It was the voice of my sister’s lover—and murderer.
I knew his name, and I’d die before I’d call him Lord Master. “You bastard.”
I slammed down the phone with one hand and was already using my other to punch up Barrons on my cell. He answered instantly, sounding alarmed. I got right to the point. “Can the Druid spell of Voice be used over the telephone?”
“No. The spell’s potency doesn’t carry through—”
“Thanks, gotta go.” As I’d expected, the store phone was already ringing again. I thumbed my cell off, and left Barrons sputtering. I was safe from being coerced over the phone lines, and that was what I’d needed to know, fast, before the Lord Master had been able to use it on me.
Just in case it was a paying customer, I said, “Barrons Books—”
“You should have asked me,” came that seductive, rich voice. “I would have told you that Voice is diluted by technology. Both parties must be in physical proximity to each other. At the moment, I’m too far away.”
I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that was what I’d been afraid of. “I dropped the phone.”
“Pretend what you will, MacKayla.”
“Don’t address me by name,” I gritted.
“What should I call you?”
“Don’t.”
“You have no curiosity about me?”
My hand was shaking. I was talking to my sister’s murderer, the monster that was bringing all the Unseelie through his mystic dolmens and turning our world into the nightmare it was. “Sure. What’s the quickest, easiest way to kill you?”
He laughed. “You have more fire than Alina. But she was clever. I underestimated her. She concealed your existence from me. She never spoke of you. I had no idea there were two with talents like hers.”
We’d been equals in our ignorance. She’d concealed his existence from me, too. “How did you find out about me?”
“I’d heard rumors of another sidhe-seer, new to the city, with unusual abilities. I would have tracked you eventually. But the day you came to the warehouse, I smelled you. There was no mistaking your bloodline. You can sense the Sinsar Dubh, the same way Alina could.”
“No, I can’t,” I lied.
“It’s calling you. You feel it out there, getting stronger. You, however, won’t get stronger. You’ll weaken, MacKayla. You can’t handle the Book. Don’t even think of trying. You can’t begin to imagine what you’d be dealing with.”
I had a pretty fair idea. “Is that why you called me? To warn me off? I’m quaking in my boots.” This conversation was wigging me out. I was on the phone with the monster that had killed my sister—the infamous Lord Master—and he wasn’t cackling maniacally or threatening villainously. He hadn’t come after me with an army of dark Fae, backed by his black-and-crimson-clad personal guard. He’d phoned me and was speaking in beautiful, cultured tones, softly, and without hostility. Was this the true face of Evil? It didn’t conquer, it seduced? He lets me be the woman I always wanted to be, Alina had written in her journal. Would he ask me out to dinner next? If he did, would I accept, to get a chance at killing him?
“What do you want most in the world, MacKayla?”
“You dead.” My cell phone rang. It was Barrons. I thumbed IGNORE.
“That’s not what you want most. You want that because of what you want most: Your sister back.”
I didn’t like where this was going.
“I called to offer you a deal.”
Deals with the devil, Barrons had recently reminded me, never went well. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What?”
“Get me the Book, and I’ll get you your sister back.”
My heart skipped a beat. I held the phone away from my ear and stared at the receiver, as if seeking some kind of inspiration, or answer, or maybe just the courage to hang up the phone.
Your sister back. The words hung in the air.
Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it. I returned the phone to my ear. “The Book could bring Alina back from the dead?” I was chock-full of superstitions inspired by childhood fables; resurrecting the dead was always accompanied by gruesome caveats, and even more gruesome results. Surely something so evil couldn’t restore something so good.
“Yes.”
I wasn’t going to ask. I wasn’t. “Would she be the same as she was before? Not some scary zombie?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why would you do that, when you’re the one who killed her in the first place?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Maybe you didn’t do it yourself, but you sent them after her!”
“I wasn’t done with her.” There was the barest hesitation. “And I had no plans to kill her when I was.”
“Bull. She found you out. She followed you into the Dark Zone one day, didn’t she? She refused to help you anymore. And you killed her for it.” I was certain of it. I’d thought about it every night before I went to sleep, for months. It was the only conclusion that made sense of the voice mail message she’d left me, a few hours before she’d died. He’s coming, she’d said, I don’t think he’ll let me out of the country.
“You’ve felt the power of my coercion. I might have lost her willing cooperation, but I never needed it to begin with.” Imperious arrogance dripped from his voice, as he reminded me how easily he’d controlled me. No, he wouldn’t have needed her cooperation. With that terrible, will-stealing Voice, he could have made her do anything he wanted, anything at all.
My cell phone rang again.
“Answer it. Barrons hates waiting. Think about my offer.”
“How do you know Barrons?” I demanded.
The line was dead.
“Are you all right?” Barrons growled, when I answered my cell.
“Fine.”
“Was it him?”
“The great LM?” I said dryly. “Yes.”
“What did he offer you?”
“My sister back.”
Barrons didn’t say anything for a long moment. “And?”
I was quiet for an even longer moment. “I told him I’d think about it.”
Silence fell between us and lengthened. Strangely, neither of us hung up. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. I strained my ears but couldn’t hear any background noise. Either his cell phone had great noise reduction capabilities, or he was somewhere very quiet. An image flashed through my mind: Barrons, big and dark, naked against white silk sheets, arms folded behind his head, phone propped at his ear, crimson and black tattoos ranging across his chest, down his abs. Leg tangled with some woman’s.