“Four it is, but Ms. Lane, if you’re wasting my time. ”
I hung up, in no mood for threats. I’d accomplished what I needed. He’d be here.
I’m not much of a cook. Mom is such a great one, and well, let’s just call a spade a spade and get it over with, until a few months ago I was so spoiled and lazy that if the thought of fending for myself had occurred to me, I would have promptly thrust it away in favor of beautifying myself and coaxed Mom into making me one of my favorite snacks. I’m not sure who’s guiltier, me for doing it, or her for putting up with me.
Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve been eating a lot of popcorn, cereal, instant noodles, and snack bars. I have a hot plate in my bedroom, a microwave, and a small fridge. That’s the kind of kitchen I know how to get around in.
But today I’d donned my chef’s hat, limp and unused though it was. I might have purchased the tray of rich, buttery shortbreads at a pastry shop down the street, but I’d made the sandwiches myself, cutting loaves of fresh bakery bread into pretty little shapes with fancy edges, preparing the filling, and spreading my special recipe between the slices. My mouth watered just looking at the bite-size snacks.
I glanced at my watch, poured water over Earl Grey to steep the tea, and carried cups to the table near the rear conversation area, where a fire crackled brightly, chasing the chill from the gloomy October day. Though I was loath to lose business or break routine, I’d closed the shop early because I had to conduct this meeting at a time when I knew my employer was unlikely to show up.
I’d gotten a major wake-up call last night when I’d watched Jericho Barrons step out of the mirror.
I’d fled up the stairs faster than a Fae sifting space, locked my door, and barricaded it, heart pounding so hard I’d thought the top of my skull might blow off.
It was bad enough that he was keeping an Unseelie Hallow in the store, hidden from me, and using it, probably regularly, considering it was in his study, but. the woman. God, the woman!
Why had Barrons been carrying a blood-covered body in his blood-covered arms? Logic screamed: Duh, because he’d killed her.
But why? Who was the woman? Where had she come from? Why was he bringing her out of the Silver? What was inside that mirror? I’d examined it this morning, but it had been flat, impenetrable glass again, and whatever the way inside, only Barrons knew it.
And the look on his face! It had been the look of a man who’d done something that he’d found in, if not pleasure, some kind of comfort. In his face there’d been a certain. grim satisfaction.
Jericho Barrons was a man it wouldn’t be hard to romanticize (overlooking the toting around of savaged bodies, of course). Fiona, the woman who’d run the bookstore before I’d come along, had been so blindly in love with him that she’d tried to kill me to get me out of her way. Barrons was powerful, broodingly good-looking, insanely wealthy, frighteningly intelligent, and had exquisite taste, not to mention a hard body that emitted some kind of constant low-level charge. Bottom line: He was the stuff of heroes.
And psychotic killers.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Dublin, it’s that there’s a very fine line between the two.
I wasn’t about to romanticize him. I knew he was ruthless. I’ve known that since the day I met him, and saw him staring at me across the length of the bookstore with cold, old eyes. Barrons does exactly and only whatever serves Barrons best. Period. Keeping me alive serves him best. Period. But one day it might not. Exclamation mark!
Why did he have an Unseelie Silver in his study? Where did he go in it? What did he do? Besides carry dead women around.
The shadow-demons in the mirror had behaved just like the Shades in the Dark Zone had when he’d walked through it: yielding to his passage, giving him wide berth. The Lord Master himself had taken one look at him recently, and walked away.
Who was Jericho Barrons? What was Jericho Barrons? Possibilities crowded my mind, each worse than the last.
I had no way of knowing what he was, but I knew what he wasn’t. He wasn’t someone I was going to be telling anything about what I’d learned about the Sinsar Dubh last night. He kept his secrets? Fine. I was keeping mine.
I had no desire to be the one responsible for putting Jericho Barrons and the Dark Book in the same place together. He walked in one Unseelie Hallow and was hunting another. Gee, might that make him Unseelie of some kind? Maybe one of those dainty, transparent ones that could slip inside human skins and take them over, that I called Grippers? Was it possible one had possession of him?
I’d considered the idea once before but swiftly discarded it. Now I had to admit that I’d had no basis for dismissing it, other than that. well. I’d been romanticizing him, telling myself Jericho Barrons was too tough to be possessed by anyone or anything. Who was I to say that was true? I’d watched a Gripper walk straight into a young woman in the Temple Bar District not so long ago. The moment it had entered her, I’d no longer been able to sense Unseelie within her. She’d passed for human to my sidhe-seer senses.
What if he was secretly working for the forces of darkness, conning me as cunningly as the Lord Master had seduced my sister into hunting the Book? It would explain virtually everything about him: his inhuman strength, his knowledge of the Fae, his familiarity with and ownership of one of the Dark Glasses, the Shades avoiding him, the Lord Master not confronting him—after all, they’d be on the same side.
I blew out a frustrated breath.
The only time I’d ever felt like I could take care of myself, since I’d come to Dublin, was the night Mallucé had nearly killed me, and I’d eaten Unseelie to survive. Revolting as it was, Fae flesh bestowed a degree of Fae power upon the person eating it; made them superstrong, healed mortal wounds, even supposedly granted power in the black arts.
I’d felt like I finally had an edge that night and hadn’t needed anyone else to protect me. I’d been able to kick ass like all the other big bad men around me. I’d been Mallucé’s equal. I’d been nearly as deadly as Barrons himself, perhaps as deadly, just not as well trained. I’d finally felt like a force to be reckoned with, someone capable of demanding answers, of throwing my weight around, without the constant fear of getting hurt or killed.
It had been exhilarating. It had been freeing. But I couldn’t eat Unseelie every day. It had too many downsides. Not only did it temporarily cancel out all my sidhe-seer powers, and make me vulnerable to my own spear (the Hallow killed anything Fae, even if you’d only eaten it; I’d learned that from watching Mallucé rot) but I’d realized over the past week that eating Unseelie was addictive, and a single meal was enough to birth that addiction. Mallucé hadn’t been weak. The lure of Fae power was strong. I’d been dreaming about it at night. Carving off chunks of live Rhino-boy. chewing. swallowing. feeling their incredible dark half-life entering my body. electrifying my blood. changing me. making me invincible again.
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.