Bloodfever (6 page)

“I think they know me,” I said when I pushed through the front door of the bookstore. Barrons was behind the counter, not Fiona. That was weird. He was actually ringing up a purchase, like a real person doing a job. He cut me a look of warning—mute it, Ms. Lane—and jerked his head toward the customer.

“Flip the sign,” he said when the patron left. He slapped a cardboard placard on the counter and began writing on it. “Who do you think knows you?”

“The Shades. They get … I don't know, agitated when they see me coming. Like they recognize me and I piss them off. I think they're more sentient than you know.”

“I think you have an overactive imagination, Ms. Lane. Did you turn the sign over yet?”

I flipped over the sign. That was Barrons, autocratic down to his steel-booted toes. “Why? Wrapping up early?”

He finished writing, walked over, and handed me a placard to hang on the door next to the sign.

I read it. “For how long?” I was surprised. The bookstore was our cover and now he was closing it?

“At least a few weeks. Unless you want to start running the cash register, Ms. Lane.”

“Where's Fiona?”

“Fiona turned off all the lights and left a window open last night.”

I staggered—physically stumbled backward—and nearly fell from the impact of that mental blow. I caught myself on a display table, toppling a few baubles and stacks of the latest best-sellers. “Fiona tried to
kill
me?” I knew she didn't like me, but come on. Talk about excessive!

“She claimed she was only trying to frighten you off. She wanted you to go home. I was beginning to think she'd succeeded. Where were you all day?”

I was too busy reeling from Fiona's viciousness to answer him. It was bad enough that I had to watch my back with all the known nasties. I wasn't well versed enough in feminine wiles to see the subtler nasties coming. “God, what did she do?” I breathed. “Sneak back in late last night? How did she get out herself?”

“Same way you did, I imagine. Flashlights. I must admit, Ms. Lane, I'm impressed with how well you cleared the place. There must have been Shades everywhere.”

“There were, and I didn't. I only cleared part of it. V'lane did the rest,” I said absently. How ironic that I'd been so doggedly trying to save her from the very monsters she'd turned loose on me.

There was a moment of frozen silence, then Barrons exploded, “What? V'lane was here? In my store?” His fingers banded around my upper arm.

“Ow, Barrons, you're hurting me,” I snapped.

He released me instantly.

Barrons is dangerously strong. I think he has to maintain constant awareness of what he's touching, or he'd end up breaking bones. I rubbed my arm. I would be bruised tomorrow. Again.

“My apologies, Ms. Lane. So?”

“No, of course he wasn't in the store; you have it warded, don't you? Speaking of which, why didn't your wards keep the Shades out?”

“It's only warded against certain things.”

“Why don't you ward it against everything?”

“Wards demand … resources. Protection has a price. All power does. Lights serve well enough to keep the Shades out. Besides, they're stupid.”

“I'm not so sure about that.” I told him about the one that had faced off with me in the back room, how I'd lost my flashlights and been left with only a pack of matches that I'd nearly run through, how V'lane had appeared in the back alley and driven it off.

He listened intently, asked me many questions about our conversation, wrapping up with, “Did you fuck him?”

“Ah!” I yelled. “Of course not!” I rubbed my face with both hands and kept it buried there a minute. “Wouldn't I be an addict if I did?” I raised my face.

Barrons studied me, dark eyes cold. “Not if he protected you.”

“They can do that? Really?”

“Try not to sound so intrigued, Ms. Lane.”

“I'm not,” I said defensively.

“Good. You don't trust him, do you?”

“I don't trust anybody. Not him. Not you. Nobody.”

“Then you might just stay alive. Where were you today?”

“Didn't Fiona tell you?” I was learning from his tricks: answer a question with a question. Distract. Evade.

“She was hardly forthcoming when I … fired her.” There was a hesitation before the word “fired,” nearly imperceptible unless you knew the man.

“What if she comes back around and tries to hurt me again?”

“Not a worry. Where were you?”

I told him about the Garda, that I'd spent the day at the station, that O'Duffy was dead.

“And they think you slit the throat of a man nearly twice your size?” He snorted. “That's absurd.”

A sudden, deep quietude blanketed my mind. I hadn't told Barrons how O'Duffy had died. “Yeah, well,” I blustered around it, “you know how cops are. By the way, where have
you
been lately? I could have used help a few times in the past twenty-four hours.”

“You seem to have done well enough on your own. You had your new friend,
V'lane,
to assist you.” He said the name in a way that made the prince sound like a prancy little fairy, not the virile, lethally seductive Fae he was. “What happened to my window out back?”

