The Seelie Queen’s hair had spilled past her waist in a thick platinum fall.
Christian’s hair had turned from rich chestnut to inky black.
Was I turning Seelie? Would the True Magic actually transform me into a Fae? Cripes. First a sidhe-seer, with the blood of the Unseelie King in my veins, then the Sinsar Dubh, now a full-on Faery queen. It was beginning to look like being “just Mac” had never been in the cards for me.
I narrowed my eyes. Maybe my changes would only go partway like Christian’s. He’d managed to arrest, even reverse, his transformation to a degree. Then again, this wasn’t a transformation I could afford to resist. I needed all the juice she’d given me. No matter the price.
After a moment I growled at my platinum-haired reflection, “Well, buck up, little buckaroo,” in my best John Wayne voice.
What I looked like, even whatever I might eventually become due to the gift Aoibheal had given me—and it was a gift because it could save our world—didn’t mean shit.
The only thing that mattered was what I did with it.
I hurried down the stairs, entering my paint-stained, wrecked store from the rear. I paused in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, studying it. The critical factor now was: we needed the song. But an equally critical factor was: assuming we got it, what power had I been given and how was I supposed to use it? I had no idea how Fae magic worked.
I remembered standing in the street, at the head of Darroc’s army of Unseelie, watching as V’lane made Dree’lia’s mouth disappear. Unlike when he’d sealed the door to the boudoir with a steel gate, he’d not said a word when he altered her face. He hadn’t even glanced at her. So what had he done? Was it based on the power of mere thought, the higher the caste of Fae, the stronger the power?
I studied the room with dried spray paint streaked everywhere, the shattered bookcases, the broken lamps and magazines and chairs. I’d only managed to clean a third of the smaller debris out the last time I’d worked on it.
I closed my eyes and painstakingly began to create a mental image of the way it had looked the day I first stumbled from the Dark Zone through the front door, so damned naïve, and met Barrons for the first time.
When I’d opened the tall diamond-paned door to the seemingly modestly sized four-story building and discovered the cavernous bookstore within, I’d fallen in love with every inch of the elegant Old World place with its antique rugs, sumptuous Chesterfields, enameled gas fireplaces, acres of books, even the old-fashioned cash register.
I lavished detail on the room I was building in my mind.
Only when I could see my bookstore with perfect clarity, exactly the way it had been that day, did I open my eyes.
Still wrecked. Not a damn thing had changed.
Okay. That hadn’t worked. Time wasn’t my friend. I needed to figure this out fast. I was rather relieved it hadn’t worked because it had taken me too long. V’lane had removed Dree’lia’s mouth effortlessly and instantly, and I didn’t believe for a minute that if things got critical and I had to do something to save us, my potential adversary might wait patiently for me to picture whatever I wanted to do with crystal clear perfection.
I dropped down onto a crate, buried my head in my hands and sank into myself, seeking the shining vault I’d claimed for my own, quite certain it was no more an actual vault than there’d ever been an actual book or box inside me. But what was it? And how did I access it?
I went still, disconnecting from my body, remembering what it had felt like to be consciousness and not one thing more, and focused.
There it was.
Rays of dazzling gold radiated from the smooth gilded surface of it, and I could feel raw, ferocious power emanating from within. I welcomed it, embraced it, basked in the bright golden light it was throwing off, and grew warm all over as if absorbing rays of sun.
I experienced a sudden whooshing sensation as if I was being yanked from one location to another. Then abruptly I was somewhere else.
My eyes flew open.
I stood near an enormous alabaster altar, on top of a hill that looked very much like Tara only bigger, more dramatic and otherworldly. At the bottom of the high, vast mound a thousand or more mighty megaliths that shimmered with iridescent fire encircled the base, with only small spaces between.
A soft breeze tousled my hair, the sky above me was dark, glittering with stars and three enormous moons that hung abnormally near the planet. One was so close, low, and directly above me that I felt as if it might drop on my head and crush me. The entire mound was carpeted with lush velvety flowers that bobbed and swayed in the breeze, scenting the night air with perfume. High in the sky, dark, leathery-winged Hunters sailed past the two more distant moons, gonging deep in their massive chests. Night birds sang an exquisite synchronized melody. It was so overwhelmingly beautiful to all my senses that it hurt. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply, wondering where I was.
What have you come for? A bodiless voice demanded.
I kept my eyes closed, the better to answer with an undistracted mind. Opening them would have done me no good anyway. The voice had been huge, coming from everywhere at once: the stones, the earth, even the moons.
“The True Magic of the Fae race,” I said strongly.
What will you do with it?
My answer was instant and effortless. “Protect and guide.”
How will you achieve it?
“With wisdom and grace.”
Are you equal to it?
Well, shit. That felt like a trick question. “Yes” displayed arrogance. “No” displayed weakness. I inhaled deeply of the jasmine-and-sandalwood-scented breeze and searched myself—the ego that was undivided for the first time in my entire life—for the answer my daddy, Jack Lane, would have given, because it was the right one, and said quietly, “I will do everything in my power to be equal to it.”