She polished off the apple and tossed it into a pile. “Looking forward to seeing Barrons, though,” she said enthusiastically. “You? Nah, guess you don’t care. You seen him naked for, what, like—months, din’t’cha?”

There were times I seriously wished she’d bar some of those holds. I was suddenly in a basement again, watching Barrons walk naked across the room, telling him he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

I changed the subject hastily. “What’s going on at the abbey? I know you left, but what were things like before you did?”

Her face darkened. “Bad, Mac. Real bad. Why? You thinking of going back? Gotta tell you, don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Good idea or not, I had no choice. According to Nana, when the Sinsar Dubh had escaped the abbey twenty-some years ago, my mother was Haven Mistress. According to Ryodan, the entire Haven had been wiped out that night, with the exception of my mom.

Nana had called me Alina.

According to Ryodan, Alina was the only child Isla ever had. Not only would trying to interrogate Ryodan be an exercise in futility, given how tight-lipped he was, but he was currently dead and I had no idea for how long.

That left Nana or the abbey.

The abbey was closer, and the occupants weren’t nearly a century old and prone to nodding off in the middle of a sentence.

The original members of the Haven might all be dead, but some of my mom’s peers had to be alive still, even after the Book’s recent massacre. Others, besides Rowena, had known my mother. Others knew something—if only rumors—about what happened that night.

And there were those libraries I needed to get into. The ward I’d not been able to pass, the one that had given even V’lane fits. Speaking of which, I’d forgotten to ask him about what had happened to him that day when I’d summoned him to the abbey. I made a mental note to follow up.

I was also toying with the idea of confronting Rowena and trying to force truth from her. I wondered if the power of mental coercion Darroc believed the old woman possessed was a match for the power I’d recently discovered in myself. One of the things holding me back from testing it was that I knew if I did, I’d not only be burning a bridge, I’d be torching the ground I stood on with all sidhe-seers. Whether or not they agreed with Rowena’s decisions, the majority of the sidhe-seers were intensely loyal to her. Another thing holding me back was that I wasn’t sure where that power came from and was reluctant to betray anything the Grand Mistress might use against me. Besides, what if all the runes I had were parasites of some kind that could inflict further damage on our world?

Still, there was another weapon at my disposal I could try. I’d become proficient at Voice and could easily explain it away as a Druid art Barrons had taught me.

“I need answers, Dani. You with me?”

“Ro’ll blow a gasket if she catches us,” she warned. Her eyes sparkled, and she was beginning to blur with excitement.

I smiled. I loved this kid. We were okay with each other again. One more pain in my heart was gone. “Oh, she’s definitely going to catch us. I intend to have a few words with that old woman.” If things went south, I’d keep my power in check and let Dani whiz us out, or I’d summon V’lane. “Want to come along?”

“You’re kidding, right? Wouldn’t miss this gig for the world!”

22

Even with Dani whizzing us in at superspeed, they found us in the south wing in less than three minutes.

Ro must have laid new wards, to sense us and tip her off if we entered the abbey. I wondered how she did it, if it was like witchcraft and required a pinch of hair, blood, or nail. I could too easily see the old woman standing over a bubbling cauldron, dropping items in, stirring away, cackling with delight.

However she’d accomplished it, a group of sidhe-seers led by Kat confronted us at the intersection of two corridors before we were even halfway to the Forbidden Library I’d broken into the last time I was here. I’d left a group searching it while I tried to get past a holographic guardian down yet another seemingly “dead-end” hall in the abbey.

Like us, they wore snug clothes no Book could hide under. I imagined that, between the Shades and the Sinsar Dubh’s visit, things were pretty tense at the abbey.

“What’s in the bag?” Kat demanded.

I opened the translucent plastic grocery bag I’d brought and showed her there was no Book inside it. Once they were assured I wasn’t carrying concealed, they got right to the point.

“The Grand Mistress said you were dead, she did,” Jo said.

“Then she said you weren’t, but we were to be thinking of you as dead because you’d taken the Lord Master’s side, just like Alina,” accused Clare.

“But you aren’t Alina’s sister at all, are you, now?” Mary demanded.

“After we visited Nana O’Reilly,” Kat said, “I spoke with Rowena, and she confirmed what Nana told us about the Haven Mistress being an O’Connor. But she said Isla died a few nights after the Book escaped, and it was believed Alina died as well, although the girl’s body was never found. Regardless, Alina was her only child. So, Mac, who are you?”

Dozens of sidhe-seers stared at me, waiting for my answer.

“She don’t hafta answer to you,” Dani said belligerently. “Buncha sheep can’t even see what’s in fronta your own eyes.”

“Sure we can. We see a sidhe-seer that supposedly doesn’t exist. Worries us some, as it should,” Kat said. “Then there’s you, so determined to defend her. Why would you be doing that?”