Shadowfever

I was still shaking my head. I didn’t seem to be able to stop.

“Oh, MacKayla! It was torture every day, knowing you were out there, being raised by someone else, knowing that I could never see you or Alina again without putting you in danger. But you’re here now, and you’re about to do something that would have terrible consequences. It’s time for the lies to stop. You need to know the truth.”

I shoved my fists in my pockets and turned away.

“Don’t turn your back on me,” she cried. “I’m your mother!”

“Rainey Lane is my mother.”

“Unkind and unfair,” Pieter said. “You aren’t even giving her a chance.”

“Why do you care?” I said irritably.

“Because I’m her husband, MacKayla. And your father.”

46

I had brothers: Pieter, Jr., who was nineteen, and Michael—everyone called him Mick—who was sixteen. They showed me pictures. We looked alike. Even Barrons seemed rattled.

“We staged your mother’s death, cremated a Jane Doe, and smuggled the two of you from the country. Took you to the States and did our best to find you a good home far from danger.” Pieter took Isla’s hand and clasped it between his own. “Your mother nearly didn’t survive it. She didn’t speak for months afterward.”

“Oh, Pieter, I knew it had to be done. It was just—”

“Hell,” he said flatly. “It was absolute hell giving them up.”

I jerked. They were saying all the things I wanted to hear. It was breaking my heart. I had parents. Brothers. I’d been born. I belonged. I only wished Alina had lived to see this day. It would have been perfect.

“You said you had something important to tell her. Say it and get out,” Barrons ordered.

I looked at Barrons, torn. Part of me wanted to tell him to be quiet so I could hear more, and part of me wanted them to go away and never come back. I’d just gotten my head wrapped around one reality. Now they wanted me to abandon that reality and embrace a new one. How many times was I supposed to decide who I knew and what I was, only to learn I was wrong? I was no longer feeling bipolar, I was feeling schizophrenic, with multiple personalities.

“If I’m your daughter, then why do I have memories that belong to the Unseelie King?”

Isla gasped. “You do?”

I nodded.

“I told you she might do it,” Pieter reminded.

“Who?” I demanded. “Do what?”

“The Seelie Queen came to see us shortly after the Book escaped, before we left Dublin. She said she would do everything in her power to help recover it,” Pieter said.

“She was very interested in you,” Isla said grimly. “You were barely three months old. I remember like it was yesterday. You had on a pink dress with tiny flowers and a rainbow hair ribbon. You couldn’t stop looking at her. You kept cooing and reaching for her. The two of you seemed fascinated by each other.”

“We were afraid then that the queen had meddled with you. She’s notorious for that. She looks to the future and tries to adjust minuscule events, nudging here and there to achieve her ends,” Pieter said. “A few times I was almost certain someone had been in your nursery moments before I walked in.”

“And you think she planted memories of the Unseelie King? How would she have any to plant? I thought she drank from the cauldron. It would have erased everything she knew.”

“Who could say with her?” Isla shrugged. “Perhaps they were false memories, cleverly crafted, or lifted from another. Perhaps she never truly drank from cauldron. Some say she pretends.”

“Who gives a fuck? What did you come here for?” Barrons said impatiently.

Isla looked at him as if he must be crazy. “You’ve been taking care of her, and for that we can’t thank you enough, but we’ve come to take her home.”

“She is home. And she’s got a world to save.”

“We’ll take care of that,” Pieter said. “It’s what we do.”

“Bang-up job you’ve been doing so far.”

Pieter gave him a look of rebuke. “Not as if you’ve been doing any better. We’ve been directing the majority of our efforts to hunting the amulet. The true one.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

“The Triton Group has been searching for it for centuries for various reasons. But recently it became critical that we find it, because we’ve discovered it’s the only way to re-inter the Book,” Pieter said. “A representative from our company heard—too late—about the auction where it was sold. We arrived at the Welshman’s castle shortly after Johnstone’s massacre. But the Goth punk seemed to vanish into thin air.”