Darkfever

Ten minutes later I found my answer in an upstairs bedroom, beyond a massive bed, in a spacious walk-in closet filled with finer clothing than even Barrons wore. Whoever, whatever the owner was, he bought only the best. I mean, the ridiculously best—the stuff you paid insane amounts for just to insure no one else in the world could wear it, too.

Tossed carelessly on the floor, beside a collection of boots and shoes that could have shod an army of Armani models, I found Alina’s Franklin Planner, her photo albums, and two packets of pictures that had been developed at one of those one-hour photo joints in the Temple Bar District. I thrust the planner and albums inside my bulky jacket but kept the plastic packs of photos in my hand.

After a quick but thorough look around both the closet and the rest of the bedroom, to make sure I wasn’t overlooking anything else of hers, I hurried back downstairs so I’d be closer to an escape if I needed one.

Then I sat down on the bottom stair, beneath the gold-and-crystal-encrusted chandelier and opened the first pack of photos.

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words.

These certainly were.

I’ll finally admit it: Ever since I’d heard the description of Alina’s boyfriend—older, worldly, attractive, not Irish—I’d been having a perfectly paranoid thought.

Was I following in Alina’s footsteps, exactly? Right down to the man who’d betrayed her? Had my sister been in love with Jericho Barrons? Was my mysterious host and alleged protector the one who’d killed her?

When I’d walked into this place earlier, a part of me had thought, Aha, so this is where he was going the other night. This is his real home, not the bookstore, and he’s really a Dark Fae and for some reason I can’t pick up on it any more than Alina could. How was I to know? It certainly would explain those strange flashes of attraction I’d felt toward him on a couple of occasions, if he were really a death-by-sex Fae somewhere under all that domineering authority. Maybe there were Fae that could hide it somehow. Maybe they had talismans or spells to conceal their true nature. I’d seen too many inexplicable things lately to consider anything beyond the realm of possibility.

I’d been vacillating back and forth on the issue: one day thinking there was no way Barrons was the one, the next day nearly convinced he had to have been.

Now I knew for certain. Alina’s boyfriend was most definitely not Jericho Barrons.

I’d just taken a photographic journey through a part of my sister’s life I’d never thought to see, beginning with the first day she’d arrived in Ireland, to pictures of her at Trinity, to some of her laughing with classmates in pubs, and still more of her dancing with a crowd of friends. She’d been happy here. I’d flipped through them slowly, lovingly, touching my finger to the flush of color in her cheeks, tracing the sleek line of her long blonde hair, alternately laughing and trying not to cry as I got a glimpse of a world I’d never expected to see—of Alina alive in this crazy craic and monster-filled city. God, I missed her! Seeing her like this was a kick in the stomach! Looking at them, I felt her presence so strongly it was almost as if she were standing right behind me saying, I love you, Jr. I’m here with you. You can do this. I know you can.

Then the pictures changed, about four months after she arrived in Dublin, according to the dates on the photos. In the second packet of photos there were dozens of Alina alone, taken in and around the city, and it was obvious from the way she was looking at the person behind the camera that she was already deeply in love. Much as it chafed me to admit, the man behind the lens had taken the most beautiful pictures of my sister that I’d ever seen.

You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, and villains that are just plain bad, but I’ve learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you.

This bad guy had seen and captured the very best in my sister. Not just her beauty, but that unique inner light that defined her.

Right before he’d extinguished it.

I found it impossible to understand that no one had been able to describe him to me. He and my sister must have turned heads all over the city, yet no one had even been able to tell me what color his hair was.

It was shimmering copper, streaked with gold, and it fell to his waist. Now, how could people not remember that? He was taller than Barrons and beneath his expensive clothing was the kind of body a man only got from weight lifting and intense self-discipline. He looked to be somewhere around thirty, but could easily have been younger or older; there was a timelessness about him. His skin was tanned gold and smooth. Though he was smiling, his strange copper eyes held the arrogance and entitlement of aristocracy. Now I understood why he’d furnished his home with the extravagant opulence of the Sun King who’d built the palace at Versailles—it fit him like a glove. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn he was the king of one of those small foreign countries few people ever heard of. The only thing that marred his perfection was a long scar running down his left cheek, from cheekbone to the corner of his mouth, and it didn’t really mar him at all. It only made him more intriguing.

There were many pictures of them together that had obviously been taken by someone else—yet not one person had been able to describe him to the police, or tell them his name.

Here, they were holding hands and smiling at each other. There they were shopping. Here, they were dancing on top of a table down in the Temple Bar District.

There they were kissing.

The more I looked at the pictures, the harder it was to see this man as a villain. She looked so happy with him and he looked just as happy with her.

I shook my head sharply. She’d thought so, too. She’d believed in him right up to the day she’d called and left me her frantic message: I thought he was helping me, she’d said, but—God, I can’t believe I was so stupid! I thought I was in love with him and he’s one of them, Mac! He’s one of them!

One of who? An Unseelie that could somehow pass for human, duping even a sidhe-seer? I wondered again if such a thing was possible. If he wasn’t Unseelie, what was he, and why would he ally himself with monsters? The man was clearly a consummate actor to have fooled Alina. But she’d found him out in the end. Had she grown suspicious and followed him here? To his home in the Dark Zone, smack in the middle of where my Spidey-sense was getting all kinds of warnings about supernatural danger?