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  “No, Ms. Lane, but I can smell you. I know when you’ve been in one of my rooms, and I know your nature. You snoop. ”

  I didn’t try to deny it. Of course I snooped. How else was I supposed to find anything out? “You can’t smell where I’ve been,” I scoffed.

  “I smell blood tonight, Ms. Lane, and it’s not yours. Why is your face bruised? What happened today? Who bled in my bookstore?”

  “Where’s the abbey?” I countered, fingering the lump on my cheek. I’d iced it, but not soon enough. It was hard and painful to the touch. I’d taken most of the blows to my body. My ribs were a mess, it hurt to breathe deep, and my right thigh was one massive contusion. My shins had huge goose-eggs on them. I’d been afraid several of my fingers were broken, but aside from being a little swollen, they seemed okay now.

  “Why? Is that where you plan to go tonight? Do you think that’s wise? What if they attack you?”

  “Been there, done that. How did you find me last night? Were you looking for me?” The question had been vexing me. Why had he shown up when I was with V’lane? It seemed too coincidental to have been coincidence.

  “I was on my way to Chester’s. ” He shrugged. “Coincidence. The bruise?”

  Chester’s. Where Inspector O’Duffy had spoken to a man named Ryodan who, according to Barrons, talked too much about things he shouldn’t be talking about—Barrons himself. I made a mental note to find Chester’s, track down the mysterious Ryodan, and see what I could learn. “I got in a fight with some other sidhe-seers. Evade if you want, Barrons, but don’t treat me like an idiot. ”

  “I knew you were nearby last night. I detoured to make certain you were safe. How did the fight go? Are you . . . unharmed?”

  “Mostly. Don’t worry, I’m intact in all the ways you need me to be. Never fear, your OOP detector is here. ” My hand went to the base of my skull. “Is it the brand? Can you find me so easily by it?”

  “I sense you when you’re near. ”

  “That sucks,” I said bitterly.

  “I can remove it if you wish,” he said. “It would be . . . painful. ” His brilliant gaze met mine and we stared at each other a long moment. In those obsidian depths I saw the darkness of Mallucé’s grotto, tasted my own death again.

  Through the annals of history, women have paid a price for protection. One day, I won’t have to. “I’ll deal with it. Where’s the abbey, Barrons?”

  He wrote “Arlington Abbey” and an address on a scrap of paper for me, got me a map off the bookshelf, and marked it with an X. It was several hours from Dublin.

  “Would you like me to accompany you?”

  I shook my head.

  He studied me a long moment. “Then good night, Ms. Lane. ”

  “What about OOP detecting?” We hadn’t done any in days.

  “I’m busy with other things now. But soon. ”

  “What are you busy with?” It was innocuous as questions go. Sometimes he answers those.

  “Among other things, I’m tracking down the bidders on the spear,” he said, reminding me that he’d gotten several names from Mallucé’s laptop in the grotto; contenders in an auction for the immortal weapon. I imagined he was trying to find out what they had in their possession that we wanted, and we’d be robbing them as soon as he had the lay of the land, and a plan in place. OOP detecting loomed on the horizon. I was startled to realize I was rather looking forward to it.

  Barrons inclined his dark head and left. I stared at the door after he’d gone. There were times that I wished I could go back to my earliest days with him, when I’d thought he was just an overbearing man, as in human. But he wasn’t, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few months, in some of the most painful ways, it’s that there’s no going back, ever. What’s done is done, the dead stay dead (well, mostly; Mallucé had a few problems with that), and all the regrets in the world can’t change a thing. If only they could, Alina would be alive and I wouldn’t even be here.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the number I’d looked up earlier. I wasn’t at all surprised that someone answered at such a late hour, at Post Haste, Inc. , the Dublin courier service that housed Rowena’s bicycling sidhe-seers who kept tabs on what was happening in and around the city under guise of delivering letters and packages.

  Their motherhouse, the abbey, was far from the city, and I was informed stiffly that the abbey was where Rowena was now.

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  “Fine. Tell the old woman I’ll be there in two hours,” I said, and hung up.

