When I got back to the bookstore, I steamed open the envelope. The adhesive edge curled quickly and the glue seemed sparse, making me wonder if I’d not been the first to do it.
It held an invitation, an exclusive one, extended by a host who denoted himself or herself with only a symbol, no address. On the back was jotted a partial list, intended to tantalize. It included an object long held to be mythical, two religious icons the Vatican was rumored to be looking for, and a painting by one of the Masters believed lost in a fire centuries ago.
Barrons and I were going to an auction tonight, a very private one, the kind of black market sale Interpol and FBI agents nurture sweet, career-making dreams of one day busting.
EIGHT
W ales is one of four constituent or home nations of the United Kingdom.
England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are the other three.
Ireland—not to be confused with Northern Ireland—is a sovereign state, and a member of the European Union.
The entire United Kingdom, at about 94,000 square miles, is slightly smaller than the state of Oregon. The island of Ireland, both Northern and the Republic, is roughly the size of the state of Indiana.
At 8,000 square miles, Wales is tiny. To put Wales in perspective, Scotland has four times the land mass, and Texas is thirty-three times as big.
I know all of this because I looked it up. When my sister was killed and I was forced, wings untried, from my gently feathered nest in Ashford, Georgia, my eyes were opened in more ways than one. I took stock of myself and realized that among other things, I had no global awareness. I’ve been trying desperately to dispel my provinciality by teaching myself a bird’s-eye view of things. If knowledge is power, I want all of it I can get.
The flight from Dublin to Cardiff took a little over an hour. We landed in Rhoose, about ten minutes from the capital city, at eleven-fifteen. A chauffeur fell into step beside us and ushered us into a waiting silver Maybach 62. I have no idea where we went from there because I’d never been inside such a car, and was too busy examining the luxurious interior to notice much more than city lights whizzing by, and finally darkness beyond the panoramic glass roof. I reclined my seat to nearly horizontal. I tested the massage option. I stroked the soft leather and the gleaming wood. I watched the velocity with which we hurtled into the night on the ceiling instruments.
“When we arrive, you will take your seat and not move,” Barrons said for the fifth time. “Do not scratch your nose, fidget with your hair, rub your face, and no matter what I say to you, you must not nod. Speak to me, but softly. People will listen if they can. Be discreet.”
“Still as a cat, quiet as a mouse,” I replied, flipping through the movie selections for my personal flat-screen TV. The car was capable of what critics called a “blistering performance,” achieving 0–100 in five seconds. Barrons must be a serious collector for our hosts to have sent such a car after him.
I didn’t become aware of my surroundings again until Barrons was helping me from the car, tucking my arm through his. I liked my attire tonight better than anything he’d chosen for me in the past. I had on a black Chanel suit that was all business, sexy heels that weren’t, and fake diamonds at my ears, wrists, and throat. I’d sleeked my short dark curls with a leave-in conditioner and tucked it behind my ears. I looked like money and liked how it felt. Who wouldn’t? Up until now the most expensive outfit I’d ever worn was my prom dress. I always figured the next expensive dress I’d get to wear would be the one my daddy bought me for my wedding, and if life was good, about half a dozen more between that and my funeral. I certainly never would have wagered on haute couture and fancy cars and illegal auctions and men who wore silk shirts and Italian suits, with platinum and diamond cuff links.
When I finally glanced around, I was startled to find we were on a deserted country lane. Stiff men in stiffer suits herded us a short distance down a shadowy path through the woods, stopping us in front of an overgrown bank. I was perplexed until they parted the dense foliage, revealing a steel door in the side of an embankment. We were guided through it, down an endless, narrow flight of concrete stairs, through a long concrete tunnel lined with pipes and wires, and into a large rectangular room.
“We’re in a bomb shelter,” Barrons said against my ear, “nearly three stories beneath the ground.”
I don’t mind telling you it creeped me out more than a little, being so deep in the earth with only one way out, and that back the way we’d come, through a dozen heavily armed men. I’m not claustrophobic but I like the open sky around me, or at least the knowledge that it’s right on the other side of whatever walls I’m enclosed by. This felt like being buried alive. I think I’d rather die in a nuclear holocaust than live in a concrete box for twenty years.
“Lovely,” I murmured. “Is this kind of like your undergr—Ow!” Barrons’ boot was on my foot and if he gave it any more pressure, it’d be flat as a pancake.
“There are times and places for curiosity, Ms. Lane. This is not one of them. Here, anything you say can and will be used against you.”
“Sorry,” I said and I really was. If he didn’t want these people to know he had an underground vault, I could understand that, and if I’d not been so discombobulated by my surroundings, I would have thought of that before I’d brought it up. “Get off my foot.”
He gave me a Barrons look that defies describing because he has several of them, and they speak volumes. “I’m alert, I swear,” I said crossly. I hate being a fish out of water, and not only was I flopping around on the beach, I was a minnow among sharks. “And I won’t say another word unless you speak to me, okay?”
He gave me a tight, satisfied smile and we headed for our seats.
The room was concrete from top to bottom, with no finishing touches. Exposed pipes and wires ran the length of the ceiling. Forty metal folding chairs had been set up in the room: five rows of four each on both sides of a narrow aisle. Most of the chairs were already filled with people in elegant evening attire. Those conversing did so in hushed murmurs.
At the front of the room was a center podium flanked by tables, covered with items draped in velvet. Additional draped items lined the wall behind it.
Barrons looked at me. I was careful not to nod. “Yes,” I told him, as we took our seats in the third row on the right side of the room. I’d been feeling it ever since we’d entered the shelter but I’d had no way of knowing if it was a Fae relic, or an actual Fae, until I had the opportunity to examine all persons in the vicinity. There were no glamours being cast; the occupants of this room were human, which meant there was a very powerful OOP under all that velvet somewhere. On a nausea scale of one to ten—ten being the Sinsar Dubh, and most other things topping out at a three or four, with nothing so far between six and ten but the single ten that had made me lose consciousness—it was a five, and I thumbed from my pocket one of the Tums I’d begun taking to help with the discomfort of carrying the spear all the time, which, by the way, I’d left on Barrons’ desk earlier at his direction, so he could strap it to his leg, not mine. I’d hated giving it up, but my sleek suit afforded no hiding places. Though there was little trust between us, I knew he would return it to me quickly if I needed it.