Bloodfever

Chapter 7

Nice place you have here,” said my latest customer, as the door banged shut behind him. “I wouldn’t have thought the interior was so big from out on the sidewalk.”

I’d had the same thought the first time I entered Barrons Books and Baubles. The building just didn’t look large enough on the outside to contain all the room it held on the inside.

“Hi,” I said. “Welcome to Barrons. Are you looking for something special?”

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

“You’ve come to the right place, then,” I told him. “If we don’t have the book you want in stock, we can order it, and we’ve got some great collectibles up on the second and third floors.” He was a good-looking man in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, dark-haired and nicely built. I seem to be surrounded by attractive men lately.

When I stepped around the counter, he gave me an appreciative once-over, making me glad I’d dressed up. I hadn’t wanted my dad to go home carrying a mental snapshot of his daughter, bedraggled, bruised, and gloomily attired, so I’d chosen my outfit with care this morning. I’d dug out a frothy peach skirt that kicked flirtatiously when I walked, a pretty camisole, and gold sandals that laced up my calves. I’d woven a brilliantly painted silk scarf through my short Arabian Night curls, and knotted it at my nape, letting the ends trail across my bare shoulders. I’d taken time with my makeup, concealing my bruises, and dusting a shimmery bronzer across my nose, cheeks, and breastbone. Dangly crystal earrings brushed my neck when I moved, and a single large teardrop rested in my cleavage.

Glam-girl Mac felt fantastic.

Savage Mac was pleased only by the spear strapped to the inside of my right thigh. And the short dirk I’d found on a display pedestal in Barrons’ study and strapped to my left one. And the small flashlight tucked into my pocket. And the four pairs of scissors behind the counter. And the research I’d been doing in my spare time today on gun laws in Ireland and how to go about acquiring one. I thought the semiautomatics looked good.

“American?” he said.

I was beginning to get the hang of being a tourist in Dublin. In college the question was “What’s your major?” Abroad everyone guesses your nationality. I nodded. “And you’re definitely Irish.” I smiled. He had a deep voice, a lilting accent, and looked like he’d been born to wear that thick, cream Irish fisherman’s sweater, faded jeans, and rugged boots. He moved with easy grace, born of muscle and machismo. He was a rightie, I couldn’t help but notice. Blushing, I busied myself neatening the evening newspapers on the counter.

For the next few minutes we indulged in the light banter of a male and female who find each other attractive and enjoy the timeless ritual of flirtation. Not everyone does, and frankly I think it’s a lost art form. Flirtation doesn’t have to go somewhere; it certainly doesn’t need to end up in bed. I like to think of it as a little friendlier than a handshake, a little less intimate than a kiss. It’s a way of saying hi, you look great, have a wonderful day. A tasteful flirtation, played out by people who understand the rules, leaves everyone feeling good and can perk up the bluest mood.

I was certainly feeling perky by the time I steered the conversation back around to business. “So what can I help you find, Mr…?” I nudged delicately for a name.

“O’Bannion.” He offered his hand. “Derek O’Bannion. And I’m hoping you can help me find my brother, Rocky.”

Have you ever had one of those moments when time just freezes? You know, when the world suddenly goes deathly still, and you could hear a pin drop, and the squishing sound your heart makes is so loud in your ears you feel like you’re drowning in blood, and you stand there in that suspended moment and die a thousand deaths, but not really, and the moment passes and dumps you out on the other side of it, with your mouth hanging open, and an erased blackboard where your mind used to be?

I think I’ve been watching too many old movies lately, in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, because the disembodied voice that offered counsel at that moment sounded a lot like John Wayne.

Buck up, little buckaroo, it said, in a dry, gravelly drawl. You wouldn’t believe how many things that advice has gotten me through since. When everything else is gone, balls are all any of us really have left. The question is: Are yours made of flesh and blood, or steel?

When I shook Derek O’Bannion’s hand, the spear I’d stolen from his brother before I’d led him to his unwitting death burned like a brand from hell against my inner thigh. I ignored it. “Goodness, is your brother missing?” I blinked up at him.

