Those were fighting words. I rose from my seat, hands splayed on the table.
She rose, too. “Easy, Mac. Hear me out. I’m not accusing you, or your sister. If I truly believed you traitors to our cause, I wouldn’t be here. I saw the look on your face when Moira—”She broke off, and I saw deep, unspoken grief in her eyes. They’d been close. Still, she was here, trying to connect with me, because she believed it was best for our cause. “We’re not here to speak of the dead but to plan for the living,” she continued after a moment. “I know that things are not always what they seem. We learn that from birth. But you can see the bind we’re in. We need you, but we don’t know you. Rowena is against you and, while we normally support her in all things, her attempts to recover the Book have failed. She has tried many times. We need results, and time is of the essence. You asked Dani for a show of faith, and she gave you it. Now we’re asking you to return the favor.”
I bit back an instinctive refusal. “What do you want?” I’d vowed never to prove myself to the old woman, but these women were not Rowena. I badly wanted to be invited to the abbey again. They were the only people I knew who were like me. I’d been banned from the only club I’d ever wanted to join. With V’lane’s name on my tongue, I wouldn’t be at their mercy at the isolated fortress. If things took a threatening turn, he’d be there to rescue me the moment I opened my mouth.
“Can you sense all Fae objects?”
I shrugged. “I think so.”
“Have you heard of the D’Jai Orb?”
When I nodded, she leaned forward and said urgently, “Do you know where it is?”
I shrugged. I’d been holding it in my hands a little over two weeks ago, but I had no idea where it was right now, only that it was in Barrons’ possession. “Why?”
“It’s important, Mac. We need it.”
“Why? What is it?”
“A relic from one of the Seelie Royal Houses that contains some kind of Fae energy that Rowena believes can be used to reinforce the walls. We need it fast, before Samhain.”
“Sowen. What’s sowen?”
“If you can get the Orb and bring it to us, we’ll tell you everything we know, Mac. Even Rowena will have to believe in you then.”
ELEVEN
I hurried back to the bookstore, deep in thought. Not, however, with my head down. I wasn’t making that mistake again today. I won the struggle not to frown at two Rhino-boys that were repairing a streetlamp. What was their deal? Shouldn’t they be supporting their dark brethren, the Shades, and busting out the lights, instead of fixing them?
I couldn’t believe the sidhe-seers had been guardians of the Book and lost it. How had it been lost? What had happened that night twenty-some years ago?
My meeting with the sidhe-seers had answered few questions, and raised more.
What was sowen? How did the D’Jai Orb fit in? How had Barrons gotten it? What did he plan to do with it? Sell it to the highest bidder? Could I steal it from him? Did I want to burn that bridge? Were there any bridges left between us?
If the Orb was my passport to Sidhe-seer Central, I was determined to get it, by fair means or foul. Was Rowena manipulating their efforts to befriend me? Had she allowed Dani to photograph those pages and give them to me, seemingly on the sly?
My short time in Dublin had me looking for games within games everywhere I turned. I’d sure like to get Christian into the same room with a few people and employ his lie-detecting abilities while I asked questions.
Speaking of the Scot, I tried calling him again. There was no answer, again. Grrr. Wondering what exactly constituted “afternoon” in the dreamy-eyed boy’s world, I let myself into the store, opened my laptop, and logged onto the Net.
My search for “sowen” yielded no results. I tried half a dozen different spellings, and was about to give up when a Google search result caught my eye. It was about trick-or-treating, which brought to mind O’Bannion’s earlier crack.
I looked up Halloween and bingo, there it was: sowen—gee, why didn’t I think of spelling it S-a-m-h-a-i-n?
Samhain had its origins, like many modern holidays or celebrations, in pagan times. As the sidhe-seers had been inclined to erect churches and abbeys on their sacred sites, the Vatican had been wont to “Christianize” ancient, pagan celebrations in an if-you-can’t-beat-them-and-don’t-want-to-join-them-rename-it-and-pretend-it-was-yours-all-along campaign.
Scrolling past the various names, etymology, and pictures of jack-o’-lanterns and witches, I read.