Shadowfever (Fever #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

“—has nothing to do with this and—” “—forbid you actually get personal with me—” “—I don’t give a damn about being judged—” “—and I don’t mean try to have sex with me—” “—I wasn’t trying to have sex with you—” “—I didn’t mean at this precise moment. I meant—” “—and it would have been impossible, anyway, because we’ve been running. I don’t have any bloody idea why we’ve been running,” he said irritably, “but you’re the one who started it and you’re the one that stopped.” “—like knock down a few walls between us and see what happens. No, you’re such a coward that the only time you can call me by my name is when you’re eithe...

“It’s not a wall. I merely endeavor to help you keep our boundaries straight. And I didn’t say I didn’t like you. ‘Like’ is such a puerile word. Mediocre people like things. The only question of any significant emotive content is: Can you live without it?” I knew the answer to that question where he was concerned, and I didn’t like it one bit. “You think I need help understanding where our boundaries are? Do you understand where our boundaries are? Because they seemed pretty damned mysterious and movable to me!” “You’re the one arguing about the names we call each other.” “What do you call Fiona? Fio! How charming. Oh, and what about that twit at Casa Blanc the night I met that bizarre man McCabe? Marilyn!” “I can’t believe you remember her name,” he muttered. “You call...

“Jericho,” I snarled back, and pushed him. He manacled both my wrists with one hand so I couldn’t hit him again. It infuriated me. I head-butted him. “I thought you died for me!” He shoved me against the wall and braced his forearm across my throat so I couldn’t head butt him again. “For fuck’s sake, is that what this is about?” “You didn’t die. You lied to me. You took a little nap and left me on that cliff thinking I’d killed you!” He searched my face, dark eyes slitted. “Ah, I see. You thought it meant something that I died for you. Did you dress it up in romance? Compose sonnets memorializing my great sacrifice? Did it make you like me better? Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing.” Alina was the lucky one. I’d thought that, too, and had been ashamed of myself for thinking it. I punched ...

Shut up, I snarled silently. I’d left that voice back in Dublin, where it had been torturing me in my bedroom. All will be lost.… It must be you.… Come. I growled. Couldn’t she leave me alone? She hadn’t spoken in my head for the past forty-five minutes. Why now? I wasn’t asleep. I was awake, wide awake, and I needed this. I needed him. Go away, I willed. “Please,” I groaned. “Please what, Mac? You’ll have to ask for it this time, spell it out in graphic detail. I’m done giving you everything you want without making you ask for it.” “Right. Words mean nothing to you, but now you insist on them,” I said against his mouth. “You are such a hypocrite.” “And you’re bipolar. You want me. You always do. You think I can’t s...

He stiffened, air hissing between clenched teeth. Make haste … He comes.… “Leave me alone,” I snapped. “Over my dead body,” he said roughly. “You’ve got my dick in your hands.” He told me where it was going to be next and my bones turned to water, tried to spill my body across the floor and let him do anything he wanted to me. “Not you. Her.” “Her who?” A hand tugged at the sleeve of my jacket, and I knew without looking that it wasn’t his. “Kiss me and she’ll go away.” I need...

But he didn’t. He pulled back and looked past me, and I knew from the look on his face that I wasn’t the only one who could see her. “I think she’s me,” I whispered. He looked at me, back at her, and at me again. “Is that a joke?” “I know this house. I know this place. I don’t know how else to explain it.” “Impossible.” It is nearly too late. Come NOW. It was no longer a wisp of a plea. It was a command, and the hand was implacable on my arm. I could not disobey, no matter how badly I wanted to stay here and lose myself in sex, no matter how desperately I needed him inside me again, needed to feel we were joined in the most primal way, that I was in Jericho Barrons’ arms and mouth and under his skin. And, God, did I need it! So much that I resented it. I never wanted to want a man this much—so much that not having him was physical pain. I never wanted to feel that any man had so much control over me an...