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“He was last seen two weeks ago.”

“How awful!” I exclaimed. “What brings you to our bookstore?”

He stared down at me, and I suddenly wondered how I could have missed the resemblance. The same cold eyes that had watched me two weeks ago from inside a mobster’s den wallpapered with crosses and religious iconography gazed down at me now. Some would have pegged Rocky and his brother Derek as Black Irish, but I knew from Barrons, who knows everything about everyone, that the fierce, ruthless blood of a long-ago Saudi ancestor runs in O’Bannion veins.

“I’ve been stopping in at all the businesses along this street. There are three cars in the alley behind this shop. Do you know anything about them?”

I shook my head. “No. Why?”

“They belong to…associates of my brother. I was wondering if you knew when they’d been left there and why. If you heard or saw anything. Maybe a fourth black car? A very expensive one?”

I shook my head again. “I really don’t go out back at all, and I don’t much notice cars. My boss disposes of the trash. I just work here. I try to stay inside most of the time. Alleys scare me.” I was babbling. I bit down lightly on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from talking. “Have you spoken to the police?” I encouraged. Go there, leave here, I willed silently.

Derek O’Bannion’s smile was sharp as knives. “O’Bannions don’t trouble the police with our problems. We take care of them ourselves.” He studied me with clinical detachment, all flirtation gone. “How long have you been working here?”

“Three days,” I said truthfully.

“You’re new to town.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mac.”

He laughed. “You don’t look like a Mac.”

Was this safer ground presenting itself? “What do I look like?” I asked lightly, leaning a hip against the counter and subtly arching my spine. Go back to flirting with me, my body posture invited.

He scanned me from head to toe. “Trouble,” he said after a moment, with a faint, sexually charged smile.

I laughed. “I’m really not.”

“Too bad,” he parried. But I could tell his mind wasn’t fully on flirting. It was on his brother. And something else I could completely understand; it was on a hunt for the truth, for retribution. What vagaries of fate had made kindred souls of us—me and this man? Oh, excuse me, it hadn’t been vagaries. It was me.

He took a business card from his wallet, a pen from his pocket, and scribbled on the back. “If you should see or hear anything, you’ll tell me, won’t you, Mac?” He took my hand, turned it palm up, and dropped a kiss in it before the card. “Anytime. Day or night. Anything. No matter how inconsequential you think it seems.”

I nodded.

“I think he’s dead,” Derek O’Bannion told me. “And I’m going to kill the fuck that did it.”

I nodded again.

“He was my brother.”

I nodded a third time. “My sister was murdered,” I blurted.

His gaze sharpened with new interest. I was suddenly more in his eyes than another flirty, pretty girl. “Then you understand vengeance,” he said softly.

“I understand vengeance,” I agreed.

“Call me anytime, Mac,” he said. “I think I like you.”

I watched him leave in silence.

When the door closed behind him, I raced to the bathroom, locked myself in, and leaned back against the door, where I stood staring at myself in the mirror trying to reconcile dual images.

I was hunting the monster that had killed my sister.

I was the monster that had killed his brother.

When I came out of the bathroom, I glanced around, relieved to find no customers had entered the store. I’d forgotten to slap one of the Back in five minutes signs that I’d made up yesterday to cover my bathroom breaks on the front door.

I hurried now to turn over the sign. Once again I was closing early. Barrons was just going to have to deal with it. It wasn’t much early, and it wasn’t like he needed the money.

As I flipped the placard, I made the mistake of glancing out the window.

It was nearly dark, that time of day folks around these parts call “gloaming,” or twilight, when the day gently bruises into night.

And I was unable to decide which was worse: Inspector Jayne sitting on a bench a few doors down to the right not even pretending to be reading the newspaper he held; the black-shrouded specter standing directly across the street, watching me from beneath the ashy shadows of a dimly flickering streetlamp; or Derek O’Bannion exiting a shop two doors down, turning left, and heading straight into the Dark Zone.

“Where the hell have you been?” Barrons yanked open the cab door and pried me out with a hand around my upper arm. My feet left the ground for a moment.