  FIVE

  The Viper isn’t the most expensive or fastest car on the market, but it delivers on everything it promises. It’s got great lines, a wicked attitude, and hits sixty in under four seconds. If I ever get home again, I won’t know what to do with my Toyota. I’ll need to pull a Fred Flintstone, and poke my feet through the bottom.

  The last Viper that Barrons let me drive, and the one I thought I was getting this time, was gone. In its place was one of the new ones, hot off the assembly line, sleek, low, and muscley: the SRT-10 with 90 additional snorting horses for a total of 600 feisty stallions, and 560 ft-lb of torque.

  It was black on black with heavily tinted windows, and looked like some kind of crouching metal beast, waiting—no, begging—to be taken and tested to its limits. I was momentarily awed to be holding its reins in my hands.

  I stood for a moment, absorbing Barrons’ incredible car collection, listening hard, alert for any sounds or vibrations in the floor. There was nothing. Whatever creature dwelled beneath the garage either slumbered or lay sated. I envisioned a hulking darkness surrounded by a mound of cleanly picked bones, and shook my head to dispel the image.

  I slid into the black leather interior of the two-seater, cranked it, listened to the engine, smiled, shifted into first, and pulled out of the garage. A complaint about the Viper (by people who would be better off sticking to 4-cylinder automatics and living vicariously through reality TV shows) is that the passenger compartment gets too hot because of the exhaust, and that it’s excessively noisy when you open it up on the road.

  I revved the engine. The throaty growl was magnified by the close quarters of the alley, and I laughed out loud. That’s what the Viper’s all about, muscle and machismo, and when you’ve got it in spades, you strut it.

  Down to my right, the huge Shade puffed up, nearly eclipsing the building behind it. I muttered something that would make my mother cringe, but kept my hands on the steering wheel and gearshift. There would be no more flipping of the bird at monsters of unknown parameters. I’d heard of road rage cases resulting in murder over less, and I saw no point in antagonizing an already antagonistic Shade that was far more aware of me than I would have liked.

  Driving a hot car is a lot like sex to me, or a lot like I keep thinking sex should be: a total body experience, overwhelming to all the senses, taking you places you’ve never been, packing a punch that leaves you breathless and touches your soul. The Viper was way more satisfying than my last boyfriend.

  I cranked up the music and barreled into the night. I didn’t think about what had happened today. I’d had all afternoon to think about it and had made my decisions. The time for thinking was over. It was time for action.

  Twenty minutes from the abbey, in the middle of what we call B. F. E. back home, surrounded by too many sheep and too few fences for my comfort in such an expensive car, I pulled over to the side of the dark, narrow, two-lane road, looked around to make sure there was grass and foliage growing, reassuring myself it was a Shade-free zone, left the headlamps blazing anyway, and stepped out.

  The thing on my tongue had been bothering me since V’lane had put it there. I didn’t know how long I was going to be able to stand it. But at the moment, I was glad I had it.

  Need me, open your mouth, and I will be there, he’d said. I’d never have believed I’d be us
ing it less than twenty-four hours later, but there was something I had to do tonight, and I needed backup. Serious backup. I needed something that would rock Rowena’s world, and Barrons just didn’t fit the bill the way a Seelie prince did.

  I tried to decide what might constitute needing him, in a way that would release whatever was piercing my tongue. Merely thinking about him? Couldn’t be that. I’d been half thinking about him all day. He’d been simmering on the back burner of my mind’s stove ever since he’d put his pot there, as he’d known he would. Maybe, in time, I’d grow inured to the intruder. I doubted it.

  “V’lane, I need you,” I told the night, and darned if the thing in my mouth didn’t move.

  I gagged. The thing uncoiled and slammed against the back of my teeth. I spit it out convulsively. Something soft and dark exploded from my mouth, hit the air, and was gone.

  “Sidhe-seer. ”

  I spun. V’lane was behind me. I opened my mouth and shut it again, pining for the good old days of cell phones. Perhaps, as experts warned, radiation really would fry my brain after decades of repeated use, but I was feeling fried already from using Fae methods of communication a single time.

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  I didn’t bother reaching for my spear. Its cold weight in my shoulder holster was gone. He’d somehow lifted it from me the moment he’d appeared. If I’d known how quickly he would show up, I’d have held on to it, to see if that stopped him. I made a mental note to try it next time.

