Never.
I had one hope: If I could get close enough, I could freeze it and run. Steeling my will with the hellish memory of how Alina had looked the day I’d identified her body, I peeled myself from the window and stepped forward.
The Fae stepped back.
I blinked. “Huh?”
“Not retreat, human,” it said coldly. “Impatience. I know what you are, sidhe-seer. We need not play your silly game of tag.”
“Oh right,” I snapped, “but we sure were going to take the time to play your silly game of death-by-sex, weren’t we?”
It shrugged. “I would not have killed you. You have value to us.” When it smiled at me, I went blank for a heartbeat, as if the sun had come out from behind clouds to shine down only on me, but it was so hot that it charred all my wiring. “I would have given you only the pleasure of my magnificence,” it told me, “not the pain. We can do that, you know.”
I trembled at the thought—all that heat, but no ice; all that sex, but no death. The night air felt suddenly cool on the scorching skin of my breasts, frigid to the fire of my nipples. I glanced down. My shirt and bra were lying in the gutter at my feet, mixed with the daily trash and grime of the city.
Jaw set, hands shaking, I bent to retrieve my clothing. Blushing a half-dozen shades of red, I put my bra back on and pulled my shirt over my head again. I reclaimed my paper-bag purse and my iPod from the gutter as well, jammed my ball cap back on my head, but didn’t bother fishing out my hideous glasses—I didn’t want the thing looking any larger than it already did. Then, without hesitation, I stood and lunged straight for the Fae. I had to freeze it. It was my only hope. God only knew what I might do next.
Before I was able to reach it, however, it vanished. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. I was pretty sure I’d just witnessed Fae “sifting” firsthand. But where had it gone?
“Behind you, human,” it said.
I turned sharply to find it standing on the sidewalk, a dozen feet to my left, pedestrians parting around it like the Red Sea drawing back from Moses, giving it increasingly wider berth. In fact, foot traffic on the entire street seemed to be thinning substantially and, here and there, a pub door suddenly slammed closed against a distinctly un-summery chill in the July air.
“We do not have time for fool’s play, MacKayla Lane.”
I jerked. “How do you know my name?”
“We know much about you, Null,” it said. “You are one of the most powerful sidhe-seers we’ve yet encountered. And we believe you have only begun to realize your potential.”
“Who are ‘we’?” I demanded.
“Those of us who are concerned with the future of both our worlds.”
“And who would these ‘those’ be?”
“I am V’lane, prince of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and I am here on behalf of Aoibheal, exalted High Queen of our race. She has a task for you, sidhe-seer.”
I barely resisted the urge to burst out laughing. The last thing I’d have expected to hear from any Fae was something along the lines of: Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . . “Uh, on the off chance that you’ve forgotten—not that I’m trying to remind you or anything—but aren’t the Fae more inclined to kill sidhe-seers than to assign them helpful little tasks?”
“We haven’t made examples of your kind for some time now,” it said. “As a gesture of our good will and a token of the queen’s esteem, we have a gift for you,”
“Oh no.” I shook my head. “No gifts, thank you.” I was familiar with the whole Trojan-horse-beware-of-Greeks-bearing-gifts debacle and there was no doubt in my mind that a Fae bearing gifts would certainly be worse.
“It is my understanding you have betrayed yourself to one or more of the Unseelie,” it said coolly.
I stiffened. How did it know? And what did it mean by “or more”? Had the Royal Hunters been alerted too? “So?” I shrugged, falling back on my best, last defense: bluffing.
“Our gift offers you no small protection from those who would harm you.”
“Including you?” I blurted. Though I’d been managing to hold my own in conversation with it—and believe me, with what I was feeling, it was hard enough to string together consecutive words, to say nothing of trying to make them intelligible—twice now I’d had to pull my shirt back down and I’d just caught myself unzipping my jeans.
“There is no protection against one such as I, sidhe-seer. We of the royal houses affect humans in this manner. There is nothing that can be done to prevent it.”
One day I would know that for the lie it was. But not before I’d been burned by the truth in it. “Then what good is your stupid gift?” Crossly, I hooked my bra again. My breasts were so hot and tight they hurt. I cupped one in each hand, squeezed and kneaded, but my desperate massage provided no relief.
“Our gift would allow you to defend against many who would kill you,” it said, “just not against those with the right to kill you.”
My eyes narrowed and my hands dropped to my sides where they fisted. My nails gouged half-moon crescents on my palms. “The right to kill me?” I snapped. Was that what they’d thought of my sister, the ones who’d murdered her? That they’d had the right?
It studied me. “Not that any of us would.”
Yeah, right—and piranhas were vegetarians. “What is this gift?” I demanded.
The Fae extended a gold arm cuff, etched with silver, flashing with ruby fire. “The Cuff of Cruce. It was made long ago for one of his prized human concubines. It permits a shield of sorts against many Unseelie and . . . other unsavory things.”
“What about the Seelie? Does it work against them?”
It shook its frighteningly beautiful head.
I thought a minute. “Would it keep me safe from the Royal Hunters?” I asked.
“Yes,” it replied.
“Really?” I exclaimed. I could want it for that alone! Ever since I’d heard of the devil-like Hunters, the mere thought of them made my skin crawl, as if a special fear of that caste of Unseelie beyond all others was programmed into my much preyed upon genes. “What’s the catch?” I asked. A stupid question, I knew. As if it would tell me. I couldn’t trust a thing it said. I’d not forgotten Barrons’ comment that Seelie and Unseelie royalty were nearly impossible to tell apart. Though this Prince V’lane of the Tuatha Dé Danaan claimed to be here on the Seelie Queen’s behalf, I had no proof of that, nor even that it was who and what it claimed to be.