I wasn't about to admit to a man who already knew how O'Duffy had died that I knew he was keeping some kind of monster under his garage. I shrugged. “I don't know. What?”

“It's broken. Did you hear anything last night?”

“Had my hands a little full, Barrons.”

“Of Shades, not V'lane, one hopes.”

“Ha.”

“You weren't in my garage, were you?”

“No.”

“You wouldn't lie to me, would you?”

“Of course not.” No more than you would lie to me, I didn't add, honesty among thieves and all.

“Well, then, good night, Ms. Lane.” He inclined his head and whisked silently through the connecting doors, into the rear of the building.

I sighed and began collecting the various books and baubles I'd knocked from the display table. I couldn't wrap my brain around the thought that Fiona had sneaked in last night and turned off all the lights. Chase me away, my petunia. That woman had wanted me dead. I couldn't imagine anyone knowing Barrons well enough to develop such strong feelings for him. Still, I knew there was something between the two of them, if only the intimacy and deep possession of long association.

From the rear of the building came a howl of outrage. A moment later Barrons exploded through the connecting doors, dragging a Persian rug behind him.

“What
is
this?” he demanded.

“A rug?” I batted my lashes, thinking what a stupid question.

“I know it's a rug. What are
these
?” He thrust it beneath my nose, stabbing a finger at the dozen or so burn marks.

I peered at them. “Burns?”

“Burns from dropped matches, Ms. Lane? Matches one might have dropped while flirting with a pernicious Fae, Ms. Lane? Have you any idea the
value
of this rug?”

I didn't think his nostrils could flare any wider. His eyes were black flame. “Pernicious? Good grief, is English your second language? Third?” Only someone who'd learned English from a dictionary would use such a word.

“Fifth,” he snarled. “Answer me.”

“Not more than my life, Barrons. Nothing is worth more than my life.”

He glared at me. I notched my chin higher and glared back.

Barrons and I have a unique way of communicating. We have these little nonverbal conversations, where we say all those things we don't say with our mouths with our eyes instead, and we understand each other perfectly.

I didn't say, You are
such
a stuffy asshole.

And he didn't say, If you ever burn one of my quarter-of-a-million dollar rugs again I'll take it out of your hide, and I didn't say, Oh, honey, wouldn't you like to? And he didn't say Grow up, Ms. Lane, I don't take little girls to my bed, and I didn't say I wouldn't go there if it was the only safe place from the Lord Master in all of Dublin.

“You might reconsider that one day.” His voice was low, fierce, on the verge of guttural.

I gasped. “What?” Intrinsic to our wordless free-for-alls was a tacit agreement never to elevate those conversations to a verbal level. It was the only reason either of us was willing to participate.

He gave me a cool smile. “That nothing is worth more than your life, Ms. Lane. Some things are. Don't put too high a premium on it. You may live to regret it.”

He turned and walked away, dragging the rug behind him.

I went to bed.

 

The next morning I woke up, dismantled my haphazard monster alarm, opened the door, and found a small TV with a builtin VCR/DVD player sitting in the hallway.

Manna from heaven! I'd been thinking, since Fiona was gone, about swiping the one she kept behind the counter. Now I wouldn't have to.

There was a tape next to it.

I toted the TV into my room, plugged it into the wall, slipped in the tape, and turned it on. The program was already cued.

I winced and turned it back off. I kicked a chair.

Every time I think I'm getting smarter I realize that I've just done something stupid. Dad says there are three kinds of people in the world: those who don't know, and don't know they don't know; those who don't know and
do
know they don't know; and those who know and know how much they still don't know.

Heavy stuff, I know. I think I've finally graduated from the don't-knows that don't know to the don't-knows that do.

Barrons had security cameras in the garage. He'd just given me a tape of myself breaking into it.

FIVE

I
flipped the sign, boldly lettered in hot pink Sharpie—Barrons Books and Baubles Summer Hours: 11
A.M.
to 7
P.M.
, M.-F., it said—and locked the front door, feeling good about myself.

I'd just completed my first day on the new job.

Up until now, bartending had been my only marketable skill but today I'd broadened my employment horizons and could now add store clerk to my résumé. An opportunity had presented itself to make money, and I wasn't about to let it pass me by. Barrons had offered me the job last night—
unless you want to start running the cash register, Ms. Lane,
he'd said.

