Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever) Page 7

  Jack Lane’s once sterling-tipped dark hair is now a mane of silver. There are reading glasses tucked in the pocket of his shirt beneath a wool cardigan. Wrinkles frame his eyes, furrow his forehead, and bracket his mouth. Although he stands several inches over six feet, he seems somehow…smaller to me.

  “Mac!” he explodes, breaking into a smile, opening his arms wide.

  I rush into the waiting bear hug that always smells of peppermint, aftershave, and home.

  “God, how I’ve missed you,” he says, dropping a kiss on the top of my head.

  “Daddy,” I murmur and tip my head back to kiss his cheek, smiling up at him. No matter what I become, or how much I change, our relationship never will. This man will always be the immutable force that towered strong and protective over me when I was a child, making me feel safe and cherished. “I love you.” I don’t miss an opportunity to say that to the mortals I care about.

  “I love you, too, baby.” He grasps me by my shoulders, staring down at me. “How you’ve changed.”

  I don’t say “so have you.” I never will. I’ll grant him the grace of always seeing him as the strongest, best, most dashing father in the world. Eyes sparkling, I tease, “And you, every bit as handsome as ever.”

  “Come,” he says, taking my hand to lead me to a deep armchair before a fire. “Tell me everything. But start with why Ryodan dragged me here. What’s wrong that everyone’s trying to conceal from me?”

  My legal-eagle father with the penetrating eyesight; it’s always been impossible to hide things from him.

  Refusing the chair, I glance away.

  Flatly, he demands, “Where is your mother, Mac?”

  Sighing, I glance back.

  “Ryodan brought me here, alone. That means she’s missing or worse, and they fear something will happen to me, too. Then you show up for the first time in two long years. Tell me everything.”

  I do, admitting it’s not much, but she can no longer be sensed in the mortal realm. I tell him he’s not to worry because the Fae won’t harm her. They’re dispassionate and patient and understand her worth to me—unharmed.

  He listens grimly then says, “What can I do to help?”

  Sadly, I shake my head. Not a thing and he knows it. That’s why his hands are balled into fists and his eyes are rushing with thunderclouds. My dad isn’t the type of man to sit back and do nothing. Yet where the Fae are concerned that’s all most humans can do, which makes my responsibility even greater. I’m the one that has to tame the Seelie that would, without a care, devour our world. I have to find the way to make both species live in peace.

  Or destroy one of them.

  We gaze at each other a wordless moment then he crushes me into another of his bear hugs and I’m just-Mac again, absorbing the heat and strength of the man who is always my rock, my champion, bestower of Band-Aids and kisses, and, when necessary, my toughest critic, all too aware that one day—even if I’m lucky enough to get decades—losing him will still come much too soon and damn near destroy me.

  “I’ll get her back, Dad. I promise. We’ll be a family and life will be normal again. I love you,” I say, again.

  “You, too, baby. To the moon and back.”

  As I sift out, I shake off the uneasy feeling those might be the last words we ever say to each other.

  I know better. I’m just feeling vulnerable because the Seelie have my mom.

  Nothing more.

  8

  There’s truth in your lies, doubt in your faith

  CHRISTIAN

  “Barrons is going to bloody well kill you,” Kat finally manages to say, after an interminable silence during which her gaze darts from me to imposter-Mac and back again. “Repeatedly and slowly, making what you suffered at the Crimson Hag’s hands seem a holiday in comparison.”

  I bristle. “But he wouldn’t kill Mac? Don’t you think when a woman cheats she’s every bit as much to blame as the man she cheats with?” I wonder why I’m arguing the idiotic moot point, given it isn’t Mac standing there naked, and we weren’t having sex, but double standards offend me, and my mood grows increasingly foul with each new obstacle that arises between me and getting laid. “Besides, this isn’t what you think it is,” I say, even more irked that Kat hasn’t noticed she’s meeting my gaze without blood trickling from her eyes, or how effortlessly I muted the dangerous aspects of my Unseelie form the instant she walked in, summoning a smidge of earth-power, locking my Highlander glamour in place, to remain until I release it.