It had come from the dark side of the boudoir, which was all bed because he required that much bed. It was a command I couldn’t refuse. I would slip through the mirror and Barrons would lay me back on the Unseelie King’s bed and cover me with lust and darkness. And we would know who

I could stay here and never have to face that my existence was empty, that emptiness was all my life had ever been about: dreams, seduction, glamour. Lies. All lies. But here I could forget. Come NOW. “Mac.” Jericho was shaking me. “Look at me.” I could see him distantly, through sparkling diamonds and ghosts of times past. And behind him, through the mirror, I could see the monstrous dark shape of the Unseelie King, as if he was casting Jericho as his shadow on the other side, on the white half of the room. I wondered if the concubine’s shadow was different, too, through the king’s Silver. Did she become like him on his half? Large and complex enough to mate with whatever the king was? Over there, in the blessed, comforting, sacred dark, what was she? What was I? “Mac, focus on me! Look at me, talk to me!” But I couldn’t look. I couldn’t focus, because whatever was beyond that mirror had been calling me all my life. I knew the Silver wouldn’t kill me. I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” His hands tightened on my shoulders and tried to turn me away. “Walk away from it, Mac. Let it go. Some things don’t need to be known. Isn’t your life enough as it is?” I laughed. The man who always insisted I see things as they were was now urging me to hide? On the rug behind him, the concubine laughed, too. Her head arched, her chin tipped up, as if she was being kissed by an invisible lover. He had to be the king. I slid my hand down his arm, twined my fing...

King’s bedchamber, repeating history, only this time I’d have left no note. When I finally slid through the dark membrane, warmth hit me like a blast oven, and I stumbled, went flying across the room, and slammed into the wall. The concubine stretched on the rug paid me no heed. I sucked in air with a greedy screech. Where was Jericho? Could he breathe on the other side? Did he need to breathe, or was it his natural environment? I glanced back at the mirror, expecting to see him moving darkly on the other side, scowling at me for having forced him to reveal his true identity. I staggered and nearly went down. I’d been so certain I was right. Barrons was collapsed on the floor, at the boundary of light and dark—on the white side of the room. Only two in all existence could ever travel through that Silver: the Unseelie King and his concubine, Darroc had told me. Any other that touches it is instantly killed. Even Fae. “Jericho!” I ran for him, dragged him away from the mirror, and sank to the floor beside him. I rolled him over. He wasn’t breathing. He was dead. Again. I stared down at him. I stared into the darkness of the mirror. The Silver hadn’t killed me. But it had killed him. I didn’t like what that meant one bit. It meant I was indeed the concubine. It also meant that Jericho wasn’t my king. NOW. The command was enormous, irresistible, Voice to the nth degree. I wanted to stay with Jericho. I couldn’t have stayed if my life had depended on it. And I was pretty sure i...

Was that possible? I wasn’t buying it. But apparently it didn’t matter whether I bought it, because my hands were pushing me up and my feet were moving me straight into the dark Silver. “Jericho!” I cried as I felt myself being forced away. I hated this. I hated everything about it. I was the concubine but Jericho wasn’t the king, and I couldn’t deal with that—not that I was sure how well I would have dealt with it if he had been the king. Now I was being summoned to a place where I couldn’t breathe, where I didn’t really live according to my disembodied tormentor, and I had no choice but to leave him, dead again, by himself.

I suddenly had no desire to learn anything else about myself. This was enough. I was sorry I’d been so hell-bent on knowing to begin with. He’d been right. Wasn’t he always? Some things just didn’t need to be known. “I’m not doing this. I’m not playing your stupid games, whatever they are, whoever you are. I’m going back to my life now. That would be Mac’s life,” I clarified. There was no reply. Only an inexorable pull into the darkness. I was once again puppet to an invisible puppet master. I had no choice. I was being dragged through and there was nothing I could do about it. Struggling, gritting my teeth, resisting every step of the way, I stepped over Jericho’s body and pushed back into the Silver.

