Feverborn (31 page)

She said again, “He’s real. You have to believe me. That’s part of the promise you’re making me.”

“You weren’t alone the whole time?” I longed to believe that. I hated the thought that she’d spent five and a half years battling enemies all by herself.

“No. Well, except for when he vanishes. And he’s amazing in a fight. Well, as long he stays focused and doesn’t have one of his pessimistic meltdowns. He hates being alone. And he’s alone again.” She added softly, “He loves me. He never said it but I know. It’s what he means when he says he sees me. And I can’t let him down. I can’t fail him. You have to tell him you
see
him, okay? Just keep telling the air that you see him. He’ll come out. And if I don’t make it, Mac, you have to love him. Promise me you’ll take care of him.”

I tried to wrap my brain around what she was telling me. I wanted to believe it was true, that she wasn’t broken and she wasn’t crazy. That she’d actually lost someone and it had been killing her inside. That in fact it had devastated her so deeply, she’d pretended he was a stuffed animal. She had feelings, deep ones. A sudden happiness filled me. Whether or not Shazam was real, Dani felt loved—and loved in return.

“There’s nothing wrong with your heart, honey,” I said softly.

“It’s broken,” she whispered. “I can’t go forward with Shazam behind me. I don’t know how.”

God, I knew that feeling! A sister, a parent, a lover, an animal. It didn’t matter where you put your unconditional love, once given, the stealing away of it was an assault to every sense. Smells were the worst—they could ambush you, put you smack back in the middle of the hottest part of the grief. The scent of a peaches-and-cream candle. The brand of deodorant she’d used. Her pillow back home. The smell of the bookstore in the evening, when I’d believed Barrons was dead. When you love too hard, you can lose the will to live without them. Everywhere you look is a great big sucking absence of what you once had and will never have again. And life gets weirdly flat and too sharp and painful at the same time, and nothing feels right and everything cuts.

There was a sudden rattling in the distance, and I inhaled sharply.

“It’s coming,” she whispered.

“Promise
me
a favor now,” I whispered.

“Anything,” she vowed.

“If you have a chance to escape, if you suddenly find yourself free, run like hell and leave me behind.”

“Anything but that, Mac.”

“I promised
you
, damn it,” I hissed. “Now you promise me, and mean it. If you have the chance to escape, turn your back on me and run as fast as you can.”

“I don’t run anymore.”

“Promise me. Say it.”

She remained silent. The only sound was the whine and clatter of our would-be tormentor approaching.

“Quid pro quo or I won’t keep my promise,” I threatened. “I won’t save Shazam if I get out.”

“Coerced promises aren’t fair, Mac. You know that.”

“Please,” I said softly. “It won’t mean anything if what I do goes wrong and we both die. One of us has to make it.”

She said nothing for a moment, then said stiffly, “I promise to do what I think is best.”

I laughed softly. That was Dani. Not Jada at all. And it was enough because I knew Dani: survival at any cost.

I heard the screech of metal and knew we didn’t have much time. I closed my eyes, leapt and dove into my black lake.

“What are you doing, Mac?” she said sharply, no longer bothering to be quiet. I knew why. There was an ominous portent to the sound of the approaching Sweeper. It was no longer ambling. It was moving with briskness and focus. Our “operations” were about to begin. Whether we were awake or not.

“What I should have done the moment you jumped through that Silver,” I said. “Believing in the good magic, too.”

She was quiet; as if trying to think of what to say. Finally she said, simply, “I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“I thought you didn’t like me,” I reminded. Chittering, coming closer. Rustling. I swam hard, focusing on the shaft of golden light slicing through the murky water.

“I don’t sometimes,” she said irritably. “But we’re…”

“Sisters?” I said as I drifted lightly to my feet in the black cavern. She’d come after me. She’d looked out that window, decided I was in trouble, and shoved aside whatever it was she’d gotten out of bed to do—go save Shazam?—and come after
me
instead.

“Peas. Pod. Whatever you’re doing, think hard about it.”

Peas in the Mega-pod, she’d once called us. My heart expanded, so full of love for her it hurt. “I have.”

“And know I’ve got your back.”

“Back at you, kid,” I said lightly. But I’d had to say it loud, to make myself heard over the jarring approach of the Sweeper.

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Don’t we all know that,” I said dryly. I dashed into the cavern, the shining, resplendent black rock chamber that housed the enormous power that had kept me immobilized by fear for far too long.

No more.

I had no idea which of my three suppositions was right, and no longer cared. The only thing that mattered to me was that Dani lived. That she went on to love. To save “Shazam” if he actually existed, to grow up and take lovers, regain her wonder and freedom of emotion and wholeness of heart.

And if the price was me, the price was me.

I guess that’s what love is. You care more that they live than you care about whether you do. Dani’s light would never be extinguished. Not on my watch.

Panic was pressing at the outer edges of my mind and I knew the Sweeper was almost on us. I could smell the noxious odor of the wraiths hemming us in.

I hurried to the Book and turned the pages rapidly, scanning, looking for anything I could use.