After only one day, I could see the job was far more complex than merely ringing up the occasional purchase. There was stocking to worry about, special ordering to be done, bookkeeping to stay on top of, and spending time with patrons, helping them find things they didn't know they wanted. The store carried some cool stuff but there were things that definitely needed changing. Some of the magazines had to go; I wasn't about to waste my precious time chasing teenage boys away from the Male Interest racks. The Female Interest racks were seriously lacking; I planned to add more high-end fashion magazines along with some eye candy, and the store definitely needed a more festive selection of writing implements. The hot pink Sharpie was mine. BB&B offered only your basic pens plus a few prissy-looking calligraphy sets, the kind that make it take forever to write a single letter. Barrons obviously didn't understand that shorthand—LMAO, IMHO, GFY—was the new longhand, and in a world where everything was high-speed and wireless, nobody wanted dial-up anymore.

My reasons for accepting the job were twofold: I was eventually going to run out of money, sooner rather than later; and if the Garda pushed their investigation, I could cite my job as the reason for my continued stay in Dublin. I was training to learn to run my own bookstore back in the States, I would tell them.

Fiona's recently extended hours were absurd; there was no way I was working an eleven-hour day. Since I was in charge now, I'd made my first executive decision and chosen new hours of operation, opening late enough that I could either sleep in in the mornings or use them to take care of personal business. As far as State of the World business was concerned, I'd decided it wasn't my problem.

Vengeance for my sister—and only blood relative, as far as I knew, but those were murky waters I wouldn't swim in any more than I'd call home right now—was my first and only priority. Well, that and staying alive.

I'd had twenty-seven customers today, not counting the boys I'd run off, and I'd made good use of my time in between to begin putting the pictures I'd found at the Lord Master's, the ones of Alina in and around Dublin, into the new diary I'd purloined from the collection of hand-tooled leather journals sold at BB&B.

Alina.

God, why? I wanted to shout at the ceiling. Why
her
? There were millions of creeps in dozens of countries across the world—why hadn't he taken one of
them
? Now that I knew I was adopted, I resented God doubly. Other people had lots of relatives. I'd only had one.

Would I ever stop hurting? Would I ever stop missing her? Would I ever live another day without this gouged-out place in my soul that I was desperate to fill with something, anything? Unfortunately, it was an Alina-shaped hole and nothing else would fit it.

But … maybe vengeance would soften the edges of it. Maybe killing the bastard who had killed her would make them less sharp, less jagged, and I could stop cutting myself on them.

Pasting the pictures of Alina into my journal had made the grief of losing her feel fresh all over again. With everything that had been happening to me lately, I'd actually woken up a time or two in the morning without the instant, crushing thought:
Alina's dead; how am I supposed to get through the day?
top on the list in my brain. I'd thought things like
I robbed a mobster yesterday and now he's going to kill me.
Or
vampires are real, whodathunk?
Or
I'm afraid Barrons was my sister's boyfriend.
Things like that. A week ago, I'd laid that last one to rest, much to my relief.

Now that weirdness in my life was the norm, grief and rage had resurfaced with a vengeance, on a level I couldn't deal with.

Inside me was a Mac I'd never met before. I couldn't dress her up. I couldn't make her take a bath. She wouldn't mix in pleasant society. I couldn't corral a single one of her thoughts. My only hope was she wouldn't suddenly sprout a mouth.

She was a bloodthirsty, primitive little savage.

And she hated pink.

 

I dug in my heels. “No way. I'm not going in there. I draw the line at grave-robbing, Barrons.”

“It's not your pen.”

“Huh? Whose is it?” What pen? I'd thought we were talking about crumbling gravestones, hallowed ground, and theft that was a crime against the tenets of church and man. We'd finished our discussion about pens on the way over, along with my plans for ordering new, cooler ones. He'd listened to me prattle in what I suspect was bemused silence. I get the feeling few women chat Barrons up.

And I'm paying you how much for running my bookstore? was all he'd finally asked. At the last minute, I'd tacked a little on to the sum I'd decided upon earlier. When he agreed, I almost whooped with joy except he'd stopped the Viper at that moment, and I'd taken my first good look around.

We were on the outskirts of the south side of Dublin, on a narrow lane, right next to a very dark, very old cemetery. The last time I'd been in a cemetery had been for Alina's funeral.

I closed my hands around the cold iron bars of the main entrance and swept a brooding glance over the headstones.

“The pen is a metaphor, Ms. Lane. Drawing lines isn't your prerogative. It's mine. You're the OOP detector. I'm the OOP director. You'll walk the cemetery. I'm particularly interested in the unmarked graves behind the church but make a thorough search of the building and the grounds, as well.”

I sighed. “What exactly is it I'm looking for?”

“I don't know, perhaps nothing. This church was built on the site of an ancient meeting circle once presided over by the Grand Mistress of the
sidhe
-seers herself.”

“In other words,” I muttered, “it's probably a wild-goose chase.”