I stared through the front door of Barrons Books and Baubles, uncertain what surprised me more: that the front seating cozy was intact or that Barrons was sitting there, boots propped on a table, surrounded by piles of books, hand-drawn maps tacked to the walls. I couldn’t count how many nights I’d sat in exactly the same place and position, digging through books for answers, occasionally staring out the windows at the Dublin night, and waiting for him to appear. I liked to think he was waiting for me to show. I leaned closer, staring in through the glass. He’d refurnished the bookstore. How long had I been gone? There was my magazine rack, my cashier’s counter, a new old-fashioned cash register, a small flat-screen TV/DVD player that was actually from this decade, and a sound dock for my iPod. There was a new sleek black iPod Nano in the dock. He’d done more than refurnish the place. He might as well have put a mat out that said WELCOME HOME, MAC. A bell tinkled as I stepped inside. His head whipped around and he half-stood, books sliding to the floor. The last time I’d seen him, he was dead. I stood in the doorway, forgetting to breathe, watching him unfold from the couch in a ripple of animal grace. He crammed the four-story room full, dwarfed it with his presence. For a moment neither of us spoke. Leave it to Barrons—the world melts down and he’s still dressed like a wealthy business tycoon. His suit was exquisite, his shirt crisp, tie intricately patterned and tastefu...

of their own history right? Maybe someone had sabotaged their written records. “How did you get her out of there? The Silver should have killed her.” “Apparently the queen has the same kind of immunity to the Silver that she has to the Sinsar Dubh.” I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly I lied. Barrons has a sharp nose for deceit. “She can touch both. It looks like the king and queen can’t cast spells that the other can’t break.” The best lies are solidly cemented in known exceptions to the rule, and by her very nature as matriarch and ruler of both courts, the queen was the universal exception to every rule that bound the lessers of the Fae court. I wasn’t above exploiting it to secure my cover until I knew beyond all shadow of a doubt what to make of myself. In his dark gaze, I saw the moment he accepted the logic of my lie. How could I be the Unseelie King? I didn’t feel like the king. I felt like Mac, with a bunch of memories I couldn’t explain. Well, that wasn’t the entire truth. There was also that place in my head where I had nifty little things like parasitic runes of ancient origin and—I terminated that line of thought. I didn’t feel like taking a tally of all the things I couldn’t explain about myself. The list was miserably long. He took her to the sofa, tucked blankets around her, and shoved the sofa closer to the fire and turned it on. “She’s freezing. I’ve half a mind to take her back and let the place finish her off,” he said darkly. “We need her.” “May...

“You might have all night, but some of us don’t,” Barrons growled over his shoulder. I stuffed the paper in my pocket and hurried

catch up. We’d parked the Viper a block away. The queen wore a hooded cloak and was wrapped in blankets. “You have all night tonight and tomorrow night and all eternity for that matter. So how long were you dead this time?” I asked, needling him. The rattle moved in his throat. I took a perverse pleasure in irritating him. “A day? Three? Five? What does it depend on? How badly you’re injured?”

“If I were you, Ms. Lane, I’d never bring that up again. You think you’re suddenly a major player because you went through that Silver—” “I left Christian at the mirror. I found him in the prison,” I cut him off. His mouth snapped shut, then, “Why the fuck does it always take you so long to tell me the important things?” “Because there are always so many important things,” I said defensively. “Her hair’s dragging again.” “Pick it up. My hands are full.” “I’m not touching her.” He shot me a look. “Issues much, Ms. Concubine?” “She’s not even the real queen,” I said irritably. “Not the one that ruined the concubine’s life. I just don’t like Fae. I’m a sidhe-seer, remember?” “Are you?” “Why are you so pissed at me? It’s not my fault who I am. The only thing that’s my fault is what I choose to do with it.” He gave me a sidelong glance that said, That might be the only intelligent thing you’ve said tonight. I looked past him to the wrecked façade of Chester’s ahead, and for a moment it looked eerily like a ruin of standing stones, black against a blue-black sky, from a faraway time and another place. A full moon hung above it, wearing a halo of crimson, round fat face splattered with...

