals of frost settled over my plate. “Our perception is not limited, sidhe-seer. It is so vast it defies your paltry language, as does my name. It is because we comprehend so much that we must distill things to their essential natures. Do not presume to think you understand our nature. Though we have long consorted with your race, we have never shown our true face. It is impossible for you to truly behold us. If I showed you—” He stopped abruptly.
“Showed me what, V’lane?” I said softly. I popped a bite of cracker spread with lightly frosted caviar in my mouth. I’d never had it before. I wouldn’t be having it again. Rhino-boy was more palatable. I hastily downed a strawberry chased by a gulp of champagne.
He offered me a smile. He’d been practicing. It was smoother, less alien. The day heated up again; the frost melted. “Irrelevant. You wanted to know of our origins. ”
I wanted to know about the Book. But I was eager to hear anything else he was willing to share. “How do you know the history of your race, if you’ve drunk from the cauldron?”
“We have stores of knowledge. After drinking, most seek immediately to become reacquainted with who and what we are. ”
“You forget to remember. ” How strange. And how awful, I thought, to be so paranoid, to have lived so long madness settled in. To be reborn but never truly wiped clean. To come back fearful, in a place of such strange and treacherous politics. “The Seelie King wanted more,” I prompted.
“Yes. He envied the queen the Song of Making, and petitioned her to teach it to him. He had become enamored of a mortal of whom he did not wish to be deprived until he had sated his desire for her. It did not appear to be waning. She was . . . different to him. I would merely have substituted another. He asked the queen to make her Fae. ”
“Can the queen do that? Make someone Fae?”
“I do not know. The king believed she could. The queen refused, and the king tried to steal from her that which he sought. When she caught him, she punished him. Then she waited for his obsession to pale. It did not. He began . . . experimenting on lesser Fae, in hopes of teaching himself the Song. ”
“What kind of experiments?”
“A human might grasp it as an advanced form of genetic mutation or cloning, without DNA or physical matter to mutate. He tried to create life, MacKayla. And he succeeded. But without the Song of Making. ”
“But I thought the Song is life. How could he create life without the Song?”
“Precisely. It was imperfect. Flawed. ” He paused. “Yet it lived, and was immortal. ”
I got it, and gasped. “He made the Unseelie!”
“Yes. The dark ones are the Seelie King’s children. For thousands of years he experimented, concealing his work from the queen. Their numbers grew, as did their hungers. ”
“But his mortal woman must have been long dead by then. What was the point?”
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“She was alive, kept so in a cage of his making. But trapped, she withered, so for her, he created the Sifting Silvers and gave her worlds to explore. Although time passes outside them, within them it does not. One might spend a thousand centuries in there, and walk out not one hour older. ”
“I thought the mirrors were used for travel between realms. ”
“They are used for that, too. The Silvers are . . . complicated things, doubly so, since they were cursed. When the queen felt the power of the Silvers spring into existence, she called the king to court and demanded he destroy them. Creation was her right, not his. In truth, she was disturbed to discover he had grown so powerful. He claimed to have made them as a gift for her, which pleased her, as he had paid her no tribute in eons.
“But the king gave her only a portion of the Silvers. The other he kept hidden from her, for his concubine, where he planted lush gardens and built a great, shining white house upon a hill with hundreds of windows, and thousands of rooms. When his mortal grew restless, he made her the amulet, so she could shape reality with her will. When she complained of loneliness he made her the box. ”
“What does it do?”
“I do not know. It has not been seen since. ”
“Are you saying he also made her the Book? But why?”
“Patience, human. I tell this tale. The king’s experiments continued. Eons passed. He created more . . . aberrations. Over time, of which we have a fortunate abundance, they began to improve until some of them were as beautiful as any Seelie. The Unseelie royalty were born, the princes and princesses. Dark counterparts to the Light. And like their counterparts, they wanted what was rightfully theirs: power, freedom to come and go, dominion over lesser beings. The king refused. Secrecy was a necessary part of his plan. ”
“But someone went to the queen,” I guessed. “One of the Unseelie. ”
“Yes. When she learned of his treachery, she tried to strip him of his power but he had grown too strong, and learned too much. Not the Song, but another melody. A darker one. They battled fiercely, sending their armies against each other. Thousands of Fae died. In that age, we still had many weapons, not merely the few that remain. Faery withered and blackened; the skies ran with the lifeblood of our kind, the planet itself upon which we lived wept to see our shame, and cracked from end to end. And still they fought until he took up the sword and she took up th
e spear and the king killed the Faery Queen. ”
I inhaled sharply. “The queen is dead?”