“Mac,” I heard from a distance. “Don’t do it for me. Don’t lose your soul for me. You know I have responsibility dysmorphia syndrome. You’ll make it worse.”

I laughed in the cavern as I thumbed through page after page. Who said I would lose my soul?
Good magic
, I reminded myself.

There! A bit of a double-edged sword, but it would work.

Triumphantly, I shouted the words of the ancient spell I’d just found. The syllables echoed sharply off the stone of the cavern, amplifying, growing, shimmering in the air around me. I could feel the power flooding me, ready, able, and more than willing. It filled me with euphoria, and I knew something that felt so good couldn’t possibly be bad.

As I finished the final syllable, the Book abruptly collapsed into a pile of shimmering gold dust.

I stared at it wondering what had just happened. Looking for the same winking red gemstones I’d seen in the cavern.

Had I absorbed it? Was I one with it? I’d been reading it in the First Language. Had I succeeded in doing what Cruce had done?

I didn’t feel any different.

I knew that, beyond me, in the warehouse, the Sweeper and its minions were gone. The spell had done what I’d intended it to do. Well, essentially.

And most importantly, Dani was free and safe.

Even now she was rising from her gurney, restraints falling away as she stood up. I could see her movements in my mind’s eye.

Music began to play in my cavern and I frowned. It was a Sonny and Cher song that I’d always hated.
They say we’re young and we don’t know
…

My blood turned to ice in my veins and I could feel it, oh God, I could
feel
it!

Inside me, expanding, cramming every nook and cranny of my being!

Blighting everything, blacking out the tiniest most essential parts of me, draping my soul in homicidal rage and bottomless hunger and madness and horror, shoving me back and down, cramming me into a tiny box with no holes for air, packing me in there as tightly as a sardine.

Just before the lid slammed down, I used the last bit of control I had over my mouth to scream, “Run, Dani. RUN!”

Got you, sweet thing
, the
Sinsar Dubh
purred.

S
IDHE
-
SEER
(
SHEE
-
SEER
):
A person on whom Fae magic doesn’t work, capable of seeing past the illusions or “glamour” cast by the Fae to the true nature that lies beneath. Some can also see Tabh’rs, hidden portals between realms. Others can sense Seelie and Unseelie objects of power. Each
sidhe-
seer is different, with varying degrees of resistance to the Fae. Some are limited; some are advanced, with multiple “special powers.” For thousands of years the
sidhe-
seers protected humans from the Fae that slipped through on pagan feast days when the veils grew thin, to run the Wild Hunt and prey on humans
.

M
AC
K
AYLA
L
ANE
(
O’C
ONNOR
): Main character, female, twenty-three, adopted daughter of Jack and Rainey Lane, biological daughter of Isla O’Connor. Blond hair, green eyes, had an idyllic, sheltered childhood in the Deep South. When her biological sister, Alina, was murdered and the Garda swiftly closed the case with no leads, Mac quit her job bartending and headed for Dublin to search for Alina’s killer herself. Shortly after her arrival she met Jericho Barrons and began reluctantly working with him toward common goals. Among her many skills and talents, Mac can track objects of power
created by the Fae, including the ancient, sentient, psychopathic Book of magic known as the
Sinsar Dubh
. At the end of
Shadowfever
we learn that twenty years before, when the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped its prison beneath the abbey, it briefly possessed Mac’s mother and imprinted a complete copy of itself in the unprotected fetus. Although Mac succeeds in reinterring the dangerous Book, her victory is simultaneous with the discovery that there are two copies of it; she
is
one of them and will never be free from the temptation to use her limitless, deadly power.

A
LINA
L
ANE
(
O’C
ONNOR
): Female, deceased, older sister to MacKayla Lane. At twenty-four went to Dublin to study at Trinity College and discovered she was a
sidhe
-seer. Became lovers with the Lord Master, also known as Darroc, an ex-Fae stripped of his immortality by Queen Aoibheal for attempting to overthrow her reign. Alina was killed by Rowena, who magically forced Dani O’Malley to trap her in an alley with a pair of deadly Unseelie.

D
ANIELLE
“T
HE
M
EGA
” O’M
ALLEY
: Main character. An enormously gifted, genetically mutated
sidhe
-seer with an extremely high IQ, superstrength, speed, and sass. She was abused and manipulated by Rowena from a young age, molded into the old woman’s personal assassin, and forced to kill Mac’s sister, Alina. Despite the darkness and trauma of her childhood, Dani is eternally optimistic and determined to survive and have her fair share of life plus some. In
Shadowfever
, Mac discovers Dani killed her sister, and the two, once as close as sisters, are now bitterly estranged. In
Iced
, Dani
flees Mac and leaps into a Silver, unaware it goes straight to the dangerous Hall of All Days. We learn in
Burned
that, although mere weeks passed on Earth, it took Dani five and a half years to find her way home, and when she returns, she calls herself Jada.

