He propped the broom against the counter and gazed into my eyes, searching deep. I had no idea what he was looking for or what he decided he found but he finally relaxed through his shoulders and said softly, “Well, then. Damn glad you’re back, Mega.”
“Damn glad to be back, Dancer.”
And just like that there was no tension left in the room.
I loved that about him. He didn’t even need to know what I’d done. Only the parameters of it that affected the respect and consideration he felt was his due if I wanted to be his friend. I hated that he’d been worrying about me again. I hated the dark circles beneath his eyes, so I extended an olive branch, something I’d never done in the past. It made me uncomfortable but I would have been more uncomfortable not doing it. “If it’s at all possible, I promise to get word to you if I ever have to go into the Silvers again.”
He inhaled sharply, not missing that what I’d just said accorded a degree of accountability to him I’d never permitted before. I meant it. The next time I had to go somewhere, I would bloody well find a way to leave him a note.
His grin was instant and blinding.
Then he was talking a mile a minute, catching me up on all the work they’d been doing, outlining the preferred theories, eyes sparkling.
Dancer was convinced the black holes suspended slightly above the earth weren’t remotely the same as the ones in outer space. “I think the ones up there”—he jerked his head toward the ceiling—“are naturally occurring phenomena. They have the right to be what and where they are. The theory is that primordial black holes were birthed at the dawn of time, have always existed and for some reason need to. I like to think of them as the universe’s trash collectors, gathering up old, defunct detritus, clearing the way for new things to be born. The holes we’re dealing with don’t behave in accordance with modern black hole theory. While it’s possible modern black hole theory is wrong—I mean, bloody hell, we believed Newtonian laws right up until Einstein turned everything on its ear—the smell I get off our black holes is that they’re anathema to the universe. They don’t belong, should never have come into existence, and are in complete defiance of the natural order of things.”
“They smell? I never noticed a smell and I have a super sniffer.”
He ducked his head, looking mildly embarrassed. “They say a great physicist is distinguished by his ability to sniff out the difference between a superior theory and one not worth pursuing.”
I smiled. “Well then, you’ve definitely got a super sniffer, too.”
He grinned. “I suspect these entities are literally spheres of ‘unmaking’ in…well, I hate to say a magical sense because I tend to lean toward everything being explainable by science, but I also believe in God, and the Fae are real and maybe magic is just a word for those things we can’t yet explain or understand.”
“What does this tell us about how to get rid of them?”
“That the Song of Making is likely the only thing that has a chance.” He was silent a moment and his eyes got that dreamy, faraway look that told me he was happily pondering a highly abstract concept. “A melody of creation—think of it, Mega!” he exclaimed. “That math and frequency might actually be capable, on some level we don’t understand, of creating new things, repairing damaged ones!” He shook his head. “There’s something about the concept that resonates with me. Makes sense on a gut level but it’s so bloody far beyond my ability to interpret and elucidate that I feel like a child, staring up at the night sky, wondering what the Milky Way is. Regardless, the fabric of our world is unraveling and has to be stitched back together again somehow, and I believe the song the Fae used to know is the only thing that’s going to work. An Unseelie created the holes. It seems quid pro quo that a Seelie must repair them. Maybe, if we had a few centuries to work on the song we’d get somewhere, but I don’t think we have a tenth that much time.”
“Months,” I told him grimly. “Perhaps even less.”
His eyes widened. “You know that for sure?”
I nodded.
He plunged his hands into his hair, raking it back. “Mega, we’re at a complete impasse with the song. We need some kind of clue, a fragment of the melody, then at least I’d understand what I’m aiming for, and stand a chance at figuring out what the bloody hell it is!”
I pressed a hand to my forehead. It was hot. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d eaten and was abruptly aware I was dangerously hungry. “Do you have anything high calorie to eat around here?”
“Always.” He led me to a small room off the back of the laboratory where a fridge was loaded with food. There were boxes and boxes of chilled protein bars. Peanut butter. Even beef jerky and milk!
“Where did you get all this?” I reached for the glass jar of milk, topped with a yellow layer of heavy cream, mouth watering.
“Ryodan,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “He’s bloody well taken over the bloody world and suddenly everyone has food. Which means he had it all along and just wasn’t sharing. Got this, too.” With his foot he nudged a box toward me, filled with canned goods.
Chocolate syrup! I unscrewed the top off the milk, squeezed the chocolate in, recapped the glass bottle and shook the milk hard enough to mix. I guzzled it for several long seconds, only stopping with a twinge of embarrassment when there were a few inches left to ask him hastily, “Did you want any of this?” When he shook his head, smiling faintly, I finished it, and chased it with two protein bars. That was better. I could feel myself cooling down already.
“We have the queen,” I told him.
“What?” he exploded. “And you’re just now telling me this? Where is she? How did you get her to come back here?”
I filled him in on what had happened in the past day, my time, omitting the parts about my meltdown and Shazam and killing Ryodan and Mac calling me a cunt.
He was pacing, repeatedly raking his hands through his hair by the time I finished. “I need to talk to Mac. Now. Like, this very instant.”
