Feversong (Fever #9)(30)

Barrons stood glowering in one corner. Cruce towered, seething, in another, his upper body canted away from the wall, betraying the degree to which his mutilated back pained him. Christian leaned back against a third corner, arms folded over his chest, majestic wings high, curled inward around his body. All of them stared fixedly at nothing, as far from one another as they could be in such a confined space. There was more hostility in the office than air, and she wondered how long they’d been occupying such tight quarters, waiting for her to join them.

Barrons shot her an impatient glare. “About fucking time you got here.”

Jada stepped inside and the door whisked shut behind her. She moved into the only corner left open, assessing the others. What an unexpected and powerful team—assuming they didn’t kill one another before getting down to their goals. Death, War, whatever Barrons was, and herself, a superhero. “Where did you find Christian?” she asked Barrons.

The Highlander shot her a look of disgust. “Bloody Mac bloody fucking cocooned me and left me behind a pile of bloody rocks, that’s where.”

Cruce bristled. “At least you still have your wings.”

Christian ignored him. “Then those slobbering beasts of Barrons bloody licked me to death. First the Hag then this. Christ, whatever happened to going to college and dating pretty lasses?”

Cruce flashed him a cruel smile. “Those days are long gone, little brother.”

“I’m no’ your bloody brother. I’m no’ your fucking anything.”

“Barrons’s beasts?” Jada said. Why did Christian think they were his? And how badly had being cocooned harmed him? He was pale, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if trying to find a comfortable position.

Christian muttered, “Whatever the fuck they are. Only time I ever saw them was at the abbey. Figured he brought them.”

“Mac said she did. She told me she found them in the Silvers,” Jada fished.

“Well there you go, lass. And Mac never lies or does anything the least bit shady.”

Ignoring the jibe, she turned to Barrons. “There are no Unseelie in Chester’s.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he replied tersely. “Cruce tried to summon a few of the lesser castes. They didn’t appear.”

“Summon how?”

“When he absorbed the spells from the Book, he gained the True Names of the Unseelie.”

She pinned Cruce with a sharp look. “What else did you get?” Obviously the Book hadn’t affected him like it had Mac, but he’d gotten more than names.

“None of your fucking business, sidhe-seer.”

“So, why didn’t the Unseelie come?” she pressed.

“Because your lovely MacKayla now possesses the same knowledge, and they recognize her as more powerful than me. That will change.”

“How did Mac come to be possessed by the Sinsar Dubh in the first place?” Christian said. “I thought there was only one copy and Cruce absorbed it. Where the bloody hell did a second copy come from?”

“Yes.” Cruce seized the topic with avid interest. “How did the lovely MacKayla come by another copy of the Sinsar Dubh?”

“Twenty-odd years ago, while Isla O’Connor was carrying the corporeal Sinsar Dubh, it deposited a copy of itself into her unborn fetus,” Barrons said curtly.

Christian stared at him incredulously. “You’re telling me Mac had the bloody Book all along?”

“I believe it was dormant until she came to Ireland,” Barrons said. “Something about it being here gave it strength it didn’t have before. When she used one of its spells to save Jada from the Sweeper, it took possession of her.”

Cruce’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed to slits. “The entire time I was hunting it, she had it inside her?”

Barrons said, “She didn’t know it was inside her until after we interred you. Jada, Alina was able to locate Mac. Fade tracked and followed her. She’s holed up at Mallucé’s abandoned mansion, with a mile of Unseelie surrounding her on every side. Tens of thousands of the fucks, even more than attacked the abbey.”

“That’s a problem,” she said. “We have to get close enough to position the stones, and that means within ten feet or so. We also have to get her out, once we’ve contained her.”

“Fade said she was staggering when she entered the mansion, appeared to be having difficulty walking,” Barrons said.

Jada told him how clumsy Mac had seemed when she first stood up from the table.

“Now it’s your turn, fairy,” Barrons growled to Cruce. “When you absorbed the spells from the Book, was there something sentient within?”

The temperature in the office dropped sharply and ice crystals glazed the floor. “The correct term is ‘Fae.’ And yes, there was sentience within, but it vanished the moment the Book crumbled. I do not believe the Sinsar Dubh possessed the power to replicate itself. No Fae does. Not the queen. Not even the king. The sentience within the Sinsar Dubh must have found a way to split itself, transferring part into Isla, leaving part behind, weaving a spell to ensure much of what it left behind would expire if the Book was ever read. Fae revile the very notion of duplicate selves. We prize our individuality and position.”

“So, what does that make Mac?” Christian demanded. “How powerful is she?”