Bloodfever (19 page)

Glasses on a beaded chain rested on her chest. She raised them now, slipped them onto a finely pointed nose. They magnified the size, fierce color, and the fiercer intelligence of her sharp blue eyes. “MacKayla. Do come in. Have a seat,” she said briskly.

I gave her a curt nod and stepped into the room. I glanced around, wondering where the sword was. Something Fae was in this room. “Rowena.”

Her eyes flickered and I knew she didn't appreciate the familiarity. Good. I meant to establish us as equals, not mentor and student. She'd lost the chance to mentor me when she'd turned her back on me. We looked at each other in silence. It stretched. I wasn't about to speak. This was our first battle of the wills. It wouldn't be our last.

“Sit,” she said again, gesturing to a chair in front of the desk.

I didn't.

“Och, for the love of Mary, get your spine down, lass,” she barked. “We're family here.”

“Really?” I leaned back against the door and folded my arms. “Because where I come from, family doesn't abandon their own in need, and you've done that to me twice. Why did you tell me to go die that night in the pub? You gather
sidhe
-seers. Why not me?”

She tilted her head back and peered down her nose, assessing, measuring. “It had been a difficult day. I'd lost three of my own. And there you were, about to betray yourself, and the saints only knew how many of us, if you weren't stopped.”

“It had to be obvious I had no idea what I was.”

“What was obvious was that you were fascinated by a Fae. I told you, I thought you were
Pri-ya,
one of their addicts. I had no way of knowing it was the first Fae you'd ever seen, or that you were unaware of what you were. Those who are
Pri-ya
are beyond our help. By the time that kind of damage has been done, the will is demolished and the mind virtually gone. I will never sacrifice ten to save one.”

“Did I look like my mind was gone?” I demanded.

“Actually, yes,” she said flatly. “You did.”

I thought back to that night, my first in Dublin. I'd been heavily jet-lagged, overcome with grief, feeling bitterly alone, and I'd just seen something that couldn't possibly have been there. Perhaps the expression on my face had been a bit … stupefied, maybe even blank. Still … “What about the museum? You abandoned me there, too,” I accused.

She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “You appeared to be in league with a Fae prince—and again,
Pri-ya.
You were stripping for it. What did you expect me to think? It wasn't until I saw you threaten him with the spear that I began to understand differently. Speaking of which, I need to see that spear.” She rose, skirted the desk with the agility of a much younger woman, and extended her hand.

I laughed. She was crazy if she thought I was handing my weapon over. I'd sooner put it through her heart. “I don't think so.”

“MacKayla,” she said sternly, “let me see that spear. We are your people. We are sisters in this war.”

“My sister is dead. Did you see her, too? Did you make the same snap judgment and turn her away? Tell her to go die by herself? Because she did,” I said bitterly. “The Fae ripped her to shreds.”

Rowena looked startled. “What is this of a sister?”

“Oh, please.” Here it was, the real reason I hated her. Not just for turning me away and shattering my beliefs about my family, but why hadn't she found my sister? With her spelled signs, her advertisements, and her bicycling spies, why hadn't she drawn Alina in? Taught her?
Saved
her? “She was in Dublin for months. She hung out in the pubs all the time. How could you not have run into her?”

“Would you expect me to encounter every single person in Chicago on a visit?” she snapped. “Dublin is a big city, and we have only recently become organized. Until a short time ago, I was busy elsewhere. How long was your sister here? What did she look like?”

“She was here for eight months. She was blond like … like I was the first time you saw me. Same color eyes. More athletically built. A bit taller.”

Rowena searched my face, as if absorbing and breaking down my individual features, trying to place them in random arrangements on another woman. Finally she shook her head. “I'm sorry, MacKayla, but no. I never met your sister. You must tell me what happened. You and I are sisters in more than vision and cause; we are sisters in loss. Tell me everything.”

“We aren't sisters in anything, and I'm not giving you my spear, old woman.” She wasn't going to suck me in with sympathy.

