I pushed past him. He didn’t move an inch. Electricity sizzled where our bodies brushed.
“Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. Be here, Ms. Lane.”
“I’m fighting with the sidhe-seers,” I tossed over my shoulder.
“Call it an early night. Or find somewhere else to live.”
At noon the next day, Dani, all the other sidhe-seers at the abbey, and I were gathered in one of their enormous cafeterias, seated around tables, listening as Rowena addressed the crowd, and, oh, did the woman know how to sway sentiment!
The canny GM was the consummate politician. I listened, committing her tactics to memory. Analyzing the words she chose, how she strung them together, how she played emotion for everything it was worth.
Yes, she said, she would put aside her differences with the young rogue sidhe-seer who’d never been properly trained and whose sister had betrayed the entire world by helping her lover—the villainous Lord Master—free the Unseelie to kill billions of people around the globe, including two hundred of our own. Yes, she would agree to do whatever they felt must be done to win the most important battle humankind had ever faced. She could not in good conscience step aside or take off the robes she’d been wearing for forty-seven years—more than twice as long as the rogue sidhe-seer had even been alive—but she would extend her hand in welcome, if that was what her beloved daughters felt was imperative she do, despite numerous and compelling arguments to the contrary.
After her little speech, I could see doubt on some of the women’s faces again, so I stood and delivered mine. Yes, I would put aside my differences with the old woman who’d turned me away the first night she’d ever met me, without even asking my name, who’d told me in no uncertain terms to go die somewhere else and leave her alone—when it had been obvious I was a sidhe-seer in desperate need of help. Why hadn’t I been one of her “beloved daughters” that night? Was it my fault I’d been raised with no idea what I was? Why hadn’t she taken me in?
But I would forgive her and, yes, I would work with the woman who’d withheld the weapons that could kill Fae, refused to let the sidhe-seers do the job they’d been born to do, and run a constant slander campaign against my sister, whose greatest mistake was being seduced by a Fae-turned-human with hundreds of thousands of years of experience creating illusions and seducing women.
Who among us might not have fallen under such circumstances? They’d met V’lane. If they wanted to throw stones, now was the time to do it, or never. Alina had ultimately seen through the Lord Master’s act and had paid with her life. Again, where had Rowena been when my sister was struggling to understand what she was? How had Alina and I gotten lost in the sidhe-seer shuffle, abandoned to a life with no training?
I was eager to do as Kat suggested, I told them, excited to work together toward common goals, putting the needs of the sidhe-seers first. From this moment forward, I vowed, I would speak no ill of the Grand Mistress, provided she did the same of me.
I sat.
She would cooperate, Rowena said from her podium, despite that I’d continually proven myself unreliable and dangerous, allying myself with the likes of V’lane.
“Excuse me, so did you,” I pointed out.
“Only for the greater good.”
“You wouldn’t allow me to be part of the greater good. You denied me welcome here.”
Kat stood. “Stop putting us in the middle! Grand Mistress, we must lay aside our differences. Do you not agree?”
Rowena was still a moment, then nodded tightly.
“Full cooperation?” Kat pressed.
Rowena studied the gathered assembly in silence. I knew the precise moment she acknowledged that she’d lost too much ground with her flock to gain it back here and now. Either the two of us would pull the cart together, or the cart was going to leave us behind. “Yes,” she said tightly.
“Great.” I shot to my feet. “So, where was the Book being kept, how was it being contained, and how in the world did you lose it?”
The roar in the hall was deafening, as I’d expected it to be. This, after all, was the question that had been bandied about these walls in whispers and secrecy for more than twenty years.
I dropped back to my seat, curious to see how she would extricate herself. I had no doubt she would.
“Wicked cool, Mac,” said Dani, grinning. “I think we’ve got her now.”
I knew we didn’t. Rowena was too clever to be trapped that easily.
When the crowd finally quieted, she informed us with humble gravity that unfortunately such matters were not within her span of authority to discuss. That although I seemed to believe she was solely in charge, the abbey had always been run as a democracy, governed by the Haven, and all her actions and choices had to be approved or rejected by them, particularly in matters of such delicacy and danger. She must meet with the High Council, present our questions, and obey their dictates. Unfortunately (and conveniently for her, I noted dryly), some of them were not in-house at the moment. But as soon as they were …