“Don’t start with me,” I growled. Shaking off his grip, I pushed past him. Inspector Jayne’s cab was just pulling up behind me. I wonder if he missed his family yet. I hoped he’d get tired of me soon and go home.

“I’m getting you a cell phone, Ms. Lane,” he barked at my back. “You will carry it at all times, like the spear. You will do nothing without it. Need I remind you of all the things you won’t be doing without it?”

I told him where he could put my as-yet-unpurchased cell phone—the sun didn’t shine there and I didn’t call it by a flower’s name—and stomped into the store.

He stomped in after me. “Have you forgotten the dangers out there in the Dublin night, Ms. Lane? Shall we go for a little walk?” Once before when he’d thought I was being intractable he’d threatened to drag me into the Dark Zone at night. Tonight, I was too numb to care. Dead bolts rang out like bullets against steel as he slammed them home. “Have you forgotten your purpose here, Ms. Lane?”

“How could I?” I said bitterly. “Every time I try to, something worse happens.”

I was halfway to the connecting doors when he caught me and spun me around. He gave me a furious once-over that seemed to get tangled up for a moment on the crystal dangling between my breasts. Or was it my breasts? “And there you are, dressed like a two-bit floozy, going out for a drink. What the fuck were you thinking? Were you thinking?”

“Two-bit floozy? Get with the times, Barrons. I don’t look like a two-bit anything. In fact, I’m positively overdressed by lots of people’s standards these days, and certainly wearing more than that stupid little black dress you made me wear when we—” I broke off; where I’d worn that skimpy halter dress was hitting too close to home right now. “And for the record,” I said stiffly, “I did not go out for a drink.”

“Don’t lie to me, Ms. Lane. I smell it on you. And other things. Who was the man?” His dark, exotic face was cold. His nostrils flared and constricted like an animal scenting prey.

Barrons has extraordinary senses. I’d not had even the tiniest sip of alcohol. “I said I didn’t have a drink,” I repeated. I’d had an awful night, one of the absolute worst of my life.

“You had something. What was it?” he demanded.

“An alcohol-laced kiss,” I said tightly. “Two, to be precise.” But only because I hadn’t moved fast enough to avoid the second one. I turned away, hating myself, hating my choices.

His hand shot out and closed on my shoulder. He spun me back to him with such vehemence that I might have whirled in dizzying toplike circles if he hadn’t caught me by the shoulders. He seemed to realize he was holding me too hard at the precise moment I was about to snap at him, and his fingers relaxed on my skin, but his body seemed to doubly absorb the tension. His gaze dropped to my necklace again, to its soft cushion between my breasts. “From who?”

“From whom, I believe is the correct phrasing.”

“All right, from-the-fuck-whom, Ms. Lane?”

“Derek O’Bannion. Any other questions?”

He regarded me a moment, then a slow half-smile curved his lips. Just as O’Bannion had earlier, he suddenly seemed to find me much more interesting. “Well, well.” He brushed the pad of his thumb across my mouth, then cupped my chin and angled my face back up to the light, searching my eyes. For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me himself, to taste the complexity and complicity of me. Or was that duplicity? “And you were kissing the brother of the man you killed—why?” he murmured silkily.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said bitterly. “You killed him without my permission.”

“Ballocks, Ms. Lane,” he said. “If I’d asked you that night if you wanted him dead so you could be safe, you’d have said yes.”

I remembered that night. I would remember it forever. I’d been freaked out by the rapidity with which my life was unraveling, terrified of Rocky O’Bannion, and fully aware that if we didn’t do something about him, he was going to do something very bad and no doubt unspeakably painful to me. I have no delusions about my ability to withstand torture. Barrons was right. I would have said “Do whatever you have to do to keep me safe.” But I didn’t have to like it. And I didn’t have to admit it.

I turned and walked away.

“I want you to go to the Ancient Languages Department at Trinity College tomorrow morning, Ms. Lane.”