She gave me a hard stare. “I sent you away the first time. The second time I tried to get you to come back here with me, but you refused. We've both turned the other away once. I won't make that same mistake again. Will you?”

“You should have found my sister. You should have saved her.”

“You have no idea how much I wish I could have. Let me save you instead.”

“I don't need saving.”

“If you're working with Jericho Barrons, you do.”

“What do you know about Barrons?”

“That there are not, and never have been, any male
sidhe
-seers, MacKayla. It is a gift of matriarchy.”

I scoffed. “A gift? It killed my sister and ruined my life. As for Barrons, what is he, then? Because he sure can see the Fae, and he helps me kill them, which is more than you've ever done.”

“Is that all one must do to win your trust, MacKayla? Battle alongside you? Let us go kill a Fae together then, right now. Do you know what's in his heart? His mind? Why he does it? What he's after?”

I said nothing because there was nothing to say to that. Most of the time I wasn't sure he even had a heart, and whatever thoughts he entertained he kept intensely guarded.

“I didn't think so. He tells you nothing, does he?”

“He's told me more about what I am than you have.”

“You haven't given me a chance.”

“I gave you two.”

“Try again, MacKayla. I'm ready to talk. Are you ready to listen?”

“Do
you
know what he is?” I pressed.

“I know what he isn't, and that's all I need to know. He's not one of us. We are pure of heart, pure of purpose. You see that shamrock?” Rowena pointed to a picture behind her desk of a large green clover on a background of embossed gold. “Look at it. Do you know why it's considered lucky, and has been for longer than anyone can recall?”

I shook my head.

“Before it was the clover of Saint Patrick's trinity, it was ours. It's the emblem of our Order. It's the symbol our ancient sisters used to carve on their doors and dye into banners millennia ago, when they moved to a new village. It was their way of letting the inhabitants know who they were and what they were there to do. When people saw our sign, they declared a time of great feasting and celebrated for a fortnight. They welcomed us with gifts of their finest food, wine, and men. They held tournaments to compete to bed us.” She strode to the picture, snatching a pencil from the desk on the way to it. “It is not a clover at all, but a vow.” She traced the lines of the two bottom leaves, left to right, with the eraser. “You see how these two leaves make a sideways figure eight, like a horizontal Möbius strip? They are two
S
's, one right side up, one upside down, ends meeting. The third leaf and stem is an upright
P
.”

So that was why the shamrock looked misshapen! It was. The upright leaf was flatter on the left side, the stem stiff.

“Over thousands of years they've forgotten us, added a few flourishes, occasionally a fourth leaf, and now they think it's a lucky clover.” She snorted. “But we haven't forgotten. We never forget. The first
S
is for See, the second for Serve, the
P
for Protect. The shamrock itself is the symbol of Eire, the great Ireland. The Möbius strip is our pledge of guardianship eternal. We are the
sidhe
-seers and we watch over Mankind. We protect them from the Old Ones. We stand between this world and all the others. We fight Death in its many guises and now, more than ever, we are the most important people on this earth.”

I almost broke into a rousing, emotional “Danny Boy,” and I didn't even know the words. She'd made me feel part of something huge; she'd given me chills and I resented it. I'd never been much of a joiner and it's hard to want to join a club that's dissed you twice. Yes, I have a long memory and hold grudges. I would do with her what I did with everyone else: Mac Lane, P.I.: I would pump her for all the information I could get. Later I would take my journal somewhere quiet, make notes, decide who to trust … sort of, or at least who to throw in with for a while.

“I suppose you have a collection of stories and records somewhere?” If so, I'd love to get my hands on it.

She nodded. “We do. We have more information on the Fae than one person could sort through in a dozen lifetimes. Some of our … less physically inclined members have been recruited to bring us into the twenty-first century. They've begun the laborious task of converting it all to electronic files. Our library, though vast, is coming apart at the spines.”

“Where is this library?”

