And I’m paying you how much for running my bookstore? was all he’d finally asked. At the last minute, I’d tacked a little on to the sum I’d decided upon earlier. When he agreed, I almost whooped with joy except he’d stopped the Viper at that moment, and I’d taken my first good look around.
We were on the outskirts of the south side of Dublin, on a narrow lane, right next to a very dark, very old cemetery. The last time I’d been in a cemetery had been for Alina’s funeral.
I closed my hands around the cold iron bars of the main entrance and swept a brooding glance over the headstones.
“The pen is a metaphor, Ms. Lane. Drawing lines isn’t your prerogative. It’s mine. You’re the OOP detector. I’m the OOP director. You’ll walk the cemetery. I’m particularly interested in the unmarked graves behind the church but make a thorough search of the building and the grounds, as well.”
I sighed. “What exactly is it I’m looking for?”
“I don’t know, perhaps nothing. This church was built on the site of an ancient meeting circle once presided over by the Grand Mistress of the sidhe-seers herself.”
“In other words,” I muttered, “it’s probably a wild-goose chase.”
“Remember the cuff V’lane offered you?”
“Is there anything you don’t know?”
“Legend has it there are multiple cuffs, each with a different purpose. Legend also has it that, in ancient times, sidhe-seers collected every Fae relic they could get their hands on, and if it proved indestructible, secreted it away where they believed Mankind would never find it. Some say when Christianity came to Ireland, sidhe-seers encouraged the building of churches in specific places, even funded them, perhaps to keep their secrets safely buried on consecrated ground. Laws governing the digging up and relocating of remains are rigidly enforced.”
It sounded plausible to me. “These sidhe-seers, were they like a club or something, back in the day?”
“As much as they could be. Times were very different then, Ms. Lane. Communication between enclaves took weeks, sometimes months, but in times of threat, they gathered in preappointed places and performed ritual magic. This was one of them.”
“Where did all the sidhe-seers go? You said there are more of us out there?”
“When the Fae withdrew from our realms, the world no longer had any use for sidhe-seers. A once vaunted position became obsolete. Those accustomed to being highly valued lost their purpose overnight. In time, sidhe-lore was forgotten. Over the centuries, talents went fallow. As for where the ones who remain are, the next time you’re out, look around. Watch. When you see something from Faery, look not at the Fae, but the crowd to see who else is watching it. Some know what they are. Some are on medication for psychological disorders. Some betray themselves to the first one they see and are killed by it. It’s how I knew what you were. I saw you watching the Shades.”
Psychological disorders? I tried to imagine seeing the monsters I’d recently encountered as a child, having no explanation for them, and realizing no one else could see them. I would have told my mother. She’d have been horrified, taken me for counseling. And if I’d told the counselor the truth? Drugs—a lot of them. I could see it happening all too easily. How many sidhe-seers were out there, too sedated to care what was going on in the world? “So this Grand Mistress, she ran things?”
He nodded.
“Is there still one today?”
“One would expect the bloodline that directed the sidhe-seers for millennia to have maintained the lore.”
That was one evasive answer I wasn’t willing to accept. “What does that mean? Do you or don’t you know if there is one, and if so, who is she?”
He shrugged. “If there is one, her identity is tightly guarded.”
“So, there’s something you don’t know. Amazing.”
He smiled faintly. “Do your thing, Ms. Lane. You might be criminally young, but the night is not.”
My “thing” entailed making like a brisk vacuum through the church, and when I’d finished with the spartan stone chapel, sweeping over the graves, up and down burial lanes, in and around mausoleums, searching with an inner antenna I’d not known I possessed, to collect things a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have believed existed.
I saved the unmarked graves behind the church for last. I was armed to the teeth with flashlights, although I knew no Shades were here. Where Shades dwell, no night crickets chirp, not a blade of grass stirs, and tree limbs gleam bare and white as old bones.