Shadowfever
Page 119“You think I don’t now?” The Damned, she’d called him. I wondered why.
“You’re learning. The abbey was the focus of the talk. I’d been watching it for weeks, trying to devise a way in without setting off their wards. Clever work. They sensed even me, and nothing senses me.”
“You said ‘we’d’ gotten wind. I thought you worked alone. Who is we?”
“I do. But dozens have hunted it over time. It’s been the Grail for a certain type of collector. A sorcerer in London that ended up with copies of pages that night. Mobsters. Would-be kings. Following the same leads, we glimpsed one another now and then, gave each other a wide berth as long as we thought the other might one day provide a valuable lead, although I never saw the Keltar. I suspect the queen cleaned up after them, kept her ‘hidden mantle’ well hidden.”
“So, you were outside the abbey?”
“I had no idea anything was going on inside. It was a quiet night, like any other I’d watched it. There was no commotion. No shouting, no disturbance. The Book slipped out into the night unnoticed, or bided its time and left later. I was distracted by a woman climbing out a window in the rear of the abbey, holding her side. She’d been stabbed and was badly injured. She headed straight for me, as if she knew I was there. You must get me out of here, she said. She told me to take her to Tellie Sullivan in Devonshire. That the fate of the world depended on it.”
“I didn’t think you gave a rat’s petunia about the fate of the world.”
“I don’t. She’d seen the Sinsar Dubh. I asked if it was still at the abbey and she said it had been but was no longer. I learned that night that the damned thing had been practically beneath my nose for the past thousand years.”
“I thought it was always there, since the dawn of time, long before it was an abbey.” I wasn’t above prying into his age.
“I’ve been in Ireland only for the past millennia. Before that, I was … other places. Satisfied, Ms, Lane?”
“Hardly.” I wondered why he’d chosen Ireland. Why would a man like him stay in one place? Why not travel? Did he like having a “home?” I supposed even bears and lions had dens.
“She said it killed everyone in the Haven. I had no idea what the Haven was at the time. I tried to Voice her, but she was slipping in and out of consciousness. I had nothing with which to stem her injuries. I thought she was my best bet to track it, so I put her in my car and took her to her friend. But by the time we got there, she was in a coma.”
“Once I realized she wasn’t coming out of it, I moved on, unwilling to let the trail cool. I had competition to eliminate. For the first time since man learned to keep written archives, the Sinsar Dubh had been sighted. Others were after it. I needed to kill them while I still knew where they were. By the time I returned to Devonshire, she was dead and buried.”
“Did you dig—”
“Cremated.”
“Oh, isn’t that just convenient. Did you question Tellie? Voice her and her grandmother?”
“Look who’s all ruthless now. They were gone. I’ve had investigators hunting for them off and on ever since. The grandmother died eight years ago. The granddaughter was never seen again.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yes, it stinks. That’s one of many reasons I don’t believe you’re the king. Too many humans went to too much effort to conceal things. I don’t see humans doing that for any Fae, especially not sidhe-seers. No, there was something else going on.”
“You said one of many reasons.”
“The list is endless. Do you remember what you were like when you first came here? Do you really think he’d wear pink? Or a shirt that said I’m a JUICY Girl?”
I looked at him. The corners of his lips were twitching.
“I just don’t see the most dreaded of the Fae wearing a matching thong and bra with little pink and purple appliqué flowers.”
“And it’s not working,” he said, as we stepped into the alcove of Barrons Books and Baubles. “How’s this?” He drew me back out into the street and cupped my head with his hands. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he tipped my head back so I was looking up.
“What?”
“The sign.”
The placard swaying on a polished brass pole read: MACKAYLA’S MANUSCRIPTS AND MISCELLANY.
“Are you kidding me?” I exploded. “It’s mine? But you just said I was on my last chance with you!”
“You are.” He released my head and moved away. “It can be removed as easily as it was hung.”
My sign. My bookstore. “My Lamborghini?” I said hopefully.
He opened the door and stepped inside. “Don’t push it.”
“What about the Viper?”
“Not a chance.”
I moved in behind him. Fine, I could deal without the cars. For the moment. The bookstore was mine. I was feeling choked up. MINE with all capital letters, just like the sign. “Barrons, I—”
“I was just going to thank you,” I said crossly.
“For what? Leaving? I changed the sign because I don’t plan to be here much longer. It has nothing to do with you. What I want is nearly within reach. Good night, Ms. Lane.”
He vanished out the back. I don’t know what I expected.
Actually, I do. I expected him to try to get me into bed again.
Barrons has been predictable in his treatment of me since the day I met him. Initially he used references to sex to shut me up. Then he used sex to wake me up. After I was no longer Pri-ya, he’d returned to using references to sex to keep me on edge. Forcing me to remember how intimate we once were.
Like everything else about him, I’d begun to count on it.
Innuendo and invitation. Eternal as the rain in Dublin. I was the one the dangerous lion licked. And I liked it.
Tonight, when we’d walked back to the bookstore, talking, sharing information freely, I felt something warm and new blossom between us. When he’d shown me the sign, I melted.