I pushed through the crowd, pulled myself up next to him, and said, “Hey, remember me?” He ignored me. I imagined he heard that a lot if he’d been coming here awhile. I stood beside him, looking out over the sea of heads. “I’m the woman that was with Darroc the night we met in the street. I need you to summon V’lane.” The golden god’s head swiveled. Disdain stamped his immortal features. “Summon. V’lane. Those two words do not go together in any language, human.” “I had his name in my tongue until Barrons sucked it out. I need him. Now.” This golden god might have disconcerted me once, but I had a spear in my holster and a black secret in my heart, and nothing disconcerted me anymore. I wanted V’lane here, now. He had a few things to answer for. “V’lane did not give you his name.” “On multiple occasions. And his fury with you will know no bounds if he learns I asked you to get him for me and you refused.” He regarded me in stony silence. I shrugged. “Fine. Your call. Just remember what he did to Dree’lia.” I turned and walked away. He was in front of me.

“Hey, what the fuck ya think ya doing? No sifting in the club!” someone cried. The golden god jerked and disentangled himself from the arm that he’d materialized around. It seemed to slide from his body, as if the section containing it had abruptly become energy, not matter. The guy the arm belonged to was young, with a faux-hawk, a petulant expression, and twitchy, restless eyes. He clutched his offended appendage, rubbing it as if it had gone to sleep. Then he seemed to see what had just sifted in next to him and his eyes rounded almost comically. A drink appeared in the golden god’s hand. He offered it to the guy with a murmured regret. “I did not mean to break the rules of the club. Your arm will be fine in a moment.” “S’cool, man,” the guy gushed as he accepted the drink. “No worries.” He stared up at the Fae worshipfully. “What can I do for ya?” he said breathlessly. “I mean, man, I’d do anything, ya know? Anything at all!” The golden god bent down, leaning close. “Would you die for me?” “Anything, man! But will you take me to Faery first?” I leaned in behind the golden god and pressed my mouth to his ear. “There’s a spear in a holster beneath my arm. You broke a rule and sifted. I bet that means I can break a rule, too. You want to try it?” He made that hissing Fae sound of distaste. But he eased away and stood straight. “Be a good little fairy,” I purred, “and go get V’lane for me.” I hesitated, weighing my next words. “Tell him I have some news about the Sinsar Du...

statues. Just as suddenly as everything had frozen, life resumed. “You have offended me, human,” the golden god was saying, “and I will kill you for the slight. Not here. Not tonight. But soon.” “Sure, whatever,” I muttered. “Just get him here.” I turned away and began shoving my way through the crowd, but by the time I reached the kingly white chair, McCabe was gone. I had to pass the sub-club where the dreamy-eyed guy tended bar to get to the stairs. “Directly,” construed as a geographical command, didn’t preclude stopping along the way and, since I was parched and had a few questions about a tarot card, I rapped my knuckles on the counter for a shot. I could barely remember what it felt like to mix drinks and party with my friends, jam-packed with ignorance and shiny dreams. Five stools down, a top hat gauzed with cobwebs was a dark, unused chimney badly in need of sweeping. Strawlike hair swept shoulders that were as bony as broomsticks in a pin-striped suit. The fear dorcha was hanging with the dreamy-eyed guy again. Creepy. Nobody was sitting next to it. The top hat rotated my way as I took a seat, four empty stools away. A deck of tarot cards was artfully arranged in its ...

them full and slid them five ways with enviable precision. I glanced up into the mirror behind the bar that angled down and reflected the sleek black bar top. I saw myself. I saw the fear dorcha. I saw dozens of other patrons gathered at the counter. It wasn’t a busy bar. This was one of the smaller, less popular sub-clubs. There was no sex or violence to be found here, only cobwebs and tarot cards. The dreamy-eyed guy was absent in the reflection. I saw glasses and bottles sparkling as they flipped in the air but no one tossing them. I glanced down at him, pouring high and flashy. Back up. There was no reflection. I tapped my empty shot glass on the counter. Another one clinked into it. I sipped this one, watching him, waiting for him to return. He took his time. “Look conflicted, beautiful girl.” “I don’t...

