Fiona had disappeared after attempting to harm his OOP detector. An inspector who’d been snooping into his business was killed. People that interfered with Jericho Barrons had a convenient way of vanishing or dying. Still…I had no proof he’d done anything nefarious in either of those cases.
He didn’t seem to want more Unseelie in our world. Nor, however, did he seem to have any interest in trying to save our world. Was he really so mercenary and ambivalent? Did he genuinely want the book just to sell it to the highest bidder?
Then there was the question of how he planned to touch it, assuming we found it. The Sinsar Dubh was so evil it corrupted anyone who came in contact with it. Did he believe he could tattoo protection spells into his skin that would permit him to touch it without it corrupting him? Could he?
I rubbed my forehead and tossed back my shot. It burned all the way down my throat. I thumped my chest with my fist and drew a scorched breath.
The only thing that was certain about Jericho Barrons was that nothing was certain. With far more questions than answers, I couldn’t place him on either side of the board.
With V’lane tentatively on the good side, and Barrons on the sidelines, next was Rowena. What a piece of work. Rowena should have been someone I could position firmly on my side of the game, and in terms of single-mindedly opposing the Unseelie and the Fae in general, I could. The problem was I didn’t feel I could in terms of my welfare.
I knew V’lane and Barrons both wanted me alive, and had the ability to keep me in that condition. However, I wasn’t so sure about Rowena. If she believed there was someone more qualified—and more malleable than I—to honor her holy triumvirate of See, Serve, and Protect with my spear, to what lengths might she go to take it from me? If humans met Fae ruthlessness with equal ruthlessness, how were we different from them? Didn’t there have to be some defining factor? Was I really supposed to walk up to a human woman and kill her because a Fae had stepped inside her, without first trying to see if there was some way to get it out? Tonight when I went to sleep would I dream about the deaths I’d caused by letting her walk away?
Thinking about Rowena sucked. I added a little note with an asterisk: if she isn’t the Grand Mistress, who is?
I moved on to making notes about the minor players like Mallucé, who’d been working for, and two-timing, the Lord Master. According to Barrons he’d still not been seen or heard from during the month I’d been gone, which I decided meant the vampire’s memorial service had been for real, and he really was dead. If he’d survived what Barrons and I had done to him, he would have been back among his worshippers long before now. I wondered if the Lord Master had someone new serving his purposes. I brushed Mallucé off the board. One down!
I decided the McCabes, O’Bannions, and sundry collectors of Fae artifacts weren’t part of the game. Only those seeking the Sinsar Dubh or working for someone who was merited their own square.
I accorded all the Unseelie in our world pawn status. It seemed their primary purpose was to indulge their twisted appetites, spy on humans, and create general chaos. To keep things stirred up while the Lord Master pursued his private agenda, and when he’d ultimately achieved his ends, serve him. If there was any single Unseelie more significant than another, either I hadn’t yet encountered it, or was too dense to see it.
I paused with my pen above the page, wondering about the players behind the scenes, as yet unseen.
The Seelie Queen, I wrote. According to V’lane she wanted the Sinsar Dubh, but why? Did she need it to recontain the Unseelie? Were there spells in there that governed their darker brethren? What was the Sinsar Dubh, really? I knew it was a book of black magic authored by the Unseelie King, but what did it do? What did everyone want it for? Did each player have a different desire/use for it? What spells and enchantments were scribed in its pages that were so heinous they could corrupt anyone who came in contact with it? Could words and symbols wield such power? Could mere scribblings on parchment unmake a person’s moral fiber? Weren’t we made of sterner stuff?
I was in no hurry to find out. My two brushes with the Dark Book had pushed me beyond pain into unconsciousness, left me weak as a baby and wishing desperately that I’d never found my way onto this game board.
Where was the Unseelie King in all this?
Did he signify or was he an absentee landlord?
If my book of dark magic had gone missing, you could bet your petunia I’d be out there looking for it. Was he? Why hadn’t he tracked me down, too? Everyone else had. How had his book gotten away from him in the first place? For that matter, indulging myself in perfect paranoia—which, in the world I inhabited, seemed perfectly reasonable—had it gotten away from him? What if it was nothing more than bait at the end of a very long fishing line? If so, what was he fishing for? Was the Lord Master himself a pawn, being moved about by a much darker, unspeakably ancient hand? Was the playing board bigger than I could see? Were we all pawns of something much larger than we knew?
Somewhere out there on the game board, the Sinsar Dubh was moving around. Who was moving it? How was it being moved? And why?
And what kind of prankster benevolent being—this was the one I really wanted to know—would create something like me that could sense the most dangerous of all relics, then give me a fatal flaw that caused me to pass out every time I got near it?
I ordered another shot and tossed it back, indulging myself in a ritual I’d witnessed too many times across my bar: swallow, shudder, breathe.
“Mind if I join you?”
I glanced up. It was the guy with the Scottish accent from the Ancient Languages Department at Trinity; “Scotty,” the one I’d gotten the envelope about the illegal auction from. Small world. And everyone keeps telling me how large a city Dublin is.
I shrugged. “Sure, why not.”
“Gee, thanks,” he said dryly.
I suspected he was unaccustomed to such a blasé response from women. He was about the same age as the dreamy-eyed guy he worked with, but the resemblance ended there. His coworker was velvety-skinned, a sexy boy-on-the-cusp-of-man, but Scotty was broader, his body more filled out, and there was maturity in the way he walked and moved, a quiet self-assurance, as if, even at his age, he’d already been tested.
Six foot two or three, his hair was long and dark and pulled back at his nape. Gold tiger eyes swept me appreciatively. Estrogen responded to testosterone—this boy was a man—and I sat up a little straighter.
“To fine Scotch and lovely lasses.” He clinked a glass of whisky to my mug of beer and we drank. I chased it with a third shot: swallow, shudder, breathe. That cold place in my stomach, where I felt alone and lost, was finally starting to warm up.
He extended his hand. “I’m Christian.”
I took it. His hand swallowed mine. “Mac.”
He laughed. “You don’t look like a Mac to me.”
“Okay, I give up. Why does everyone keep saying that? What do I look like?”
“In most places Mac is a man’s name and you, lass, look nothing like a man. Where I come from you just introduced yourself to me as ‘from the clan of’ and I’m still waiting for the rest of your name.”
“You’re from Scotland.”
He nodded. “From the clan of the Keltar.”
Christian MacKeltar. “Beautiful name.”
“Thanks. I’ve been watching you since you came in. You look…pensive. And if I’m not mistaken, that was your third shot. When a lovely lass drinks shots alone I worry. Is everything okay?”