  Shadows flicker in her gray eyes. “Did she use the Sidhba-jai on you, Christian?” she asks quietly then frowns. “Is that even possible—for the queen to overpower and use an Unseelie prince for sex against his will?”

  “It would never be against his will,” naked not-Mac says. “Sex is sex. All beings seek to mate.”

  “It would, too, be against my will,” I growl, glad I’m the only lie detector in the room.

  “Sex is not just sex,” Kat says in a low voice. “Sometimes it’s rape.”

  Naked not-Mac says, “Among mortals, perhaps.”

  “She’s not Mac,” I tell Kat.

  Kat cuts me a look of bafflement. “Then who is she?”

  I sense a disturbingly powerful displacement of time and space a split second before someone sifts in behind Kat, and I curse vehemently, as Mac—the real one—manifests in the chapel. “You’ve got to bloody be kidding me,” I explode. What did I do to deserve such a lousy continuation of my so auspiciously begun day? Clearly, there’s a sadistic force at work in the universe that delights in saying, Gee, look down there, Christian MacKeltar’s finally having a decent day. Let’s shit all over it.

  Mac gapes at her nude self. “No, you’ve got to bloody be kidding—” She breaks off, skirting Kat, approaching her duplicate, and looks her up and down.

  The librarian stares back, regarding her with an equal blend of wariness and fascination.

  “That’s not what I look like,” Mac says finally.

  “We strongly resemble each other,” naked not-Mac disagrees.

  “I haven’t been native down there in years. And the rest of her is what I looked like when I first arrived in Dublin.” Mac scans the duplicate’s hair, her hands and feet. “She’s natural everywhere. I can’t believe you got me so wrong.” She appraises me a moment, hard, then nods and says, “You’ve changed. Well done, Christian.”

  I was so discombobulated by seeing first Mac nude, then Dani, that I hadn’t registered that it was pre-royalty Mac who’d drifted from the bottle. Queen Mac has platinum hair that hangs past her hips, and power crackles electric in the air around her. The librarian has shorter, sunnier hair and not a hint of royalty sizzling about her form. “I didn’t make this woman, Mac. She came from one of the king’s flasks. What do you mean ‘well done’?” I probe. I know I’ve changed, but is she sensing something more with her queenly powers?

  “Later. Still opening them, eh? What is she? And why does she look like me?”

  “I have no idea, and I didn’t open it on purpose. The bloody flask broke.”

  “All by itself?” Kat says dryly.

  I shoot her a dark look. “I tripped on it, but it shouldn’t have been there in—” I break off and snap, “Yes I broke the bloody thing, okay? But it wasn’t there this morning. I have no clue how it ended up on the floor. I always keep the beakers put away.” To Mac, I say, “Is she Seelie or Unseelie?”

  “She can’t be Unseelie,” Kat says. “They were all destroyed by the Song.”

  Was that a fleeting look of shock on the librarian’s face?

  “It’s possible, sealed in a bottle, she might have escaped destruction. We don’t know exactly how the Song worked,” Mac muses and frowns, studying her. “It eludes me,” she says finally.

  “How is that possible? You’re queen. If she’s Fae, you must know whether she’s Shadow or Light Court.”

  “I’ve not encountered the melody she emits. It’s…” Her eyes drift closed. When she opens them again, she says, “Confounding.”

  “Beautiful? Ugly?” I press.

  “Different than anything I’ve heard. Yet…familiar.”

  “A singularity?” Kat offers. “But don’t only the Unseelie have those?”

  Mac paces a circle around the woman, examining her. “Perhaps a Seelie contained so long in the White Mansion, she changed. Which still doesn’t explain why she looks like me.”

  “But wouldn’t time in the Unseelie kingdom have killed her, as Cruce intended with Aoibheal?” Kat says.

  “The White Mansion isn’t the Unseelie kingdom,” Mac replies.

  I frown. Mac’s eyes don’t look good. Beneath lucent green, shards of ice glitter. Something is wrong. And whatever it is has nothing to do with the unknown entity in my castle. I decide to wait until later to tell her that the bottle-dweller has two forms, and Dani is the other.

