His mouth shaped a bitter smile. “All this time I’ve been hunting it, I’ve been telling myself I would be the exception. I would be the one who could touch it. Use it. I would be unaffected. I was so certain of myself. ‘Just get me within sight distance of it, Ms. Lane,’ I said, convinced I’d all but have it in the bag then. Well, I was wrong.” He laughed, a sharp bark of a sound. “I can’t touch it, either.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“A fine distinction. Irony, perfect definition: That for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want, once I possessed it. I would lose everything to gain nothing. I am not one for exercises in futility.”
Well, at least I no longer had to worry about Barrons or V’lane getting the Book before I did. V’lane couldn’t touch it because he was Seelie, and Barrons wouldn’t touch it because he was smart enough to realize that whatever purpose he wanted it for would be instantly forfeit to the Beast’s all-consuming nature. “Was it coming after us?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It certainly looked like it, though, didn’t it?”
I nestled deeper into my blankets. “What are we going to do, Barrons?”
He gave me a dark look. “The only thing we can do, Ms. Lane. We’re going to keep those fucking walls up.”
FOURTEEN
When I unlocked the front door Thursday morning to open for business—a measure of how desperately I wanted to be a normal girl in a normal world—Inspector Jayne was waiting for me.
I stepped back to let him in, closed the door, then, with a gusty sigh, ceded the absurdity of my actions, and flipped the sign back to CLOSED. I wasn’t normal and it wasn’t a normal world, and pretending wasn’t going to accomplish a thing. It was time to call yet another of my own bluffs. The bookstore lulled me with temporary comfort that I had no right to. I should be anxious, I should be afraid. Fear is a powerful motivator.
I took the inspector’s damp coat and motioned him to a seat near the fire. “Tea? Er, I mean, normal tea?”
He nodded and sat.
I brought him a cup of Earl Grey, took a seat across from him, and sipped at my own.
“Aren’t we the pair?” he said, blowing his cup to cool.
I smiled. We certainly were. It seemed a year ago that he’d dragged me down to the station. Months since he’d accosted me in the alcove with his maps. “It has downsides,” I told him, meaning eating Unseelie. He knew what I meant. It was what he’d come here for.
“Doesn’t everything?”
“It makes you superstrong, but the Fae can’t be killed, Jayne. You can’t engage them. You must be satisfied merely seeing them. If you start trying to kill them, they’ll know you know, and they’ll kill you.”
“How strong does eating it make you? As strong as one of them?”
I considered it. I didn’t know, and told him that.
“So, it might?”
I shrugged. “Regardless, you still can’t kill them. They don’t die. They’re immortal.”
“Why do you think we have prisons, Ms. Lane? We’re not allowed to kill the serial murderers, either.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “I never thought of imprisoning them. I’m not certain anything would hold them.” Except an Unseelie prison woven from the fabric of the Song of Making. “They sift, remember?”
“All of them?”
He’d made another good point. I’d never seen a Rhino-boy sift. I supposed it was possible only the more powerful Fae could do it; the princes and the one-of-a-kinds like the Gray Man.
“Isn’t it worth a try? Maybe we lowly humans can come up with a few surprises. While you do your thing, others can be doing theirs. The word in the street is that something bad is coming, soon. What’s going on?”
I told him about Halloween, and the walls, and what would happen if they came down.
He placed his cup and saucer on the table. “And you would have me go out there defenseless?”
“It has other downsides, too. I’m not sure what they all are, but one of them is that if you get wounded by one of the immortal weapons, you’ll . . .” I described Mallucé ’s death for him. The decomposing flesh, the dying body parts.
“How many of these immortal weapons are there, Ms. Lane?”
“Two.” How far he’d come from denying missing parts of the maps to so casually speaking of dining on monsters and immortal weapons!
“Who has them?”
“Uh, me and someone else.”
He smiled faintly. “I’ll take my chances.”
“It’s addictive.”
“I used to smoke. If I can quit that, I can quit anything.”
“I think it changes you somehow.” I was pretty sure eating Unseelie was why I’d been able to get closer to the Sinsar Dubh. There was a lot about eating Dark Fae I wasn’t clear on, but something had made the Book perceive me as . . . tarnished, diluted.
“Lady, you’ve changed me more than an early heart attack. Quit stalling. No more tips, remember?”
For the time being, I didn’t want tips. I had no desire to know where the Book was, other than as a means of avoiding it.
“You didn’t give me a choice when you opened my eyes,” the inspector said roughly. “You owe me for that.”
I studied his face, the set of his shoulders, his hands. How far I’d come, too. Far from seeing an enemy, an impediment to my progress, I saw a good man sitting in my store, having tea with me. “I’m sorry I made you eat it,” I said.
“I’m not,” he said flatly. “I’d rather die seeing the face of my enemy than die blind.”
I sighed. “You’ll have to come back every few days. I don’t know how long it lasts.”
I went to the counter, rummaged in my purse. He accepted the jars a bit eagerly for my taste, revulsion married to anticipation on his face. I felt like a supplier to a junkie. I felt like a mom, sending her child off to face the perils of first grade. I had to do more than pack his lunch and put him on the bus; I had to give him advice.
“The ones that look like Rhinos are watchdogs for the Fae. They spy, and lately, for some bizarre reason, they’ve been doing utility work. I think the ones that fly prey on children, but I’m not sure. They follow them, behind their shoulders. There are dainty, pretty ones that can get inside you. I call them Grippers. If you see one coming toward you, run like hell. The shadowy dark ones will devour you in an instant if you stumble into a Dark Zone. At night, you’ve got to stay to the lights. . . .” I was half hanging out the door, calling after him. “Start carrying flashlights at all times. If they catch you in the dark, you’re dead.”