Shadowfever

I gave her a look. “I’ve had a lot on my plate. And I sure learned Voice fast, didn’t I? But we have other, more-immediate problems: I know Christian MacKeltar, and he’s missing. He’s been trapped inside the Silvers since Halloween. We can’t do a thing until we find him.”

“In the Silvers?” Kat exclaimed. “We can’t go in the Silvers! None can!”

“I was there myself recently. It can be done.”

Rowena appraised me. “You’ve been in the Silvers?”

“I stood in the Hall of All Days,” I said, and was surprised to hear a touch of pride in my voice. I finally allowed myself to ask the question that had been gnawing at me ever since I’d heard there were two prophecies and, in one of them, I supposedly doomed the world. Was it really about me? Or was it as vague as this one? “I heard there were two prophecies. Where’s the other one?”

Kat and Jo exchanged uneasy glances.

“The washerwoman rambled ’til the end of the page about how many stones there were to throw into a loch at any given moment and that some were more possible than others,” Jo said. “She claimed she dreamed of dozens such stones, but only two seemed likely. The first could save us. The second was far more likely to doom us.”

I nodded impatiently. “I know. So what’s the second prophecy?”

Kat handed me the slim volume. “Turn the page.”

“I can’t read Old Irish Gaelic.”

“Just turn it.”

I did. Because the ink she’d used had stained through the sheets of vellum bound into the thin journal, Mad Morry had written on only one side of the page. The next page was missing. Small pieces of parchment and torn threads protruded from the binding. “Someone tore it out?” I said disbelievingly.

“A good while ago. This is one of the first volumes we cataloged once you removed the wards protecting the library. We found it open, on a table, with this page and several others missing. We suspect it was whoever destroyed the wards outside your cell when you were Pri-ya,” Kat said.

“There’s a traitor in the abbey,” Jo said. “And whoever it is either translates as well as me or took random pages.”

“To have bypassed my wards and gained access to this library,” Rowena added grimly, “it could only have been one of my trusted Haven.”

23

I parked the Viper behind the bookstore and sat staring down into what was once the city’s biggest Dark Zone—crammed full of Shades, with one giant amorphous life-sucker in particular that had seemed to enjoy threatening me as much as I’d enjoyed threatening it.

I wondered where it was now. I hoped I would get the chance to hunt it and try out some of my newfound runes, destroy it once and for all, because as large as it had been before it escaped on the night the lights went out in Dublin, I imagined it could devour small towns in a single swallow now.

I glanced at the garage. I looked at the bookstore. I sighed.

I missed him. Ironically, now that I’d become obsessed with wondering who and what I was, I was less worried about who and what he was. I was beginning to understand why he’d always insisted I judge him by his actions. What if the sidhe-seers really were Unseelie? Did that make us innately bad? Or did that just mean we—like the rest of the human race—had to choose whether to be good or evil?

I got out of the car, locked it, and turned for the bookstore.

“Barrons say you can drive his Viper?” Lor said behind me.

Hand on the doorknob, I turned, dangling the key ring from my finger. “Possession. Nine-tenths of the law.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “You been around him too much.”

“Where’s Fade? Did you catch him?”

“Book left him dead.”

“And just when do you expect him back?” I said sweetly.

“Report. What did you learn at the abbey?”

“You think I’m reporting to you now?”

“Until Barrons gets back and takes control of you again.”

“Is that what you think? He takes control of me?” My temper flared.

“You’d better hope so, because if he doesn’t, we kill you.” The threat was delivered tonelessly, with utter disinterest. It was chilling. “We don’t exist. That’s the way it always has been. That’s the way it always will be. If people find out about us, we kill them. It’s not personal.”

“Well, excuse the hell out of me if you try to kill me and I decide to take it pretty damned personally.”

“We’re not trying to. At the moment. Report.”

I snorted and turned to enter the store.

He was behind me, his hand on my hand on the doorknob, his face in my hair, lips close to my ear. He inhaled. “You don’t smell like other people, Mac. I wonder why. I’m not like Barrons. Ryodan is downright civilized. I don’t suffer Kasteo’s problems, and Fade is still having fun. Death is my morning coffee. I like blood and the sound of bones breaking. It turns me on. Tell me what you learned about the prophecy and, next time, bring me the seer’s book. If you want your parents to remain … intact, you will cooperate only with us. You will lie to everyone else. We own you. Don’t make me give you a lesson. There are things that can break you. You wouldn’t believe the madness certain kinds of pain can induce.”

I turned to face him. For a moment he didn’t let me, made me push against his body and struggle to move. His body was every bit as electric as Barron’s and Ryodan’s. And I knew he was enjoying it, quite possibly on a level of primitive carnality I didn’t understand.

There are things that can break you, he’d said. I almost laughed. He had no idea the thing that had broken me most completely was my belief that Barrons was dead.

One look at Lor’s eyes and I decided I would wait until Barrons was back before pressing any issues with him. “You think Barrons has a weakness for me,” I said. “That’s what worries you.”

“It is forbidden.”

“He despises me. He thinks I slept with Darroc, remember?”

“He cares that you slept with Darroc.”

“He cared that I burned his rug, too. He gets a little pissy about those things he likes to think of as his property.”

“You two drive me bug-fuck. Prophecy. Talk.”