I snapped out of my reverie to find a dainty sandwich perched at my mouth. A bit of flour from the bakery bread was on my lip.
I thrust the sandwich back on the tray, carried the snacks to the table, and arranged the spread invitingly, near flowered paper plates and napkins I’d picked up on my way back from the pastry shop.
Genteel southern Mac was shamed by my lack of china and silver.
Spear-toting Mac cared only that there might be leftovers and food should never be wasted. People were starving in third-world countries.
I glanced at my watch. If Jayne was a punctual man, he’d be here in three minutes, and I would put my plan into action. It was risky but necessary.
Last night—between nightmares in which I was chasing the Book and each time I got close to it, it morphed into, not the Beast, but Barrons—I’d lay awake, sorting through and discarding ideas until I’d struck upon one that had impressed even me with its cleverness.
The key to finding the Sinsar Dubh was tracking the most heinous crimes. Where chaos and brutality reigned, It would be found. At first, I’d decided to try to get my hands on a police radio, but the logistics of stealing one, and monitoring it 24/7, had defeated me.
What I needed, I’d realized, I already had.
Inspector Jayne.
Mom always told me not to put all my eggs in one basket, and that was exactly what I’d been doing with Barrons. Who had I cultivated as my backup plan? No one. I needed to diversify.
If I could persuade one of the Garda to call whenever they received a report of the type of crime that fit my parameters, I’d get an instant lead, without being tied to a radio. I could rush to the crime scene, hoping the Book was still close enough that I could sense it, and use my sidhe-seer senses to track it. Most of the tips would probably prove fruitless, but eventually, I was bound to get lucky, at least once.
Jayne was going to be my informant. One might wonder how I planned to achieve such a monumental twist on the usual police/civilian relationship. That was the brilliant part of my simple plan.
Of course, I had no idea what to do if I managed to actually locate the Sinsar Dubh. I couldn’t even get close to it, and if I managed to somehow, I’d seen what happened to people who touched it. Still, I had to hunt it. It was one of those things programmed into my genes along with my innate fear of Hunters, knee-jerk reactions to Hallows, and constant urge to run around warning people about the Fae, even though I knew I’d never be believed.
Today, I needed to be believed. Jayne wanted to know what was going on.
Today, I would show him.
The voice of my conscience protested thinly. I quashed it. Conscience wasn’t going to keep me alive.
I eyed the tray. My mouth watered. Those were no simple egg, tuna, or chicken salad sandwiches, those scrumptious little confections I’d worked so hard to make, and was now dying to eat. Dreaming of eating. Hungering for in a way I’d never hungered for human food.
Those wriggling little delicacies were Unseelie salad sandwiches.
And Jayne was about to get one great, big, eye-opening look at his city.
_____
It went about as well as train wrecks do.
The inspector ate only two of my tiny sandwiches: the first because he hadn’t expected it to taste so awful; the second, I think, because he’d thought surely the first must have been a mistake.
By the time he’d swallowed the second one, he could see that the sandwiches were moving on his plate, and there’d been no chance of getting a third one into him. I wasn’t sure how long the effects of such a small amount of Unseelie would last, but I figured he had a day or two of it. I hadn’t told him about the superstrength, regenerative powers or skill in the black arts that resulted from eating Unseelie. Only I knew he was currently strong enough to crush me with a single blow.
My hands had trembled when I’d forced myself to flush the rest of the uneaten delicacies down the toilet before we’d left. I’d set two aside, in case of emergency. Halfway out the door I’d called my own bluff and gone back to flush those, too. I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, white-faced with the strain of denying myself what I so badly wanted, the bliss of strength, safety from my countless enemies roaming the streets of Dublin, not to mention being able to hold my own with Barrons. I’d clung to the edge of the toilet, watching the chunks of meat swirl around in the porcelain-cradled whirlpool, until they’d disappeared.
We stood on the outskirts of the Temple Bar District, and I was exhausted.
I’d been with Jayne for seven long hours, and I didn’t like him any better now than before I’d fed him Unseelie, and forced him to see what was going on in his world.
He didn’t like me any better, either. In fact, I was pretty sure he was going to hate me for the rest of his life for what I’d made him confront tonight.
I’d drugged him, he’d insisted, shortly after I’d commenced our little monster-tour. Given him hallucinogens. He was going to have me arrested for trafficking in narcotics. He was going to have me kicked out of Ireland and sent home to prison.
We both knew he wouldn’t.
It had taken hours of steering him around Dublin, showing him what was in the bars, driving the cabs, and running the vendor stands, to get through to him, but I’d finally managed. I’d had to coach him the entire time on how to act, how to sneak looks and not to betray us, unless he wanted to end up as dead as O’Duffy.
Regardless of what I might think of his methods of handling me, Inspector Jayne was a fine cop, with sound instincts—whether he liked what they were telling him or not. Though he’d insisted none of it was real, he’d nonetheless employed the stealth of twenty-two years of investigative procedure. He’d regarded the mouthless, sad, wet-eyed monsters and the leather-winged gargoyles and the hulking masses of deformed limbs and oozing flesh with the perfect impassivity of a nonbeliever.
He’d slipped up only once, a few minutes ago.
I’d quickly nulled and stabbed three Rhino-boys in the dark alley we’d been using as a shortcut.
Jayne stood there, staring down at their gray-limbed bodies, absorbing the lumpy faces with jutting jaws and tusklike teeth, the beady eyes and elephant skin, the open wounds, revealing pinkish gray flesh marbled with pus-filled cysts. “You fed me this?” he said finally.
I shrugged. “It was the only way I knew to show you what you needed to see.”
“Pieces of these. things. were in those little sandwiches?” His voice rose; his ruddy face was pale.
“Uh-huh.”
He looked at me, his Adam’s apple convulsing, and for a moment I thought he was going to vomit but he got it under control. “Lady, you are one sick fuck.”
“Come on. There’s one more thing I want you to see,” I told him.
“I’ve seen enough.”
“No, you haven’t. Not yet.” I’d saved the worst for last.
I concluded our sightseeing tour at the edge of a new Dark Zone on the north side of the river Liffey that I’d been planning to scout, so I could ink its parameters on the map I’d nailed up on my bedroom wall. “Remember those places you couldn’t find on the maps?” I said. “The area next to the bookstore? The ones O’Duffy was checking into? This is what they are.” I waved a hand down the street.
Jayne took a step toward the darkness and I barked, “Don’t leave the light!”
He stopped beneath a streetlamp and leaned against it. I watched his face as he watched the Shades slithering hungrily at the edge of the darkness.
“And you expect me to believe these shadows eat people?” he finally said, tightly.