I shook my head. She was too young to be seeing so much death. She should be reading magazines and thinking about cute guys. As I thumbed through the fliers and coupons, I spotted an envelope stuck in the middle. I’d seen that kind of envelope before: thick, plain, off-white vellum.
No return address.
It had a Dublin postmark, stamped two days ago.
MacKayla Lane c/o Barrons Books and Baubles, it said.
I ripped it open with trembling hands.
I talked to Mac tonight.
I closed my eyes, mentally braced myself, then opened them again.
It was soooo good to hear her voice! I could picture her lying on her bed, sprawled across the rainbow quilt Mom made for her years ago that’s frayed at the edges from a hundred washings, but she refuses to give it up. I could close my eyes and smell the caramel-apple pie with pecan crumb crust Mom was baking. I could hear Daddy in the background, watching baseball with old man Marley from next door, yelling at the Braves as if the batter’s ability to hit the ball depended on how loud they could shout. Home feels like it’s a million miles away, not four thousand—a mere plane ride, eight hours and I could see her.
Who am I kidding? Home’s a million lifetimes away. I want to tell her so badly. I want to say, Mac, come over here. You’re a sidhe-seer. We’re adopted. There’s a war coming and I’m trying to stop it, but if I can’t I’m going to have to bring you over here anyway, to help us fight. I want to say, I miss you more than anything in the world, and I love you so much! But if I do, she’ll know something’s wrong. It’s been so hard to hide it from her, because she knows me so well. I want to reach through the phone lines and hug my baby sister. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll never get to do it again. That I’ll die here and there’ll be a lifetime of things left unsaid and undone. But I can’t let myself think that way because—
I fisted my hand, crushing the page into a wad. “Watch the counter, Dani,” I barked, and raced for the bathroom.
I slammed the door, locked it, sat on the toilet, and hung my head between my knees. After a moment, I blew my nose and dried my eyes. Her handwriting, her words, her love for me, had slid an unexpected knife straight through my heart. Who was sending me these stupid, painful pages, and why?
I uncrumpled the page, smoothed it on my legs, and continued where I’d left off.
— if I do, I’ll lose hope, and hope’s all I’ve got. I learned something important tonight. I thought I was hunting the Book, and that would be the end of it. But now I know we’ve got to re-create what once was. We’ve got to find the five foretold by the Haven’s prophecy. The Sinsar Dubh alone isn’t enough. We need the stones and the book and the five.
That was the end of the page. There was nothing on the other side.
I stared at it until it blurred out of focus. When did grief end? Did it ever? Or did you just get numb from hurting yourself on it so many times?
Would I grow emotional scar tissue? I hoped so. At the same time I hoped not. How could I betray my love for my sister by not suffering every time I thought about her? If I stopped hurting, would that mean I’d stopped loving her a little?
How had Alina known about the Haven? I’d only recently learned of its existence and what it was: the High Council of sidhe-seers. Rowena claimed she’d never met my sister, yet Alina had written in her journal about the governing body of the very organization Rowena ran, and she’d somehow learned of a prophecy foretold by them.
What were the five? What was the Haven’s prophecy?
I clutched my head and massaged my scalp. Evil books and mysterious players and plots within plots, and now prophecies, too? Before I’d needed five things: four stones and a Book. Now I needed ten? That wasn’t merely absurd, it was unfair.
I stuffed the page in the front pocket of my jeans, stood up, freshened my face, took a deep breath, and went out to relieve Dani of her clerk duties. If my eyes were too bright when I stepped behind the counter, either she didn’t notice, or she understood a thing or two about grief, and left me alone.
“Some of the girls want to meet with you, Mac. That’s why I came today. They asked me to ask you because they figured you wouldn’t even let them in the door, and they’re freaked out that you know a prince.” Her feline eyes narrowed. “What’s he like?” Her young voice was hushed with a dangerous blend of fascination and awakening hormones.
V’lane was the sidhe-seer equivalent of Lucifer; and even if his motives in Mankind’s current predicament mirrored ours, he was to be feared, shunned, and, a deep part of me insisted, destroyed. Seelie and Unseelie alike, the Fae were our enemies. They always had been, and always would be. Why, oh why, do we find the most dangerous, forbidden men the most irresistible?
“Fae princes kill sidhe-seers, Dani.”
“He hasn’t killed you.” She shot me an admiring look. “It looked like you had him eating out of your hand.”
“No woman could have that Fae eating out of her hand,” I said sharply, “so don’t be daydreaming about it.”
She ducked her head guiltily, and I sighed, remembering what it was like to be thirteen. V’lane would have been the object of every one of my teenage fantasies. No rock star, no actor, could have competed with the golden, immortal, inhumanly erotic prince. In my daydreams, I would have wowed him with my cleverness, seduced him with my budding femininity, succeeded in winning his heart where no other woman could because, of course, in my fantasy, I would have endowed him with the heart he didn’t have.
“He’s so beautiful,” she said wistfully. “He’s like an angel.”
“Yep,” I agreed flatly. “The one that fell.” My words did nothing to change the expression on her face. I could only hope she never saw him again. I could see no reason that she would. At some point, in the near future, she and I were going to have a long talk about life. She was overdue. I almost laughed. I’d been overdue too. Then I’d come to Dublin. “Tell me more about this meeting they want, Dani.” What were they after?
“After you left that night, everybody got into a huge fight. Rowena sent everybody back to bed, but once she left, it started up again. Some of the girls wanted to hunt you down and get even. But Kat—she was with Moira that day—said that you didn’t mean to do it, and it would be wrong, and a lot of girls listen to her. Some of ’em aren’t happy with Rowena. They think she keeps too tight a rein on us. They think we should be out in the streets, doing what we can to stop what’s going on, instead of just biking past it every day, watching. She almost never lets us go out to kill.”
“With only one weapon, I can see why.” I hated agreeing with the old woman, but I concurred on that score.
“She keeps the sword herself. She doesn’t like to be without it. I think she’s afraid.”
I could understand that, too. Last night, after I’d gotten on the bike and we’d sped off, I’d checked for my spear. Despite his obvious displeasure with me, V’lane had kept his word and returned it at parting.
I showered with it strapped to my thigh.
I slept with it in my hand.
“We could fight, Mac. Maybe we can’t kill them without the sword, but we sure could kick some fecking ass, and maybe they’d think twice about settin’ up shop in our city. I could save dozens of people every day, if she’d just let me. I see ’em walking down the street, holding hands with a human”—she shuddered—“and I know that person’s gonna die. I could save them!”
“But the Unseelie you stopped would only move on to another victim, if you didn’t kill it, Dani. You’d be saving one person to sentence another.” I’d thought this through myself. I felt the same things. We were hopelessly outnumbered with only two weapons.
Her mouth twisted. “That’s what Rowena says, too.”