The feeling made her skin tingle, her neck tense. She’d felt this before, in the courtyard at DolanCo. This sense that someone was with her, watching her. There had been rumors about the fae crossing into the mortal realm. And since this had happened only when Cari attempted to use Shadow, then yes, her stalker had to be fae.
Her panic swelled: first there was fighting among magekind, then the angry attention of humanity, and now something altogether different . . . within Dolan House?
“Who are you?” she demanded aloud.
I’ve been with Dolan since the beginning. And will be to the end.
The answer came from within Cari, in her own voice. She had to grip the back of a chair to keep herself upright.
“Are you fae?” Cari already knew the answer. Dolan House, like any other mage House, was on the brink of the Twilight wilds. Curious fae were going to come; they were to be treated like dangerous guests and directed elsewhere for their diversions.
I am a god, the voice answered. And I am your mother.
No. “My mother is dead.” And a mage, once dead, is always dead. Mages did not possess everlasting souls as humans did. They had one life of magic and then oblivion. So live large.
I was mother to Dolan eons before the woman that birthed you.
“Interesting. My father never spoke of you.” It was well-known that fae lied when it suited them. Or rather, that the fae didn’t know truth from lie.
Caspar loved me. He gave you to me, and he gave me to you. My darkness feeds your umbra.
Father had never mentioned any such thing. He rarely brought up the fae at all. He was practical, not passionate, in nature.
Use me and see. I will give you everything you want.
The fae laughed, the trilling feeling dancing up Cari’s throat. The sensation of the fae—a wild, giddy leap of energy—was located within. Cari finally understood that the fae was the source of the panic that had seized her since her father had died. The fae was the pushing, no-breath feeling. The fae was inside her.
Passed down each generation, lord to heir. Son to son. But this time, this once in so very long, father to daughter.
At the recitation Cari went rigid, a sudden hot sweat chilling on her skin. The room began to spin, her palms going damp.
No fear. It does not suit my line.
Think. She needed a specific detail about this fae so she could find information later. “Who are you?”
Laughter. I am Maeve. I am yours. And you are mine. What do you want most? I’ll give it to you.
Okay, Cari thought bitterly. “I want my father back.”
Maeve wailed and it was the sound of Cari’s own grief wracking her heart and closing her throat with sobs. Cari guessed that meant, no can do.
“Then if you’re so powerful, why didn’t you save him?”
I saved you. I saved you. Pleading now. And who knew if it were true? If Maeve had saved her from the plague, then who had saved Mason?
“Okay, then I want to know who killed my father.” Who brought this plague down on all the mage Houses?
Anguish again: I cannot see! I cannot see!
Cari wasn’t surprised. “Then what use are you?” Faery. God? Mother. Please.
First, she’d search her father’s things for a mention of Maeve. She had to go through them anyway and had clearly put it off too long. Then, she’d widen her scope to the faelore. And she would find time to do this when? Her panic rose; Maeve again.
You need me. Use me.
“No.” Cari wasn’t a fool. Dolans weren’t fools.
Not yet?
Cari considered what she’d been taught about dealing with the fae: Don’t make her angry. Placate. “Not now,” Cari clarified through gritted teeth. How could she push the fae out of her mind? Out of her guts? Out of her Shadow soul? She let go of her pull on magic, released, and felt the fae go distant, like a leash pulling quickly through her hand. It begged the question: who was bound to whom? Was Cari the pet or was the fae?
Maeve crooned, a sound that Cari had never made in her life, We belong to each other.
Chapter Five
Mason was on the inside of a mage House, and like never before, he could sense the flows of magic and almost hear the hiss of the fae as they looked in from their world. It was an uncanny, skull-crawling awareness, one that reaffirmed that he, Fletcher, and even Cari were sliding down the knife’s edge of danger toward certain doom—plague, mob, magic—and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Cari’s company was trying to contain Shadow in some sort of membrane (as far as he knew, an impossible feat); Mason needed to know how. He couldn’t deny Webb’s assertion that he was “fortuitously placed.” He was. Ridiculously so.
The new Dolan was about to get a very good lesson on why strays weren’t permitted inside warded Houses. Maybe she needed to learn, so that in the future she wouldn’t lose just her company’s most exciting product, and at the worst time possible. The best thing that Cari could hope for was the misfortune of some other mage House to contract the plague so that he and Cari would have to leave Dolan property. In that case, they could finish their investigation and part ways.
He hoped for it too because he still liked her, the sweet girl turned mistress of a small empire. Made him grin, what she’d become. She’d always been capable, if a little soft-spoken. And damn smart. Scary smart, which he’d admired. And scarier still was the way she looked at him, like she was thinking complicated things, maybe guessing the worst. And yet, they’d been friends once, briefly. At least he’d thought so. And there’d been that one day when he’d gotten up the courage to make a move . . . Her tricksy, telling mouth had obsessed him. He’d wanted to kiss her so bad he still felt the disappointment nine years later.
He’d been such an idiot. Cari Dolan, of all people. Her father would’ve killed him, after torture and dismemberment.
And now this Webb business with the membrane. He wanted to watch her rise, not be the instrument of her downfall. Or one of them, at least. There were so many ways she could crash.
He regarded the flat screen in his room, tuned to a cable news program that specialized in hyperbole. The celebrity newscaster spoke in exclamation marks and agitation. Shadow! On the ground! What’s anyone doing about it!?
Humanity had caught a mage fever to go with magekind’s plague.
The main road that led to Dolan House’s extended drive had a small encampment of humans, barely visible through Cari’s security cameras, but clear on the webcast streaming video that someone had set up to watch the house. Signs that read, No More Shadow! were stuck into the ground. The area surrounding the house was protected by wards—which had made headlines as well—so that any who tried to approach were blocked. One brilliant soul had tried to shoot in the direction of the house, but had ended up with a bullet in his elbow.
Shadow’s first casualty! Who will be next? Are your children safe?
It was making everyone within the wards a little crazy, too.
He was almost certain that the stepmother was plotting to kill him. Shrewd lady. And the weird sisters had made a game of catching him alone and dropping increasingly lewd suggestions. One of them, the blonde, he thought, had stood outside his bedroom door singing, “Cupcake delivery.” He was pretty sure that the “cupcake” was her. He’d bolted the door, then switched the lock so that no one could get in.