  The librarian is no longer looking at Mac but standing perfectly still, staring past her into the distance, as if trying to be invisible. Unfortunately she isn’t, and she’s still disturbingly naked. I growl, “For fuck’s sake, whatever you are, put some blasted clothes on.”

  Instantly, the creature from the flask is no longer naked.

  Kat is.

  The lean, muscled sidhe-seer shrieks, ducks, and wraps her arms around her body, trying to shield her sudden nudity.

  I summon earth-power to clothe her at the precise moment Mac does, and Kat ends up bundled in multiple layers, snug enough for the iciest of winters.


  Mac and Kat both glare daggers at me.

  “What?” I snarl, exasperated, glowering at the librarian. Though her eyes are demurely downcast, she’s smirking faintly.

  “Why didn’t you just clothe the naked-me to begin with? You’ve mastered your power,” Mac snaps.

  “Why,” I counter furiously, “didn’t the naked-you just dress herself in the first place if she was able to snatch Kat’s clothing? How was I to know she’d do that?”

  “You mastered the power to rearrange small elements some time ago,” Kat grits, as she yanks off the sweater Mac layered over the turtleneck I fashioned for her, then sits down on the floor to jerk at one of a redundant set of boots. I consider telling her not to bother. Mac and I created things so simultaneously I suspect the shoes are fused. Tugging at the boot, Kat continues irritably, “If you’d dressed her, I wouldn’t have ended up naked.”

  “It’s been a complicated morning, and I get distracted by nudity,” I roar. I don’t know what’s worrying me more, the ramifications of the inexplicable librarian, her blatant insouciance and deliberate button pushing, or the barely banked storm in Mac’s eerie Fae eyes. “I’m a man. Shoot me for it or get over it. I did keep draping the cloth around her. She refused to keep it on.”

  “Volume!” Kat exclaims, clamping her hands to her ears. “And remove a pair of these boots.” She begins wrenching at a boot too merged to doff. “And I only need one pair of jeans.”

  Mac—the real one—begins to laugh. I eye her warily. There’s a touch of…not quite madness but definitely an undercurrent of…unhinged in it. “What’s wrong, Mac?”

  “Not now.”

  Kat cuts her a dark look. “How can you possibly think this is funny?”

  “I needed a dose of absurdity, and I can always count on life in Ireland for that.”

  “Technically,” I tell her, “we’re in Scotland.”

  Mac glances around the chapel, crammed with the Unseelie king’s books and baubles. “Where in Scotland?”

  I clarify tersely, “So we don’t further compound things, Mac, will you be removing Kat’s boots and jeans or should I?” If we both do it, we’ll be back to square one, and they’ll both be pissed at me again. I’m pissed enough myself. People I care about getting pissed at me when I’m already pissed makes me pissier.

  “I will,” Mac says, and Kat’s duplicate attire vanishes with the words.

  Kat sighs with relief. “Thanks. I was hot.”

  “The Highlands. Draoidheacht Keep,” I answer Mac’s question. “How did you manage to sift here when you’ve never been here before?” It’s difficult for me to sift to locations I’ve never been, unless I have additional means at my disposal, like a lock of Mac’s hair.

  “I was trying to sift to Kat at the abbey but got rerouted here.” Her gaze moves back to the librarian, who’s standing, eyes downcast. “Who are you?”

  Gaze fixed on the floor, she replies, “You may call me the librarian.”

  “Of what?”

  “What used to be the Unseelie king’s Library until that inept one”—she stabs a finger at me with an accusing glare—“transported me and part of my collection elsewhere, and destroyed my method for locating things.” She’ll look my way, without discomfort, I note with interest, just not at Mac anymore.

  “Are you Seelie or Unseelie?”

  “I can’t answer that one way or another.”

  Mac cuts me a look. “Lie-detect.”

  “Ringing true somehow but with an undercurrent I can’t pinpoint,” I say.

  “You are Fae,” Mac says.

  The librarian shrugs.

