“Not Fae yet,” he murmurs. “You bleed human. Mostly.”
“Others must never know.” He can employ spells to help me conceal it. I understand his hungers and deepen our kiss, spilling more blood into his mouth. When at last we separate, there’s a hint of color in his face.
“How long was I in the chamber?”
“How long did it feel to you?”
“Centuries.”
“Mortal time, you were gone two years, one month, and seven days. It’s currently five years, three months, and nine days since the Song of Making was sung.”
I stare at him, horrified. I thought I’d been gone months, not years. “And you stayed here the entire time? How did you survive without food?”
“Lor was of assistance on occasion.”
“What did I miss? How are my parents? Dani? Dublin, the world?” I ask, trying to wrap my brain around such an enormous lost chunk of time.
“Until recently, things were quite calm. Once you vanished, aside from opening a club in Dublin, the Fae were unusually quiet.”
I notice he didn’t address my question about my parents or Dani. “And now?” I ask warily.
“Your mother is missing.”
My heart slams violently in my chest a single time, skips several beats, and for a moment my lungs are locked down so tight I can’t breathe. I right myself on the chesterfield and clench my hands, resisting the mushroom cloud of fear and fury that’s trying to explode behind my sternum. Although I once joked that my worst nightmare would be a kingdom of immortal Seelie with a full range of human emotions, it’s their very dearth of emotion that makes them a lethal foe. They think and act; patient, detached sociopaths, and, after my battle with the Sinsar Dubh, I understand the monumental advantage of laser-focused thought, unencumbered by feelings. I will be no less remote and controlled. I unclench my hands and inhale slowly. “How long?”
“Since this morning.”
“A short time. How is that cause for alarm? She often goes off on her own to—”
“Her presence can no longer be felt in the mortal realm.”
“You branded my mother?” Fury blazes in my blood, not because of the brand but because if my mother isn’t in the mortal realm, that means she’s in Faery. Taken there by a Fae. One of my Fae. I’m High Queen. I’ll crush them all. Turn them inside out. Leave them writhing in immortal agony. I have a veritable armory of soul-destroying (not that they have souls) spells to use against the fools. What Fae dare attack my family?
“Thank me later. And it’s not precisely a brand. Rather a GPS tracker, void of emotional bond. I did the same with your father.”
“When?”
“When you were the Sinsar Dubh.”
Barrons thinks of everything that matters to me. I used to find his heavy-handed tactics irritating. I sometimes still do, but they’re difficult to dispute when they keep saving my life and the lives of those I love. “Can you feel anything else about my mother? Is she frightened? Have they harmed her?”
He slices his head in negation, and the man who never repeats himself says gently, “Tracker only.”
“Where is my father now?”
“At Chester’s with Ryodan.”
“Safe?”
“As long as he doesn’t step outside the club.”
“Have you told him that? Impressed it upon him vigorously?”
“We haven’t told him your mother’s missing.”
Because he knows I want to be the one to tell him. And only after I’ve gotten her back. I sink back into the sofa, pressing a hand to my thundering heart. My court just said: Fuck you, MacKayla Lane. We’re coming for you and we’re going to mow down those you love most. “Ryodan better keep him safe,” I hiss.
“He will.”
My mother. Gentle, kind, loving, good-to-the-bone Rainey Lane is somewhere in Faery with the monsters I’m ill equipped to rule. Bile rises in the back of my throat. I quell it swiftly. Useless emotion. I can’t hunt her alone. I need Barrons at full strength, and that means he needs to eat. “Go. Eat. I’ll sift to Dani for the latest news—”
He’s already halfway to the tall black mirror leaning against the wall near the fireplace that leads from our aerie bookstore via stacked Silvers to the White Room, and finally to Dublin below, moving in that fluid, nearly imperceptible way of his. “Dani isn’t available.”
I freeze, my heart skipping a beat again. “But she’s okay?”
“She turned into a Hunter. Kat’s your source for information. I’ll meet you back here in one hour.”
A Hunter? I gape. Lithe as a cat, flame-haired Dani is now an enormous, icy, black, dragon-like thing with fiery eyes and leathery sails of wings? How? Why?
He pauses and glances over his shoulder, an atavistic rattle stirring deep in his chest. I don’t like leaving you alone, glittering blood-on-black eyes say.
I smile faintly and raise my fists, opening them to reveal handfuls of crimson runes, dripping blood, inflating and deflating like disembodied hearts, the cores of the Fae I will rip out and shred to ribbons. The only other time I was able to produce such dangerous, powerful runes was with the Sinsar Dubh’s help. I’ve learned, however, that the Seelie queen’s powers and the Unseelie king’s were once not so different, and I, too, can saunter through Dublin as fearlessly as my psychotic nemesis. At the moment, I feel nearly as psychotic. I’ve learned much, Barrons. Let them try.
The corner of his mouth ticks up in a blend of humor wed to insatiable lust beneath ancient, cold eyes—Barrons gets my beast, thinks she’s beautiful—before he steps into the tall, cobweb-dusted mirror and is gone.
* * *
I sift to my father first. I have no intention of telling him Mom’s missing, but I have an unshakable need to ascertain his safety with my own eyes.
When I arrive at Chester’s, I lose a few moments, staring upward, mouth softly ajar. Dani’s a Hunter, Chester’s has been rebuilt; I wonder what else changed while I was away.
When I first tracked down 939 Rêvemal Street, looking for the mysterious Ryodan, owner of Chester’s, the nightclub was a heap of collapsed brick and concrete, streetlamps, broken glass, and shattered signage, and I nearly walked away until Dani, with her super-senses, led me to the underground entrance to the dangerous, sordid, fantasy-fulfilling nightclub.