  “Fae,” I returned the salutation, if it could be called that, dryly. How had I ended up in a world with such strange methods of address? Of all the men I’d met in Dublin, only Christian called me Mac. “Give me my spear back. ” I knew he wouldn’t but it didn’t stop me from asking.

  “I do not come to you armed with lethal human weapons. ” V’lane was in full Fae mode: glittering a dozen shades of alien, his iridescent eyes dispassionate with a thousand-yard stare, dripping heart-stoppingly incredible sex. Literally.

  “You are a lethal human weapon. ”

  His gaze said There is that, and so it should be. “Why have you called me?” He looked impatient, as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of something important.

  “How badly do you want the Book for your queen?”

  “If you have found it and think to hold out on me . . . ”

  I shook my head. “Not holding out. But everyone wants my help finding it, and I’m not sure who’s the strongest, or who will help me the most. There are things I want, too. ”

  “You question my power?” His eyes blazed the silver of sharp knives, and I had a sudden, strange vision—the tatters of a genetic memory?—of a Fae flaying a human’s skin from his body with a glance. If they catch you, bow your head before them, we’d taught our children, and never look into their eyes. Not because we’d been afraid they might be mesmerized—a Fae didn’t need to make eye contact to do that—but because if our children were going to die horribly, we didn’t want them to see their fate glinting in those sharp, inhuman eyes.

  “Why did you leave when Barrons showed up?” I asked.

  “I despise him. ”

  “Why?”

  “It is not your concern. Are you such a fool that you think to summon me to interrogate me?”

  I shivered in my light sweater and jacket. The temperature had just dropped sharply. Fae royalty are so powerful that their pleasure or displeasure affects the weather, if they allow it. I’d recently learned that the Unseelie Hunters, with their great leathery wings, forked tongues, and fiery eyes, command this power, too. “I called you because I need your help. I’m just wondering if you can do what I need you to do. ”

  “I will keep you alive. And I will not let you . . . what is it you disliked so greatly when you couldn’t summon me before? Ah, you said you suffered horribly. I will not permit that. ”

  “That’s not enough. I need you to keep everyone alive tonight, and not let anyone suffer horribly. And I need to know you won’t return here one day and hurt them in the future. ” Sidhe-seers had been hiding from the Fae for thousands of years, and I was about to take one of the most powerful straight into their hidden lair. Would I be branded traitor? Cast out? Oh, duh, I already was. Those who should have been my allies in this battle were now gunning for me, thanks to Rowena. I wouldn’t have to do this if she hadn’t pushed me so far.

  His alien eyes narrowed and he glanced around. Then he laughed.

  I caught myself pulling my sweater up, smiling vapidly. My breasts ached and my nipples throbbed. “Turn it off,” I growled. “We have a deal, remember? You said you would turn it off around me all the time. ”

  He shimmered and was once again the man I’d seen the night before, in jeans, boots, and biker jacket. “I forgot. ” There was neither truth nor contrition in his words. “You are going to the abbey. ”

  “Crimeny,” I exploded, “does everyone know everything but me?” I consoled myself with the thought that at least now I didn’t have to feel bad about betraying their location to V’lane. He already knew it.

  “It would seem so. You are young. Your minuscule time is a yawn in my life. ” He paused then added, “And Barrons’. ”

  “What do you know about Barrons?” I demanded.

  “That you would be far wiser to depend on me, MacKayla. ” He moved toward me and I stepped back. Even in his muted, humanlike form, he was pure sex. He glided past me, stopped at the Viper, and traced his hand over the sleek metallic curve of the hood. V’lane standing next to a black-on-black Viper was a thing to see.

  “I want you to go to the abbey with me,” I told him. “As backup. I want you to be my protection. You will not harm any of the sidhe-seers there. ”

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  “You think to give me orders?” The temperature plunged again, and snow dusted my shoulders.

  I reconsidered. It wouldn’t kill me to phrase it nicely. Mom always said you draw more flies with honey than vinegar.

  “Will you promise me that you won’t hurt any of the sidheseers?” Grimacing mentally, I added, “Please?”

