Had Alina been in this world? Had she known this obsessive-compulsive man in white? I could certainly see him killing her, or killing anyone for that matter. But could I see Alina believing herself in love with a man like him? Granted, he was rich, worldly, and attractive in a brutish, powerful way. But the inspector and the two girls I’d spoken with had been absolutely certain Alina’s boyfriend wasn’t native to the Emerald Isle, and McCabe—despite his enormous pretensions—was salt-of-the-earth Irish, through and through.
“Heard anything about it?” Barrons lost interest in me, too, and moved on to a new subject. Simply two men going about their business, with walking, talking—or rather mute—sex-on-heels nearby in case anyone wanted any, just a convenient platter of oyster on the half shell.
“No,” McCabe said flatly. “You?”
“No,” Barrons replied just as flatly.
McCabe nodded. “Well, then. Leave her and go. Or just leave.” It was obvious he couldn’t have cared less which option Barrons chose to exercise. In fact, if I’d gotten left, I wasn’t sure McCabe would even notice me again for several days.
The King of White had dismissed us.
TWELVE
Glamour: illusion cast by the Fae to camouflage their true appearance. The more powerful the Fae, the more difficult it is to penetrate its disguise. The average human sees only what the Fae wants them to see, and is subtly repelled from bumping into or brushing against it by a small perimeter of spatial distortion that is part of the Fae glamour.
And that was why the monster in the alley with mule-size genitals and leechlike sucking mouths had instantly known what I was—I’d been unable to avoid crashing into it.
Any other person would have been repelled the instant they’d rounded the corner, and stumbled clumsily, careening off nothing they could see. You know all those times you say, “Geez, I don’t know what’s wrong with me—I must have tripped over my own feet?” Think again.
According to Barrons, McCabe had no idea his “bodyguards” were Unseelie who’d addressed each other as Ob and Yrg when they’d escorted us from the Throne Room in guttural tones Barrons and I had pretended not to hear. McCabe’s usual staff of bodyguards had disappeared three months ago and been replaced by the Rhino-boys, a type of Unseelie Barrons believed were low-to-mid-level caste thugs dispatched primarily as watchdogs for the highest-ranking Fae.
After thinking about that for a minute and following it to the logical conclusion, I’d said, Does that mean an Unseelie is hunting for the Sinsar Dubh, too?
It looks that way, Barrons replied. And a very powerful one, at that. I keep catching wind of someone the Unseelie call the “Lord Master,” but so far I’ve had no luck discovering who or what this Lord Master is. I told you, Ms. Lane, that you had no idea what you were getting into.
The Unseelie were terrifying enough. I had no desire to encounter whatever they addressed as their ruler. Well, maybe now’s a real good time for me to get right back out of it, I’d said.
Try, the look he’d given me had said. Even if I managed to close my heart and turn my back on my sister’s murder, Jericho Barrons wasn’t about to let me go.
Sad fact was we needed each other. I could sense the Sinsar Dubh and he had all the pertinent information about it, including a few ideas about where it might be and who else was looking for it. Left to my own devices, I would never be able to find out about parties like the one at Casa Blanc and get myself invited there. Left to his own devices, Barrons would never know if the book was nearby, perhaps even in the same room with him. He could be standing right next to it, for all he knew.
I’d gotten a good idea just how important I was to him last night. If the book was metal, I was Jericho Barrons’ own private state-of-the-art metal detector. After Ob and Yrg had returned to McCabe, Barrons had escorted me through floor after floor of the starkly decorated house. When I’d felt nothing, he’d marched me all over the manicured estate, including the outbuildings. He’d insisted we cover the grounds so thoroughly that I hadn’t gotten back to my borrowed bedroom to sleep until just before dawn. Reluctant though I was to feel something so awful again, I’d been almost disappointed when my newly discovered Spidey-sense hadn’t picked up the faintest tingle anywhere.
Still, to me, the bottom line wasn’t about the Dark Book at all. It was about uncovering the details of my sister’s secret life. I didn’t want the creepy thing. I just wanted to know who or what had killed Alina, and I wanted him or it dead. Then I wanted to go home to my pleasantly provincial po-dunk little town in steamy southern Georgia and forget about everything that had happened to me while I was in Dublin. The Fae didn’t visit Ashford? Good. I’d marry a local boy with a jacked-up Chevy pickup truck, Toby Keith singing “Who’s Your Daddy?” on the radio, and eight proud generations of honest, hardworking Ashford ancestors decorating his family tree. Short of essential shopping trips to Atlanta, I’d never leave home again.
But for now, working with Barrons was my only option. The people I met during our search could be people Alina had met too. And if I could somehow find and retrace the path she’d taken through this bizarre film-noir world, it should lead me straight to her killer.
I would be seriously rethinking the wisdom of that before long.
I picked up my pen. It was Sunday afternoon and Barrons Books and Baubles was closed for the day. I’d woken up disoriented and badly missing Mom, but when I’d called, Dad had said she was in bed and he didn’t want to wake her. She hadn’t been sleeping well, he said, even though she’d been taking something that was supposed to help her. I’d carried on an achingly one-sided conversation with him for a few minutes, but his efforts had been so painfully halfhearted that I’d given up. At a loss for what to do, I’d finally grabbed my journal and gone downstairs to the bookstore.
Now I was sprawled on my stomach on the comfy sofa in the rear conversation area of the bookstore, notebook propped on a pillow in front of me.
Sifting: a method of Fae locomotion, I wrote.
I nibbled the tip of my fine-point, felt-tipped fuchsia pen and tried to figure out how to write this one down. When Barrons had explained it to me, I’d been horrified.
You mean they can just think themselves somewhere and that’s how instantly it happens? They just want to be someplace—and then there they are?