“And the Song died with her. She was slain before she was able to name her successor and pass on her essence. When she died, the king and all the Unseelie vanished. Before dying, she had managed to complete the walls of the prison, and with her last breath uttered the spell to contain them. Those Unseelie that eluded the spell’s radius were hunted by the Seelie, and killed. ”
“So, where does the Book come into all this?”
“The Book was never meant to be what it was. It was created in an act of atonement. ”
“Atonement?” I echoed. “You mean for killing the queen?”
“No. The king’s atonement was to his concubine. She slipped from the Silvers and took her own life. She hated what the king had become so much that she left him the only way she could. ”
I shivered, chilled by the dark tale.
“They say the king went mad and when his madness finally abated, he beheld the dark kingdom he had created with horror. In her name, he vowed to change, to become the leader of his race. But he knew too much. Knowledge is power. Immense knowledge is immense power. So long as he had it, his race would never trust him. Aware they would not let him near the Cauldron of Forgetting, and even if they did, they would destroy him the second he drank from it, he created a mystical book into which to pour all his dark knowledge. Freed of it, he would banish it to another realm where it could never be found and used for harm. He would return to his people, their Seelie King, beg their forgiveness, and lead them into a new age. The Fae would become patriarchal. The Unseelie, of course, would be left to rot in their prison. ”
“So that’s what the Book is,” I exclaimed, “part of the dark king himself! The worst part. ”
“Over the eons it changed, as Fae things do, and became a living thing, far different from what it was when the king created it. ”
“Why didn’t the king destroy it?”
“He had made . . . how do you say it? . . . his doppelgänger. It was his equal and he could not defeat it. He feared one day it might defeat him. He cast it out, and for much time it was lost. ”
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I wondered how it had come to be in the sidhe-seers’ care. I didn’t ask, because if V’lane didn’t know it had been there, I didn’t want to be the one to tell him. He despised Rowena, and might decide to punish her, and other sidhe-seers could suffer in the process. “Why does the queen want it? Wait a minute, if the queen is dead, who is Aoibheal?”
“One of many who came after, and tried to lead our race. She wants it because it is believed that, somewhere in all its darkness, the Book contains the key to the true Song of Making that has been lost to my race for seven hundred thousand years. The king was close, very close. And only with living strands of that Song can the Unseelie be reimprisoned. ”
“And Darroc? Why does he want it?”
“He thinks foolishly to possess its power. ”
“Barrons?”
“The same. ”
“Am I supposed to believe you’re different? That you would blithely hand all that power to the queen, with no thought for yourself?” Sarcasm laced my words. V’lane and self-serving were synonyms.
“You forget something, MacKayla. I am Seelie. I cannot touch the Book. But she can. The queen and king are the only two of our race that can touch all the Hallows, Seelie and Unseelie. You must obtain it; summon me, and I will escort you to her. We alone have any hope of rebuilding the walls should they come down. Not the old woman, nor Darroc, nor Barrons. You must place your trust, as I have, in the queen. ”
It was dark when I returned, massaged, manicured, pedicured, and waxed. There were a dozen long-stemmed red roses wrapped in tissue paper waiting for me, propped in the alcoved entrance to the bookstore. I bent to pick them up, then stood in the lighted cubby, fumbling with the card.
Help me find it, and I will give you your sister back. Refuse and I will take what you prize most.
Well, well, all my suitors were calling. There was a disposable cell phone tucked into the leaves with a text message waiting: Yes or no?The reply number was zeroed out; I could text him back, but I couldn’t call him.
“V’lane?” came Barrons’ voice from behind me.
I shook my head, wondering what “I prized most” was, afraid to contemplate it.
I felt the electricity of his body behind me as he reached around me and took the card from my hand. He didn’t move away, and I battled the urge to lean back into him, seeking the comfort of his strength. Would he wrap his arms around me? Make me feel safe, if only for a moment, and if only a delusion?
“Ah, the old ‘what you prize most’ threat,” he murmured.
I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek.
“Such naked pain,” he whispered.
