CUFF OF CRUCE: A gold and silver arm cuff set with blood-red stones; an ancient Fae relic that supposedly permits the human wearing it “a shield of sorts against many Unseelie and other. unsavory things” (this according to a death-by-sex Fae—like you can actually trust one).
DANI: A young sidhe-seer in her early teens whose talent is superhuman speed. She has to her credit—as she will proudly crow from the rooftops given the slightest opportunity—forty-seven Fae kills at the time of this writing. I’m sure she’ll have more by tomorrow. Her mother was killed by a Fae. We are sisters in vengeance. She works for Rowena and is employed at Post Haste, Inc.
Addendum to original entry: Her kills now number nearly two hundred! The kid has no fear.
DARK ZONE: An area that has been taken over by the Shades. During the day it looks like your everyday abandoned, run-down neighborhood. Once night falls, it’s a death trap.
DEATH-BY-SEX FAE: (e.g., V’lane) A Fae that is so sexually “potent” a human dies from intercourse with it unless the Fae protects the human from the full impact of its deadly eroticism.
Addendum to original entry: V’lane made himself feel like nothing more than an incredibly sexy man when he touched me. They can mute their lethality if they so choose.
Addendum to original entry: This caste of Fae springs only from royal lines. They can do three things: protect the human completely and give them the most incredible sex of their life, protect them from dying and turn them Pri-ya, or kill them with sex.
They can sift space.
DOLMEN: A single-chamber megalithic tomb constructed of three or more upright stones supporting a large, flat horizontal capstone. Dolmens are common in Ireland, especially around the Burren and Connemara. The Lord Master used a dolmen in a ritual of dark magic to open a doorway between realms and bring Unseelie through.
DRUID: In pre-Christian Celtic society, a Druid presided over divine worship, legislative and judicial matters, philosophy, and education of elite youth to their order. Druids were believed to be privy to the secrets of the gods, including issues pertaining to the manipulation of physical matter, space, and even time. The old Irish “Drui” means magician, wizard, diviner. (Irish Myths and Legends)
Addendum to original entry: I saw both Jericho Barrons and the Lord Master use the Druid power of Voice, a way of speaking with many voices that cannot be disobeyed. Significance?
Addendum: Christian MacKeltar descends from a long, ancient bloodline of Druids.
FAE: (fay) See also Tuatha Dé Danaan. Divided into two courts, the Seelie or Light Court, and the Unseelie or Dark Court. Both courts have different castes of Fae, with the four Royal Houses occupying the highest caste of each. The Seelie Queen and her chosen consort rule the Light Court. The Unseelie King and his current concubine govern the Dark.
FIONA: The woman who ran Barrons Books and Baubles before I took over. She was wildly in love with Barrons and tried to kill me by turning out all the lights one night and propping a window open to let the Shades in. Barrons fired her for it—gee, now that I think about it, getting fired for trying to kill me sure feels like underkill. She’s hooked up with Derek O’Bannion, and he’s got her eating Unseelie. I have a bad feeling that she and I aren’t done with each other.
FOUR STONES, THE: Translucent blue-black stones covered with raised runelike lettering. The key to deciphering the ancient language and breaking the code of the Sinsar Dubh is hidden in these four mystical stones. An individual stone can be used to shed light on a small portion of the text, but only if the four are reassembled into one will the true text in its entirety be revealed. (Irish Myths and Legends)
Addendum: Other texts say it is the “true nature” of the Sinsar Dubh that will be revealed.
GLAMOUR: Illusion cast by the Fae to camouflage their true appearance. The more powerful the Fae, the more difficult it is to penetrate its disguise. Average humans see only what the Fae want them to see, and are subtly repelled from bumping into or brushing against it by a small perimeter of spatial distortion that is part of the Fae glamour.
GRAY MAN, THE : Monstrously ugly, leprous Unseelie that feeds by stealing beauty from human women. Threat assessment: can kill, but prefers to leave its victim hideously disfigured, and alive to suffer.
Addendum to original entry: Allegedly the only one of its kind, Barrons and I killed it.
Addendum to original entry: It could sift space.
GRIPPER: Dainty, diaphanous Unseelie that is surprisingly beautiful. Grippers look like the modern media’s representation of fairies—delicate, shimmering, nude beauties, with a cloud of gossamer hair, and lovely features, only they’re nearly the size of a human. I named them Grippers because they “grip” us. They can step inside a human’s skin and take them over. Once they’ve slipped inside a person, I can no longer sense them. I could be standing right next to a Gripper inside a person, and not even know it. For a while, I was afraid Barrons might be one. But I made him hold the spear.
HALLOWS, THE: Eight ancient relics of immense power fashioned by the Fae: four light and four dark. The Light or Seelie Hallows are the stone, the spear, the sword, and the cauldron. The Dark or Unseelie Hallows are the amulet, the box, the mirror, and the book (Sinsar Dubh, or Dark Book). (A Definitive Guide to Artifacts, Authentic and Legendary)
Addendum to original entry: I still don’t know anything about the stone or the box. Do they confer powers that could help me? Where are they? Correction to above definition, the mirror is actually the Silvers. See Sifting Silvers or Silvers. The Unseelie King made all the Dark Hallows. Who made the Light ones?
Addendum to original entry: See the story of the Unseelie King and his mortal concubine, as V’lane told it to me. (p. 77 this journal.) The king created the Silvers for her to keep her ageless and give her realms to explore. He created the amulet so she could reshape reality. He gave her the box for her loneliness. What does it do? The Sinsar Dubh was an accident.
HAVEN, THE: High council of sidhe-seers.
Addendum to original entry: Once selected by popular vote, now chosen by the Grand Mistress for their loyalty to her and the cause. They were the only ones besides Rowena who knew what was being kept beneath the abbey. Some of them died and/or disappeared when the Book escaped twenty-some years ago. How did it happen? I’m twenty-two. Is it possible my mother was one of them?!!!
IYCGM: Barrons gave me a cell phone with this number programmed in. It stands for If You Can’t Get Me. The mysterious Ryodan answers when I call.
IYD: Another of Barrons’ preprogrammed numbers; stands for If You’re Dying.
LORD MASTER: My sister’s betrayer and murderer! Fae but not Fae, leader of the Unseelie army, after the Sinsar Dubh. He was using Alina to hunt it like Barrons is using me to hunt OOPs.