The Keltar, Christian told me, had once been High Druids to the Tuatha Dé Danaan, many thousands of years ago, during that brief time in which the Fae had attempted to play nice and coexist with man. Something had happened that shattered the fragile peace—he skimmed over this part—but whatever it was had caused Fae and Man to go their separate ways, and not amicably.
A Compact was negotiated to permit both races to exist on the same planet but keep the realms separate, and the Keltar were given the duty of performing certain rituals to maintain the walls between them. Over the millennia, they performed them faithfully with few exceptions, and if they failed in some small way, they always managed to make up for it in the nick of time.
But in recent years, the rituals stopped going as expected. On those preappointed nights of the year when the Keltar were to perform their magic, some other dark magic had risen up and prevented the pledge from being reinforced, and the tithe from being fully paid. Although this other magic hadn’t been able to collapse the walls between our worlds, it had seriously weakened them. Christian’s uncles believed the walls would not hold through another incomplete ritual. The queen of the Seelie, Aoibheal, who in the past had always appeared in times of crisis, had yet to be seen, although they’d invoked her by every spell they had at their disposal.
I was riveted by the story. The thought that, for thousands of years, a clan in the Highlands of Scotland had been protecting Mankind from the Fae fascinated me. Especially if they were all like Christian: gorgeous, sexy, self-possessed. It was comforting to know there were other bloodlines out there in the world with special, unusual powers. I wasn’t alone in my awareness of what was happening to our world. I’d found someone besides Barrons who had more information than me, and he was willing to share it!
“My uncles believe something has happened to the queen,” he said, “and as her power diminishes, another’s grows. The walls continue to weaken, and if we don’t figure out something by the time the next ritual must be performed, they’ll come down.”
“What’ll happen then?” I asked in a hushed voice. “Will the Compact be broken?”
“My uncles believe the Compact already is broken, that the walls are holding only because of the increasing tithes they keep paying. Fae magic is strange stuff.” He paused then said tightly, “At the last rites, we had to use blood, Keltar blood, in a pagan ritual. It’s unheard of. We’ve never used blood before. Uncle Cian knew how to do it. It was dirty magic. I could feel it. What we did was wrong but it was the only thing we could do.”
I understood that feeling. What I’d done to Jayne would never sit entirely well with me, but I’d been unable to think of an alternative. It hadn’t been dirty magic, just dirty tea. Manipulative. Ruthless. But I’ve begun to understand that you can only afford to play nice when there’s not much at stake. “And if the walls come down completely?” I reiterated my earlier question. I wanted to know just how bad things might get.
“When the Fae walked among us before, only the Seelie did. The Unseelie have been imprisoned for so long that mere whispers of myths remain. If the walls come down completely, all the Unseelie will be freed, not just the lower castes that are currently managing to get through somehow. The most powerful of the Unseelie Royal Houses will escape.” He paused and when he spoke again, his voice was low, urgent. “Myth equates the heads of those four houses, the dark princes, with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
I knew who they were: Death, Pestilence, War, and Famine. The Unseelie I’d seen so far were bad enough. I had no desire to ever encounter a royal dark Fae.
“It’ll get bad, Mac. They’ll turn our world into a living nightmare. My uncles believe the Seelie may not be able to reimprison the Unseelie if they escape.”
Was this why everyone was after the Sinsar Dubh? Did it contain the spells necessary to imprison the Unseelie, maybe even keep the walls from coming down in the first place? It would certainly explain why V’lane and the Queen wanted it, why Alina had wanted me to find it before the Lord Master did. No doubt if he got his hands on it, he’d hurry up and destroy it to make sure no one could ever imprison his army again. I wondered where Barrons fit in. Would he really sell it to the highest bidder?
I couldn’t dwell on the possibility of Unseelie overrunning our world. Keeping my thoughts tightly focused on my goals was the key to keeping my fears in check. “Tell me more about Alina.” At my swift change of subject, he looked relieved, and I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt like I was charged with an impossible task. It was no wonder Christian seemed mature beyond his years. He was. He had his own fate-of-the-world issues to deal with.
“I’m sorry, Mac, but I don’t have much more to say. I tried to make friends with her. Although my uncles couldn’t translate the text, they knew where it had come from, and we needed to know how she’d gotten it. It was a photocopy of a page from an ancient book—”
“—called the Sinsar Dubh.” The Beast, I thought, and my soul shivered.
“I wondered if you knew about it. What do you know? Do you know where it is?”
I didn’t know exactly where it was at the moment, and brandished that thought like a shield when I answered, “No,” in case he really was a walking, breathing lie detector. Because he was searching my gaze far too intently for my comfort, I added quickly, “What happened when you tried to make friends with my sister?”
“She rebuffed my efforts. She was deeply involved with someone and I got the impression he was very possessive. Didn’t like her talking to anyone.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“No. I caught a glimpse of him once. Fleeting. Don’t remember much, which makes me believe he was Fae. They mess with your head if they don’t want you to see them.”
“Did you tell my sister the stuff you just told me?”
“I didn’t get the chance.”
“If you never became friends, how did you find out she was a sidhe-seer? How did you find out about me?”
“I followed her a few times,” he said. “She was always watching things that weren’t there, studying empty spaces. I was raised on stories of sidhe-seers. My family is . . . into old myths and lore. I put two and two together.”
“And me?”
He shrugged. “You were poking around Trinity asking about her. Besides, family’s a matter of public record, if you know where to look.”
With all my enemies, those were records I’d like destroyed. I was grateful my parents were four thousand miles away.
“Which Dark Hallow did you have a close call with last night?” he asked casually.
“The amulet.”
“Lie.”
I tested him. “The scepter.”
“Lie again. And there is no such thing.”
“You’re right. It was the box,” I said heavily.
“I’m waiting for the truth, Mac.”
I shrugged. “The Sinsar Dubh?” I offered, like I didn’t really mean it.
He exploded out of his chair. “What the—are you kidding me? No, no need to answer that, I know you’re not. You said you didn’t know where it was!”
“I don’t know. I saw it in passing.”
“Here? In Dublin?”
I nodded. “It’s gone. I have no idea where it was . . . taken.”
“Who—” Christian began.
“Hi, guys. What’s up?”
Christian’s gaze slid past me, to the door. He stiffened. “Hey, man, I didn’t hear you come in.”
I hadn’t, either.
“How long’ve you been standing there?”
“I just opened the door. I thought I heard you in here.”
I turned in my chair. The second time he’d spoken, I’d recognized the voice. The dreamy-eyed guy I’d seen in the museum and then run into later on the street the day I’d been interrogated by Inspector Jayne was filling the doorway with his dark, dreamy good looks. He’d told me he worked at the ALD, but I’d put him out of my mind. Like Christian, in another life, I’d have dated him in a heartbeat. Why, then, had it been Barrons I’d ended up kissing?
“Hey, beautiful girl. Fancy seeing you here. Small world, isn’t it?”
“Hey.” I blushed a little. I do that when a good-looking guy calls me beautiful. Especially now that every time I look in a mirror, I hardly recognize myself. Ironically, when your world comes completely unglued, it’s the paste of the everyday, meaningless little things that suddenly seem like real gems.
“You two know each other?” Christian looked baffled.
“We’ve run into each other a time or two,” I replied.
“They’re looking for you back at the office, Chris,” said the dreamy-eyed guy. “Elle wants to talk to you.”
“Can’t it wait?” said Christian impatiently.
He shrugged. “She didn’t seem to think so. Something about misappropriated funds or something. I told her I’m sure it’s just a bookkeeping error, but she’s on one.”