Burned - Moning Karen Marie - Страница 45
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“Why have you brought Unseelie inside our walls, Mac?” Shauna says grimly.
I sigh. “I didn’t. They, I—” Shit, how do I explain this one? I blurt, “I was trying to do a spell and it backfired and they’ve been stuck to me like glue ever since.” I practically roll my own eyes. It’s the weakest lie I’ve ever heard myself tell.
Dageus gives me a look.
Ryodan laughs.
“They’re harmless,” I add. “They don’t even kill anything. They just stalk me.”
“The Unseelie doesn’t exist that doesn’t kill,” Josie says coolly.
Sorcha moves past me, inspecting them from a cautious distance. Then she surprises me by saying, “I’m not certain they’re Unseelie, Mac.”
I frown. “What else could they be?”
“I don’t know but they’re … different.”
That would explain why I can’t Null them, but not why my sidhe-seer senses seem to pick up on them as Unseelie. Or do they? Is that yet one more preconception I accepted without bothering to consider simply because they looked like Unseelie, and what else would they be? I realize I’ve never listened past their incessant chittering for their caste’s dark melody. But I will, in the near future. At the moment I want no distractions.
Barrons says impatiently, “Who the fuck cares. They follow her. Where is the one that holds you hostage?”
Josie laughs, a brittle sound. “That’s what you think? We’re being held hostage? The woman saved us!”
“Saved?” I echo.
“Aye, saved. And we’ve no need of your army, Mac. We’re just fine. The lot of you can be leaving now. With your Unseelie.”
“I’m telling you,” Sorcha says, “they’re not Unseelie.”
“We’d be finer if we knew Kat was all right,” Clare says.
“And Dani,” Shauna adds. “Two of our best have gone missing.”
“Dani isn’t one of our best,” Josie says sharply. “She’s a liability, a hotheaded child. And Kat, well … you see where her plans got us.”
Josie doesn’t look much older than Dani herself. And Kat’s plans kept them alive this long.
Clare disagrees, “How can you say that when it was Dani and Ryodan that saved us from the Hoar Frost King?”
“They didn’t save us from Cruce,” Josie says hotly. “Jada did.”
I narrow my eyes. “Who’s Jada?” Was this the name of the supposedly mystical fighter that was leading them now? “And what do you mean you’re ‘fine’? This place is a mess. It’s obviously been taken over by—”
“No, it hasn’t. Not anymore,” Josie cuts me off. “Not since she came.”
“Jada?” I guess dryly.
The skinny goth folds her arms over her chest and tosses her head, looking down her thin nose at me. “Aye, she freed us from our prison. When Kat went missing, the changes to our abbey escalated. The doors and windows closed, trapping us inside. But Jada understands his runes. She was able to open them. Since her arrival the changes have stopped. Completely.”
I mock, “Gee, let’s see, your lights glow without bulbs, your fireplaces burn with no wood or visible source of fuel, and there are Fae flowers and monuments scattered all over your land. Inside a stone wall that wasn’t there three weeks ago.”
“I said she stopped the changes. Not undid them. Yet,” she adds with the fervent faith of a recent convert.
“Where’s Colleen?” Christopher demands.
Clare says, “You must be her father. She’s the look of you. She said you would be coming if she didn’t send word soon. She’s with a group of women in the Red Library, searching our oldest books. Unseelie Prince or not, your son sacrificed himself for us, and we will help you get Christian back. Jada has agreed to make it a priority.”
Her last words rub me a thousand kinds of wrong. “One of your women escaped and told us the abbey was taken hostage and three of your women killed.” They’ve accepted their conqueror, permitted her to choose their priorities. How quickly they’ve abandoned Kat.
Shauna says, “At first we didn’t know what was going on, and aye, we battled, that’s true. There were losses on both sides. But we swiftly realized the asset Jada is.”
“She’s a born leader,” Josie says proudly. “She fears nothing and I’ve never seen anyone with such unobstructed vision. She makes plans and takes action and her plans yield immediate, concrete results. Have you any idea how long we’ve been floundering out here? Hammered by one threat after the next! I’ll fall in behind her any day. You wouldn’t believe what she’s accomplished in the short time she’s been here.”
Sorcha nods agreement. “We aren’t the first group of sidhe-seers to join her. The ones she arrived at the abbey with told us they lost their own leader a few weeks ago. Jada found them wandering Dublin, thinking of returning home. She talked them out of it.”
“Do any of you even know where she came from?” I demand.
Josie slants me a scornful look. “Who cares? She’s the most powerful sidhe-seer we’ve ever seen. Not even you possess such skills. In fact, she should have the spear, not you. They’re training us. Teaching us to fight. Martial arts and weapons.”
I refuse to reach for it. My spear is beneath my arm and there it will remain.
Deep inside me the Book sends out a dark, cold draft of brimstone and damnation, offering all kinds of power.
I don’t need it. I am enough.
Shauna says, “Kat did a fine job keeping us together in the present. But Jada can lead us into the future.”
I glance at Barrons. He’s motionless, processing, assessing. We came here to roust a conqueror and received instead an unarmed welcome coupled with news that the abbey has embraced their conqueror.
Wants to keep her.
Likes her better than Kat.
Whoever this Jada is, I don’t trust her one bit.
“You will bring her to us now,” Barrons says.
Josie tips her head back and says down her nose to him, “We will inform Jada you’ve requested an audience. After Mac and her Unseelie leave our home.”
Seven men blast past her so fast her short platinum hair flies straight up in the air, and one of them must have caught her with his elbow or fist — I’d bet blood it was Barrons — because she crashes back into a couch, goes tumbling over the side, and slams into the floor.
Grimly, me and my cavalcade of whatever they are follow the men.
By the time we reach the wing that houses Rowena’s chambers — I have no doubt that’s where “Jada” has decided to squat, like the Oval Office, mere occupancy confers power — our group has dwindled to Barrons, Ryodan, and me.
The Highlanders insisted on going underground to check on Cruce’s prison after first making a detour to the Red Library to collect Colleen. Ryodan, who trusts no one, insisted Fade accompany them. Clare and Sorcha, who’d caught up with us by then, insisted we ask Jada before going beneath the abbey, and when the men stalked past them, looked impossibly torn before storming off after them. I remained silent the entire time, prepared to lie through my teeth about anything and everything if they tried to make me go down there where I might get caught in the sticky spiderweb of the powers that hold or are failing to hold Cruce.
As we approach Rowena’s chambers, the stone floor changes from pale gray to stone that glitters faintly, as if sprinkled by silver dust, to solid gold etched with elaborate symbols, inlaid near the walls with glittering gems that wink with dark fire.
Ryodan stops abruptly.
“What is it?”
“Getting a read on anything, Mac.”
I expand my sidhe-seer senses, reaching, searching. “Like what?”
“I feel the same thing I felt at the club the night you were supposed to kill the Unseelie Princess.”
“You didn’t expressly tell me to kill her,” I remind crossly. “And you’re not a sidhe-seer, so how could you possibly be feeling anything?” I glance up at Barrons. “Do you feel something?”
He slices his head once to the left and looks at Ryodan, who stands motionless a long moment then says, “It’s nothing. Forget it.”
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