Faefever Part 2

"The warehouse is still there, but the city around it seems to have been . . . forgotten. I mean, completely completely forgotten. The streets aren't being cleaned. The trash isn't being collected. The lamps are out. Sewage has backed up into the gutters. My cell phone couldn't get a signal there. Right in the middle of the city, I couldn't get a b.l.o.o.d.y signal!" forgotten. The streets aren't being cleaned. The trash isn't being collected. The lamps are out. Sewage has backed up into the gutters. My cell phone couldn't get a signal there. Right in the middle of the city, I couldn't get a b.l.o.o.d.y signal!"

"Not getting what this has to do with me," I said in my most bored voice.

He didn't hear me, and I knew he was walking the desolate, debris-filled streets in his mind again. A Dark Zone doesn't just look abandoned; it oozes death and decay, makes you feel slimy with it. It leaves an indelible mark on you. It will wake you up in the middle of the night, heart in your throat, terrified of the dark. I sleep with all the lights on. I carry flashlights, 24/7.

"I found cars abandoned in the middle of the streets with the doors wide open. Expensive cars. The kind that get stripped for parts before the owner can even return with petrol. Explain that," he barked.

"Maybe Dublin's crime rate is decreasing," I offered, knowing it for the lie it was.

"It's skyrocketing. Has been for months. Media's been crucifying us over it."

They certainly had. And after what I'd seen tonight, the local escalation in violent crime was a fact I was especially interested in. I had an idea germinating.

"There were piles of clothing outside the cars with wallets in the pockets. Some of them were stuffed with cash, just waiting to be stolen. For Christ's sake, I found two Rolexes on the sidewalk!"

"Did you pick them up?" I asked with interest. I'd always wanted a Rolex.

"But you know what the strangest thing was, Ms. Lane? There were no people. Not a single one. As if everyone had agreed at exactly the same moment to vacate twenty-some city blocks, right in the middle of whatever they were doing, without taking a single thing, not their cars, not even their clothes. Did they all walk out naked?"

"How would I know?"

"It's happening right here, Ms. Lane. There's an area missing on these maps right next to your bookstore. Don't tell me you never look down that way when you leave."

I shrugged. "I don't leave much."

"I follow you. You leave all the time."

"I'm pretty self-engrossed, Inspector. I rarely look around." I glanced behind him, for the dozenth time. The Shades were still behaving shadily, trapped in their darkness, licking thin, dark, nasty Shade lips.

"Bulls.h.i.t. I interrogated you. You're smart and sharp, and you're lying."

"Okay, you explain it. What do you think happened?"

"I don't know."

"Can you think of anything that might explain what you found?"

A muscle worked in his jaw. "No."

"Then what do you expect me to tell you? That evil creatures of the night have taken over Dublin? That they're right down there"-I flung my arm out to the right-"and they're eating people and leaving the parts they don't like behind? That they've claimed certain territories as their own, and if you're stupid enough to walk or drive into one after dark, you'll die?" There, that was as close to warning him as I could get.

"Don't be a fool, Ms. Lane."

"Ditto, Inspector," I said sharply. "You want my advice? Stay out of places you can't find on maps. Now go away away." I turned my back on him.

"This isn't over," he said tightly.

It seemed, lately, everyone was saying that to me. No, it certainly wasn't, but I had a sinking feeling I knew how it was going to end: With one more death on my conscience to occupy my already sleepless nights. "Leave me alone, or go get a warrant." I slid the key into the door and unlocked it. As I opened it, I glanced over my shoulder.

Jayne was standing on the sidewalk, in almost exactly the same spot I'd occupied five minutes earlier, staring down into the abandoned neighborhood, brows drawn, forehead furrowed. He didn't know it, but the Shades were staring back, in that faceless, eyeless way they have. What would I do if he began walking down there?

I knew the answer and I hated it: I'd whip out my flashlights and follow him in. I'd make a complete and utter spectacle of myself rescuing him from something he couldn't and wouldn't ever be able to see. Probably get locked up in the mental ward at the local hospital as thanks for my trouble.

My headache was turning brutal. If I didn't get aspirin soon, it was going to spike right back up to vomiting pain.

He looked at me. Although Jayne had perfected what I call cop-face-a certain imperturbable scrutiny coupled with a patient certainty that the person they're dealing with will eventually sprout several extra a.s.sholes and turn into a complete one-I've gotten better at reading people.

He was scared.

"Go home, Inspector," I said softly. "Kiss your wife, and tuck your children in. Count your blessings. Don't go hunting for curses."

He looked at me a long moment, as if debating the criteria of cowardice, then turned and stormed off toward Temple Bar.

I heaved a huge sigh of relief and limped into the bookstore.