R
OWENA
O’R
EILLY
: Grand Mistress of the
sidhe
-seer organization until her death in
Shadowfever
. Governed the six major Irish
sidhe
-seer bloodlines but rather than training them, controlled and diminished them. Fiercely power-hungry, manipulative, and narcissistic, she was seduced by the
Sinsar Dubh
into freeing it. She ate Fae flesh to enhance her strength and talent, and kept a lesser Fae locked beneath the abbey. Dabbling in dangerous black arts, she experimented on many of the
sidhe
-seers in her care, most notably Danielle O’Malley. In
Shadowfever
she is possessed by the
Sinsar Dubh
and used to seduce Mac with the illusion of parents she never had, in an effort to get her to turn over the only illusion amulet capable of deceiving even the Unseelie king. Mac sees through the seduction and kills Rowena.

I
SLA
O
’
C
ONNOR
: Mac’s biological mother. Twenty-some years ago Isla was the leader of the Haven, one of seven trusted advisors to the Grand Mistress in the sacred, innermost circle of
sidhe
-seers at Arlington Abbey. Rowena (the Grand Mistress) wanted her daughter, Kayleigh O’Reilly, to be the Haven leader, and was furious when the women selected Isla instead. Isla was the only member of the Haven who survived the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped its prison beneath the abbey. She was briefly possessed by the Dark
Book but not turned into a lethal, sadistic killing machine. In the chaos at the abbey, Isla was stabbed and badly injured. Barrons tells Mac he visited Isla’s grave five days after she left the abbey, that she was cremated. Barrons says he discovered Isla had only one daughter. He later tells Mac it is conceivable Isla could have been pregnant the one night he saw her and a child might have survived, given proper premature birth care. He also says it is conceivable Isla didn’t die, but lived to bear another child (Mac) and give her up. Barrons theorizes Isla was spared because the sentient evil of the
Sinsar Dubh
imprinted itself on her unprotected fetus, made a complete second copy of itself inside the unborn Mac and deliberately released her. It is believed Isla died after having Mac and arranging for her friend Tellie to have both her daughters smuggled from Ireland and adopted in the States, forbidden ever to return to Ireland.

A
UGUSTA
O’C
LARE
: Tellie Sullivan’s grandmother. Barrons took Isla O’Connor to her house the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped its prison beneath Arlington Abbey over twenty years ago.

K
AYLEIGH
O’R
EILLY
: Rowena’s daughter, Nana’s granddaughter, best friend of Isla O’Connor. She was killed twenty-some years ago, the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped the abbey.

N
ANA
O’R
EILLY
: Rowena’s mother, Kayleigh’s grandmother. Old woman living alone by the sea, prone to nodding off in the middle of a sentence. She despised Rowena, saw her for what she was, and was at the abbey the night the
Sinsar Dubh
escaped more than twenty years ago. Though many have questioned her, none have ever gotten the full story of what happened that night.

K
ATARINA
(
K
AT
)
M
C
L
AUGHLIN
(
M
C
L
OUGHLIN
): Daughter of a notorious crime family in Dublin, her gift is extreme empathy. She feels the pain of the world, all the emotions people work so hard to hide. Considered useless and a complete failure by her family, she was sent to the abbey at a young age, where Rowena manipulated and belittled her until she became afraid of her strengths and impeded by fear. Levelheaded, highly compassionate, with serene gray eyes that mask her constant inner turmoil, she wants desperately to learn to be a good leader and help the other
sidhe
-seers. She turned her back on her family mafia business to pursue a more scrupulous life. When Rowena was killed, Kat was coerced into becoming the next Grand Mistress, a position she felt completely unfit for. Although imprisoned beneath the abbey, Cruce is still able to project a glamour of himself, and in dreams he seduces Kat nightly, shaming her and making her feel unfit to rule, or be loved by her longtime sweetheart, Sean O’Bannion. Kat has a genuinely pure heart and pure motives but lacks the strength, discipline, and belief in herself to lead. In
Burned
, she approaches Ryodan and asks him to help her become stronger, more capable of leading. After warning her to be careful what she asks him for, he locks her beneath Chester’s in a suite of rooms with the silent Kasteo.

J
O
B
RENNAN
: Mid-twenties, petite, with delicate features and short, spiky dark hair, she descends from one of the six
famous Irish bloodlines that can see the Fae (O’Connor, O’Reilly, Brennan, the McLaughlin or McLoughlin, O’Malley, and the Kennedy). Her special talent is eidetic or sticky memory for facts, but unfortunately by her mid-twenties she has so many facts in her head, she can rarely find the ones she needs. She has never been able to perfect a mental filing system. When Kat clandestinely dispatches her to get a job at Chester’s so they can spy on the Nine, Jo allows herself to be coerced into taking a waitressing job at the nightclub by the immortal owner, Ryodan, and when he gives her his famous nod, inviting her to his bed, she’s unable to resist even though she knows it’s destined for an epic fail. In
Burned
, Jo turns to Lor (who is allegedly Pri-ya at the time and won’t remember a thing) after she breaks up with Ryodan to “scrape the taste of him out of her mouth.” She learns, too late, that Lor was never Pri-ya and he has no intention of forgetting any of the graphically sexual things that happened between them. Although, frankly, he’d like to be able to.

P
ATRONA
O’C
ONNOR
: Mac’s biological grandmother. Little is known of her to date.