“Remember the cuff V'lane offered you?”

“Is there anything you don't know?”

“Legend has it there are multiple cuffs, each with a different purpose. Legend also has it that, in ancient times,
sidhe
-seers collected every Fae relic they could get their hands on, and if it proved indestructible, secreted it away where they believed Mankind would never find it. Some say when Christianity came to Ireland,
sidhe
-seers encouraged the building of churches in specific places, even funded them, perhaps to keep their secrets safely buried on consecrated ground. Laws governing the digging up and relocating of remains are rigidly enforced.”

It sounded plausible to me. “These
sidhe
-seers, were they like a club or something, back in the day?”

“As much as they could be. Times were very different then, Ms. Lane. Communication between enclaves took weeks, sometimes months, but in times of threat, they gathered in preappointed places and performed ritual magic. This was one of them.”

“Where did all the
sidhe
-seers go? You said there are more of us out there?”

“When the Fae withdrew from our realms, the world no longer had any use for
sidhe
-seers. A once vaunted position became obsolete. Those accustomed to being highly valued lost their purpose overnight. In time,
sidhe
-lore was forgotten. Over the centuries, talents went fallow. As for where the ones who remain are, the next time you're out, look around. Watch. When you see something from Faery, look not at the Fae, but the crowd to see who else is watching it. Some know what they are. Some are on medication for psychological disorders. Some betray themselves to the first one they see and are killed by it. It's how I knew what you were. I saw you watching the Shades.”

Psychological disorders? I tried to imagine seeing the monsters I'd recently encountered as a child, having no explanation for them, and realizing no one else could see them. I would have told my mother. She'd have been horrified, taken me for counseling. And if I'd told the counselor the truth? Drugs—a lot of them. I could see it happening all too easily. How many
sidhe
-seers were out there, too sedated to care what was going on in the world? “So this Grand Mistress, she ran things?”

He nodded.

“Is there still one today?”

“One would expect the bloodline that directed the
sidhe
-seers for millennia to have maintained the lore.”

That was one evasive answer I wasn't willing to accept. “What does that mean? Do you or don't you know if there is one, and if so, who is she?”

He shrugged. “If there is one, her identity is tightly guarded.”

“So, there's something you don't know. Amazing.”

He smiled faintly. “Do your thing, Ms. Lane. You might be criminally young, but the night is not.”

My “thing” entailed making like a brisk vacuum through the church, and when I'd finished with the spartan stone chapel, sweeping over the graves, up and down burial lanes, in and around mausoleums, searching with an inner antenna I'd not known I possessed, to collect things a few weeks ago I wouldn't have believed existed.

I saved the unmarked graves behind the church for last. I was armed to the teeth with flashlights, although I knew no Shades were here. Where Shades dwell, no night crickets chirp, not a blade of grass stirs, and tree limbs gleam bare and white as old bones.

I expected my stroll through the cemetery at night to be unnerving. I didn't expect to find the hushed world of the human dead soothing, peaceful, but there was an undeniable synergy here. Natural death was part of life. Only unnatural death—like Alina's—opposed the order of things and demanded retribution, a balancing of the scales on a cosmic level. I read the inscriptions as I passed. The epitaphs not worn to dust by time were heartfelt and warm. There were a surprising number of octogenarians and even centenarians interred here. Around these parts, life had once been simple, good, and unusually long, especially for the men.

Barrons waited in the car. I could see him in profile, talking on his cell phone.

Finding an object of power, or OOP, for short, is a talent not all
sidhe
-seers have. From what Barrons says it's rare. Alina had the gift, too, which is why the Lord Master used her.

Don't think I don't see the similarities between us: my sister and the Lord Master, Barrons and me. Difference is, I don't believe Barrons is out to destroy Mankind. I don't think he particularly
cares
much for Mankind, but I don't think he has any deep-seated desire to see us all wiped out. Another difference is he hasn't tried to seduce me, and I'm not in love with him. I have a clear head about what I'm doing and why. And, if one day, I learn Jericho Barrons did kill O'Duffy for snooping into his life, and
is
one of the bad guys, well … I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. I never used to understand that saying, but I think I finally get it. I'm hotheaded and inexperienced right now. I need to know more about the Fae, and what I am. I need to be cooler, smarter, tougher, stronger, and packing better arsenal before I go after revenge. I need more OOPs, like the spear. I need Barrons. He's an endless source of information, and knows all the right places to look. Take this cemetery, for instance. I never would have known it existed, or what it had once been. I don't know the first thing about my heritage and even less about Irish history. Criminally young, he charged, and I can't argue. But I can change.