Shadowfever

At the bottom of the page was a short bulleted list:

Sidhe-seers—sense Fae.

Alina—senses Sinsar Dubh, Fae Hallows, and relics.

Abbey—Sinsar Dubh

Unseelie King—sidhe-seers?

I blinked at it, trying to make sense of it. Was Darroc saying that it hadn’t been the Seelie Queen, as Nana O’Reilly had claimed, who’d delivered the Dark Book to the abbey so long ago? Had the Unseelie King himself brought it to us, because we could sense Fae, and Fae Hallows, and that made us the perfect guardians for it?

Suddenly Barrons was behind me, looking over my shoulder. “Makes you think about yourself a little differently, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. I mean, who cares who brought it to the abbey? Point is, we’re the guardians.”

“Is that what you get from his notes, Ms. Lane?” he purred.

I glanced up at him. “What do you get from them?” I said defensively. I didn’t like his tone any more than I liked the amused glitter in his dark gaze.

“It’s said the king was horrified when he realized that his act of atonement had resulted in the birth of his most powerful abomination yet. He chased it from one world to the next, for eons, determined to destroy it. When he finally caught up with it, their battle lasted centuries and reduced dozens of worlds to ruins. But it was too late. The Sinsar Dubh had become fully sentient, a dark force of its own. When the king first created the Sinsar Dubh, he was greater, and the Book was lesser. It was a repository for the king’s evil, but without drive and intent. Yet while it roamed, it evolved, until it became all the king was, and more. The creation—abandoned by its creator—learned to hate. The Sinsar Dubh began to pursue the king.” He paused and gave me one of his wolf smiles. “So what else might the dark king have created? Perhaps an entire caste that could track his greatest enemy, contain it, and keep it from destroying him? Are you going to tell me you never once considered that?”

I stared. We were the good guys. Human to the core.

“Sidhe-seers: watchdogs for the U.K.,” he mocked.

I was chilled by his words. It had been bad enough to discover I was adopted and the parents who’d raised me weren’t my biological parents. Now what was he implying? That I’d had no parents?

“That’s the biggest pile of BS I’ve ever heard.” First Darroc had suggested I was a stone. Now Barrons was proposing that the sidhe-seers were a secret caste of Unseelie.

“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.”

“I am not a duck.”

“Why does it offend you so much? Power is power.”

“The Unseelie King didn’t make me!”

“The idea frightens you. Fear is more than a wasted emotion. It’s the penultimate set of blinders. If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t be a part of it, can’t control it. You may as well throw in the towel and yield to the whims of anyone with a stronger will. Do you like being helpless? Is that what you get off on? Is that why the moment I was gone you turned to the bastard that had you raped?”

“So, what are you and your men?” I countered coldly. “Another of the Unseelie King’s secret castes? Is that what you are, Barrons? Is that why you know so much about them?”

“None of your fucking business.”

He turned away and resumed his search.

I was trembling, and there was a sour taste in my mouth. I pushed the papers away, got up, and walked to the balcony, where I stood staring out at the night.

Barrons had shaken me deeply with his suggestion that the sidhe-seers were a caste of Unseelie. I had to admit that Darroc’s notes could certainly be construed that way.

And just the other night, I’d stood between two Fae armies, thinking how glad I was to be like the Unseelie, strengthened by pain, less frivolous and breakable.

Then there was that dark glassy lake in my head, that had so many inexplicable “gifts” to offer, like runes that an ex-Fae had recognized, that had given him pause, runes that the Unseelie princes had disliked intensely.

I shivered. I had a new question to be obsessed with besides what was Jericho Barrons?

What was I?

18

When we left, I snatched a Dani Daily from the lamppost outside the building, slid into the passenger’s seat of the Viper, and began to read it. Her birthday was coming up. I smiled faintly. Figured she’d tell the whole world. She’d make it a national holiday if she could.

I wasn’t surprised to learn she’d been in the street last night and had seen the Hunter kill Darroc. Dani didn’t take orders from anyone, not even me. Had she been there to try to kill Darroc herself? I wouldn’t put it past her.

As I fastened my seat belt, I wondered whether she hadn’t stuck around long enough to see that the Hunter had been possessed by the Sinsar Dubh, or if she’d decided to omit that bit of news. If she had stuck around, what did she make of the beast that blasted into me and carried me off? Probably figured it was some other kind of Unseelie she hadn’t seen before.

Although I was shocked to realize so much time had passed while I was in the Silvers and it was the middle of February, I should have known today was Valentine’s Day.

I glanced sourly over at Barrons.

I’d never had a happy one. They’d been various shades of sucky since kindergarten, when Chip Johnson ate too many iced cookies and threw up all over my new dress. I’d been drinking fruit punch, and when his puke hit me, I had an involuntary sympathetic response and spewed punch everywhere. It had set off a chain reaction of five-year-olds vomiting that I still couldn’t think about without getting queasy.

Even back in second and third grade, Valentine’s Day had been a stressful experience for me. I’d wake up dreading school. Mom always got Alina and me cards for everyone in our class, but a lot of moms weren’t as sensitive. I’d sit at my desk and hold my breath, praying someone besides Tubby Thompson or Blinky Brewer would remember me.

Then, in middle school, we had the Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girls had to ask the guys to go, putting on even more pressure. Adding insult to injury on what was supposed to be the most romantic day of the year, I was forced to risk rejection by asking out the guy of my dreams and praying that, by the time I got my nerve up, there’d be someone left besides Tubby and Blinky. In eighth grade, I waited too long and nobody popular was left, so I’d blow-dried my forehead on the high-heat setting, spritzed my sheets with water, and faked the flu that morning. Mom made me go anyway. The scorch mark on my forehead gave me away. I’d hastily cut bangs to try to cover it and had ended up at the dance dateless, miserable, with a painful burn and a bad haircut.