Even if it hadn't been a much-needed sanctuary, I would have loved BB&B. I've found my calling, and it isn't being a sidhe sidheseer. It's running a bookstore, especially one that carries the best fashion magazines, pretty pens, stationery, and journals, and has such an upscale, elegant atmosphere. It embodies all the things I always wanted to be myself: smart, cla.s.sy, polished, tasteful.

The first thing that strikes you when you step inside Barrons Books and Baubles, besides the abundance of gleaming rich mahogany and beveled gla.s.s windows, is a mildly disorienting sensation of spatial anomaly, as if you've slid open a matchbox and found a football field tucked neatly inside.

The main room is about seventy feet long and fifty feet wide. The front half vaults straight up to the roof, four grand stories. Ornate mahogany bookcases line each level, from floor to molding. Behind elegant banisters, platform walkways permit catwalk access on the second, third, and fourth levels. Ladders slide on oiled rollers from one section to the next.

The first floor has freestanding shelves arranged in wide aisles on the left, two seating cozies, fore and aft, with an elegant, enameled gas fireplace (in front of which I spend a great deal of time trying to thaw out from Dublin's chilly weather) and a cashier station on the right, behind which is a fridge, a small TV, and my sound dock. Beyond the rear balconies on the upper levels are more books, including the very rare ones, and some of those baubles the sign mentions, secured in locked display cabinets.

Costly rugs drape the hardwood floors. The furniture is old-world, sumptuous, and expensive, like the authentic tufted Chesterfield sofa I like to curl up on and read. The lights are antique sconces and recessed bulbs of a particular amber hue that cast everything in a warm b.u.t.tery glow.

When I cross the threshold from the cold, wet, crazy streets outside and step into the bookstore I feel like I can breathe. When I open for business and begin ringing up purchases on the old-fashioned cash register that tinkles a tiny silver bell each time the drawer pops open, my life feels simple and good, and I can forget all my problems for a while.

I glanced at my watch, and kicked off my ruined shoes. It was nearly midnight. Just a few hours ago, I'd been sitting in the rear conversation area with the enigmatic owner of the bookstore, demanding to know what he was.

As usual, he hadn't answered me.

I really don't know why I bother. Barrons knows virtually everything about me. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere he has a little file that encompa.s.ses my entire life to date, with neatly mounted, acerbically captioned photos-see Mac sunbathe, see Mac paint her nails, see Mac almost die.

But whenever I ask him a personal question, all I get is a cryptic "Take me or leave me," coupled with a broody reminder that he keeps saving my life. As if that should be enough to shut me up and keep me in line.

Sad fact is, it usually does.

There's an intolerable imbalance of power between us. He's the one holding all the trump cards while I'm barely managing to hang on to the few lousy twos and threes life deals me.

We might hunt OOPs, or Objects of Power-sacred Fae relics, like the Hallows-together, fight and kill our enemies side by side, and, recently, even try to tear each other's clothing in a case of l.u.s.t as sudden and searing as the unexpected sirocco I'd somehow glimpsed in his mind while kissing him-but we sure didn't share personal details of our lives or schedules with each other. I had no idea where he lived, where he went when he wasn't around, or when he might come around next. It irked me. A lot. Especially now that I knew he could find me me anytime he wanted, using the brand he'd tattooed on the back of my skull-his f.e.c.king middle initial anytime he wanted, using the brand he'd tattooed on the back of my skull-his f.e.c.king middle initial Z Z. Yes, it had saved my life. No, that didn't mean I had to like it.

I peeled off my dripping jacket and hung it up. Two flashlights crashed to the floor and went rolling. I needed to find a better way to carry them. They were c.u.mbersome in my pockets and constantly falling out. I was afraid that pretty soon I'd be known as "that crazy flashlight-carrying chick" around the parts of Dublin I frequented.

I hurried to the bathroom at the back of the store, gingerly toweled my hair, and wiped gently at my smudged makeup. There was a bottle of aspirin upstairs shouting my name. A month ago, I would have immediately fixed my face. Now, I was just happy I had good skin and glad to be out of the rain.

I stepped from the bathroom and through the set of double doors that connected the bookstore to the private residence part of the building, calling for Barrons, wondering if he was still around. I pushed open the doors and checked in all the rooms on the first floor, but he wasn't there. There was no point in searching the second and third floors. He kept all the doors locked. The only open rooms were on the fourth floor, where I slept, and he never went up there, except once, recently, to trash my bedroom when I'd disappeared for a month.

I considered calling him on my cell phone, but my head hurt so bad that I vetoed the idea. Tomorrow was soon enough to tell him what I'd learned about the Sinsar Dubh Sinsar Dubh. Knowing him, if I called him tonight and told him, he'd try to make me go back out and hunt it, and there was no way I was going anywhere but straight into a hot shower and a warm bed.