“If Mac had any information about the song, she’d already be here, sharing it. I think it’s going to take time for her to decipher what the queen passed on and figure out how to use it.”
“Time is the one thing we don’t have,” he said darkly.
When I left, after promising to return later that night so he could demonstrate his latest invention—“And maybe we could take it out for a test drive,” he’d said, eyes sparkling—I headed down the hall and was about to access the slipstream when I saw Caoimhe hurrying down the corridor toward me. The moment she saw me, her eyes filled with glacial hostility. I considered kicking up and blasting past her with an elbow casually protruding but that was something Dani would have done so I sludged along in slow-mo.
We approached each other with equal coolness. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was his girlfriend now. She sure acted like she was. Or his keeper.
We drew up a few feet apart. “You,” she said with icy disdain.
“Caoimhe,” I said tonelessly.
“Why did you even bother coming back? We don’t need you. And I sure as hell don’t want you here. It was a grand month without you around.”
“I’m just his friend,” I said in a voice void of inflection.
“No you’re not,” she spat. “If you were his ‘friend’ you wouldn’t cause him so much worry, make him take so many careless risks. If you were his ‘friend’ you’d realize he may have a super brain but he’s no bloody superhero. A true friend wouldn’t subject him to constant disappearances and reckless shenanigans with no consideration whatsoever for what’s good for him!”
I studied her objectively, trying to define the origin of her hostility. It seemed as if it had to be more than mere jealousy, and I didn’t see any reason for her to be jealous of me. “I’ve never kissed him,” I finally said, thinking that might defuse the tension between us. Discord was illogical. We had too many problems already. We couldn’t afford to create more for ourselves.
She tossed her head impatiently. “Oooh! You think that’s what this is about? I’m jealous? Why don’t you try pulling your selfish head out of your selfish ass? Yes, I love Dancer. I freely admit it. Most of the women here do, he’s damn near impossible not to love. Funny, sweet, thoughtful, brilliant. But this is about his well-being not mine. That’s what love is, how it behaves, but you obviously don’t know a thing about it. The only person you love is yourself. Did you make plans to dash off and indulge in another one of your little adventures with him tonight? Whiz him about at speeds he was never meant to endure while you ‘goof off’ and play at being superheroes together?”
I guess the look on my face gave me away because she narrowed her eyes and hissed, “If you can’t be selfless enough to protect the health of the one man that has a chance at figuring out how to save our world, then you need to stay away from him. Far away from him. Like go get lost all over again only never bloody come back this time.” She shoved past me and stormed off down the hall.
I whirled and stalked after her. She’d said something I didn’t understand and didn’t like, and it had sent a chill racing up my spine. “What do you mean ‘protect the health’?” I growled at her back. “What are you talking about? Dancer’s young and strong. He works out and looks amazing. He’s perfectly healthy.”
She whirled, eyes flashing. “Aye, he spends hours working out every day while he ponders his theories—and he shouldn’t. It’s not good for him. Know why he does it? To keep up with you. To get you to see him as a man. He can’t do cardio so he does isometrics, pitting muscle against muscle to build strength without overloading himself. Planks, crunches, tension exercises, and the like. He’s obsessed with looking like those men you hang out with. God! I wish he’d just stop wanting you!”
My stomach had turned into a blender on high speed and was threatening to propel the milk I’d drunk out the lid of my mouth. “Why can’t he do cardio? Why isn’t working out good for him?”
She looked at me a long moment then a bit of the fury eased from her face and her eyes widened faintly. She took a few steps toward me and said wonderingly, “For the love of Mary, you don’t even know, do you? All of us do, but not you.”
Apparently not. Pressing a hand to my stomach, I shook my head.
“He never told you?” she said incredulously.
“Repeating the same bloody question in a slightly different way is still the same bloody question,” I hissed. What the bloody hell was wrong with Dancer? What did everyone know that I didn’t know? “Do I fucking look like I have any idea what you’re talking about?” I practically shouted.
Her face changed as if she was seeing me for the first time. “Well then,” she murmured, “at least I don’t have to keep hating you. I hate hating people.”
“Good to know. So what the bloody hell is it that I don’t know about Dancer?” I ground out between clenched teeth.
She smiled, but it was a terrible, sad smile. “Dani—Jada—whatever it is you’re calling yourself these days—our lad has a bad heart. He came that way. I thought you knew.”
MAC
I opted for no makeup, swiped balm on my lips because they were so dry, stepped back and studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Even with the lights off I could tell my eyes were red and it was obvious I’d been crying, but I could blame that on any number of things and be believed.
I’d curled on the floor of the shower, sobbing for a long time, wondering if all the images the Sinsar Dubh had forced on me were true. Had I done every one of those terrible things? Killed so many, with such chilling brutality and barbarism? I’d laid on the tile floor, reliving each detail the Book had showed me. Owning every bit of it. Jo’s death had been the truth. That told me they very likely all were. I’d done unforgivable things I could never undo. My choice to take a spell from the Sinsar Dubh to save Dani’s life had cost the lives of many others, and there was no way I could make my books on those accounts balance. Not just cost the lives, let us be perfectly precise—my hands, my body, had killed them.
