I watched in horror as they began storming my beloved bookstore.
Methodically spraying everything in sight with garish red spray paint.
—
Twenty minutes later there wasn’t a square inch of the first-floor, patron-accessible part of BB&B that wasn’t dripping red.
My counter was a slippery crimson mess.
Every chair and sofa drenched. Barrons’s rugs—his exquisite treasured rugs—had been soaked with red paint that could never be removed without destroying the fragile weave.
My bookcases, books, and magazines were all graffitied. My lovely lamps were broken and bleeding. My pillows and throws were a soggy mess. They’d even spray-painted my enamel fireplaces, the mantels, and gas logs.
My inner Sinsar Dubh had remained silent throughout the assault. It hadn’t taunted me once with the temptation to stop them. I wouldn’t have used it anyway. I hadn’t used it to save myself. I certainly wouldn’t use it to save my store, no matter how much I loved it.
The massive bookcase on which I sprawled was fourteen feet tall. Once they’d begun spraying, I retreated to the center of the large flat top, squeezing in on myself as small as I could be, praying their spray wouldn’t reach that high. I peered down at my side.
Shit! There was a fine mist of red paint all down my right leg! Had my head gotten glossed, too? Did I dare poke it up to sneak a look below?
I lay motionless. Maybe they would just leave now. Stranger things had happened.
“Second floor, Brody?” one of the Garda asked eagerly. Pricks. They were getting off on the destruction, just like so many people had on Halloween, before they’d become prey. Rioting begets violence begets rioting. I sometimes think the entire human race is comprised of barely restrained animals, avid for any excuse to tear off their masks of civility. And here I am, always trying desperately to keep mine on.
If they went upstairs, one of them would certainly glance over the balustrade and spy the vaguely outlined red-misted form of my body stretched on top of the bookcase.
But wait—this was an opportunity to escape!
I tensed, preparing to take a bone-jarring leap from the bookcase and make a mad dash for the door the moment they topped the stairs. I’d strip as I went so they couldn’t follow my spray-paint-misted clothes and hope the rain would take care of whatever was anywhere else.
Brody jerked his head toward the front. “Three of you block that door. Three more at the back. Nothing gets in or out.”
Fuck.
“Then start climbing the ladders. I want every inch of this place covered. She’s got to be here. Check everywhere, she may be hanging off a railing, hiding beneath something. There’s no way she got out.”
Double fuck.
As the Guardians moved toward both exits, a voice bellowed from the alcove, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”
I knew that voice. I dared a peek over the edge.
Inspector Jayne exploded into the room, shaking off rain. A big, burly Liam Neeson look-alike, the ex-Garda dripped no-nonsense authority and command. I’d never been so glad to see him in my life. If he hadn’t authorized this maybe he’d stop it.
He took a long look around and snarled, “Fall in!”
No one moved.
“I said fall the fuck in! Or are you answering to Brody now?”
“The bitch killed our Mickey,” Brody growled.
“You aren’t in charge of our force. I am,” Jayne said flatly.
“Maybe some of us don’t like the shots you’ve been calling.”
“Maybe some of you are just bored and looking for a little action. Felt like letting off steam. Tired of Fae you can’t kill so you turn on a human. A human woman. Who taught us to eat Unseelie? Who showed us what was going on in our city? She’s been out there killing Fae.”
“She slaughtered Mick!”
“You don’t know that.”
“Everyone’s saying it.”
“And since everyone’s saying it, it must be true,” Jayne mocked. “Without concrete proof we don’t move against anyone. And never without my explicit orders.”
“They say she’s possessed by the Book—”
Who says? I wondered.
“The Book was destroyed,” Jayne snapped.
“They say there’s another one!”
“They say,” Jayne echoed. “Are you so easily persuaded? If there was a second copy of the Sinsar Dubh and she was possessed by it and actually here, do you really think you wouldn’t be dead right now? It kills. Brutally. Without hesitation. You’ve seen what it does. We all have. It wouldn’t cower and hide while you destroyed its home.”
Faulty logic but I wasn’t about to argue. Too busy cowering and hiding.
“You wanted an excuse to raise hell and you dragged good men into it with you. Brody O’Roark, I said fall the fuck in!” Jayne roared.
This time, ten men moved toward the good inspector, forming up.
Brody stood unmoving, legs wide, hands fisted. “She has the spear. We should have the spear and you bloody well know it.”
“We don’t kill humans to steal their weapons.”
“You took the sword from the kid.”
“At an opportune moment, without hurting her.”
I wasn’t sure Dani saw it that way.
“We don’t cry sentence on any human until we’ve examined the evidence,” Jayne continued. “And we sure as fuck don’t slaughter people—any people—on the unproven word of an unvetted source.”
Two more men moved toward their barrel-chested commander.
I like Jayne. He’s a good man. Flawed like the rest of us but his heart is in the right place.
I’d give my bullet-pierced right arm to know who their unvetted source was.
“They were right about her being invisible,” Brody growled.
“That doesn’t mean they’re right about everything. And until we’ve investigated, we take no action,” Jayne said. “Besides, do you know whose store this is? Who she belongs to? Are you bloody daft? You want to bring his vengeance crashing down on us? Who the fuck do you think you are to make that decision and jeopardize every man on our force?”
“It’s war, Jayne. He’s not on our side. He’s on no one’s side but his own.”
“In war, a wise man makes alliances.”
“Ballocks. You blow up bridges so the enemy can’t come across.”
“You didn’t blow up a bridge. You invaded his home. Wrecked it. Hunted his woman. Now he’ll hunt us for it.”
Eight more men joined the inspector’s ranks.
“Clean this place up,” Jayne ordered.
Everyone just stared at him, including me.
“It’s oil-based, Inspector,” one of the younger Guardians protested. “There’s no cleaning it up unless we slosh the place with—”
“Petrol,” Brody said with a savage smile. “We’ll burn it down. Then he’ll never know.”
I jerked.
“The fuck you will,” Jayne exploded. “You’ll haul your bloody arses out of here now and hope to hell she’s not here to tell him who the fools were that did this. Move it, men! Fall in!”
I didn’t breathe properly until the last man had marched out the front door, with hostile, battle-ready, pyrodickhead Brody at the rear, glaring back at the room over his shoulder as he left.
I lay there another ten minutes, shaking off the trauma. I’d read in one of my books that most of the time animals didn’t get the human equivalent of PTSD. They shook violently after a horrifying incident, their body’s way of processing and eliminating the tension and terror. I embraced the involuntary trembling until at last my body was still.
If not for Jayne, they’d have found me. They’d wanted to burn my cherished bookstore. Gut it. Leave it a smoking ruin.