He measured me coldly. Finally he said, “I should barter with you. Demand favor for favor. But it’s not my way. I care more that people survive than I care for vengeance. You might take a lesson from that. Your Book is still in Dublin.”
“It’s not my Book,” I hissed. When he’d called it that, my spine had iced with violent chills. As if somehow it was. Or wanted to be. Or I was having some hint of a premonition of things to come. I shook it off. So, the Sinsar Dubh was still being spotted in Dublin. That explained why so many Fae were here. We were all hunting it. I wouldn’t have thought it would be so difficult to find. It had been months since the walls had come down. Didn’t it want to be found by Unseelie? Weren’t they kin? What did it want in this city? It was a huge world out there, with countless countries and opportunities for chaos and destruction. Yet it remained in Dublin. Why?
“It took one of my men a few weeks ago on his way home to his family. Would you like to know what it did then, Ms. Lane? After it hitched a ride home to his wife, kids, and his mother?”
I kept my head perfectly still and said nothing. I wasn’t about to ask. I knew what happened when the Book took over a human. I’d seen so much carnage in the last few months that I was running out of room in my head for more gory images. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it wasn’t enough. I understood him wanting one of the Hallows. I could even have made a really good case for it myself, in his shoes. A kinder, gentler Mac would care. A nicer me would share.
I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t.
“It’s unfortunate there aren’t more weapons to go around,” I told him with complete sincerity, but it didn’t change a thing. I had enough to worry about, and I had plans in the works that were every bit as good or better than Jayne’s. I’d meant it when I said we could work something out. We could stop by once a week, wherever he and his men were keeping the Fae caged, and kill them all for him.
“I’d prefer it not end this way,” he said softly, and sliced air with a hand gesture. His men closed in around us.
Dani moved to stand next to me, shoulder to shoulder. I imagined that to them we looked like two young girls, huddling close, daunted by such a show of armed manpower.
“So would I,” I said just as softly. “Never try to take from me, Jayne. Never make that mistake. What’s mine is mine. You really don’t know what you’re messing with.”
“I don’t want to ‘mess’ with you at all, Ms. Lane. I’m merely looking for a little teamwork.”
“I’ve already got my team, Jayne.” I looked at Dani and nodded.
Her face lit up and she grinned. “Tuck in your elbows, Mac.”
I poked them out, the better to bruise a few ribs along the way. I got a gratifying chorus of grunts, heard guns clatter to the pavement.
They didn’t even see us go.
“We need iron, Mac,” Dani said as we moved down the street, back at normal speed again. We’d put a huge chunk of the city behind us in a matter of seconds. Her mode of transportation, nauseous as it made me, was worth its weight in gold.
I nodded absently, still mulling over the Jayne encounter. I regretted that it had ended on a note of animosity. I wanted every front in the battle for our planet united, with no cracks any Fae could slip through.
“We need more than iron.” I was busy making a mental list to scribble in my journal later. Between high school and college, my dad had made me take a Franklin Planner course. He said it would help me get control of my life. I told him I had control of my life: sun, friends, fashion, marriage one day. That’s not enough for you, baby, he said.
I argued; he bribed. I took the course, let Daddy spend a fortune on pink flower-covered calendar pages, doodled on them until I got bored, and shelved it.
What a brat I’d been.
One of the primary tenets of the course was that highly successful leaders kept journals, morning and night, in order to stay tightly focused on their goals. I was going to be a highly successful leader.
“I don’t have a gun, Mac. I need a gun.” Dani had turned to face me and was walking backward, bounding from foot to foot, a thousand watts of hyper energy, gobbling a candy bar. I was surprised her auburn hair wasn’t crackling with static electricity from frantic friction with the pavement.
I laughed. “All weapons are good weapons, is that it?”
“Aren’t they?”
Watching her was like watching a Ping-Pong ball bounce back and forth: zing-zing, zing-zing. I liked the way she thought. “I’ve got a plan.”