Shadowfever

“Love you, too, honey. Hurry back.” I clung to her for a moment, then turned to Daddy, who wrapped me in a bear hug.

“Love you, too, Mac.” Against my ear he whispered, “The crazy woman was Augusta O’Clare from Devonshire. Had a granddaughter named Tellie she said helped your mother get the two of you out of the country. You’re sunshine and light, baby. There’s not a damned thing wrong with you, and don’t you ever forget that.” He pulled away and smiled down at me. Love and pride blazed in his eyes.

Tellie. It was the same name Barrons had mentioned in his phone conversation with Ryodan the morning after I’d discovered he was alive. He’d wanted to know if Ryodan had located Tellie yet and instructed him to get more people involved in the search.

“Get on with saving the world, baby.”

I nodded, lower lip trembling. I could hunt monsters. I could have sex with men who turned into beasts. I could kill in cold blood.

And Daddy could still make me cry just by believing in me.

“I won’t have her on the ground with us,” Rowena was saying fifteen minutes later. “There’s no reason for it. We’ll have our radios. She need only fly overhead, spot the Book, talk us into position with the stones, then fly off on her demon steed.” She shot me a look full of venom that said no sidhe-seer alive would ride a Hunter, and there was all the proof she needed of my treason. “The Keltar will chant and carry it to the abbey, where they will teach my girls to re-inter it. There is no purpose for her presence.”

I snorted. The air was so thick with tension, I was getting light-headed from lack of oxygen. I’d never stood in a room packed with so much distrust and aggression as I was standing in today. That Ryodan had made everyone strip and have their clothes searched before returning them at the top of the stairs had only added to their bad tempers. I knew why he’d done it. It wasn’t about new rules. It was about throwing everyone off balance, establishing from the get-go that they weren’t in control of anything, not even their person. Being naked in front of clothed guards makes anyone feel intensely vulnerable.

I surveyed the room. On the east wall of the glass room, five heavily tattooed Keltar hulked in tight pants and shirts.

On the south wall, Rowena, Kat, Jo, and three other sidhe-seers—all dressed in drab, snug pantsuits—stood at attention, minus Dani. I was surprised Rowena hadn’t brought her, but I guessed she’d decided her risks outweighed her benefits—the most risky of her flaws being that she liked me.

On the north wall, V’lane, Velvet, Dree’lia—who once again had a mouth but was wisely keeping it closed—and three other Seelie of the same caste posed arrogantly, draped in see-through short shifts, their flawless faces matched by flawless genitalia.

Barrons, Lor, Ryodan, and myself occupied the west wall, closest to the door.

Rowena glared at the five Scots lined shoulder-to-shoulder like the Falcons’ defense. “You do know how to seal it away, do you not?” she demanded.

Oozing varying degrees of hostility, they glared back at her.

The Keltar were not the kind of men a woman ordered around, especially not an old woman like Rowena, who hadn’t been bothering to exercise an ounce of diplomacy or charm since she’d been escorted, blindfolded, into one of the glass rooms on the top floor of Chester’s.

Perversion and decadence, she’d snapped the moment they’d removed her blindfold. You condone this … this … consorting? The flesh of human and Fae mix in this place. Och, and you’ll be the damnation of the human race! she’d hissed at Ryodan.

Fuck the human race. You’re not my problem.

I’d almost laughed at the expression on her face, but I wasn’t laughing now. She’d been trying to shut me out of the ritual. Acting like I was a pariah that shouldn’t even be allowed in the room where this meeting was taking place.

“Och, and of course we ken it.” The speaker was Drustan, the Keltar who would be picking up the Sinsar Dubh and carrying it to the abbey. According to his brother, he’d been burned on a pyre of sorts and had an incorruptible heart. I didn’t believe it for a minute. Nobody has an incorruptible heart. We all have our weaknesses. But I had to admit that the man who looked out from those silvery eyes exuded some kind of … serenity, at utter odds with his appearance. He looked like a man who would have been more comfortable centuries in the past, stomping around the Highlands with a club in one hand and a sword in the other. They all did, except for Christopher, who strongly resembled Drustan, without the throwback gene. But Drustan had presence. He had a way with words and a voice that was deep, full of command, yet gentle. He spoke more softly than any of the other Keltar, but he was the one I found myself trying hardest to hear when they were all talking at once, which was pretty much all the time.