Fever 4 - DreamFever (28 page)

  The canny GM was the consummate politician. I listened, committing her tactics to
memory. Analyzing the words she chose, how she strung them together, how she played
emotion for everything it was worth.

   Yes, she said, she would put aside her differences with the young rogue sidhe-seer
who'd never been properly trained and whose sister had betrayed the entire world by
helping her lover--the villainous Lord Master--free the Unseelie to kill billions of
people around the globe, including two hundred of our own. Yes, she would agree to do
whatever they felt must be done to win the most important battle humankind had ever
faced. She could not in good conscience step aside or take off the robes she'd been
wearing for forty-seven years--more than twice as long as the rogue sidhe-seer had
even been alive--but she would extend her hand in welcome, if that was what her
beloved daughters felt was imperative she do, despite numerous and compelling
arguments to the contrary.

   After her little speech, I could see doubt on some of the women's faces again, so I
stood and delivered mine. Yes, I would put aside my differences with the old woman
who'd turned me away the first night she'd ever met me, without even asking my name,
who'd told me in no uncertain terms to go die somewhere else and leave her alone--
when it had been obvious I was a sidhe-seer in desperate need of help. Why hadn't I
been one of her "beloved daughters" that night? Was it my fault I'd been raised with no
idea what I was? Why hadn't she taken me in?

  But I would forgive her and, yes, I would work with the woman who'd withheld the
weapons that could kill Fae, refused to let the sidhe-seers do the job they'd been born to
do, and run a constant slander campaign against my sister, whose greatest mistake was

being seduced by a Fae-turned-human with hundreds of thousands of years of
experience creating illusions and seducing women.

   Who among us might not have fallen under such circumstances? They'd met V'lane.
If they wanted to throw stones, now was the time to do it, or never. Alina had ultimately
seen through the Lord Master's act and had paid with her life. Again, where had
Rowena been when my sister was struggling to understand what she was? How had
Alina and I gotten lost in the sidhe-seer shuffle, abandoned to a life with no training?

  I was eager to do as Kat suggested, I told them, excited to work together toward
common goals, putting the needs of the sidhe-seers first. From this moment forward, I
vowed, I would speak no ill of the Grand Mistress, provided she did the same of me.

  I sat.

  She would cooperate, Rowena said from her podium, despite that I'd continually
proven myself unreliable and dangerous, allying myself with the likes of V'lane.

  "Excuse me, so did you," I pointed out.

  "Only for the greater good."

  "You wouldn't allow me to be part of the greater good. You denied me welcome
here."

   Kat stood. "Stop putting us in the middle! Grand Mistress, we must lay aside our
differences. Do you not agree?"

  Rowena was still a moment, then nodded tightly.

  "Full cooperation?" Kat pressed.

  Rowena studied the gathered assembly in silence. I knew the precise moment she
acknowledged that she'd lost too much ground with her flock to gain it back here and
now. Either the two of us would pull the cart together, or the cart was going to leave us
behind. "Yes," she said tightly.

  "Great." I shot to my feet. "So, where was the Book being kept, how was it being
contained, and how in the world did you lose it?"

  The roar in the hall was deafening, as I'd expected it to be. This, after all, was the
question that had been bandied about these walls in whispers and secrecy for more than
twenty years.

  I dropped back to my seat, curious to see how she would extricate herself. I had no
doubt she would.

  "Wicked cool, Mac," said Dani, grinning. "I think we've got her now."

  I knew we didn't. Rowena was too clever to be trapped that easily.

   When the crowd finally quieted, she informed us with humble gravity that
unfortunately such matters were not within her span of authority to discuss. That
although I seemed to believe she was solely in charge, the abbey had always been run as
a democracy, governed by the Haven, and all her actions and choices had to be
approved or rejected by them, particularly in matters of such delicacy and danger. She
must meet with the High Council, present our questions, and obey their dictates.
Unfortunately (and conveniently for her, I noted dryly), some of them were not in-house
at the moment. But as soon as they were ...

