Oh, yes, here we were, working together again. All was well—or at least back to normal—at Barrons Books and Baubles.
“I really get to live at Barrons’? With, like, Barrons?” Dani exclaimed, bounding from foot to foot backward as we walked through Temple Bar. We were on our way to intercept the sidhe-seers. Dani had learned that a group of several dozen, led by Kat, was coming into the city tonight, to scout it out.
“No,” I said dryly, “with, like, the LM and his minions.” “I’m living with Barrons! Holy fecking shit! Way cool!”
“Doesn’t it bother you that we have no idea what he is or whether he’s good or bad?”
“Nope. Not a bit.” Her eyes sparkled.
I snorted. She was completely serious. I wished I could be so uncomplicated. But I couldn’t. Right and wrong, good and bad mattered to me. Blame it on my parents. They endowed me with a massively inconvenient sense of ethics.
“We’re almost there, Mac. I hear ‘em dead ahead.” She cocked her head, then her eyes widened. “Aw, Ro’s gonna be wicked pissed! She told ‘em not to fight, no matter what! Just to suss out what’s goin’ down and how many are where. We gotta hurry, Mac. It don’t sound like it’s goin’ good!”
I didn’t have time to brace myself for the rough ride. Her hand was on my arm, and we were gone.
Dani slammed us to a stop, directly in the middle of the fight. It was huge, messy, and filled the street from one end of the block to the next. Dani loves the action. Unfortunately, she forgets that the rest of us aren’t as fast as she is. She arrived with her sword drawn, perfectly at ease moving in hyperspeed mode, but it took me a moment to fumble my spear from my shoulder holster. In that moment, I got slammed in the back of my head so hard that I saw stars, and brackets from my MacHalo went flying in three different directions. Snarling, I spun around and drove my spear into an Unseelie’s … head, I think. It had three roundish things on its shoulders with dozens of slits that spewed icy, stinging liquid as it fell.
Then the fight became a blur of motion, of spinning, kicking, Nulling, and stabbing. I glimpsed Kat’s wide eyes, her terrified face. I had no doubt this was her first fight and it had come out of the blue.
Between Unseelie, I caught glimpses of other sidhe-seers. They were trying desperately to hold their own. Most of the time, the gifts inside us are dormant, but the presence of Fae and especially of engaging in battle slams them awake. I could see they were in that special sidhe-seer state—stronger, faster, tougher, more resilient—but it wasn’t enough. There was too much fear in their eyes.
Fear translates to hesitation, and hesitation kills.
If you’ve ever been behind someone on an on-ramp who’s trying to merge onto a highway but is scared to do it, going too slow, stopping and starting, and growing more uncertain by the minute, you know what I mean. There you are, hemmed in by traffic, trapped behind rampant indecision, and you know that if they don’t get their act together and merge, you’re going to end up getting hit.
That’s how the sidhe-seers were fighting. I cursed Rowena for not training them better, for sheltering them so completely that their gifts were a hazard to their own health and mine. Dani and I moved together, back to back, slicing and stabbing our way through the mob of Unseelie.
“Help me!” I heard Kat scream. I glanced wildly toward the sound. She was trapped between two large winged things with sharp talons and teeth that looked horrifyingly like raptors.
I assessed, I acted.
Later, I would puzzle over my decision. Wonder what temporary insanity had possessed me. But I knew they couldn’t touch it and she could, and I knew she was dead otherwise, and nobody was dying on my watch if I had anything to say about it.
“Kat!” I yelled. When she looked, I drew back my arm, tossed my spear at her, and watched it go flying, end over end.
Her eyes widened in astonishment. She lunged into the air, snagged the spear, landed lightly on the balls of her feet, and took them both out in one smooth ricochet of motion, left to right.
It was beautiful. If I’d had a remote, I’d have hit replay a dozen times.
And there I stood, without a weapon.
Then I had a leathery appendage in my face that probably should have broken my nose but didn’t, and I was under attack and lost sight of Kat and my spear. I slammed my palms into my attacker, Nulling it. While it stood, frozen, I retreated into my mind, into that special sidhe-seer place. Without my spear, I was in deep shit and I needed more power.
Abruptly, the street faded and I was inside my own head, staring down into a huge black pool. Was this the source of what made a sidhe-seer, this vast obsidian lake? I’d never seen it before when I’d gone poking around. Was I so much stronger now that I could see more clearly, probe more deeply?
Power radiated from its dark depths, crackled in the air of the cave in which I stood. I could feel something in the water, waiting in the darkness.
What lay concealed beneath the surface knew everything, could do everything, feared nothing. It was waiting for me. To call it forth. To use it as my birthright.
But doubt as vast as the thing’s watery habitat immobilized me.
What if whatever I summoned from those ancient depths wasn’t a part of me at all but something else entirely?
If it was me, I could use it.
But if by some bizarre twist of events—and no events were too bizarre to consider in my day-to-day existence—there was something down there that wasn’t me, it could use me.