“I’m not responsible for what it shows. Or doesn’t.” “Who are you?” “Who are you?” I narrowed my eyes. “Somehow I got the idea you were trying to help me. Guess I was wrong.” “Help. Dangerous medicine.” “How?” “Hard to gauge the right dose. Especially if there’s more than one doctor.” I sucked in a breath. The dreamy-eyed guy’s eyes were no longer dreamy. They were … I stared. They were … I caught my lower lip with my teeth and bit down. What was I looking at? What was happening to me? He was no longer behind the counter but sitting on a bar stool beside me, to my left, no—to my right. No, he was on the stool with me. There he was—behind me, mouth pressed to my ear. “Too much falsely inflates. Too little underprepares. The finest surgeon has butterfly fingers. Airy. Delicate.” Like his fingers on my hair. The touch was mesmerizing. “Am I the Unseelie Ki...

looked to see Barrons descending. When I looked back, the dreamy-eyed guy was no more vi...

was coming,” I said irritably. Fingers handcuffed around my wrist, Barrons dragged me toward the stairs. “What part of ‘directly’ didn’t you understand?” “Same part of ‘play well with others’ you never understand, O cantankerous one,” I muttered. He laughed, surprising me. I never know what’s going to make him laugh. At the oddest moments, he seems to find humor in his own bad temper. “I’d be a lot less cantankerous if you admitted you wanted to fuck me and we got down to it.” Lust ripped through me. Barrons said “fuck” and I was ready. “That’s all it would take to put you in a good humor?” “It’d go a long way.” “Are we having a conversation, Barrons? Where you actually express feelings?” “If you want to call a hard dick feelings, Ms. Lane.” A sudden commotion at the entra...

“What? Who?” I said, bouncing on my tiptoes to try to see. “Is it V’lane?” “Why would it be—” He glared down at me. “I stripped his name from your tongue. There hasn’t been an opportunity for you to get it back again.” “I told one of his court to go get him. Don’t look at me like that. I want to know what’s going on.” “What’s going on, Ms. Lane, is that you found the Seelie Queen in the Unseelie prison. What’s going on—given the condition she’s in—is that V’lane’s obviously been lying about her whereabouts for months now, and that can mean only one thing.” “That it was impossible for me to permit the court to know that the queen was missing, and has been missing for many human years,” V’lane said tightly behind us, his voice hushed. “They would have fallen apart. Without her reining them in, a dozen different factions would have assaulted your world. There has long been unrest in Faery. But this is hardly the place to discuss such matters.” Barrons and I turned as one. “Velvet told me you r...

“Have you truly found her? Is she alive? In every spare moment, I have searched for her. It has prevented me from attending you as I wished.” “Velvet is a Fae name?” “His true name is unpronounceable in your tongue. Is she here?” I nodded. “I must see her. How does she fare?” Barrons’ hand shot out and closed around V’lane’s throat. “You lying fuck.” V’lane grabbed Barron’s arm with one hand, his throat with the other. I stared, fascinated. I was so discombobulated by recent developments that I hadn’t even realized Barrons and V’lane were standing face-to-face on a crowded dance floor for what was probably the first time in all eternity—close enough to kill each other. Well, close enough for Barrons to kill V’lane. Barrons was staring at the Fae prince as if he’d finally caught a fire ant that had been torturing him for centuries while he’d lay spread-eagled on the desert, coated in honey. V’lane was glaring at Barrons...

“Maybe I don’t care what happens to the world.” V’lane’s head swiveled my way, cool appraisal in his gaze. “I have permitted you to retain your spear, MacKayla. You will not let him harm me. Kill him—” Barrons squeezed. “I said shut up.” “He has the fourth stone,” I reminded Barrons. “We need him.” “Keltars!” V’lane said, staring up at the foyer. He hissed through his teeth. “I know. Big fucking party tonight,” said Barrons. “Where? Is that who just came in?” I said. Barrons leaned closer to V’lane and sniffed him. His nostrils flared, as if he found the scent both repulsive and perfect for a fine, bloody filet. “Where is she?” a man roared. The accent was Scottish, like Christian’s but thicker. V’lane ordered, “Shut him up before his next question is, ‘Where is the queen,’ and every Unseelie in this place discovers she is here.” Barrons moved too fast for me to see. One second, V’lane was his usual gorgeous self, then his nose was crushed and gushing blood. Barrons said, “Next time, fairy,” and was gone. “I said, where the bloody hell is the—” I heard a grunt, then the sound of fists and more grunts, and all hell broke loose at Chester’s. “I doona give a bloody damn what you th...

