“Mallucé was summoned away last night by someone whose orders he apparently could not, or would not, refuse. His followers expect him to be gone for several days, perhaps as long as a week,” said Barrons.
My battered spirits lifted a little. That meant, for a few days at least, I could venture out into the city and move about almost like a normal person again, with only the Fae to worry about. I wanted to go back to Alina’s apartment and decide just how much damage I was willing to inflict on it to further my search for her journal, I wanted to buy more snacks for my room in case I got stuck up there again, and I’d been itching to pick up a cheap SoundDock for my iPod. Earbuds were fast becoming a thing of my past; I was turning into too paranoid a person to stand not being able to hear the approach of whatever might jeopardize my life next. But at least I could listen to music in my room if I had a SoundDock, and since I was saving money by not paying for a room anymore, I’d neatly justified the purchase. “Why am I going to the museum?”
“I want you to scour it for OOPs, as you call them. I’ve long wondered if there are Fae artifacts being hidden in plain view, catalogued as something else. Now that I have you, I can test that theory.”
“Don’t you know what all the OOPs are, and what they look like?” I asked.
He shook his head. “If only it were that simple. But not even the Fae themselves recall all their own relics.” He gave a short, dark laugh. “I suspect it comes from living too long. Why bother to remember or keep track of things? Why care? You live today. You’ll live tomorrow. Humans die. The world changes. You don’t. Details, Ms. Lane,” he said, “go the way of emotions in time.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“The Fae, Ms. Lane,” he said. “They aren’t like humans. Extraordinary longevity has made them something else. You must never forget that.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I wasn’t about to mistake them for human. I know they’re monsters. Even the pretty ones.”
His eyes narrowed. “The pretty ones, Ms. Lane? I thought all the ones you’d seen so far were ugly. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
I’d almost slipped about V’lane, a topic I had no desire to discuss with Barrons. Until I knew who I could trust—if anyone—and how far, I would keep my own counsel about some things. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” I countered coolly. How dare he poke at me for keeping secrets when he was chock-full of them? I didn’t bother trying to hide that I was trying to hide something. I just used one of his methods on him—evasion by counterquestion.
We had another of those wordless communiqués, this time about truths and deceptions and bluffs and calling people on them, and I was getting better at reading him because I saw the very moment Barrons decided pushing me wasn’t worth giving up anything himself.
“Try to wrap the museum up as quickly as possible,” he said. “After you’ve finished there, we’ve a list of places longer than your arm in and about Ireland to search for the remaining stones and the Sinsar Dubh.”
“Oh God, this is my life now, isn’t it?” I exclaimed. “You expect me to just trudge around from place to place as you select them, with my nose pressed to the ground, sniffing out OOPs for you, don’t you?”
“Have you changed your mind about trying to find the Sinsar Dubh, Ms. Lane?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you know where to look yourself?”
I scowled. We both knew I didn’t.
“Don’t you think the surest way to find both the Dark Book and your sister’s killer is to immerse yourself in the very world that killed her?”
Of course I did. I’d thought of that all by myself last week. “So long as that world doesn’t kill me first,” I said. “And it certainly seems to be trying its darnedest.”
He smiled faintly. “I don’t think you understand, Ms. Lane. I won’t let it kill you. No matter what.” He stood and walked across the room. As he opened the door, he shot over his shoulder, “And one day you will thank me for it.”
Was he kidding? I was supposed to thank him for staining my hands with blood? “I don’t think so, Barrons,” I told him, but the door had already swung closed and he’d disappeared into the rainy Dublin night.
EIGHTEEN
Shades: perhaps my greatest enemy among the Fae, I wrote in my journal.
Dropping my pen between the pages, I checked my watch again; still ten more minutes to go until the museum opened. I’d had bad dreams last night, and I’d been so eager to get out of the bookstore and into the sunny morning, to go do something touristy and refreshingly normal, that I hadn’t thought to check what time the museum opened. After stopping for coffee and a scone, I’d still arrived a half an hour early and was one of many people milling outside, standing in groups or waiting on benches near the domed entrance of the Museum of Archaeology and History on Kildare Street.
I’d managed to snag a bench for myself and was making good use of my extra time by updating recent events in my notebook and summarizing what I’d learned. My obsession with finding Alina’s journal was shaping what and how I chose to write in my own: about everything, and in great detail. Hindsight was twenty-twenty and you never knew what clues someone else might be able to pick up on in your life that you were blinded to by living it. If anything happened to me, I wanted to leave behind the best possible record I could, in case someone else would take up my cause—although frankly, I couldn’t imagine anyone who would—and I hoped Alina had done the same.
I picked up my pen.
According to Barrons, I wrote, the Shades lack substance, which means I can neither freeze nor stab them. It appears I have no defense against this low-level caste of Unseelie.
The irony was not lost on me. The Shades were the most base of their kind, barely sentient, yet—despite the spearhead in my purse (tip securely cased in a wad of foil) allegedly capable of killing even the most powerful shark in the Fae sea—I was still helpless against the bottom-feeders.
Well, I was just going to have to stay off the bottom, then, and arm myself tooth and nail with what did work against them. I jotted a quick addition to a shopping list I’d been compiling: several dozen flashlights in varying sizes. I would begin carrying two or more on me at all times and scatter the rest around the bookstore, in every corner of every room, bracing for the horrifying possibility that the power might, one night, go out. Despite the bright morning sun, I shivered, just thinking about it. I’d not been able to get the Shades off my mind ever since yesterday when I’d discovered those piles of clothing collapsed around their papery remains.