Burned (48 page)

Still stymied, I open my eyes and stare around the room.

The monitors. Holy cow. There must be places in his club he likes to keep tabs on that he prefers no one else see.

I kick my boots off the desk and sit up straight. This time when I begin punching buttons, I keep a close eye on the screens on the wall directly in front of me.

Aha! Just as I thought, these control his private cameras! The ones that monitor places visitors don’t get to see.

The first one on the left makes the image of the main stairs speckle out on the seventh screen from the right and reveals their kitchens.

Oops, guess he knows I was regularly raiding them while I stayed here.

A white-haired man with burning eyes stands at the counter, eating … oh, no. I didn’t want to see that. I punch it off hastily.

The second button wipes out a shot of the kiddie subclub
(apparently he liked to keep an eye on Jo) to reveal a dark, shadowy room, ornately paneled with a lovely transom ceiling. It’s empty.

I keep my eyes trained on the cameras at the ceiling in front of his desk. The third button causes the live feed of the Sinatra subclub to vanish, replacing it with an overhead shot of a state-of-the-art gym, paneled with mirrors.

Kasteo is stretched out on a weight bench, pumping iron, massive muscles rippling as he does deep, wide flies. He’s bare-chested and as heavily scarred as the others.

To his left, nearly lost in shadow, a woman lies, similarly supine, mimicking his movements with smaller dumbbells.

I gasp, and push slowly to my feet. I don’t believe my eyes. I hurry around the desk and stand directly beneath the monitor a few feet above my head. “Kat?” I exclaim softly. “Kat is working out with Kasteo? What the hell?” Is she here of her own choice? Did Kasteo abduct her? Did Ryodan lock her away with him? He’d pretended not to have any idea where the missing headmistress had gone!

I watch for a few moments then hurry back around the desk. I want to know everything. This is unbelievable.

I punch the next button. A shot of the balustrade at the entry vanishes and I see a long shadowy corridor. Lor is stalking down it, and I wonder where he’s going in such a hurry. I lose him and punch the next button. As I’d hoped, I’m able to follow him down the hallway. I punch three more buttons tracking him through what I realize must be the servers’ wing. When I punch the fifth, I gasp again as Lor reaches out, grabs Jo from behind and spins her around. I see their mouths moving, she’s angry, he’s pissed, too, but I can’t hear a word. I study the panel irritably, feeling cheated by my reality TV, trying
to locate a volume button but no such luck. When I glance back up, Lor has Jo turned around, facing the wall, shoved against it. He’s holding both her hands in one of his, trapped against the cool glass surface.

I can see her profile. She’s not angry anymore. She’s turned on as hell.

With his other hand he undoes his belt, shoves her short skirt up, and before I can give them the privacy the moment demands, he’s up against her, pushing inside her.

Her back arches, head drops back, and the look on her face is—

“Just as I suspected, everybody is having sex but me,” I mutter irritably.

I punch the screen off and hurry to the next one.

And stare blankly at the screen for a long, pained moment.

“No,” I finally manage to say. “He would
not
come back here first. He would come to me.”

But he wouldn’t. And he didn’t.

Barrons is back.

Standing in a room I can’t place, a deep gash of a stone chamber. I think, Please tell me it’s not the sex club I’ve heard so many rumors about. Please tell me I’m enough.

Ryodan moves into view.

Where are they? What are they doing? Why didn’t Barrons come to me, tell me he was back?

I watch the screen, never taking my eyes from it. Minutes creep by and nothing changes. They don’t even appear to be talking. Just watching something.

I shake myself from my trance and punch the next button.

The Rhino-boy club disappears, revealing another dimly lit stone room.

A shadow moves in the darkness.

What the hell is down there?

What are they watching?

The thing separates from the shadows, stumbles toward the light, cringes and stumbles back again.

I suddenly can’t find enough oxygen in Ryodan’s office to breathe.

My hand flies to my mouth as I stare, staggered.

Dageus MacKeltar is not dead.

      PEOPLE      

SIDHE
-SEERS

S
IDHE-
SEER
(
SHEE
-
SEER
):
A person on whom Fae magic doesn’t work, capable of seeing past the illusions or “glamour” cast by the Fae to the true nature that lies beneath. Some can also see Tabh’rs, hidden portals between realms. Others can sense Seelie and Unseelie objects of power. Each
sidhe
-seer is different, with varying degrees of resistance to the Fae. Some are limited; some are advanced, with multiple “special powers.” For thousands of years, the
sidhe
-seers protected humans from the Fae that slipped through on pagan feast days when the veils grew thin, to run the Wild Hunt and prey on humans
.

M
AC
K
AYLA
L
ANE
(O’C
ONNOR
): Main character, female, twenty-three, adopted daughter of Jack and Rainey Lane, biological daughter of Isla O’Connor. Blond hair, green eyes, had an idyllic, sheltered childhood in the Deep South. When her biological sister, Alina, was murdered and the Garda swiftly closed the case with no leads, Mac quit her job bartending and headed for Dublin to search for Alina’s killer herself. Shortly after her arrival she met Jericho Barrons and began reluctantly working with him toward common goals. Among her many skills and talents, Mac can track objects of power created by the Fae, including the ancient, sentient, psychopathic book of magic known as the
Sinsar Dubh
. At the end of
Shadowfever
we learn that twenty years before, when the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped its prison beneath the abbey, it briefly possessed Mac’s mother and imprinted a complete copy of itself in the unprotected fetus. Although Mac succeeds in reinterring the dangerous book, her victory is simultaneous with the discovery that there are two copies of it, she
is
one of them and she will never be free from the temptation to use her limitless, deadly power.