I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch. His hand tightened at the base of my skull and squeezed, and he raised me slowly to my tiptoes. I opened my eyes and it was my turn to inhale sharply. Not human. Oh, no, not this man.
“Never show it to me again. ” His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.
“Why? What will you do?”
“What it is my nature to do. Get inside. It’s time for your lesson. ”
After I’d received yet another failing grade, Barrons and I cruised the streets.
I’d gotten no tips from Jayne since his last call, four nights ago. I read the paper each morning. If I recognized the Sinsar Dubh’s calling card, and I was pretty sure I did, it was jumping to a new victim every night. I knew what the good inspector was doing: he was waiting for his “tea. ”
I was waiting for divine inspiration to strike at any moment, and show me the way, who to trust, what to do. I had no doubt Jayne would get what he wanted before I did.
I was wrong.
We’d been at it for almost six hours, driving up and down, muscling through the city in the Viper. After so many nights, I knew every street, every alley, every parking lot. I knew the location of every convenience store and petrol station that was open between dusk and dawn. There weren’t many. Crime might not be keeping the partyers at home—the drunk and lonely are hard to corral; I know that from bartending—but it was certainly sending the small-business owners and their employees packing well before nightfall.
It made me sad to see Dublin battening her hatches. Just last night, we’d discovered a two-block Dark Zone that wasn’t on my map, by driving through it. I mourned each newly darkened block as a personal loss, a few inches off my hair, a drabber outfit. We were both changing, this boisterous, craicfilled city and I.
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Normally, when we went hunting, Barrons drove in case I lost control of my primary motor functions, but it had been getting more difficult to turn him away from near brushes with the Book, so I’d insisted on driving tonight.
He made a lousy passenger, barking directions I ignored, but it was better than the alternative. Last night when we’d had a near brush with the Book, I’d pretended to have an abrupt desperate need to use the bathroom—the only gas station open was one we’d fueled at, in the opposite direction—and he’d given me an unnervingly searching look. I suspected he was getting suspicious. After all, he could read the paper, too. This morning’s crime had been less than a mile from where I’d had him turn around last night. Although he didn’t know my radar had been getting stronger, I had no doubt he was going to put two and two together eventually.
And so I was driving, my sidhe-seer senses on high alert, waiting for the faintest tingle, so I could subtly turn us away, when something totally unexpected happened.
The Sinsar Dubh popped up on my radar, and it was moving straight tow
ard us.
At an extremely high rate of speed.
I whipped the Viper around, tires smoking on the pavement. There was nothing else I could do.
Barrons looked at me sharply. “What? Do you sense it?”
Oh, how ironic, he thought I’d turned us toward it. “No,” I lied, “I just realized I forgot my spear tonight. I left it back at the bookstore. Can you believe it? I never forget my spear. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t. I was talking to my dad while I was getting dressed and I totally spaced it. ” I worked the pedals, ripping through the gears.
He didn’t even try to pat me down. He just said, “Liar. ”
I sped up, pasting a blushing, uncomfortable look on my face. “All right, Barrons. You got me. But I do need to go back to the bookstore. It’s . . . well . . . it’s personal. ” The bloody, stupid Sinsar Dubh was gaining on me. I was being chased by the thing I was supposed to be chasing. There was something very wrong with that. “It’s . . . a woman thing . . . you know. ”
“No, I don’t know, Ms. Lane. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
A stream of pubs whizzed by. I was grateful it was too cold for much pedestrian traffic. If I had to slow down, the Book would gain on me, and I already had a headache the size of Texas that was threatening to absorb New Mexico and Oklahoma. “It’s that time. You know. Of the month. ” I swallowed a moan of pain.
“That time?” he echoed softly. “You mean time to stop at one of the multiple convenience stores we just whizzed past so you can buy tampons? Is that what you’re telling me?”
I was going to throw up. It was too close. Saliva was pooling in my mouth. How far behind me was it? Two blocks? Less? “Yes,” I cried. “That’s it! But I use a special kind and they don’t carry it. ”
“I can smell you, Ms. Lane,” he said, even more softly. “The only blood on you is from your veins, not your womb. ”
My head whipped to the left and I stared at him. Okay, that was one of the more disturbing things he’d ever said to me. “Ahhh!” I cried, letting go of both the wheel and the gearshift to clutch my head. The Viper ran up on the sidewalk and took out two newspaper stands and a streetlamp before crashing to a stop against a fire hydrant.