Shadowfever

But I was glad to be alive and couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than here and now, watching it all unfold.

I felt like Barrons: I’d never get enough of living.

Only yesterday, Ryodan’s men had finally located Tellie, and I’d gotten to speak with her briefly on Barrons’ cell phone. She told me Isla O’Connor really was pregnant with me the night the Book escaped. I had been born. I did have a biological mother. Tellie was on her way here to give me the whole story, would be arriving in a few days.

My parents were healthy and happy. The bad guys bit it and the good guys won the day. This time around.

It was a wonderful life.

With a single painful exception.

There was a child behind my bookstore, beneath the garage, and he was in agony every second he lived.

And there was a father who hadn’t said a word to me about him or the spell since we’d left the cavern beneath the abbey.

I didn’t have the faintest idea why. I’d expected him to demand the spell of unmaking the moment we got back to the bookstore. It was what he’d existed for, been hunting for an eternity.

But he hadn’t, and with each passing day I grew to dread my inevitable confession more. The lie loomed larger, seemed increasingly impossible to retract.

I would never forget the hope in his eyes. The joy in his smile.

I’d put it there. With a lie.

He was never going to forgive me when he found me out.

You can still do it …

I squeezed my eyes shut.

That insidious voice had been torturing me ever since we’d left the abbey: the Sinsar Dubh. I couldn’t decide if it was a memory of what it had said to me when it tempted me to embrace it—or a reality that was actually inside me.

Had the Book really “downloaded” a copy of itself into me while I was still an unformed fetus inside my mother?

Had it really created the perfect host for itself twenty-three years ago, making me a human facsimile of it, waiting for me to mature?

Most important of all: Was the spell to lay his son to rest really inside me?

Could I give it to him? Hear the joy in his laughter again? Free them both? At what cost?

I dug my nails into my palms.

Last night, right before I drifted off to sleep, I’d heard the child/beast howl. Hunger, anguish, eternal misery.

We’d both heard it. He kissed me, pretending he hadn’t. Then later, when he left to go do whatever it was he did for the child, I’d choked back tears of shame and failure.

He’d asked me for one thing. And I hadn’t been strong enough to get it for him and survive the getting.

I opened my eyes and stared at the bookstore, at the sign swaying gently in the breeze. Dusk brushed the store in shades of violet. A tinge of a metallic silver gauzed the windowpanes, one of the many new Fae hues.

Barrons would be back soon. I had no idea where he went when he left. But I’d learned the pattern. When he returned, I would be able to feel his heartbeat.

I didn’t let myself think about doing it. I knew if I thought about it, I never would. I’d chicken out. I let my eyes drift out of focus and took the plunge.

The water was frigid, unwelcoming, black as pitch, black as original sin. I couldn’t see a thing. I kicked deep.

I felt small, young, and afraid.

I kicked deeper.

The lake was enormous. I had miles and miles of dark, icy water inside me. I was surprised my blood didn’t run black and cold.

Melodrama. See you finally got some, a familiar voice purred. How is that flamboyance coming? Universe hates a dull girl.

“Where are you?”

Keep swimming, MacKayla.

“Are you really in here?”

Always have been.

I kicked harder, pushing deeper into the blackness. I couldn’t see a thing. I might as well have been blind.

Suddenly there was light.

Because I said let there be, it said silkily.

“You’re not God,” I muttered.

I am not the devil either. I’m you. Are you finally ready to see yourself? What lies at the bottom, the great taproot?

“I’m ready.” I’d no sooner said it than there it was. Shining, resplendent, at the bottom of my lake. Golden rays shot out from it, rubies shimmered, locks gleamed.

The Sinsar Dubh.

I have been here all this time. Since before you were born.

“I beat you. In the study, I saw through your games twice. I walked away from the temptation.”

Can’t eviscerate essential self.

I was no longer swimming but dripping wet and floating to the floor of a black cavern. I drifted to my feet, boots lightly touching down. I looked around, wondering where I was. In the dark night of my soul? The Sinsar Dubh was open on a regal black pedestal in front of me. Gold pages shimmering, it waited.