Aw, crap! Or sifts. Some of the Fae can travel from place to place at the blink of a thought—just a hair faster than me, but I’m working on that. I have a theory I been testing. Haven’t worked out the kinks yet. The kinks are killer.
“Stop,” I hiss at Kat. “Tell ‘em all to stop!”
She cuts a hard look my way but bites a sharp command that rips down the line. We’re well trained. We move together and I tell her my worry: that Mac’s in there, in serious trouble, and if the big-bads throwing off all that power are sifters—which most of the big-bads are—she’ll be gone the second we’re spotted.
Which means I’m going in alone. I’m the only one who can sneak-attack fast enough to pull it off.
“No way,” Kat says.
“No choice, and you know it.”
We look at each other. She gets that look grown-ups get a lot and touches my hair. I jerk. I don’t like to be touched. Grown-ups creep me out.
“Dani.” She pauses heavily.
I know that tone like I know the back of my hand, and I know where it’s going: Lectureville on a runaway train. I roll my eyes. “Save it for somebody who cares. Newsflash: It ain’t me. I’ll go up”—I jerk my head at a nearby building—”to get the lay of things. Then I’m going in. Only. When I. Come. Back. Out.” I spit each word. “Can you guys can go in.”
We stare at each other. I know what she’s thinking. Nah, reading minds isn’t one of my specialties. Grown-ups telegraph everything. Somebody kill me before I get one of those Play-Doh faces. Kat’s thinking if she makes the call against me and loses Mac, Ro’ll have her head. But if she lets me make the call and things go bad, she can blame it on headstrong, uncontrollable Dani. I take the blame a lot. I don’t care. I do what needs to be done.
“I’ll go up,” she says.
“I need the visual snapshot myself, or I could end up grabbing the wrong thing. You want me coming out with some fe—er, effin’ fairy in my hands?” They rip me a new one when I cuss. Like I’m a kid. Like I haven’t spilled more blood than they’ve ever seen. Old enough to kill but too young to cuss. They make a pit bull poodle around. What kinda logic is that? Hypocrisy pisses me off worse than most anything.
Her face sets in stubborn lines.
I push. “I know Mac’s in there and for some reason she can’t get out. She’s in major trouble.” Was she surrounded? Wounded that badly? Had she lost her spear? I didn’t know. Only that she was in way deep shit.
“Rowena said alive or dead,” Kat says stiffly. She left “It sounds like she’ll be dead soon and our problems will be solved” hanging unspoken.
“We want the Book, remember?” I try reason. Times I think I’m the only one in the whole abbey that’s got any.
“We’ll find it without her. She betrayed us.”
Feck reason. Pisses me off when people jump to conclusions they have no proof for. “You don’t know that, so stop saying it,” I growl. Somebody’s fist is holding Kat’s coat collar, got her up on her toes. It’s mine. I don’t know who’s more surprised, her or me. I drop her back on the ground and look away. I’ve never done anything like that before. But it’s Mac in there and I have to get her out, and Kat’s wasting my time big-time with total BS.
Her mouth sets with tiny white lines around it, and her eyes take on a look I get a lot. It makes me feel mad and alone.
She’s afraid of me.
Mac isn’t. One more way we’re like sisters.
Without another word, I give my feet the wings they live for and vanish into the building.
* * *
From the rooftop, I stare.
My fists clench. I keep my nails real short; still, they gouge blood from my palms.
Two Fae are dragging Mac down the front steps of a church. She’s naked. They drop her like a piece of trash in the middle of the street. A third Fae exits the church and joins them, and they stand, imperial guards around her, heads swiveling, surveying the street.
The raw sex they’re throwing off blasts me, but it’s not like V’lane, who I’m gonna give my virginity to one day.
I’m as obsessed with sex as anybody, but those … things … down there … those incredibly—fecking A, they hurt to look at; something’s wet on my cheeks; are my eyes boiling in their sockets?—beautiful things scare even me, and I don’t scare easy. They don’t move right. Storms of color rush under their skin. Black torques slither at their necks. There’s nothing in their eyes. Nothing. Eyes of pure oblivion. Power. Sex. Death. They reek of it. They’re Unseelie. My blood knows. I want to fall on my knees at their feet and worship, and Dani Mega O’Malley don’t worship nothing but herself.
I wipe my face. My fingers come away red. My eyes are leaking blood. Freaky. Kinda cool. Vamps got nothing on Fae.
I close my eyes, and when I open them again I don’t look directly at the things guarding Mac. Instead, I take a wide-angle image of the scene. Every Fae, fire hydrant, car, pothole, streetlamp, piece of trash. I map objects and empty spaces on my mental grid, lock it down tight, calculate margin of error based on likely movement, slap it over my snapshot.
I squint. A shadow moves in the street, almost too fast to see. The Fae don’t seem to know it’s there. I watch. They don’t respond to it. No heads swivel to follow it. I can’t focus on it. Can’t make out its shape. It moves like I move … mostly. What the feck? Not a Shade. Not a Fae. A blur of shadow. Now it’s hanging over Mac. Now it’s gone. Bright side—if the Unseelie aren’t noticing it, they shouldn’t notice me when I whiz in to snatch her. Dimmer side—what if whatever it is can see me? What if we collide? What is it? I don’t like unknowns. Unknowns can kill.