Shadowfever

We’d spent months building to this moment, and now, on the eve of battle, in walked my biological parents, telling us we were no longer necessary. They would fight the war and finish it.

It chafed.

“Can you track it?” Barrons demanded.

Pieter answered. “Isla can. But it can sense her, as well, which made it too dangerous for her to be in Dublin until we were certain MacKayla had the amulet.”

“How did you know I had it?” I said.

“Your mother said she felt you connect with it tonight. We came at once.”

“I thought I felt you connect with it once before, at the beginning of October last year,” Isla said, “but the feeling was gone almost as suddenly as it came.”

I blinked. “I did touch it last October. How did you know that?”

“I have no idea,” she said simply. “I felt the joining of two great powers. Both times I felt you, MacKayla. I felt my daughter!” Her face crumpled. “I felt Alina once, too.” She looked away, stared into the cold fireplace for a long moment, then shivered. “She was dying. Could we please have a fire?”

“Of course,” Pieter said immediately. He rose and moved to the fireplace, but Barrons beat him there.

He glared at Pieter. You may be trying to claim the woman, his eyes said, but make no mistake, she and the fucking fireplace are mine.

After a long moment, Pieter shrugged and moved back to the sofa.

“We’ll sleep on it,” Barrons said. “Leave now. We’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

Pieter snorted. “We can’t leave, Barrons. This has to end here, tonight, one way or another. There’s no time to waste.”

I couldn’t stop looking at Isla. There was something about her face. Looking at her made me think of Rowena. I guess because the old woman had persecuted us for so long. “Why does it have to end tonight?”

Isla gave me an odd look. “MacKayla, don’t you feel it?”

“Feel wh—” I broke off. I hadn’t been trying to feel it. I’d been keeping my sidhe-seer volume all the way down for so long it had become instinct. “Oh, God, the Sinsar Dubh is heading straight for us.” I opened my senses as far as I could. “It’s … different.” I looked at Isla, who nodded. “It’s more intense. Like it’s all pumped up and ready. It’s been waiting for this.” My eyes widened. “It’s got a suicide bomber again, and it’s going to blow us all to hell if we don’t stop it!”

“It knows I’m here,” Isla said. Her face was pale, but her eyes were narrowed with determination that I recognized. I’d seen it in my own face. “It’s all right,” she said with a tight smile. “I’m ready, too. It may have stolen my children and torn my family apart twenty-three years ago, but tonight we’re putting it back together.”

Pieter and Isla excused themselves for a moment and stepped away, talking in hushed, urgent tones.

I sat on the chesterfield with Barrons, watching them. This was all so surreal. I felt as if I’d stepped through the Silver into an alternate reality, one with a happily-ever-after. This was exactly what I’d wanted: a family, a safe haven, no responsibility to save the day.

Then why did I feel so deflated and off kilter?

Out there in the night, I could feel the Book coming. It had slowed for some reason, nearly stopped. I wondered if it was swapping “rides.” Maybe it had found a better one.

In spite of myself, despite my love for Jack and Rainey, looking at my biological parents was doing something funny to me. Knowing that they hadn’t wanted to give me up had released a knot of tension I hadn’t even known I’d been carrying. I guess some part of me had felt like the devil-child that everyone was afraid of, who’d been banished only because no one had wanted to kill a baby. But all these years my real parents had been out there, missing Alina and me, longing for us. They’d hated giving us up and had done so only for our own safety. We were connected by a mother–daughter bond. We were going to be a family again. I had so many questions!

“I don’t trust a bloody thing about them,” Barrons said. “This is bullshit.”

Barrons was perfectly paranoid. Perfect awareness, he called it. It was exactly what I expected him to say. “It is hard to believe,” I murmured.

“Then don’t.”

“Look at her, Barrons. She’s the woman that warded me out at the abbey, the last leader of the Haven. The woman you picked up that night. For heaven’s sake, we look alike!” When I’d first arrived in Dublin, we hadn’t. I’d been soft and curvy and still holding on to a smidge of baby fat in my face. Now I was like her, older, leaner, my face less round, my features more distinct.

He glanced between us. “She could be a cousin.”

“She could also be my mother,” I said drily. “And if she is, I’m not the Unseelie King.” There went the weight of countless sins from my shoulders. Believing I was the ultimate villain, responsible for so many twisted births and billions of deaths, had been a crushing load to carry. “Maybe they’re right, Barrons. Maybe this never was my battle. Maybe Alina and I just got caught in the crossfire. The Book sensed us as part of her bloodline and harassed us, screwed up our lives.”

“Dani killed Alina,” he reminded sharply.

Why did he have to remind me of that now? I turned to scowl at him.

Face contorted, he was staring at me, dark eyes wild, roaring Rowena’s name so loud I was surprised the windows didn’t shatter.

I blinked. He was just Barrons again. Looking at me strangely.

“Are you okay?”

“What did you just say?”

“I said, are you okay?”

“No, what did you say before that?”

“I said Dani killed Alina because of Rowena, never doubt it. What’s wrong? You’re white as a sheet.”

I shook my head, embarrassed. Then I jerked and my head whipped toward the window. “Oh, no!” The Sinsar Dubh had begun moving again, rapidly.

“It’s coming!” Isla cried at the same moment.

“How long?” Pieter demanded.

“Three minutes, maybe less. It’s in a car,” Isla said.

I needed to know we were both sensing it in the same general vicinity. With two of us, we would be harder to deceive. I’d be damned if what had happened the last time we’d tried to corner it was happening again. “Where do you sense it?”