“You have absurd priorities.” He stepped from the shadows between bookcases.
I looked him up and down. Once before I’d seen Jericho Barrons wearing jeans and a T-shirt. It’s like sheet-metaling a W16 Bugatti Veyron engine—all 1,001 horsepower of it—with the body of a ‘65 Shelby. The height of sophisticated power sporting in-your-face, fuck-you muscle. The effect is disturbing.
He had more tattoos now than he’d had a few days ago. When I’d last seen him wearing nothing but a sheen of sweat, his arms were unmarked. They were now sleeved in intricate crimson and black designs, from bicep to hand. A silver cuff gleamed on his wrist. There were silver chains on his boots.
“Slumming, huh?” I said.
You should talk, said those dark eyes, as they swept my black leather ensemble.
“What’s absurd about my priorities?” I evaded. None of my concern what he thought of my outfit. “You hated my rainbows, now you don’t like my leather. Is there anything you like on me?”
“The LM, as you call him, sent his princes to rape you and may possibly have raped you himself, and you only now mention that he … what? Came calling? Did he bring you flowers? And the answer is skin, Ms. Lane.”
I wasn’t about to acknowledge his last words. “No flowers. Just coffee. Wasn’t Starbucks, though. I’d give my eyeteeth for a grande latte from Starbucks.”
“I wouldn’t so blithely offer up my eyeteeth. You never know when you might need them. For a woman who was gang-raped recently, you certainly seem blasé.”
“Oh, please, Barrons, how much more can I lose?”
“Never wonder that.”
“Why did you teach him? Do you realize that inadvertently, perhaps even vertently—”
“Not a word, Ms. Lane.”
“—you might have helped him kill my sister?”
“You’re stretching.”
“Am I? What else did you teach him?”
“A few minor Druid arts.”
“In exchange for what?”
“What did Darroc say? Did he promise you your sister back again?”
“Of course.”
“And did you tell your rapist you’d think about it?”
“He said he was coming back for me in three days. And that I’d better be willing.”
“But you,” Barrons said softly, stepping closer, “ah, my dear Ms. Lane, you think you have nothing more to lose. When do these three days expire?”
“That’s what really pisses me off. I don’t know. He was annoyingly vague.”
Barrons looked at me, then a faint smile curved his lips, and for a moment I thought he might laugh. “The nerve. Threatening you and not being precise about it.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
The faint smile was gone. His face was cold. “You will not leave my side again.”
I sighed. “I was pretty sure you’d say that.”
“Do you want him to take you again?”
“No.”
“Then you won’t be stupid. You won’t go dashing off into danger at precisely the most inopportune moment for some seemingly noble cause, only to get abducted by the villain, through no fault of your own, because you had to do the honorable thing; after all, aren’t some things worth dying for?” he said dryly.
I cocked my head. “I didn’t know you read romances.”
“I know humans.”
“Ha. You finally admit you aren’t one.”
“I admit nothing. You want truths from me? See me when you look at me.”
“Why did you smash the birthday cake I got you into the ceiling?”
“You were trying to celebrate the day I was born. Come, Ms. Lane. I have something to show you.”
He turned and moved into the rear of the store without looking back to see if I was following.
I followed. Major OOPs, dead ahead.
“Who’d you have to kill to get the third one?” I stared. Three of the stones necessary to “reveal the true nature” of the Sinsar Dubh glowed an eerie bluish-black on the desk in his study.
He looked at me. Do you really want to know? his dark gaze mocked.
“Scratch that question,” I said hurriedly. “V’lane has the fourth, right?” On that note, I wondered where V’lane had gone and why. What had happened to him in that warded corridor? Why had he hissed at me, and what had caused him pain? I’d expected him to sift in shortly after it had happened and either explain or be seriously ticked off at me.
I believe so.
“But we don’t know where.”
Not at the moment.
“Quit talking without talking. You have a mouth; use it.” I resented the implied intimacy of our wordless dialogues.
“I was using my mouth a few days ago. So were you.”
“Quit reminding me,” I growled.
“I thought we were past unnecessary pretenses. I stand corrected.”
I moved toward the desk, both drawn and repelled by the power the rune-covered stones were throwing off. I recognized the one I’d stolen from Mallucé’s lair. It was the smallest of the three. The second was twice its size, the third even larger. They had sharply hewn edges, as if they’d been chiseled with great force from some substance with vastly different chemical composites and universal laws than anything on our world. Arranged in close proximity to one another, each of the three emitted a delicate crystalline chiming sound of different duration and pitch. The sound was hauntingly beautiful. And intensely disturbing. Like wind chimes from hell.
“You said that if all four were brought together, they would sing a Song of Making. The Song? Or a lesser one? Are there lesser songs?”
“I don’t know.”
I fidgeted. Barrons admitting to ignorance disturbed me as much as the sound coming from the stones.
I reached out to touch one of them. As my hand passed above it, its banked glow flared so bright it hurt my eyes. I drew my hand back.
“Interesting,” Barrons murmured. “Are you up for an experiment?”
I looked at him sharply. “You want to try to corner the Book with three.” To study it, see how it might react and if anything further would be revealed.
“You game?”
I considered it a moment, remembering what had happened the last time he and I had gone chasing the Book.