I wallowed in shame and grief.
I shuddered, wept, and screamed.
Then I forced myself to stop, collected the savage murder of Jo and the other unforgivable crimes I’d committed, put them in a box and shut the lid.
I despised using one of the Sinsar Dubh’s tactics but it was effective, and hating myself for my sins would have to wait. As was whatever act of atonement I would eventually make. Not that there was any act of atonement that would mean a thing to those I’d killed.
Putting them away didn’t mean the pain was gone. I carried it. I would always carry it. But because I’d been given the queen’s power, my state of mind was too critical to everyone’s survival for me to let myself fall apart now. It simply wasn’t an option.
It occurred to me, while lying on the floor, that grief’s drink recipe is two parts tribute to the person you loved and four parts feeling sorry for yourself because you lost them. Or, in the case of Jo and the others, four parts extreme self-loathing.
Either way, grief was self-indulgent, and that was something I had no right to be. If we survived, I’d have oodles of time to hate myself all I wanted.
Currently, I was the only one who could wield the Song of Making. And that meant I didn’t get to be anything less than one-hundred-percent focused on our situation. I was a soldier on the front line, and soldiers don’t get the luxury of addressing their issues until the war is over and everyone’s safe.
I began to turn away from the mirror then narrowed my eyes and glanced back. Something about me was different. What was it? I’d dried my hair upside-down as usual, and my eyes were green, not black. My teeth were almost blindingly white since I’d brushed them about a hundred times, trying to not to think about what had been lodged between them.
Frowning, I fumbled behind me for the light switch and flipped it on.
“Holy hell I look like the Khaleesi!” I exploded, jumping back from the mirror. I’d showered and dried my hair in the dark, in no mood to see myself clearly. The streaks of crimson paint were gone and my hair was blonder than I’d ever seen it, nearly white. I tucked my chin down and peered at my part—yep, all the way to the roots. I gathered a handful of it, examining the length, trying to remember how long it had been a few days ago. It sure seemed to be a few inches longer now than I recalled.
The Seelie Queen’s hair had spilled past her waist in a thick platinum fall.
Christian’s hair had turned from rich chestnut to inky black.
Was I turning Seelie? Would the True Magic actually transform me into a Fae? Cripes. First a sidhe-seer, with the blood of the Unseelie King in my veins, then the Sinsar Dubh, now a full-on Faery queen. It was beginning to look like being “just Mac” had never been in the cards for me.
I narrowed my eyes. Maybe my changes would only go partway like Christian’s. He’d managed to arrest, even reverse, his transformation to a degree. Then again, this wasn’t a transformation I could afford to resist. I needed all the juice she’d given me. No matter the price.
After a moment I growled at my platinum-haired reflection, “Well, buck up, little buckaroo,” in my best John Wayne voice.
What I looked like, even whatever I might eventually become due to the gift Aoibheal had given me—and it was a gift because it could save our world—didn’t mean shit.
The only thing that mattered was what I did with it.
I hurried down the stairs, entering my paint-stained, wrecked store from the rear. I paused in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, studying it. The critical factor now was: we needed the song. But an equally critical factor was: assuming we got it, what power had I been given and how was I supposed to use it? I had no idea how Fae magic worked.
I remembered standing in the street, at the head of Darroc’s army of Unseelie, watching as V’lane made Dree’lia’s mouth disappear. Unlike when he’d sealed the door to the boudoir with a steel gate, he’d not said a word
when he altered her face. He hadn’t even glanced at her. So what had he done? Was it based on the power of mere thought, the higher the caste of Fae, the stronger the power?
I studied the room with dried spray paint streaked everywhere, the shattered bookcases, the broken lamps and magazines and chairs. I’d only managed to clean a third of the smaller debris out the last time I’d worked on it.
I closed my eyes and painstakingly began to create a mental image of the way it had looked the day I first stumbled from the Dark Zone through the front door, so damned naïve, and met Barrons for the first time.
When I’d opened the tall diamond-paned door to the seemingly modestly sized four-story building and discovered the cavernous bookstore within, I’d fallen in love with every inch of the elegant Old World place with its antique rugs, sumptuous Chesterfields, enameled gas fireplaces, acres of books, even the old-fashioned cash register.
I lavished detail on the room I was building in my mind.
Only when I could see my bookstore with perfect clarity, exactly the way it had been that day, did I open my eyes.
Still wrecked. Not a damn thing had changed.
Okay. That hadn’t worked. Time wasn’t my friend. I needed to figure this out fast. I was rather relieved it hadn’t worked because it had taken me too long. V’lane had removed Dree’lia’s mouth effortlessly and instantly, and I didn’t believe for a minute that if things got critical and I had to do something to save us, my potential adversary might wait patiently for me to picture whatever I wanted to do with crystal clear perfection.
I dropped down onto a crate, buried my head in my hands and sank into myself, seeking the shining vault I’d claimed for my own, quite certain it was no more an actual vault than there’d ever been an actual book or box inside me. But what was it? And how did I access it?
I went still, disconnecting from my body, remembering what it had felt like to be consciousness and not one thing more, and focused.