“She’s asleep, Mac,” Kat said.
“Well, wake her again! We need to know more!”
“Tomorrow’s another day.”
“Every day counts!”
“Mac, she’s weary. We can begin again in the morning. I’ll be staying the night. She shouldn’t be alone. She should never have been alone this long. Will you be staying, as well?”
“No,” Barrons growled through the door.
I inhaled slowly. Exhaled. I was in knots inside.
I had a mother.
I knew her name.
I knew where I came from.
I needed to know so much more!
Who was my father? Why had we O’Connors been getting so much bad press? Blaming my mother, then my sister, now me? It pissed me off. I wanted to shake the old woman awake, force her to go on.
I studied her. Sleep had smoothed the wizened face, and she looked peaceful, innocent, the hint of a smile touching her lips. I wondered if she dreamed of two young girls playing in her gardens. I wanted to see them, too.
I closed my eyes, flexed that sidhe-seer place, and found it easy to sip at the edges of her mind. It was, like her bones, weary and without defense.
And there they were: two girls, one dark, one blond, maybe seven or eight, running through a field of heather, holding hands and laughing. Was one of them my mother? I pressed harder, tried to shape Nana’s dream and make it show me more.
“What are you doing?” Kat cried.
I opened my eyes. Nana was staring at me, looking frightened and confused, hands tight on the arms of her rocking chair. “‘Tis a gift to be given, no’ taken!”
I stood and spread my hands placatingly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I didn’t think you’d even feel me there. I just wanted to know what she looked like. I’m so sorry. I just wanted to know what my mother looked like.” I was babbling. Anger that she’d stopped me vied with shame that I’d tried.
“Ye ken what she looked like.” Nana’s eyes drifted closed again. “Yer mam was e’er takin’ ye to the abbey wi’ her. Search yer memories. ‘Tis there ye’ll be finding her, Alina.”
I blinked. “I’m not Alina.”
A soft snore was her only reply.
It had been, Barrons said, a grand waste of time, and he wouldn’t be escorting me back to see the old woman again.
How could he say that? I exploded. I’d learned the name of my mother tonight! I knew my own last name!
“Names are illusions,” he growled. “Nonsensical labels seized upon by people to make them feel better about the intangibility of their puny existences. I am this. I am that,” he mocked. “I came from so and so. Ergo I am … whatever the blah-blah you want to claim. Bloody hell, spare me.”
“You’re beginning to sound dangerously like V’lane.” I was an O’Connor, from one of the six most powerful sidhe-seer lines—that mattered to me. I had a grandmother’s grave I could visit. I could take her flowers. I could tell her I would avenge us all.
“Irrelevant where you came from. What matters is where you’re going. Don’t you understand that? Have I succeeded in teaching you nothing?”
“Lectures,” I said, “deafen the ears.”
We were still arguing hours later, when he pulled the Hummer into the garage behind the bookstore.
“You just don’t like that she knew something about what you are!” I accused.
“An old bag of rural superstitions,” he scoffed. “Brain-starved by the potato famine.”
“Got the wrong century there, Barrons.”
He glowered at me, appeared to be doing some math, then said, “So what? Same result. Starved by something. Reading blinds the vision, lectures deafen the ears, my ass.”
We both leapt out of the Hummer and slammed the doors so hard it shuddered.
Beneath my feet, the floor of the garage trembled.
The concrete actually rumbled, making my shins vibrate, as a sound from something that could only have been born on the far side of hell filled the air.
I stared at him across the hood of the Hummer. Well, at least one of my questions had been laid to rest: Whatever was beneath his garage wasn’t Jericho Z. Barrons.
“What do you have down there, Barrons?” My question was nearly drowned out by another swell of hopeless, anguished baying. It made me want to run. It made me want to weep.
“The only way that could ever possibly be any of your business is if it was a book, and one that we need, and it’s not, so fuck off.” He stalked from the garage.
I followed hot on his heels. “Fine.”
“Fiona,” he snarled.
“I said ‘fine,’ not Fiona.” I plowed into his back.
“Jericho, it’s been too long,” a lightly accented, cultured voice said.
I stepped out from behind him. She looked stunning as ever in a hip-hugging skirt, fabulous boots that clung to the shapely lines of her long legs, and a low-cut lace blouse that showcased every voluptuous curve. A long velvet cloak was draped lightly about her shoulders, flapping gently in the night breeze. Blowsy sensuality. Fae on her skin. Expensive perfume. Her flawless skin was paler than ever, more luminous, her lipstick blood-red, her gaze frankly sexual.
My spear was in my hand instantly.
She was flanked by a dozen of the Lord Master’s black-and-crimson-clad guard.
“Guess you’re not important enough to merit protection from the princes,” I said coolly.
“Darroc is a jealous lover,” she said lightly. “He does not permit them near me, should they turn my head. He tells me what a relief it is to have a woman in his bed, after the bland taste of the child he ripped to pieces.”
I sucked in a sharp breath and would have lunged, but Barrons’ hand closed like a steel cuff around my wrist.
“What do you want, Fiona?”
I wondered if she remembered that Barrons was at his most dangerous when his voice was that soft.
For the barest moment, as she looked at Barrons, I saw unabashed, vulnerable longing in her eyes. I saw hurt, pride, desire that would never stop eating at her. I saw love.
She loved Jericho Barrons.
Even after he’d thrown her out for trying to kill me. Even after taking up with Derek O’Bannion and now the LM.
Even with Unseelie flesh running through her veins, lover to the darkest denizens of the new Dublin, she still loved the man standing next to me and always would. Loving something like Barrons was a pain I didn’t envy her.