I drew up like he’d yanked my leash, and scowled up at the ceiling. Was something Cosmic up there playing tricks on me? Was the whole universe in on a great big let’s-mess-with-Mac joke? The Ancient Languages Department was the only place in all of Dublin I’d made a mental note never to go. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Why?”

“Forget it,” I muttered. “What do you want me to do there?”

“Ask for a woman named Elle Masters. She’ll have an envelope for you.”

“Why don’t you go get it yourself?” What did he do all day?

“I’m busy tomorrow.”

“So, go get it tonight.”

“She won’t have it until morning.”

“Then have her send it by courier.”

“Who’s the employer here, Ms. Lane?”

“Who’s the OOP detector?”

“Is there some reason you don’t want to go to the university?”

“No.” I was in no mood to talk about dreamy-eyed guys and dates I could never have.

“Then what, Ms. Lane, is your problem?”

“Shouldn’t I be afraid the Lord Master might get me while I’m out and about?”

“Were you worrying about that tonight when you were letting Derek O’Bannion shove his tongue down your throat?”

I stiffened. “He was walking into the Dark Zone, Barrons.”

“So? One less problem for us.”

I shook my head. “I’m not you, Barrons. I’m not dead inside.”

His smile was ten shades of ice. “So what did you do? Run after him and offer yourself on a silver platter to get him to turn around?”

Pretty much. And then I’d had to spend the next three and a half hours in a downtown club, dancing and flirting with him, and trying to keep his hands off me, while Inspector Jayne watched from a corner table. Trying to use up so much of his time that he would be disinclined to go back and search the Dark Zone tonight. Eventually trying to beg off nicely, and failing.

Like his brother, Derek O’Bannion was used to getting his way, and if he didn’t, he pushed harder. In my blind determination to avert culpability in another death, I’d forgotten he was related to the man who’d brutally murdered twenty-seven people in a single night to get what he wanted.

By eleven-thirty, I’d had as much as I could take. With each drink he tossed back, he’d sprouted more hands and a worse attitude. I hadn’t been able to extricate myself gracefully so, in a fit of desperation, I’d excused myself for the bathroom, and tried to sneak out a side door. I’d figured I would call him tomorrow, pretend I’d gotten sick, and if he asked me out again, evade, procrastinate, and lie. I really hadn’t wanted another O’Bannion pissed off at me in this city. One had been bad enough.

He’d caught me outside the bathroom, shoved me into a wall, and kissed me so brutally that I hadn’t been able to breathe. Flattened between his body and a brick wall, I’d grown light-headed from lack of oxygen. My mouth still felt swollen, bruised. I’d seen the excitement in his eyes and known he was a man turned on by a woman’s helplessness. I’d remembered his brother’s restaurant, the carefully coiffed and tightly controlled women, how the waiters were forbidden to serve a woman a meal or a drink unless a man ordered for them. O’Bannions were not nice men.

When I’d finally wrested myself free, I’d made a scene, loudly accusing him of forcing his attentions on me when I’d already told him a dozen times I wasn’t interested. If he’d been anyone else, the bouncers would have tossed him out of the club, but in Dublin, nobody tosses an O’Bannion. They’d thrown me out instead. The tape-to-my-derriere inspector had watched it all through narrowed eyes, arms folded, without lifting a finger to help me.

I made another enemy in this city tonight, as if I didn’t already have enough.

Still, I’d accomplished my goal and it hadn’t been an easy one to tackle.

When I’d looked out the window and seen Derek O’Bannion heading straight for his deadly rendezvous with the Shades I’d wanted nothing more than to flip the sign, lock the door, curl up with a good book, and pretend nothing was out there, and nothing bad was about to happen. But it seems I’ve got this set of scales inside me that I never used to have, or at least I wasn’t aware of, and I can’t shake the feeling that if I don’t try to keep them balanced, I’ll lose something I won’t be able to get back.