I was headed up the back stairs, when something moved in my peripheral vision. I turned, trying to pinpoint the source. It couldn't have been a Shade; all the lights were on. I backed down a step and scanned the rooms I could see. Nothing moved. I shrugged and started back up.

It happened again.

This time I got a weird feeling, not quite a tingle of my sidhe sidhe-seer senses, more like a prelude to it. I glanced in the direction that was bothering me: Barrons' study. After poking my head in, I'd left the door ajar. Beyond it, I could see the ornate fifteenth-century desk, and part of the tall mirror that filled the wall behind it, between bookcases.

It happened again and I gaped. The silver reflection of the mirror had just shivered shivered.

I backed down the stairs, never taking my eyes off it. From a safe vantage in the hallway outside the room, I watched it for a few minutes, but the event didn't reoccur.

I pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the room. It smelled like Barrons. I inhaled deeply. A trace of dark, spicy aftershave lingered in the air, and for a moment I was in the caves beneath the Burren again, where I'd almost died last week, when the vampire Malluce had abducted me and taken me deep into the labyrinthine tunnels, to torture me to death as vengeance for a gruesome injury I'd inflicted on him not long after I'd arrived in Dublin. I was lying on the ground, beneath Barrons' wild, electric body, ripping his shirt open, and splaying my hands over the hard, muscled abdomen tattooed black and crimson in intricate, alien designs. Smelling him all around me. Feeling like he was inside me, or I was inside him. Wondering how much more inside him I'd get if I let him inside me me.

Neither of us had mentioned that night. I doubted he ever would. I I sure wasn't going to bring it up. It disturbed me on levels I didn't pretend to understand. sure wasn't going to bring it up. It disturbed me on levels I didn't pretend to understand.

I focused on the room. I'd searched his study once before. Peered into every drawer, looked in the closet, even snooped behind the books on the shelves hunting for I don't know what, any secret I could dig up on the man. I'd found nothing. He maintains an antiseptic existence. I doubt he permits so much as a hair to lie around that might be used for DNA a.n.a.lysis.

I walked over to the mirror and traced my fingertips across the gla.s.s. Elegantly framed, it filled the wall from floor to ceiling, and was hard and smooth, made of nothing that could shiver.

It shivered beneath my fingertips. This time my sidhe sidhe-seer senses trumpeted alarm. Yanking my hand away, I stumbled back against the desk with a m.u.f.fled cry.

The surface was now shivering in earnest.

Did Barrons know about this? I thought wildly. Of course, he did. Barrons knew everything. It was in his bookstore. But what if he didn't? What if Barrons wasn't as omniscient as I believed? What if he was dupable, and someone-like, oh, say, the Lord Master-had planted some kind of spelled mirror in his path, knowing his penchant for certain antiquities . . . and Barrons had bought it, and the crimson robed leader of the Unseelie was spying on him through it, or something? How had I failed to sense it? Was it Fae or not?

Smoky runes appeared on the surface, and the perimeter of the gla.s.s darkened abruptly to cobalt, framing the mirror with a three-inch-wide border of pure black.

It was definitely Fae! The black edges were a dead giveaway. If they'd been visible earlier, I'd have known instantly what the mirror was, but the true nature of the gla.s.s had been camouflaged behind some kind of illusion that even my sidhe sidhe-seer senses hadn't been able to penetrate. I'd been in this room half a dozen times, and never gotten the faintest tingle. Who could craft such flawless illusion?

This was no mere mirror. It was one of the gla.s.ses fashioned by the Unseelie King himself as a means of moving between the realms of Man and Fae. It was part of the Unseelie Hallow known as the Sifting Silvers, and it was in my bookstore! What was it doing here? What else might be concealed in the store from me, hiding in plain sight?

I'd seen part of this Hallow before. Nearly a dozen of the eerie silver apertures with black edges had adorned the walls of the Lord Master's house at 1247 LaRuhe, in the Dark Zone. There'd been terrible things in them. Things I still had nightmares about. Things like . . . well, like that hideously deformed thing currently morphing into shape before my very eyes.

When I'd told Barrons about the mirrors I'd seen at the Lord Master's house, he'd asked if they'd been "open." If this was what he'd meant, they had been. When they were open, could the monsters inside them come out? If so, how did one "close" a Sifting Silver? Could it be as simple as breaking it? Could it be be broken? Before I could glance around for something to try it with, the thing of stunted limbs and enormous teeth was gone. broken? Before I could glance around for something to try it with, the thing of stunted limbs and enormous teeth was gone.

I exhaled shakily. I now understood why BB&B had that strange sense of spatial distortion. I'd felt a similar thing in the Lord Master's house, the day I'd gone into the Dark Zone and discovered my sister's ex-boyfriend was Dublin's Big-Bad, but I hadn't put two and two together. These mirrors, these dimension connecting portals, somehow affected the s.p.a.ce around them.

