Darkfever

And there was the man himself: stepping into the abandoned neighborhood, moving from the safety of his floodlights into complete darkness.

And he didn’t have a flashlight!

I raised my hand to knock on the windowpane. I don’t know what I was thinking, I guess to get his attention and call him back before he did something stupid.

Then I paused, my knuckles half an inch from the glass. Barrons was anything but stupid. He did nothing without a reason.

Tall, dark, and graceful as a midnight panther, he wore unrelieved black beneath his long black coat, and as he walked, I caught the glint of steel on his boots. Then even that was gone, absent the light to reflect it, and he was just a lighter shadow in the shadows.

You must never, Ms. Lane, ever enter the abandoned neighborhood at night, he’d said not so long ago.

Okay, then why was he? What was going on? I shook my head and paid for it instantly, as tiny jackhammers fell over, then righted themselves and renewed their attack with vigor: rat-a-tat-tat-TAT-TAT! I clutched my skull and stared down uncomprehendingly.

The Shades weren’t paying Barrons the slightest bit of attention. In fact, if I were a woman given to fancy, I would have said the oily darknesses actually peeled back with distaste as Jericho Barrons passed by.

I’d seen the husks the Shades left. I’d seen the evidence of their voracious appetite. The only thing they feared was light. They kill with vampiric swiftness, Barrons had told me. I’d written that in my journal, appreciating the phrase.

I watched him move deeper into the abandoned neighborhood, black on black, until he and the night became one. I stared blankly down the alley after him for a long time after he’d gone, trying to make sense of what I’d just seen.

There were really only two possibilities I could think of: either Barrons was lying to me about the Shades, or he’d struck some kind of dark bargain with the life-sucking Fae.

Whichever it was, I finally had my answer to whether or not I could trust him.

That would be a great, big NOT.

When I finally turned away, brushed my teeth, flossed, washed my face, moisturized, ran a brush through my hair, slipped on my favorite sleep shirt and matching panties, and crawled beneath the covers, I wasn’t sure of much, but I did know this: I wasn’t going to be asking Barrons any questions about addresses tomorrow.

I woke up the next morning with the answer burning in my brain.

Years ago, in some book I’d read, the author had postulated that the human mind was little different from a computer, and that one of the primary functions of sleep was downtime to integrate new program files, run backup subroutines, defrag, and dump minutiae so we could start fresh the next day.

While I’d slept, my subconscious had attended to my consciousness’ dreck, determining data or detritus, dispatching it accordingly, allowing me to see what I would have seen much sooner if I had not been blinded by inner chaos. I would have slapped myself in the forehead if I hadn’t been in that delicate just-recovered-from-a-headache state.

I scrambled from bed—I didn’t need to turn on a light, I slept with every one of them lit, and would for years to come—and picked up map after map, examining the copyright date. Each was current, as any good tourist map would be, compiled from information collected over the past year.

But Barrons had told me the city had “forgotten” one entire section existed—the abandoned neighborhood. That no district of the Garda would claim it, that city utilities would contend no such addresses existed. Did that mean there were streets in Dublin nobody remembered anymore? And if so, had they “fallen off the map,” so to speak?

If I were to examine another map—say, one from five years ago—would the Dublin preserved in shamrock-embossed laminate look identical to the one I had now? Or would parts of it be missing?

Could it be the answer I was looking for had been staring me in the face all the while from just the other side of my windowpane?

“Bingo!” I stabbed the map with the fuchsia tip of my favorite pen. “There you are!”

I’d just found LaRuhe Street, and—as I’d suspected—it was deep in the abandoned neighborhood.

Last night, when I’d needed a map, I’d gone automatonlike to the first place I remembered seeing a prominent display. It hadn’t occurred to me that Barrons would have some in the bookstore. Up on the third floor I’d found a large collection of atlases and maps, gathered up a dozen or so, and toted them down to my favorite sofa to begin my search all over again.

What I’d discovered shocked and horrified me. The Dark Zone abutting Barrons wasn’t the only part of Dublin that was missing. There were two other areas, which had existed on maps in previous years, that did not exist on any of them now. They were considerably smaller, and on the outskirts, but there was no doubt in my mind that they were areas that had become Shade-infested, too.

Like a cancer, the life-sucking Unseelie were spreading. I couldn’t begin to guess how they’d gotten all the way out in those nearly rural areas, but then I couldn’t begin to guess how they’d gotten here in the city, either. Perhaps someone had transported them from one place to the next, unknowing, like roaches in a cardboard box. Or perhaps . . . I had a terrible thought . . . was that the basis for Barrons’ truce with the parasites? Did he take them to new feeding grounds in exchange for safe passage? Were they sentient enough to make and keep bargains? Where did the Shades go during the day? What dark places did they find? How small could they be in repose if they had no real substance? Could a hundred of them travel in a matchbox? I shook my head. I couldn’t ponder the horrors of Shades spreading right now. Alina had left me a clue. I’d finally managed to stumble upon it, and all I could think about was finding whatever it was she’d wanted me to find.

I lay the laminated maps of the city on the table in front of me, side by side, and looked at them a long moment. The map on the right was current; the one on my left had been distributed seven years ago.

On the current map, Collins Street was one block over and ran directly parallel to Larkspur Lane. On the map from seven years ago, there were eighteen city blocks between those two streets.

I shook my head, shrugged, and snorted, all at the same time, an explosive expression of how completely freaked-out I was. This was awful. Did anyone know? Were Barrons and I—and God only knew what Barrons really was; I sure didn’t—the only two with any clue that such things were happening?