  He smiled, and a nearby tree pushed out velvety-looking, fragrant white blossoms that drenched the night air with pungent spices. They overgrew rapidly, plummeted to the ground in a lush fall of alabaster petals, and swiftly decomposed. Life to death in a matter of seconds. Was that how he saw me? “I will grant you this. I like it when you say ‘please. ’ You will say it again. ”

  “No. Once was enough. ”

  “What will you do for me in exchange?”

  “I’m doing it. Helping you find the Book. ”

  “Not enough. You wish to command a Fae Prince as a lapdog? It costs, MacKayla. You will let me fuck you. ”

  I jerked, and for a moment I was so angry I couldn’t speak. It didn’t help that his words had caused a slick, erotic thrill to flutter in my belly. Had he amped himself up again? Shot some kind of Fae sex-dart at me when he’d said it? “No. Not even if Hell freezes over will I offer you sex with me in exchange for anything. Got it? Some things are non-negotiable and that’s one of them. ”

  “It is merely coitus, a physical act, the same as eating or voiding waste. Why attach such importance to it?”

  “Maybe for a Fae it’s merely a physical act, and maybe for some people, too, but not me. ”

  “Because sex has been so stupendous in your brief life? Because you have had lovers that have made your body burn, and set your soul on fire?” he mocked.

  I notched my chin higher. “Maybe I haven’t felt that, exactly, yet, but I will one day. ”

  “I will give it to you now. Ecstasy that you would die for, but I will not permit it. I will stop before that happens. ”

  His words chilled me: he was just another vampire, promising to stop before he drained the last drops of blood that kept my heart beating. “Forget it, V’lane. I’m sorry I summoned you. I’ll take care of t
hings myself. I don’t need you or anybody. ” I opened the car door.

  He slammed it so quickly that I nearly lost a finger. I was startled by his sudden violence. He crushed me back against the Viper, and touched my face. His eyes were razor sharp, hostile; his fingers feather-light. “Who bruised you?”

  “I had a fight with some sidhe-seers. Quit crowding me. ”

  He traced a finger over my cheekbone, and the ache vanished. He dropped his hand to my rib cage and pain no longer spiked through me with each breath. When he slid his palm across my thigh, I felt the hemorrhaged blood drain from the contusion. He pressed his legs to mine and my shins were no longer bruised. My flesh burned in the wake of his touch.

  He dropped his head forward, lips close to mine. “Offer me something in exchange for what you ask of me, MacKayla. I am a prince and we have our pride. ” Though his touch was soft, I felt the rigidity in his body, and knew I’d pushed him as far as he would go.

  In the Deep South, we understand pride. We lost everything once, but by God, we held on to our pride. We heaped fuel onto the fire of it, stoked it as high as a crematorium. And we immolate ourselves on it sometimes. “I know how the Book is moving around. I haven’t told anyone. ” The length of Vlane’s body against mine was unhinging doors in my mind, showing me rooms I was better off not knowing existed.

  His lips brushed my cheek and I shivered. “Barrons doesn’t know?”

  I shook my head, turned it away. His lips moved to my ear. “No. But I’ll tell you. ”

  “And you won’t tell Barrons? It will be our secret?”

  “No. I mean yes. In that order. ” I hate it when people pile questions on top of each other. His mouth was fire on my skin.

  “Say it. ”

  “I won’t tell Barrons and it will be our secret. ” No loss there; I hadn’t planned to tell him, anyway.

  V’lane smiled. “We have a deal. Tell me. ”

  “After you help me. ”

  “Now, MacKayla, or you go in alone. If I am to accompany a Null inside sidhe-seer walls, I require payment in advance. ” There was no room for negotiation in his voice.

  I hated parting with any of my aces in the hole, but if I had to give V’lane a piece of information that I’d rather not give him, in order to keep Rowena from going after my back every time it was turned, so be it. I couldn’t guard against all the dangers in the city. The Fae were bad enough, but at least I could see them coming. Rowena’s minions were perfectly normal-looking humans who could get too close before I even knew they were a danger. While my instincts to lash out at a Fae were strong, my instincts to strike at a human weren’t, and I didn’t want them to get better. Humans weren’t my enemy. I needed to send Rowena and her sidhe-seers a great, big “Back Off” message, and V’lane was the perfect courier.