A
LINA
L
ANE
(O’C
ONNOR
): Female, deceased, older sister to MacKayla Lane. At twenty-four went to Dublin to study at Trinity College and discovered she was a
sidhe
-seer. Became lovers with the Lord Master, also known as Darroc, an ex-Fae stripped of his immortality by Queen Aoibheal for attempting to overthrow her reign. Alina was killed by Rowena, who magically forced Dani O’Malley to trap her in an alley with a pair of deadly Unseelie.

D
ANIELLE
“T
HE
M
EGA
” O’M
ALLEY
: Main character. An enormously gifted, genetically mutated
sidhe
-seer with an extremely high IQ, super strength, speed, and sass. She was abused and manipulated by Rowena from a young age, molded into the old woman’s personal assassin, and forced to kill Mac’s sister, Alina. Despite the darkness and trauma of her childhood, Dani is eternally optimistic and determined to survive and have her fair share of life plus some. In
Shadowfever
, Mac discovers Dani killed her sister, and the two, once as close as sisters, are now bitterly estranged.

R
OWENA
O’R
EILLY
: Grand Mistress of the
sidhe
-seer organization until her death in
Shadowfever
. Governed the six major Irish
sidhe-
seer bloodlines but rather than training them, controlled and diminished them. Fiercely power-hungry, manipulative, and narcissistic, she was seduced by the
Sinsar Dubh
into freeing it. She ate Fae flesh to enhance her strength and talent, and kept a lesser Fae locked beneath the abbey. Dabbling in dangerous black arts, she experimented on many of the
sidhe
-seers in her care, most notably Danielle O’Malley. In
Shadowfever
she is possessed by the
Sinsar Dubh
and used to seduce Mac with the illusion of parents she never had, in an effort to get her to turn over the only illusion amulet capable of deceiving even the Unseelie King. Mac sees through the seduction and kills Rowena.

I
SLA
O’C
ONNOR
: Mac’s biological mother. Twenty-some years ago Isla was the leader of the Haven, one of seven trusted advisors to the Grand Mistress in the sacred, innermost circle of
sidhe
-seers at Arlington Abbey. Rowena (the Grand Mistress) wanted her
daughter, Kayleigh O’Reilly, to be the Haven leader, and was furious when the women selected Isla instead. Isla was the only member of the Haven who survived the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped its prison beneath the abbey. She was briefly possessed by the Dark Book but not turned into a lethal, sadistic killing machine. In the chaos at the abbey, Isla was stabbed and badly injured. Barrons tells Mac he visited Isla’s grave five days after she left the abbey, that she was cremated. Barrons says he discovered Isla had only one daughter. He later tells Mac it is conceivable Isla could have been pregnant the one night he saw her and a child might have survived given proper premature birth care. He also says it is conceivable Isla didn’t die, but lived to bear another child (Mac) and give her up. Barrons theorizes Isla was spared because the sentient evil of the
Sinsar Dubh
imprinted itself on her unprotected fetus, made a complete second copy of itself inside the unborn Mac and deliberately released her. It is believed Isla died after having Mac and arranging for her friend Tellie to have both her daughters smuggled from Ireland and adopted in the States, forbidden ever to return to Ireland.

A
UGUSTA
O’C
LARE
: Tellie Sullivan’s grandmother. Barrons took Isla O’Connor to her house the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped its prison beneath Arlington Abbey over twenty years ago.

K
AYLEIGH
O’R
EILLY
: Rowena’s daughter, Nana’s granddaughter, best friend of Isla O’Connor. She was killed twenty-some years ago, the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped the abbey.

N
ANA
O’R
EILLY
: Rowena’s mother, Kayleigh’s grandmother. Old woman living alone by the sea, prone to nodding off in the middle of a sentence. She despised Rowena, saw her for what she was and was at the abbey the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped more than twenty years ago. Though many have questioned her, none have ever gotten the full story of what happened that night.

K
ATARINA
(K
AT
) M
C
L
AUGHLIN
(M
C
L
OUGHLIN
)
: Daughter of a notorious crime family in Dublin, her gift is extreme empathy. She
feels the pain of the world, all the emotions people work so hard to hide. Considered useless and a complete failure by her family, she was sent to the abbey at a young age, where Rowena manipulated and belittled her until she became afraid of her strengths and impeded by fear. Levelheaded, highly compassionate, with serene gray eyes that mask her constant inner turmoil, she wants desperately to learn to be a good leader and help the other
sidhe
-seers. She turned her back on her family mafia business to pursue a more scrupulous life. When Rowena was killed, Kat was coerced into becoming the next Grand Mistress, a position she has felt completely unfit for. Although imprisoned beneath the abbey, Cruce is still able to project a glamour of himself, and in dreams he seduces Kat nightly, shaming her and making her feel unfit to rule, or be loved by her longtime sweetheart Sean O’Bannion. Kat has a genuinely pure heart and pure motives but lacks the strength, discipline, and belief in herself to lead.

J
O
B
RENNAN
: Midtwenties, petite, with delicate features and short, spiky dark hair, she descends from one of the six famous Irish bloodlines that can see the Fae (O’Connor, O’Reilly, Brennan, the McLaughlin or McLoughlin, O’Malley, and the Kennedy). Her special talent is eidetic or sticky memory for facts but unfortunately by her midtwenties she has so many facts in her head, she can rarely find the ones she needs. She has never been able to perfect a mental filing system. When Kat clandestinely dispatches her to get a job at Chester’s so they can spy on the Nine, Jo allows herself to be coerced into taking a waitressing job at the nightclub by the immortal owner, Ryodan, and when he gives her his famous nod, inviting her to his bed, she’s unable to resist even though she knows it’s destined for an epic fail.

P
ATRONA
O’C
ONNOR
: Mac’s biological grandmother. Little is known of her to date.