taken five of Barrons’ men to get things back under control. Being able to move like the wind gave them a tremendous advantage. They didn’t warn the patrons to stop fighting—they simply appeared and killed them. Once humans and Fae figured out what was happening, the outbreak of violence ended as quickly as it had begun. The other Scot, Cian, had yet to speak a word and had escaped the brawl without a mark, but with all the red and black ink on his torso, I’m not sure I would have noticed blood. He was massive, with bunched short muscles, the kind a man gets from weight training in a gym or working off a long prison sentence. His shoulders were enormous, his stomach flat; he had piercings, one of his tattoos said JESSI. I wondered what kind of woman could make a man like him want to tattoo her name on his chest. These were the uncles Christian had talked about, the men who’d broken into the Welshman’s castle the night Barrons and I had tried to steal the amulet, the ones who’d performed the ritual with Barrons on Halloween. They were nothing like any uncles I’d ever seen. I’d expected time-softened relatives in their late thirties or forties, but these were time-hardened men of ...

“Convenient for you, fairy.” V’lane cut Barrons a look of disdain. “Look beyond the tip of your mortal nose. The Unseelie Princes are easily as powerful—if not more so—than I. And the Unseelie King himself is far stronger than us all. The magic would most certainly go to him, wherever he is. I have nothing to gain by harming my queen and everything to lose. You must let me have her. If she was in the Unseelie prison the entire time that she has been missing, she may be very close to death. You must permit me to take her to Faery, to regain her strength!” “Never going to happen.” “Then you will be responsible for killing our queen,” V’lane said bitterly. “And how do I know that’s not what you’ve been after all along?” “You despise us all. You would allow the queen to die to satisfy your own petty vengeances.” I wanted to know what Barrons’ petty vengeances were. But I was feeling that damned duality again. What was unfolding here wasn’t remotely what anyone thought. Only I knew the truth. This was not the queen they were fighting over. It was the concubine from hundreds of thousands of years ago, who’d somehow ended up becoming the Seelie Queen. Had the king finally gotten what h...

32 I stepped out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror. Since dragging my aching body up the back stairs of BB&B to my bedroom twenty minutes ago, my bruises had faded by forty percent. I traced my fingers across a particularly bad one on my collarbone. I’d thought I heard a crack and was worried something had broken, but it was only a hot, swollen contusion and was healing remarkably fast. What was with me? I might have suspected it was something to do with my being … well, Not the Concubine, but I’d never healed like this when I was a kid. I’d run around with skinned knees constantly. Was McCabe one of my parts? Was that why he hadn’t frozen, too? Could the dreamy-eyed guy be a part? Who else? How many parts did Not the Concubine have? “I am not the king,” I said out loud. “There’s some other explanation.” There had to be. I simply wouldn’t accept it. Tonight had been a rush. We’d run into Jayne, his guardians, and Dani near Fourteenth and cut a wide swath through the city. Dageus, Cian, and V’lane had pummeled; Dani and I had sliced and diced. Barrons had done whatever it was he did, but he’d done it too fast for me to see. After a time I’d stopped trying, too lost...

die slowly.” “Spear … not instant?” There was shock in her voice. “No.” I knew the moment she accepted it. When I turned and headed for the Silver in the brick wall, she followed. I heard the soft swish of her cloak behind me. “There’s a price, though. If you really want to die, you’re going to have to tell me everything you know about—” “I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” Barrons said. “Where the hell do you think you’re going this time, Ms. Lane? And who is that with you?”