23

I parked the Viper behind the bookstore and sat staring down into what was once the city’s biggest Dark Zone—crammed full of Shades, with one giant amorphous life-sucker in particular that had seemed to enjoy threatening me as much as I’d enjoyed threatening it.

I wondered where it was now. I hoped I would get the chance to hunt it and try out some of my newfound runes, destroy it once and for all, because as large as it had been before it escaped on the night the lights went out in Dublin, I imagined it could devour small towns in a single swallow now.

I glanced at the garage. I looked at the bookstore. I sighed.

I missed him. Ironically, now that I’d become obsessed with wondering who and what I was, I was less worried about who and what he was. I was beginning to understand why he’d always insisted I judge him by his actions. What if the sidhe-seers really were Unseelie? Did that make us innately bad? Or did that just mean we—like the rest of the human race—had to choose whether to be good or evil?

I got out of the car, locked it, and turned for the bookstore.

“Barrons say you can drive his Viper?” Lor said behind me.

Hand on the doorknob, I turned, dangling the key ring from my finger. “Possession. Nine-tenths of the law.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “You been around him too much.”

“Where’s Fade? Did you catch him?”

“Book left him dead.”

“And just when do you expect him back?” I said sweetly.

“Report. What did you learn at the abbey?”

“You think I’m reporting to you now?”

“Until Barrons gets back and takes control of you again.”

“Is that what you think? He takes control of me?” My temper flared.

“You’d better hope so, because if he doesn’t, we kill you.” The threat was delivered tonelessly, with utter disinterest. It was chilling. “We don’t exist. That’s the way it always has been. That’s the way it always will be. If people find out about us, we kill them. It’s not personal.”

“Well, excuse the hell out of me if you try to kill me and I decide to take it pretty damned personally.”

“We’re not trying to. At the moment. Report.”

I snorted and turned to enter the store.

He was behind me, his hand on my hand on the doorknob, his face in my hair, lips close to my ear. He inhaled. “You don’t smell like other people, Mac. I wonder why. I’m not like Barrons. Ryodan is downright civilized. I don’t suffer Kasteo’s problems, and Fade is still having fun. Death is my morning coffee. I like blood and the sound of bones breaking. It turns me on. Tell me what you learned about the prophecy and, next time, bring me the seer’s book. If you want your parents to remain … intact, you willcooperate only with us. You will lie to everyone else. We own you. Don’t make me give you a lesson. There are things that can break you. You wouldn’t believe the madness certain kinds of pain can induce.”

I turned to face him. For a moment he didn’t let me, made me push against his body and struggle to move. His body was every bit as electric as Barron’s and Ryodan’s. And I knew he was enjoying it, quite possibly on a level of primitive carnality I didn’t understand.

There are things that can break you, he’d said. I almost laughed. He had no idea the thing that had broken me most completely was my belief that Barrons was dead.

One look at Lor’s eyes and I decided I would wait until Barrons was back before pressing any issues with him. “You think Barrons has a weakness for me,” I said. “That’s what worries you.”

“It is forbidden.”

“He despises me. He thinks I slept with Darroc, remember?”

“He cares that you slept with Darroc.”

“He cared that I burned his rug, too. He gets a little pissy about those things he likes to think of as his property.”

“You two drive me bug-fuck. Prophecy. Talk.”

He interrogated me for nearly half an hour before he was satisfied. I let myself into my fourth-floor bedroom, weary to the bone. My room was a mess—protein-bar wrappers, empty water bottles, and clothes everywhere. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, slipped into pajamas, and was about to crawl into bed, when I remembered the tarot card from last night that the dreamy-eyed guy had given me.

I dug in the pocket of my coat and pulled it out. The back of it was black, covered with silver symbols and runes that looked a lot like the silver etchings I’d glimpsed on one of the three forms of the Sinsar Dubh—the one of an ancient black tome with heavy locks.

I turned it over. THE WORLD was inscribed at the top.

It was a beautiful card, framed in crimson and black. A woman stood in profile on a white landscape tinged with blue that looked icy, forbidding. Against the backdrop of a starry sky, a planet revolved in front of her face, but she was looking away—not at the world at all but staring off into the distance. Or was she looking at someone who wasn’t on the card? I had no idea what THE WORLD card was supposed to mean in a tarot reading. I’d never had my cards read. Mac 1.0 had considered having your future divined through tarot cards as ridiculous as trying to dial up a dead relative on a Ouija board. Mac 5.0 would happily take any help she could get from any source. I studied it. Why had the dreamy-eyed guy left it for me? What was I supposed to learn from it? That I needed to look at the world? That I was distracted by other things and people and not seeing clearly? That I really was the person holding the fate of the world in my hands?