Darkfever (Fever, #1)

by Karen Marie Moning

I should be more frugal, but my weaknesses are books and music and I figure there are worse ones to have.

He dripped casual European elegance and arrogance.

Lots of times you see it the other way around, the sultry do-me-big-boy Betty Boop with a Jack Nicholson, but you don’t often see a Fabio with an Olive Oyl.

Maybe I was hysterical. Or maybe I was just mad because I’d begun to understand that something was very wrong with me and I didn’t want it to be.

But he let me hit him. And he didn’t hit me back. Which was, I suspected, a pretty major concession from Jericho Barrons.

The old tales say the Gray Man is so ugly that even his own race mocks him. He steals the beauty of others out of corrosive envy and hatred.

Beautiful women rarely possess sufficient depth of character to survive without their pretty feathers. Strip them down and they crumble.”

The Seelie, or Light Fae, are as disconcertingly beautiful as their darker brethren are distressingly foul.”

“All myths contain a grain of truth, Ms. Lane. I’ve handled books and artifacts that will never find their way into a museum or library, things no archaeologist or historian could ever make sense of. There are many realities pocketed away in the one we call our own. Most go blindly about their lives and never see beyond the ends of their noses. Some of us do.”

Tall, dark, and basely sexual in a way I supposed some women might find irresistibly attractive, Barrons exuded his usual unsettling vitality.

The Dark Book is the most powerful of all the Fae Hallows. As well as the deadliest.”

These folks seemed to think leeching the world of all color was cool. I decided they all must be deeply depressed.

I brushed the tips of my lashes with sable mascara, and wondered what one wore to visit a vampire.

told you we were going to visit a vampire in a Goth-den tonight. Why, then, Ms. Lane, do you look like a perky rainbow?”

“Unseelie royalty, the princes and princesses of the four houses, are every bit as inhumanly beautiful as Seelie royalty. In fact, it is virtually impossible to tell them apart.”

It is said if the four are brought together again they will sing a Song of Making.”

To the Tuatha Dé there is no difference between creating and destroying. There is only stasis and change.”

The world notices pretty, well-dressed young women. And it tries real hard not to see the unattractive, sloppy ones.

I am every erotic dream you’ve ever had and a thousand more you’ve never thought of. I am sex that will turn you inside out and burn you down to ashes.”

The Fae was unutterably beautiful. And I wanted to fuck and fuck and fuck until I died.

This one was death-by-sex. Immolation by orgasm;

The city has forgotten that section exists, he’d replied. You will not find a district of the Gardai that claims it, and if you ask city power or water they will have no record of service to any address within its bounds.

You really don’t know me at all. Stay out of this or leave. I’m sure I can find another to”—he paused a moment as if searching for precisely the right words—“serve my needs.”

there will always be a place for you in my thoughts. But I am not the man you believe me to be. You have romanticized me unforgivably.”

you make one of Womankind’s greatest mistakes: falling in love with a man’s potential. We so rarely share the same view of it, and even more rarely care to achieve it. Stop pining for the man you think I could be—and take a good, long, hard look at the one I am.”

My thought bounced back to V’lane. What if the Fae was lying and was actually an Unseelie, working to free more of his brethren to prey upon my world?

how had this highly sought-after book gotten lost in the first place?

Had Alina thought she was in love with a Fae? Had it wooed her, used her?

Rocky was considered quite the charmer and ladies’ man, but one with a fine point of honor that endeared him to his faithful; he didn’t sleep with other men’s wives. Ever. The man who had no respect for life, limb, or law, respected the sacrament of marriage. Did I mention he was Irish Catholic?

There’s not a waiter in here that will take an order from a woman. At O’Bannion’s, you eat what is chosen for you, whether you like it or not. Welcome to a time gone by, Ms. Lane, when men provided and women accepted. And if they didn’t like it, they pretended they did.”

“In some parts of Dublin, there’s another city beneath the city.”

“Expect to die,” he said, “and you will. The power of thought is far greater than most people ever realize.”

the Spear of Destiny has another name, the Spear of Luin, or Luisne, the Flaming Spear. And it is not a Roman weapon at all but one brought to this world by the Tuatha Dé Danaan. It is a Seelie Hallow and just happens to be one of only two weapons known to man that can kill a Fae.

“You came looking for this mess, Ms. Lane. You sauntered in here all innocence and stupidity asking for the Sinsar Dubh, remember? I told you to go home.”

It’s the difference between involuntary manslaughter and homicide: the dead person is still dead, and I highly doubt the corpse appreciates any legal distinctions we make over it.

“I suspect it comes from living too long. Why bother to remember or keep track of things? Why care? You live today. You’ll live tomorrow. Humans die. The world changes. You don’t.

Distinguish yourself, my mom had told Alina and me, in an age where girls often make themselves too available to boys, by making him work a little for your attention. He’ll think he’s won a prize when he gets it, and he’ll work that much harder to keep it. Boys turn into men and men put a premium on what’s hardest to get.

“You wanted it and you still do,” it said flatly. “Your body burns for me, human. You want to worship me. You want to be on your knees.” The horror of it was—it was right. I did.

What V’lane had done to me today had left me so awfully, icily aroused that it had taken more orgasms than I’d thought possible and a long frigid shower to calm me. And now it seemed I hadn’t done a good enough job, because I was still suffering residual effects. There was no other way to explain why I was standing there wondering what it would be like to kiss Jericho Barrons.

This isn’t even about life and death. This is about things that are worse than death.”

“You might try wearing black next time.

Then he leaned forward and got right in my face. Up close I could see how truly furious he was with me.

You will eat with it, shower with it, sleep with it, fuck with it.”

I used to walk on my feet. Now all I knew how to do was crawl.

He’d said “your” world. Not “our” world. Mine. Was it not his world also?

I’ll finally admit it: Ever since I’d heard the description of Alina’s boyfriend—older, worldly, attractive, not Irish—I’d been having a perfectly paranoid thought. Was I following in Alina’s footsteps, exactly? Right down to the man who’d betrayed her? Had my sister been in love with Jericho Barrons? Was my mysterious host and alleged protector the one who’d killed her?

Much as it chafed me to admit, the man behind the lens had taken the most beautiful pictures of my sister that I’d ever seen.

“Mac!” I heard Barrons shout. I slumped down the plastic-shrouded wall, thinking how weird it sounded, him calling me Mac. He’d only ever called me Ms. Lane.

“You can call me Mac, er … Jericho. And thanks for saving me.” One dark brow rose and he looked amused. “Stick with Barrons, Ms. Lane,” he said dryly.

“Mac.” He said my name and laughed. “What a name for something like you. Mac.” He laughed again.