Frowning, I made a fist and punched the doorjamb. “Ow!”
Stunned, disbelieving, I punched it again. It hurt again, and my abraded knuckles began to bleed, too.
My superhuman strength was gone! And I was not regenerating!
My thoughts whirled. Mallucé had talked as if he’d eaten Unseelie constantly, even before I’d stabbed him. I’d assumed it was because it was somehow addictive.
Now I knew how: If you didn’t keep eating it, you reverted to your natural human state. Of course, Mallucé hadn’t been willing to let that happen.
I stared in the mirror, watching myself bleed. It made me think of another time I’d stood in front of this mirror, examining myself. Of crimson I’d glimpsed on myself once before.
It’s hard to say what causes things to come together in a startling flash of clarity but images suddenly bombarded me—
Splint dropping from my arm, smudges of crimson and black ink on my skin; tattoos on Barrons’ torso, Mallucé screaming that he’d left the cuff in the alley, demanding to know how Barrons had tracked us; me chained to a beam in the garage, tattooing implements nearby—
— and I had a small epiphany.
“You bastard,” I breathed. “It was all a ruse, wasn’t it? Because you were afraid I’d find out that you’d already done it.” Games within games, true Barrons form.
I began examining every inch of my skin in the mirror. I’d planned to hide it, he’d said.
I poked, I prodded. I looked beneath my breasts. I checked between the cheeks of my behind with a hand mirror and heaved a huge sigh of relief. I looked in my ears. I checked behind my ears.
I found it on the nape of my neck, high up in the slight indentation of my skull, nearly invisible beneath my hair.
It was an intricate pattern of black and red ink with a faintly luminescent Z in the middle, a mystical bar code, a sorcerous brand.
He must have done it the night he brought me out of the Dark Zone, the night he’d splinted and healed me. The night he’d told me to sleep and kissed me. I’d been unconscious for a long time.
Then something must have made him begin to worry that I’d find it. Worry that if I did, it might push me too far. He was right, it would have. So when I’d returned from Faery, he’d seized the perfect opportunity to insist on tattooing me for my own good. No doubt he would have just touched up the old one, perhaps added something nefarious to it.
When I’d made it plain that if he trespassed against my boundaries so egregiously I’d leave, he must have been in a double bind. Unwilling to push, because I’d leave—knowing if I found out what he’d already done, I’d leave.
He’d branded me without my knowledge and consent, like a piece of property. His property. There was a fecking Z on the back of my skull.
I traced the pads of my fingers over the tattoo. It was warmer than the skin around it. I remembered lying in the hellish grotto, regretting with every ounce of my being that I hadn’t let him tattoo me.
If he hadn’t tattooed me, I’d be dead now.
Ironically, the very thing I’d been determined to leave him over if he’d done it to me was the only thing that had kept me alive.
I stared at myself in the mirror, wishing that anything in my life were one-tenth as clear as my reflection.
Rowena was wrong. She was so wrong. There are only shades of gray. Black and white are nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which we try to judge things, and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, are as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We can only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we can no longer aim for the light.
Power is. If you don’t use it, someone else will. You can either create with it or destroy. Creation is good. Destruction is evil. That’s my bottom line.
I could sense the spear behind me, quietly chafing my sidhe-seer senses.
I could sense OOPs again. I had only normal human strength and healing abilities again. I was me. One hundred percent MacKayla Lane, for better or for worse.
I was back—and I was glad. I hoped the dark flesh had passed through me and left no mark.
Life is not black and white. The closest we ever get to either of those colors is wearing them.
I got dressed, went downstairs, and opened my store for business.
It was a busy day. A little rainy but not too bad.
I found the cell phone Mallucé had dumped in the alley when he’d abducted me lying on the counter next to the cash register, beside my boots, jacket, and purse; Barrons must have gone searching for me and found them. It had two bars so I plugged it in to recharge it; I don’t take my cell phone responsibilities lightly anymore. I will forever be haunted by the reminder of one floating in a sky blue swimming pool, and the spoiled young woman I used to be.
I threw the boots and jacket in the Dumpster out back, along with everything else I’d been wearing during my interment beneath the Burren. Mallucé had touched them; they stank of him and I would never wear them again.
The cuff was not on the counter.
I smiled faintly. Barrons knew I’d figured out from Mallucé’s little slip that he’d had some other way to find me. Good. He didn’t underestimate me. He shouldn’t.
I’d had nearly sixty customers by four o’clock.
I was about to flip the sign for a bathroom break when I sensed someone, or something, outside my front door.
Fae—but not Fae!
I stiffened.
The cherry-framed, diamond-paned door moved, the bell above it tinkled.
Derek O’Bannion stepped in, dripping aggression and arrogance. I wondered how I’d ever found him attractive. He wasn’t darkly handsome; he was swarthy. His movements weren’t macho; they were saurian. He gave me that sharp-bladed smile and I saw my death waiting on those ivory knives.
I knew what he was feeling. I’d been there recently myself. He was pumped up on Unseelie.
I was getting better at putting things together; my deductive reasoning skills had improved a hundredfold since I’d stepped off that plane from the States.
Facts: Derek O’Bannion is not a sidhe-seer. He can’t see the Unseelie. If you can’t see the Unseelie, you can’t eat the Unseelie. Which means that if a human who is not a sidhe-seer shows up, pumped up on Unseelie, someone who can see the Unseelie must have fed it to that person, deliberately opening their eyes to a whole new dark realm, like the Lord Master did with Mallucé. A normal human can’t choose to be turned into a hybrid; he or she must be made into it, initiated into the dark rite by someone in the see and know.
“Get out of my store,” I said coldly.
“Got a lot o’ balls for a walking dead woman.”
“Who fed it to you? Red robe? Pretty boy? Did he tell you about Mallucé?”
“Mallucé was a fool. I’m not.”
“Did he tell you Mallucé rotted from the inside out?”
“He told me you killed my brother and that you have something that belongs to me. He sent me for it.”
“He sent you to die, then. The thing he sent you for is the one thing capable of killing Unseelie—which parts of you are now—which is how and why Mallucé rotted from the inside out. I stabbed him with it.” I smiled. “Did your new friend tell you that? You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.” Had I just sounded exactly like Barrons? Had I just said something to the mobster’s brother Barrons had said to me when I’d first begun pushing my way into the realm of the Fae? Please tell me my mentor wasn’t rubbing off on me. Please tell me we don’t grow up and turn into the adults that drive us crazy.
I slipped the spear from my shoulder holster and slammed it, point first, into the counter. It quivered in the wood, shimmering with alabaster light, nearly white. “Go ahead, O’Bannion, come and get it. I’m fed up with jack-petunias like you and would like nothing more than to watch you rot, slowly and painfully. I know you’re all juiced up on your new powers right now, but you should know that I’m way more than just a pretty face. I’m a sidhe-seer and I have a few kick-ass powers of my own. There’s no way you can stop me from stabbing you with this if you get within a dozen feet of me. So, if you don’t mind rotting from the inside out—did I mention that his dick went before his mind did? — step one inch further inside my store.”