So I’d forced myself out of the bookstore and into the rapidly deepening dusk. I’d rolled my eyes at the inspector, and ground my teeth against the oppressive sense of dread that cloaked me every time I saw that terrifying black specter, watching, waiting. I’d notched my chin higher and made myself walk straight past it like it didn’t even exist—and as far as I could tell, it didn’t, because Jayne had ignored it and O’Bannion sure hadn’t looked at it on the way back, but then again, I’d tugged my camisole down to reveal a shocking amount of cleavage to tempt him to turn around. I’d done for one O’Bannion what I’d failed to do for the other, and the scales inside me had leveled a little.

I hoped he’d continue his search tomorrow, in the daylight, and not stop in here on his way by. But if, despite my efforts, he went back into the abandoned neighborhood tonight, well, I’d done the best I could, and frankly I wasn’t sure how important it was another O’Bannion remained among the living. Dad says Hell has a special place for men who abuse women. There are Unseelie monsters and there are human ones.

“Was he a good kisser, Ms. Lane?” Barrons asked, watching me carefully.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand at the memory. “It was like being owned.”

“Some women like that.”

“Not me.”

“Perhaps it depends on the man doing the owning.”

“I doubt it. I couldn’t breathe with him kissing me.”

“One day you may kiss a man you can’t breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.”

“Right, and one day my prince might come.”

“I doubt he’ll be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.”

“I’ll get your envelope, Barrons. What then?” What crazy zig was my life going to zag down next?

“I took the liberty of placing garments in your room. Tomorrow evening we leave for Wales.”

Turned out Elle Masters wasn’t there the next day, nor, much to my relief, was the dreamy-eyed guy.

Instead, I met a fourth-year student who worked for Elle, and was holding the envelope for me. He was tall with dark hair, a great Scottish accent, a ton of curiosity about Barrons, who he’d heard about from his employer I guess, and pretty dreamy eyes himself, an unusual shade of amber, like tiger eyes, framed by thick, black lashes.

“Scotty” (we never got around to introducing ourselves, I was in too much of a hurry to get out of there and on with my day) told me Elle’s six-year-old daughter was sick and she was keeping her out of school, so he’d swung by to pick up the envelope on his way into work.

I took it and hurried out the door. Scotty followed me halfway down the hall, making small talk with a charming Scots burr, and I got the distinct impression that he was working up to asking me out. Two gorgeous guys in the same department, two normal guys! I would only be torturing myself if I spared a second thought for either of them. The Ancient Languages Department at Trinity was off limits for me in the future. Barrons could run his own errands, or hire a courier service to do it for him.

On my way back to the bookstore, I pretended not to see nearly a dozen Unseelie Rhino-boys, escorting their new protégés down the streets, shaping them up for human society. They pointed and spoke, their charges nodded, and it was obvious they were being indoctrinated into their new world—my world. I wanted to stab every one of them with my spear as I walked by, but I refrained. I’m not in this for the little battles. I’m here for the war.

All of them were casting Fae glamours to make themselves appear human to varying degrees of attractiveness, but either they were rudimentary efforts, or I’ve gotten better at penetrating the Fae façade because aside from a momentary blurriness, a brief vacillation of color and contour, I saw them in their true forms. None were as revolting as the hideous Gray Man who’d preyed on women, stealing their beauty through the open sores in his flesh and hands, although all made me feel queasy, but that’s just the effect of any Fae on my sidhe-seer senses; it’s my early-warning system. I picked up a group of ten of them on my “radar” a full two blocks before encountering their little monster-posse. I counted three new types of Unseelie I would make notes on later in my journal, perhaps on the plane to Wales tonight.

When I got back to the bookstore, I steamed open the envelope. The adhesive edge curled quickly and the glue seemed sparse, making me wonder if I’d not been the first to do it.

It held an invitation, an exclusive one, extended by a host who denoted himself or herself with only a symbol, no address. On the back was jotted a partial list, intended to tantalize. It included an object long held to be mythical, two religious icons the Vatican was rumored to be looking for, and a painting by one of the Masters believed lost in a fire centuries ago.

Barrons and I were going to an auction tonight, a very private one, the kind of black market sale Interpol and FBI agents nurture sweet, career-making dreams of one day busting.