The auctioneer’s eyes twinkled as he spoke of the amulet and its “mystical” ability to grant its owners’ deepest desires.
Is it good health you seek? he asked the wheezing, wheelchair bound man softly. Longevity? One of its owners, incidentally a Welshman like yourself, sir, was reputed to have lived for hundreds of years.
Perhaps you have political aspirations, he offered the famous man. Would you like to guide your great nation? How about greater wealth?
Could he get any wealthier? I wondered. If I were him, I’d go for better hair.
Perhaps you seek a return of sexual desire and desirability? he crooned to the faded beauty with bitter grooves bracketing her mouth and smoldering embers for eyes. Your husband back? His new young wife…shall we say…receiving her comeuppance?
Perhaps, he teased a man in the fourth row wearing the most haunted, hunted expression I’d ever seen, you’d like to vanquish all your enemies.
Bidding exploded.
The entire time Barrons sat motionless, staring straight ahead. I, on the other hand, rubbernecked shamelessly. My heart was pounding, and I didn’t even have anything vested in the situation.
I kept waiting for Barrons to bid and grew increasingly alarmed when he didn’t. Cruz was obviously Cruce, the legendary creator of the Cuff V’lane had offered me. It was a Fae relic, unbelievably powerful, and even if we weren’t going to use it ourselves, it shouldn’t be out there in the world. It was an OOP. Every sidhe-seer instinct in me wanted it withdrawn from the world of Man where it never should have been in the first place and in the wrong hands was capable of aiding great evil, as evidenced by a German dictator who’d once owned it.
I leaned into him and pressed my mouth to his ear. “Say something,” I hissed. “Bid!”
He closed his hand around mine and squeezed. Bone ground gently upon bone. I shut up.
The bids reached astronomical proportions. There was no way Barrons had that kind of money.
I couldn’t believe we were just going to let it go.
The bidding narrowed down to five fervent contenders. Then two: the famous man and the dying one. When the bidding reached eight figures, the famous man laughed and let it go. I already have everything I want, he said, and I was pleasantly surprised to see he actually meant it. In a room of malcontent, covetous people, he genuinely was happy with his Klimt, and his life overall. He rose considerably in my estimation. I decided I liked his hair and admired that he didn’t care what anyone else thought of it. Good for him.
An hour later, the auction was over. A few hours after that, via a private plane—you can hardly transport illegal goods on a public one—we were standing outside the bookstore, shortly before dawn. Exhausted, I’d slept through the flight, waking only when we’d landed, to find my mouth slightly ajar on a soft snore and Barrons watching me with amusement.
I was pissed that he’d let the OOP go. I wanted to know the extent of the power it conferred. I wanted to know if it could have protected me even better than the Cuff V’lane was offering.
“Why didn’t you at least bid on it?” I asked crossly, as he unlocked the front door.
He followed me inside. “I purchase what I must to maintain a façade, to continue receiving invitations. Any acquisition made at such an auction is observed and recorded. I don’t like other people knowing what I have. I never buy the things I want.”
“Well, that’s just stupid. How do you get them, then?” I narrowed my eyes. “I am not helping you steal that thing, Barrons.”
He laughed. “You don’t want it? The auctioneer was incorrect, Ms. Lane. It’s not the Amulet of Cruce. The Unseelie King himself fashioned that trinket; it’s one of the four Unseelie Hallows.”
A few months ago I’d never have believed in anything like the Hallows, but a few months ago I’d never have believed myself capable of killing, either.
The Hallows were the Fae’s most sacred, powerful, and obsessively coveted relics. There were four Light or Seelie Hallows: the spear, the sword, the cauldron and the stone, and four Dark or Unseelie Hallows: the amulet, the box, the mirror, and the most terrible of them all, the Sinsar Dubh.
“You saw who owned it in the past,” Barrons said. “Even if you don’t want it, can you abide a Dark Hallow out there, loose in the world?”
“That’s not fair, using my sidhe-seer-ness against me to get me to commit a crime.”
“Life isn’t fair, Ms. Lane. And you happen to be up to your ears in crimes. Get over it.”
“What if we get caught? I could get arrested. I could end up in jail.” I wouldn’t survive prison. The drab uniforms, the lack of color, the rut of penitentiary existence would unravel me completely in a matter of weeks.
“I’d break you out,” he said dryly.
“Great. Then I’d be on the run.”
“You already are, Ms. Lane. You have been ever since your sister died.” He turned and disappeared beyond the connecting doors.
I stared after him. What didn’t Barrons know? I knew I’d been running since then, but how did he?
After Alina was murdered, I’d started to feel invisible. My parents had stopped seeing me. With increasing frequency, I’d caught them watching me with a heartbreaking mixture of longing and pain, and I’d known it was Alina they were seeing in my face, my hair, my mannerisms. They were hunting for her in me, summoning her ghost.
I’d stopped existing. I was no longer Mac.
I was the one who’d lived.
He was right. Justice and revenge had been only part of my motivation for leaving Ashford. I’d run from my grief, from their pain, from being a shadow of another person, better loved for bitterly lost, and Ireland hadn’t been nearly far enough.
The worst of it was that now I was caught up in a deadly marathon, running for my life, desperate to stay one step ahead of all the monsters behind me, and there was no finish line in sight.
NINE
S peaking of the better loved for bitterly lost, I had one day left to clean out her apartment. By midnight all of Alina’s belongings had to be out, or the landlord had the right to set them to the curb. I’d packed the boxes up weeks ago. I just needed to drag them to the door, call a cab, and pay a little extra to have the cabbie help me load and transport them to the bookstore, where I could wrap them and ship them home.
I couldn’t believe I’d so completely lost track of time, but I’d had monsters to fight, a police interrogation to deal with, a graveyard to search, my dad to send home, a mobster’s brother’s death to avert, a new job to learn, and an illegal auction to attend.