I love Arlington Abbey.

With accommodations for a thousand sidhe-seers, the fortress is riddled with secret passages behind bookcases and fireplaces, has dozens of concealed nooks and cubbies, and has always held an air of irresistible mystery to me.

From the meditation pavilion hemmed by shaped topiary that legend claims once lived and breathed, protecting the abbey, to the elaborate maze that spans seven acres near the lake, it was once a badly run motherhouse for women trained to be reclusive, cowed, and uncertain.

Things have changed. We train, we fight, we get dirty and bloody and push each other harder all the time. The abbey’s filled to capacity, with a waiting list a mile long to get in.

Entry-level sidhe-seers, Initiates can spend anywhere from two to ten years in training as they learn to use their gifts. Those gifts we’ve been seeing, since the Song of Making restored magic to our world, are unlike anything we’ve encountered before.

Apprentices, who’ve achieved a level of proficiency sufficient to pass a series of difficult tests, will spend another few years in additional training. Some might never graduate to the final level: the Adepts, those of us who’ve harnessed our gifts and serve as trainers for the Initiates and Apprentices.

Then there’s the Shedon, the council of popularly elected sidhe-seers that govern the abbey.

The motherhouse is no longer a tyrannical prison of coercion and tightly controlled, skewed press. In my youth I’d blasted through those corridors at full throttle, feared and distrusted by everyone around me. I used to hate that, seeing the fear. It made me feel alone. But I’ve galvanized my truths. Life is funny, it makes you choose sides all the time. Fearless people are outsiders. The fearful have many places to belong. They’re the fluffy white sheep that stick close to shepherds, let others feed, fatten, and shear them, and spiral in a tight, panicked knot if a wolf draws near.

When I’m surrounded by that herd, I can’t understand the conversation that usually goes something like this: I’m scared, what do you think we should do? I dunno, what do you think we should do? I dunno, let’s ask somebody else.

Panic ensues. Baaaaa.

I’m the dingy gray sheep, the one no one wants to shear and everyone forgets to feed, the one that gets pissed off and, with plumes of steam shooting from my ears, rather than lazing in the sun under the care of a master I have no guarantee knows how to survive any better than me, goes trotting off alone to hunt for wolf-slaying weapons.

I’d rather be fearless and criticized than fearful and approved of.

That’s the bloody choice sometimes.

Still, I’ve learned in recent years to bleach my coat, the better to blend. And when they aren’t looking, I’m as gray as I need to be. It’s easier on all of us that way. I think that’s what Ryodan does, too, concealing his inner beast with casual elegance, behind cool gray eyes. I miss him. When I let myself think about him. Which is never.

Today I stalked down vaulted stone corridors to the library, offering greetings and returning smiles. Though many of the women stared at my arm, it was without censure, only a lifting of brows and curious meeting of my eyes.

When Shazam hadn’t returned by the time I awakened from a quick nap on the sofa, I’d packed up and headed out to start my day. He has a way of finding me wherever I go and I suspect he’s often perched above me in a higher dimension, manifesting when he feels like it. I understand the need for time alone and don’t normally pressure him but after last night’s escapade, once he appeared again, I planned to do everything in my power to keep him engaged and by my side.

“Hey, Kat,” I said as I entered the library.

The tall, athletic brunette glanced up from a computer screen and swept me with a level gray gaze. “Och, and it’s grown.”

Kat was part of the Shedon, her sidhe-seer gift a dangerously sensitive empathy. Possessing the ability to read the emotions of those around her at their truest level, I’ve found her incapable of lying.

“What do you feel? Read me.” I dropped over the back of a chair and sat down across the table from her.

She stared at me a long moment, eyes drifting out of focus, then said lightly, “You feel like you always do.”

“And how’s that?”

“Like Dani. Light and energy, a bubbling sense of humor, an exacting sense of personal responsibility and justice, and a heart the size of Ireland.” She was silent a moment then added, “And many, many private vaults that never open to see the light of day.”

My eyes narrowed. “Can you get in them?”

“No.”

“That means you’ve tried.”

“I have.”

An unwilling smile tugged at my lips as I thought both “How dare you?” and “Good for you!” She’d changed, toughened, moved beyond courtesy to necessity. We live in hard times. You can’t keep your blades sharp by polishing them with a chamois, you have to sharpen them on stone.

“The day I get in, I’ll tell you. And the moment I do, I’ll back out without looking around. I’ve no desire to know secrets you’ve no desire to tell me, Dani. But the vaults of your mind are the greatest challenge I’ve found.”

And would forever remain that challenge. She wouldn’t get in. I restructure my brain regularly and meticulously, planting decoys everywhere. Not even Ryodan got very far past the surface. I changed the subject. “I had a visitor last night. Actually two.” Nine if you counted the Pallas cats, which I didn’t and hoped never to smell again. As I filled her in on what happened, she listened intently.

“The old gods,” she finally murmured, “at war with the Fae? Bloody hell. Does it never end?”

“Mommy said a bad word,” came a breathless, little-girl voice from behind Kat. Her daughter Rae peeked around her shoulder and I crinkled my nose at her and smiled. Usually, when I first see the dazzling-ray-of-sunshine child, I catch her up in my arms, kick us both up into the slipstream, and twirl her around in a dizzying starry explosion of light because I live to hear her unfettered belly laugh, but from the way she was peeping at me, I could tell she was in a hide-and-seek mood today. I’d chase her later, up and down halls, perhaps into the maze behind the abbey.

“Shazzy?” she asked hopefully, luminous dark eyes rounding with excitement.

“On a walkabout,” I said, and her face fell. Rae adored Shazam and the feeling was mutual. When, a few years back, Kat suddenly had a baby, seemingly out of nowhere, we’d all been shocked. We had no idea who the father was, although many believed it was her childhood love, Sean O’Bannion, who, like Christian and Inspector Jayne, had begun transforming into a Fae prince when the original princes were killed.

One of the many unpredictable things about the Fae race was, on the rare occasion the princes or princesses were killed, the nearest raw matter, mortal or Fae, that met some mysterious requirement was selected to begin a painful transformation. Mac told me the Unseelie King said the Fae were like starfish and would always regrow essential parts. Lesser Fae weren’t considered essential. The High Court was.

Unlike Jayne, Sean O’Bannion had turned Unseelie and hadn’t been seen for years. Kat never offered the name of Rae’s father and we didn’t ask. She made it clear it didn’t matter: Rae was her daughter, end of subject. Whatever sidhe-seer gifts the girl possessed hadn’t yet begun to manifest. Rae certainly looked like she might be Sean’s, with raven curls, brown eyes flecked with amber, and the complexion of a Black Irishman’s daughter.

I wasn’t interesting enough without Shazam to keep the curious, energetic child’s attention today, and Rae ambled off to play as Kat opened a word document and made notes about our conversation, nudging me for as much detail as I could recall. “And this AOZ mentioned another who might come for the sword?”

I nodded.

“But no name?”

I shook my head.

She studied me a moment, then, “Do you believe the sword would be safer with a Fae?”

I said irritably, “I’m half tempted to give it to the strongest god I can find and let the races kill each other.”

Kat sucked in a breath.

I raised both hands in placation: one pale Irish, the other dark as ebony. “But I won’t. Mac’s queen.” And I’d die before I put a weapon into the hands of someone who might hurt her. She and I had been through so much together; she was the sister I’d never had. “I don’t think that’s the answer, Kat. I was able to protect it last night. If I hadn’t been, I’d be open to the possibility, especially if I could somehow get it to Mac.”