They come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from as small as a cat to as large as—
I blinked.
Surely that wasn’t the one that had cornered me in the back parlor the night Fiona, the woman who used to run the bookstore, had tried to kill me, by letting a horde of them inside while I slept! The last time I’d seen it, roughly five weeks ago, counting the month I’d lost in Faery, it had been about twenty feet long and nine feet high. It was now twice as large, a dense cloud of oily darkness stretching nearly the entire length of the deserted building adjacent to Barrons.
Did they grow from eating us? Could one get as big as a small town? Maybe hunker down on top of it and swallow it whole?
I stared. For a thing that had no face, it certainly seemed to be staring back at me. I’d flipped this thing off a time or two. Last time I’d seen it, it had shaped itself into an almost human form and shot the insult right back at me.
I wasn’t about to teach it any new tricks.
I gave myself a brisk shake, and immediately regretted it. My head hurt so badly my brain felt bruised, and I’d just jostled it from side to side against the inner walls of my skull.
Though the rain had finally stopped—or rather taken one of those all too brief Dublin hiatuses—I was wet and freezing, and had better things to do than stand out here brooding over one of my many enemies. Things like eating a half a bottle of aspirin, and standing under a scalding shower. Things like clearing my head so I could ponder the ramifications of what I’d seen tonight, and finding Barrons to tell him all about it. I had no doubt he would be as astonished as I was by the Book’s method of locomotion. What dark agenda was it pursuing? Were random chaos and violence purpose enough?
As I stepped into the alcove and began digging in my purse for my keys, I heard footsteps behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and scowled.
Inspector Jayne joined me in the arched entry, dashing rain from his coat with a gloved hand. I’d passed him earlier in the street, on my way to see Christian, before my encounter with the Sinsar Dubh. He’d given me a look that had promised harassment, but I’d figured I’d had a day or two before he got around to making good on that promise.
No such luck.
Tall and burly, with brown hair neatly combed to a side part, his craggy face was set in harsh lines. Brother-in-law to the late Inspector Patty O’Duffy—the inspector who’d originally handled my sister’s murder case, and who’d had his throat cut while clutching a scrap of paper with my name on it—Jayne had recently hauled me down to the Garda station and held me all day on suspicion of murder. He’d interrogated and starved me, accused me of having had an affair with O’Duffy, then turned me out into the dark heart of Dublin, minus my Shade-repelling flashlights, to walk home by myself. I wasn’t about to forgive his callous treatment.
I’m going to be tape to your ass, he’d told me.
He’d been proving true to his word, following me, staking me out, watching my every move.
Now, he looked me up and down and gave a snort of disgust. “I’m not even going to ask.”
“Are you here to arrest me?” I said coolly. I quit trying to pretend I had a heel and leaned lopsidedly against the door. My calves and feet hurt.
“Maybe.”
“That was a yes or no question, Jayne. Try again.” He didn’t say anything and we both knew what that meant. “Then go away. The store is closed. That makes it private property right now. You’re trespassing.”
“Either we talk tonight, or I come back in the morning when you have customers. You want a homicide detective hanging around, interrogating your clientele?”
“You don’t have any right to interrogate my clientele.”
“I’m the Garda, lady. That gives me all the rights I need. I can and will make your life miserable. Try me.”
“What do you want?” I growled.
“It’s cold and wet out here.” He cupped his hands, blew on them. “How about a cup of tea?”
“How about you go screw yourself?” I flashed him a saccharine smile.
“What, my overweight, middle-aged brother-in-law was good enough for you, but I’m not?”
“I did not have sex with your brother-in-law,” I snapped.
“Then what the fuck was he doing with you?” he snapped back.
“We’ve already been through this. I told you. If you want to interrogate me again, you’re going to have to arrest me, and this time I’m not saying a word without an attorney.” I glanced over his shoulder. The Shades were moving restlessly, vigorously, as if stirred up by our discord. Our arguing seemed to be . . . exciting them. I wondered if anger or passion made us taste even better to them. I forced the macabre thought from my mind.
“Your answers were no answers at all, and you know it.”
“You don’t want the real answers.” I didn’t want the real answers. Unfortunately, I was stuck with them.
“Maybe, I do. However . . . difficult to believe . . . they might seem.”
I gave him a sharp look. Though he wore his usual determined dog-with-a-bone expression, there was a subtle new component to it that I’d missed before. It was the same component I’d glimpsed in O’Duffy’s eyes the morning he’d come to see me, the morning he’d died, a wary, maybe-my-world-isn’t-quite-what-I-thought-it-was look. A sure sign that, like O’Duffy, Jayne was about to start poking into matters that were probably going to get him killed. Although O’Duffy’s method of death seemed to imply a human murderer, I had no doubt he’d been killed for what he’d been learning about the new kids in town—the Fae.
I sighed. I wanted out of my nasty, wet clothes. I wanted to wash my disgusting hair. “Let it go, will you? Just let it go. I didn’t have anything to do with O’Duffy’s murder, and I don’t have anything else to tell you.”
“Yes, you do. You know what’s going on in this city, Ms. Lane. I don’t know how or where you fit into things, but I know you do. That’s why Patty came to see you. He didn’t stop by that morning to tell you anything about your sister’s case. He came to ask you something. What was it? What had been burning such a hole in his brain all night that he couldn’t wait until Monday to talk to you, that he sent his family on to church and missed Mass? What did Patty ask you the morning he died?”