   "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," I muttered. "By the time she gets around to telling us
anything, the Unseelie will have killed a billion more humans." No matter. I was back
in the walls of the abbey. It was time to go to work on plan A. This meeting had been
plan B.

  I looked at Dani. "You said you'd been trying to get into the Forbidden Libraries. Do
you know where all twenty-one of them are?"

  Her eyes sparkled.
 

D    ani knew her way around the abbey's endless maze of stone corridors as well as
any sidhe-seer in the first five circles of ascension, she told me proudly. There were
seven circles of ascension in total, with the seventh being the Haven itself. Kat and her
crew were in only the third. She herself was subject to no such limits, Dani confided
smugly. Rowena had set her apart from such matters, as her own personal charge.

   "So Rowena told you where all the libraries are?" That just didn't sound like the GM
I knew.

  Well, no, Dani hedged, not exactly. So, okay, maybe she'd learned most of what she
knew about the abbey before Rowena and the other women figured out that a soft
breeze meant she was near, when she'd still been able to snoop freely. What did it
matter? She knew, and that was more than any of the others knew! It had taken her
years to track down the libraries, and she still wasn't certain of a couple because she
couldn't get down those corridors, but the way she figured it, they had to be libraries,
because what else would Rowena be hiding?

  "Place is huge and deadly weird, Mac," she told me. "There's parts of the abbey don't
make sense. Wasted space where you think something should be but ain't."

  I wanted to see all those places, but right now I needed to focus on the libraries. I'd
barely slept last night. The conversation I overheard between my parents had played like
a stuck record in my head. Baby, I'm sorry to tell you this, but according to some
ancient prophecy, there's something wrong with you and you're going to doom the
whole world. ...

  I'd been anxious to get my hands on the prophecy before. Now that it was supposedly
about me, I was desperate. I wouldn't believe it was about me until I saw it with my
own eyes, and even then I probably still wouldn't, unless it spelled out my entire name
and said something as indubitably incriminating as: Beware of that evil MacKayla
Lane; she's a piece of work. Gonna doom the whole world, that wench.

  I snorted. Absurd. Had Alina learned any of this? Was that why she'd kept me so far
away? Not just for my own good but because she'd learned something about me that
made her afraid to get me involved, for the world's sake?

  "Nah," I said derisively.

  "Is, too," Dani defended. "I can show you `em."

  I snapped back to the present. "Sorry, I was thinking out loud. I believe you, and I
want to see those places. But first the libraries."

  We wound down one corridor after the next. They all looked the same to me. The
abbey was huge. Without Dani, I might have wandered for days, trying to find my way
around. Before I came to the abbey the first time, I'd researched it and learned that the
enormous stone fortress had been constructed on consecrated ground in the seventh
century, when a church originally built by St. Patrick in 441 A.D. had burned down.
That church had been built to replace a crumbling stone circle some claimed had, long
ago, been sacred to an ancient pagan sisterhood. The stone circle had been predated by a
shian, or fairy mound, that had allegedly concealed within it an entrance to the
Otherworld.

  Translation: This specific spot of earth, this precise longitude and latitude, had been a
place of great importance, sacred and protected, as far back as records went and--I had
no doubt--even further. Why? Because a book of unspeakable power had been trapped
beneath it for thousands and thousands of years?

  The abbey was plundered in 913, rebuilt in 1022, burned in 1123, rebuilt in 1218,
burned in 1393, and rebuilt in 1414. It was expanded and fortified each time.

   It was added on to in the sixteenth century and again extensively in the seventeenth,
sponsored by an anonymous wealthy donor who completed the rectangle of stone
buildings, enclosing the inner courtyard and adding housing--much to the astonishment
of the locals--for up to a thousand residents.

   This same unknown donor bought the land around the abbey and turned the enclave
into the self-sustaining operation it was today. If I ever had the time to act instead of
always being so busy reacting, I wanted to find out who that unknown donor was.