Now something else was coming, moving deep in the gla.s.s, whirling silver gusts back with its inexorable stride. I retreated to a safer distance.

Dark shapes drifted over the surface of the shivering mirror. Shadows that lacked definition yet tugged at primal fears. It was one of those times when running probably would have been a really good idea, but the problem was, I didn't have anyplace to run to. This was was my sanctuary, my safe haven. If I couldn't stay here, I couldn't be anywhere. my sanctuary, my safe haven. If I couldn't stay here, I couldn't be anywhere.

It was closer now, the thing that was coming.

I stared into the mirror, down the narrow, silvery lane fading into blackness at the edges, lined with skeletal trees, cloaked in wisps of jaundiced fog, littered with monstrous creatures forming and re-forming in the mist. It reeked of wasteland worse than a Dark Zone, and I somehow knew the air inside the mirror was a chilling, killing cold, physically and psychically. Only a h.e.l.lish, inhuman half-life could endure in such a place.

As the dark shape glided down the nightmarish path, the shadow-demons reared back with soundless screams.

More smoky runes materialized on the shivering gla.s.s. I couldn't tell if what was coming walked upright, or stalked on all fours. Perhaps it scuttled on dozens of claws. I strained my eyes trying to identify the shape of it, but the sickly fog concealed its attributes.

I knew only that it was huge, dark, dangerous . . . and almost here.

I exited the room on tiptoe, and pulled the door shut, leaving the smallest of slivers through which to peer, braced to yank it shut and run like h.e.l.l.

The mirror belched an icy gust of air.

It was here here!

Long black coat fluttering, Jericho Barrons stepped out of the gla.s.s.

He was covered with blood that had iced to crimson frost on his hands, face, and clothing. His skin was pale from extreme cold, and his midnight eyes blazed with an inhuman, feral light.

In his arms he carried the brutally savaged, b.l.o.o.d.y body of a young woman.

I didn't need to feel her pulse to know that she was dead.

TWO.

I'd like to speak with Inspector Jayne, please," I said into the phone, early the next morning. As I waited for him to pick up, I gulped down three aspirins with my coffee.

I'd hoped to be done with the insufferable inspector for a while, but after last night I'd realized I needed him. I'd devised a plan that was simple yet brilliant, and I lacked only one thing to implement it: my unsuspecting victim.

After a few moments and a series of clicks, I heard, "Jayne here. How can I help you?"

"Actually, I'm the one that can help you."

"Ms. Lane," he said flatly.

"The one and only. You want to know what's going on in this city, Inspector? Join me for tea this afternoon. Four o'clock. At the bookstore." I caught myself on the verge of adding, in a deep announcer's voice, and come alone. and come alone. I'm the product of a generation that watches too much TV. I'm the product of a generation that watches too much TV.

"Four it is, but Ms. Lane, if you're wasting my time . . ."

I hung up, in no mood for threats. I'd accomplished what I needed. He'd be here.

I'm not much of a cook. Mom is such a great one, and well, let's just call a spade a spade and get it over with, until a few months ago I was so spoiled and lazy that if the thought of fending for myself had had occurred to me, I would have promptly thrust it away in favor of beautifying myself and coaxed Mom into making me one of my favorite snacks. I'm not sure who's guiltier, me for doing it, or her for putting up with me. occurred to me, I would have promptly thrust it away in favor of beautifying myself and coaxed Mom into making me one of my favorite snacks. I'm not sure who's guiltier, me for doing it, or her for putting up with me.

Since I've been on my own, I've been eating a lot of popcorn, cereal, instant noodles, and snack bars. I have a hot plate in my bedroom, a microwave, and a small fridge. That's the kind of kitchen I know how to get around in.

But today I'd donned my chef's hat, limp and unused though it was. I might have purchased the tray of rich, b.u.t.tery shortbreads at a pastry shop down the street, but I'd made the sandwiches myself, cutting loaves of fresh bakery bread into pretty little shapes with fancy edges, preparing the filling, and spreading my special recipe between the slices. My mouth watered just looking at the bite-size snacks.

I glanced at my watch, poured water over Earl Grey to steep the tea, and carried cups to the table near the rear conversation area, where a fire crackled brightly, chasing the chill from the gloomy October day. Though I was loath to lose business or break routine, I'd closed the shop early because I had to conduct this meeting at a time when I knew my employer was unlikely to show up.

I'd gotten a major wake-up call last night when I'd watched Jericho Barrons step out of the mirror.

I'd fled up the stairs faster than a Fae sifting s.p.a.ce, locked my door, and barricaded it, heart pounding so hard I'd thought the top of my skull might blow off.