She measured me. “In an old abbey, a few hours from Dublin.”

An old abbey. Right. I was going to kill Barrons the next time I saw him.

“Would you like to see it?”

With every ounce of my being. I wanted to say take me, show me, right now, walk me up and down those halls, teach me who I am. But I didn't. What if she got me out there among hills and sheep and ruins, overpowered me with a coven of her faithful, and stole my spear? I understood the value of my weapon. There were only two capable of killing Fae. She had one—and countless followers who were unarmed. I had the other. Hardly seemed fair, even to me. I wasn't interested in fair. I was interested in my own survival. “Maybe sometime,” I said noncommittally.

“Let me give you a taste of what you're missing.” She moved to the desk, opened a drawer, and removed a thick volume bound in leather, tied with a cord. “Come.” She placed it on the desk, motioned me over, and opened it, handling the time-stained pages with care. “I think this entry might interest you.” She traced her finger down the page. It was an alphabetical record of some kind, a
sidhe
-seer lexicon, and we were in the
V
's.

I gasped.

V'lane: Prince of the Court of the Light, Seelie. Member of Queen Aoibheal's High Council and sometimes Consort. Founder of the Wild Hunt, highly elitist, highly sexed. Our first recorded encounter with this prince took place in—

She closed the book and returned it to the desk drawer.

“Hey!” I protested. “I wasn't done reading. When and what was the first encounter? How sure are you of those notes? Are you positive he's Seelie?”

“The Fae prince you kept at bay in the museum was born to the Court of the Light and has been with his queen since the dawn of time. Join us, MacKayla, and we will share with you all we have.”

“And demand what in return?”

“Allegiance, obedience, commitment. For that we will give you a home, a family, a sanctuary, a noble cause, and put all the lore of the ages at your disposal.”

“Who was Patrona?”

She smiled faintly, sadly. “A woman for whom I once had tremendous hopes, killed by the Fae. You've the look of her.”

“You said I looked like an O'Connor. Are there O'Connors in your organization? People I might be related to?”

She tilted her head and gave me that look down her nose, with a vaguely approving air. “You spoke to your mother. Very good, I wasn't certain you would. And?”

My jaw locked. I couldn't bring myself to tell her she'd been right. “I want to know who I am, where I came from. Can you give me that?”

“I can aid you in your search for truth.”

“Are there or aren't there O'Connors in your organization?” Why didn't anyone ever give me a straight answer?

A shadow crossed her face. She shook her head. “The bloodline died out, MacKayla. If you are an O'Connor, or an offshoot of that branch, you are the last.”

I turned away, deeply affected. I hadn't realized how strongly I'd been nurturing the hope of blood relatives until it was summarily executed with a few words.

Her hand was gentle on my shoulder, although I knew it was made of iron. “We are your kin, MacKayla.”

“Were the O'Connors killed by Fae, too?”

“You're in a doorway, child, one foot in, one foot out. Make up your mind. That door may close.”

I turned and looked at her. “Where is the
Sinsar Dubh
?”

“Och, now isn't that the question.”

“Do you have it?”

“You are asking questions only The Haven have the right to know. I will not answer them.”

“Who are The Haven?”

“Our Council, over which Patrona once presided. Are you a Null?”

“Yes.” She'd shifted gears so swiftly I'd answered without hesitation. I employed her tactic and fired right back at her, “What are the Fae that slip inside humans and don't come out again?”

She sucked in a breath. “You've seen such a creature?”

I nodded.

“What do they look like?” I told her and she said, “Sweet saints, the one Dani described to me, the day she met you! So
that's
what it does. I've heard rumors such Unseelie exist. We don't know what they are, and have no name for them.”

“I couldn't see it once it was inside her.”

“It went beyond your
sidhe
-seer vision? You mean it wore humanity as a glamour, and you were unable to penetrate it?” She looked as troubled as I felt. “Did you kill it?”

“How could I, without killing the girl?”