   I glanced at my watch. It was three P.M., and my schedule was tight. I was supposed
to meet the sidhe-seers in Dublin at seven, then Barrons at ten, for who knew what
purpose. Further hampering my appointment calendar was the LM's threat to return for
me in three days, which put an uncomfortable squeeze on, because I couldn't decide
what day that was going to be. Was he counting all day yesterday, which meant he
would return on Saturday morning? Or had he meant to begin counting on Friday,

which meant he would return Sunday? Maybe he'd meant to allow me three full days
and planned to come back on the fourth. It was all irritatingly vague. Not only had he
threatened me, but he'd not even given me a specific date and time for my impending
... whatever.

   I planned to discuss it with Barrons tonight. He was my wave. I was counting on him
to keep the LM from making good on any threats.

  Back to my time crunch. "Take me to the corridors you're barred from, Dani. What's
keeping you out?" I envisioned thick stone walls blocking them off, maybe vault doors
with combinations as long as pi.

  I couldn't have hoped for a better answer.

  She gave me a sour look. "Stupid fecking wards."

Dani knew where eighteen of the libraries were. There were three places in the abbey
she'd never been able to get near. The first spot she took me to, wards were etched in
the stone floor at ten-foot intervals along the length of the hall, vanishing around a
corner.

   I sauntered down the warded corridor, barely even flinching, while Dani hooted
triumphantly behind me. I turned the corner, passed through another few wards, and
came to a tall, ornately carved door.

   The door wasn't as easy to get through. It was loaded with wards and strange-looking
runes. I tried the handle. It wasn't locked, but the moment I touched it I suffered the
horrifying sensation of falling from a great height and instantly felt I was being
watched/vulnerable/targeted in someone's crosshairs, an instant away from a bullet in
the back of my head.

  I snatched my hand away, and the feelings vanished.

   I took a deep breath and tried the knob again. I immediately felt as if I'd been stuffed
into a small dark box underground and had only moments before I suffocated!

  I snatched it back.

  I was breathing shallowly and shaking but standing in the hall, perfectly fine.

   I peered at the runes on the door and suddenly realized what they were. Since I'd
come to Dublin, I'd become a voracious reader of books on the paranormal, devouring
articles on topics ranging from Druids to vampires to witches, looking for facts in the
fiction and answers in the myths. These were repelling runes! They worked by
amplifying the innate fears of whoever tried to cross them.

   The third time I grasped the knob, my body was covered with fire ants, biting
viciously, and I remembered how, at seven years old, I thought the silky red dirt of the
hill would be fun to play in. I'd been terrified of them ever since.

  It's not real.

   I braced myself and forced the knob to turn, while the ants shredded the flesh of my
fingers away.

   The door opened and I stumbled through, choking down a scream, on the verge of
clawing my skin off.

  All sensation stopped the instant I crossed the threshold.

  I looked back. The wood of the threshold was also engraved with repelling runes.

  I was through! I was in one of the Forbidden Libraries!

  I glanced around eagerly. It wasn't particularly impressive. Not compared to BB&B.
The room was small, windowless, and, despite a number of dehumidifiers, musty.
Between shelves and tables filled with books, scrolls, and collectibles, dozens of lamps
blazed. Rowena was taking no chances with Shades getting into her precious libraries.

   I moved into the room and began searching the tables first, while Dani stood watch
far down the corridor. As I'd feared, there were no card catalogs in the Forbidden
Libraries. Even though the room was small, a thorough search could take days.

  Ten minutes later, Dani yelled, and I hurried out into the hall, jerking as I crossed the
spelled threshold, to find a mob of sidhe-seers pushing and shoving at the ward line.

   Kat stood in the front of the mob. "Rowena said you managed to pass through some
of her wards and were in forbidden archives. She sent us to stop you."

   Well, that answered one of my questions. I'd wondered--now that I could move
through wards at will--if I still tripped them when I did. I was surprised Rowena hadn't
come herself.

  "To stop me, you'd have to be able to cross the ward line, and"--I glanced down at
her toes, on the edge of the line of nearly invisible symbols--"it doesn't look to me like
you can."