High Voltage (Fever #10)(23)

“Shazzy?” she asked hopefully, luminous dark eyes rounding with excitement.

“On a walkabout,” I said, and her face fell. Rae adored Shazam and the feeling was mutual. When, a few years back, Kat suddenly had a baby, seemingly out of nowhere, we’d all been shocked. We had no idea who the father was, although many believed it was her childhood love, Sean O’Bannion, who, like Christian and Inspector Jayne, had begun transforming into a Fae prince when the original princes were killed.

One of the many unpredictable things about the Fae race was, on the rare occasion the princes or princesses were killed, the nearest raw matter, mortal or Fae, that met some mysterious requirement was selected to begin a painful transformation. Mac told me the Unseelie King said the Fae were like starfish and would always regrow essential parts. Lesser Fae weren’t considered essential. The High Court was.



Unlike Jayne, Sean O’Bannion had turned Unseelie and hadn’t been seen for years. Kat never offered the name of Rae’s father and we didn’t ask. She made it clear it didn’t matter: Rae was her daughter, end of subject. Whatever sidhe-seer gifts the girl possessed hadn’t yet begun to manifest. Rae certainly looked like she might be Sean’s, with raven curls, brown eyes flecked with amber, and the complexion of a Black Irishman’s daughter.

I wasn’t interesting enough without Shazam to keep the curious, energetic child’s attention today, and Rae ambled off to play as Kat opened a word document and made notes about our conversation, nudging me for as much detail as I could recall. “And this AOZ mentioned another who might come for the sword?”

I nodded.

“But no name?”

I shook my head.

She studied me a moment, then, “Do you believe the sword would be safer with a Fae?”

I said irritably, “I’m half tempted to give it to the strongest god I can find and let the races kill each other.”

Kat sucked in a breath.

I raised both hands in placation: one pale Irish, the other dark as ebony. “But I won’t. Mac’s queen.” And I’d die before I put a weapon into the hands of someone who might hurt her. She and I had been through so much together; she was the sister I’d never had. “I don’t think that’s the answer, Kat. I was able to protect it last night. If I hadn’t been, I’d be open to the possibility, especially if I could somehow get it to Mac.”



I trusted neither gods nor the Fae with one of the only two hallowed weapons capable of ending an immortal life. Any Fae who got their hands on it could amass an army and go to war against their queen, and many of them despised the human who’d been chosen as their ruler’s successor. “Perhaps the sword is right where it needs to be and this power is awakening so I can keep it safe.”

Kat said dryly, “Or perhaps it’s merely coincidental and our world’s gone as mad as it seems while we bumble about foolishly trying to ascribe patterns to chaos.”

I laughed. There was that.

“The wish, Dani. Have you any idea what AOZ meant?”

I’d tried to figure it out on the ride here, reflecting on the moment I’d picked up the spelled item. I’d responded primarily with raw emotion, secondarily with actual thought. AOZ might have sorted through a dozen half-formed desires and selected whichever one he thought might bite me in the ass the hardest. I shook my head and said grimly, “No clue. Kat, what do you think about this god business? I read the Book of Invasions a long time ago and found it to be…” I try not to insult anyone else’s beliefs. I dangle first and let them finish, see how they go about it. I’ve learned diplomacy. It doesn’t come easy to me so I like to practice when I can.

“Pure tripe?” she said with a wry smile.

“At the very least heavily redacted, with enormous poetic license taken,” I agreed. “Do you think these gods might be the reality of the stories of the ancient Fomorians, awakened by the Song?”

“It’s certainly a theory worth exploring. According to the Book of Invasions, the Fomorians battled the Tuatha De Danaan, were widely regarded as monsters, and were driven into the sea, never to be seen again. But the timetable of those events was severely condensed, to reconcile history with Christianity, forcing the entire period from creation of the world to the Middle Ages to fit within the events of the Bible. I’ve long suspected those events happened far longer ago than we can imagine. History is murky business, rewritten again and again until the original story is lost to us. That’s why it’s critical we translate our ancient scrolls. They’ll be closer to truth than anything scribed in the past few thousand years, influenced by political and religious agendas. We’ve been hearing stories from all over Ireland. People in rural areas have encountered beings they claim have Faelike powers. Were you able to sense AOZ with your sidhe-seer senses?”



I shook my head grimly. “No. My gut got nothing. My brain registered empirical evidence that made me believe he wasn’t human.”

She nodded again and rose, gathering her notes. “I’ll meet with the Shedon, pass on the news, see what they know.”

I kicked back in the chair, propped my boots on the table, grabbed the latest stack of translations and began to read.



* * *



π

“Nothing,” I muttered several hours later. “Bloody nothing.”