Bloodfever

I made no attempt at conversation, nor did Barrons.

I’d been through too much in the past, however many hours it had been. Twenty-seven, I would learn later. I’d faced a Hunter, discovered my specter was not only real but a greater threat than the Unseelie chasing me; been locked in a cave, tortured, beaten to the brink of death, rescued; eaten the living flesh of an Unseelie, gained superhuman strength and power and lost God only knew what, battled a vampire, gotten into a fight with Barrons that had skewed dangerously toward the end, lost a powerful Dark Hallow to my sister’s murderer, and worse, been unable to function with any will at all in his presence, and if Barrons hadn’t been there to save me yet again, I would have trundled off behind my archenemy, ensorcelled by the crimson-cowled Pied Piper.

Then when I’d thought nothing else could possibly startle or surprise me, the Lord Master had taken one look at Barrons—and walked away.

That worried me. A lot. If the Lord Master walked away from Barrons, how much danger was I in on a daily basis? I’d been feeling invincible up until those last few moments in the cave. Until one man in the room with me had stripped away my will with mere words, and the other man in the room with me had apparently intimidated that one into leaving. Bad and badder.

I glanced across the front seat at Badder. I opened my mouth. He looked at me. I closed it.

I don’t know how he continued driving, because we stared at each other for a long time. The night whizzed by, the air inside the speeding car pregnant with all the things we weren’t saying. We didn’t even have one of our wordless conversations this time; neither of us was willing to betray a single thought or feeling.

We looked at each other like two too-intimate strangers who’ve woken after the lovemaking and don’t know quite what to say to each other, so they say nothing at all and go their separate ways, promising, of course, that they’ll call, but each time they look at the phone over the next few days, the discomfort and mild embarrassment of having taken off their clothing in front of someone they didn’t really even know rises up, and the phone call never gets made.

Barrons and I had taken our skins off around each other tonight. Shared too many secrets, and none of them the important ones.

I was about to look away when he reached across the seat, touched my jaw with his long, strong, beautiful fingers, and caressed my face.

Being touched by Jericho Barrons with kindness makes you feel like you must be the most special person in the world. It’s like walking up to the biggest, most savage lion in the jungle, lying down, placing your head it its mouth and, rather than taking your life, it licks you and purrs.

I turned away.

He returned his attention to the road.

We completed the drive in the same strained silence it had begun.

“Hold this,” said Barrons, as he turned to lock the door on the garage. He had an alarm system on it now, and punched some numbers in on the keypad.

It was nearly dawn. I could see the Shades out of the corner of my eye, down at the edge of the Dark Zone, moving as restlessly and desperately as flies stuck on flypaper.

I accepted the delicate glass ball. Eggshell thin and fragile, it was an impossible color, the ever-changing hues of V’lane’s robes on the beach that day in Faery. I handled it carefully, aware of my heightened strength. I’d bent the door of the Maybach when I’d shut it too hard. Barrons was still pissed about it. Nobody likes a door-slammer, he’d growled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The D’Jai Orb. A relic from one of the Seelie Royal Houses.”

“Can’t be. It’s not an OOP,” I told him.

He looked at me. “Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “I know these things, remember?”

“Yes,” he repeated carefully, “it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

For a moment I thought we were going to get into a “is to/is not” squabble. We glared at each other, resolute in our opinions.

Then his eyes widened as if with a startling thought. “Remove the spear from the box, Ms. Lane,” he snapped.

“I hardly see the point, and I’d really rather not.” I never wanted to touch it again. I was excruciatingly aware of the Unseelie flesh inside me, and that I had no idea how profoundly eating it had changed me, and until I understood what my new limits were, I meant to studiously avoid anything capable of damaging a Fae.

“Then just open it,” he gritted.

I could do that, although I still didn’t see the point. I slipped it from beneath my arm and lifted the lid. I looked at the spear. It took a moment to sink in.

I couldn’t sense it.

At all.

In fact, I realized, I hadn’t sensed it back in Mallucé’s boudoir. I’d merely seen it, lying there in the box.

I focused on it, hard. I wasn’t getting the faintest tingle. My sidhe-seer sense was dead. Not numb. Not tired. Gone. Stricken, I cried, “What’s wrong with me?”

“You ate Fae. Do the math.”

I closed my eyes. “A Fae can’t sense Fae OOPs.”

“Precisely. And do you know what that means? That means, Ms. Lane, that you can no longer find the Sinsar Dubh. Bloody hell.” He turned sharply on his heel and stalked into the bookstore.

“Bloody hell,” I echoed. It also meant that Barrons no longer had any use for me. Nor did V’lane. For all my superhuman abilities, I suddenly wasn’t so special at all.

There’s always a downside, he’d warned.

This was one hell of a downside.

I’d lost everything I was to become part Fae with a fatal weakness.

I stayed in bed all day Sunday, slept for most of it. The horrors I’d endured had drained me. It seemed my rapid, preternatural healing had taken a toll as well. The human body wasn’t meant to nearly die and regenerate. I couldn’t begin to comprehend what had happened to me on a cellular level. Despite my exhaustion, the Fae inside me kept me feeling on edge, aggressive, like I was bristling with tiny soldiers inside my skin.

Fitfully, I dozed, I dreamed. They were nightmares. I was in a cold place from which there was no escape. Towering walls of ice surrounded me, hemmed me in. Creatures had carved out caverns in the stark, sheer cliffs above me, and were watching me. Somewhere there was a castle, a monstrous fortress of black ice. I could feel it drawing me, knew if I found it and entered those forbidding doors I would never be the same again.