  “I asked you a question,” Mac growls.

  “I didn’t hear a question mark,” the librarian says coolly. “Sounded like a statement to me.”

  Mac’s eyes narrow and she grits, “Are you Fae?”

  Not-Mac sneers with palpable hostility, “How am I to know anything about myself? I live in a bottle, O great queen. Unlike you, I don’t have the freedom to saunter about, indulging my royal desires.”

  “Address me like that again and you’ll die in the bottle.”

  “It’s the answer I have to offer.”

  “You know what I can do to you.”

  “Torture me. In many and varied ways. When one lives forever within a prison of glass, pain is something with which to occupy oneself.”

  “Why do you resemble me?”

  “I could as easily ask why you resemble me. Who was made first?”

  “I wasn’t made. I was born.”

  “Made. Born. Same result. We are.”

  “How did you come to be here?”

  Gaze centered on my sternum, the librarian replies, “That oaf broke my flask.”

  My wings lift, rustling with irritation. Who is this creature that thinks to address an Unseelie prince as an oaf?

  Mac glances at me. “Seal her in another flask. We have more important matters to discuss. We’ll sort her out later. Perhaps. Perhaps we’ll never uncork her again.” She cuts a hard look back at the librarian. “Unless you’d care to be more forthcoming.”

  “I have answered all your questions to the best of my ability.”

  “Clarify what you are and why you look like me.”

  The librarian remains silent.

  “Cork her,” Mac snaps.

  “I could remain free,” the librarian offers hastily, “and begin sorting the mess the dullard created. I can be useful in many ways.”

  Dullard. That’s it. Glowering, I grab a bottle of Guinness with a few swigs left at the bottom, wipe sticky cobwebs from the mouth of the bottle, and thrust it at her, commanding the librarian, or whatever the hell she is, to get in.

  “I can tell you how to find things in the Library.” There’s an edge of desperation in her voice.

  “I said, get in,” I snarl.

  She approaches, bends to peer in the bottle, wrinkles her nose with distaste, and glares defiantly up at me. “It reeks! My prior flask did not.”

  “Now,” I growl, trusting she is as compelled to obey as a genie in a bottle. If not, I’ll use Voice.

  Nostrils flaring, eyes narrowed, the librarian evaporates into a rainbow-colored mist and drifts with dramatic, insolent leisure into the bottle.

  The moment she’s contained, I cram a cork in the neck, seal it, and place it carefully on a high shelf. Then I level a hard stare at Mac. “Out with it. What happened? What’s wrong?”

  Her eyes flicker with silvery lightning. “The Seelie abducted my mother.”

  “Bloody hell,” I curse. The Fae just declared all-out war.

  Against their queen.

  Which meant against the entire human race. No longer was the apocalypse a distant promise on a dark wind.

  It was here.

  9

  Tuck those ribbons under your helmet

  MAC

  After catching up with Kat and Christian, I sift back to Barrons Books & Baubles, arriving ten minutes before the appointed hour.

  Sifting is one power of which I’ll never tire. Gone are the days of twenty-hour plane trips with three layovers from Ashford, Georgia, to Dublin, only to arrive jet-lagged, starving, and exhausted. I won’t miss the drudgery of human locomotion one bit. As one fierce redhead-turned-Hunter I know would say: feck slow-mo Joe-ing.

  Now a mere thought can put me…say…out back, on our patio by the pool in Ashford.

  Wait, what?

  Barrons Books & Baubles is gone. I’m out back, on our patio by the pool in Ashford, deep in the land of sugar: sweet tea, sugar pines, sugared pecans, sugar ants, and that uniquely southern sugar in our voices when we skewer outsiders with a platitude-coated insult like “bless your heart,” which usually means we find you far too ignorant to bother correcting.

  I gape at my surroundings, horrified.

  My childhood home, which my folks always maintained with loving care, landscaping the yard with magnolias and Annabelle hydrangeas, lilac bushes, azaleas, daffodils, and jasmine, even a growth of meticulously tended mountain laurel, is nearly unrecognizable.