He shook his head with a wry smile. His wings had always known instinctively how to arrange themselves but his brain had been in the way. He’d been in the way of himself. They’d been a burden because he’d thought them a burden, and now that he thought them a gift, they behaved like a gift.

He stole a glance at his companion. If he could learn to like himself and the world around him, Barrons could learn to have friends. Thanks to Dageus, the Keltar and the Nine were practically bloody married now. They’d become clan in every meaningful sense of the word. Like the Nine, the Keltar had long been insular, secretive, staying intentionally isolated. But the world had changed and neither band could afford insularity anymore. There were too many risks to them all to shun shared knowledge and power.

Christian wanted friends. He’d missed having them as a lad. God damn it, at least he could have peers.

Barrons cut him an irritated look.

“What? Don’t tell me you can actually hear what I’m thinking,” Christian snapped. He wouldn’t be surprised. Barrons and his men were bizarrely attuned to people’s slightest nuances.

“I endeavor not to,” Barrons muttered. “Sometimes you infernal creatures seem to be holding a bloody megaphone to your brains.”

“What is the god’s name?” Christian changed the subject swiftly. It would be easier to be courteous if he knew something of whom he was to address.

“Culsans. They are the keeper of doorways, of gates and passages, of the underworld itself, standing bastion at all that is liminal. When they can be stirred to bother themselves. Culsu may be with him. If so, beware her blades.”

“What blades?”

“The ones I just mentioned.”

“Why is Culsans a they?”

“You’ll see.”

“Are they hideous?” Christian braced himself for the worst.

Barrons cut him a mocking look. “No more so than they may find you.”

“Well, where are they from? How do you find these old gods?”

“For fuck’s sake, shut up.”

“What the bloody hell is wrong with trying to understand my situation? Were you this much of a pain when Mac was trying to figure things out? How did she stand you?”

“She prefers me lying down. On top of her. Frequently, behind her. You want to keep talking, Highlander?”

They made their way down the long white corridor in silence.

DELETED CHRISTIAN MACKELTAR SCENE FROM FEVERSONG

I stole a bit of Mac’s hair a while back and carry it in my wallet. Yes, Death carries a wallet. Funny the things you do to try to normalize yourself. It’s not as if anything in that wallet is worth a damn the way the world is now, but when I slip it into my jeans, I get a vague sensation of being Christian MacKeltar of the clan Keltar, who has a driver’s license and credit cards and a picture of my mother and one of me and my childhood sweetheart, Tara, building a fort down by the loch. I don’t carry Mac’s hair from sentimentality or interest in her but because with it I can sift to her location whenever, wherever, I feel like it, and keeping an eye on that woman is on my list of priorities.

I didn’t mention this to Barrons. He’s not the kind of man you tell you carry a lock of his woman’s hair, and there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that’s what she is.

Sifting to her location inside Malluce’s is simple. I touch her hair and let my mind go to that strange, cool place I now have that seems to connect to something deeper within the earth than I ever reached with my druid arts, draws upon it, becomes one with it, and I can suddenly step…sideways, in a way, because space and time no longer function the same for me once I’ve tapped into whatever it is I’m connected to now. One of these days I really want to be able to sit down and talk to a born-not-made Fae and pick its brain about what I can and can’t do. Maybe when this is all over and we get a sliver of peace.

She’s a fright, standing in the middle of an overblown, gothic nightmare of a room. Not because of what she looks like, but because I can feel some kind of dark wind inside her, and for a moment I wonder if Barrons lied to me. There’s Mac, then there’s a shadow within, crouching, so damned hungry, dark, velvety, and utterly seductive. I get a vague impression of enormous charm and charisma. Whatever lurks within her can be beguiling if it wishes. I expand my senses, trying to assess the emotional content of whatever it is, and get nothing.

Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. The thing that abides inside Barrons’s Rainbow Girl does not feel. At all. Not one ounce, not one flicker. I can’t penetrate past that. If I’d known earlier, when she approached me at the abbey, that she was inhabited by the Sinsar Dubh, I might have picked this up. But my expectations colored what I’d perceived. When you don’t expect a monster, it’s hard to see one. When you know it’s there, it becomes so visible you wonder how the bloody hell you ever missed it.

“Christian!” she exclaims, then explodes in a staccato-fast rush: “What are you doing here? Where is Barrons? Is he okay? Did I hurt anyone? What about my parents? Is Jada wearing the cuff? She has to wear the cuff! The ZEWs will get her again otherwise. She’s okay, right? I didn’t hurt her? Did I kill anyone? Who did I kill?”

I narrow my eyes, assaulted by a veritable barrage of emotion. Genuine, unless the Sinsar Dubh can fake it to perfection. I relax only slightly, unwilling to make mistakes. I proceed with extreme caution. Not getting one inch closer yet.

“Jada is fine, she’s wearing the cuff, and no, Mac, you didn’t hurt anyone. You just bloody cocooned us all.”

“But I had blood and black feathers and—”

“Tell me you’re not currently the Sinsar Dubh,” I cut her off impatiently. This is the only other test I can perform. And it may or may not be valid, depending on the power of the malevolent Book.

She stops abruptly, blinks then says, “I’m not currently the Sinsar Dubh. I think it fell asleep but you have to contain me with the stones. Now, Christian, while it’s not aware. Sift me to wherever the stones are and lock my ass down. Do it!”

It’s my turn to blink. Okay, either the Sinsar Dubh is playing a deep game because it wants the stones or it’s really Mac and she’s finally wised up.

She locks eyes with me. Tiny little dots of crimson appear in the corners then vanish. “I know I killed,” she says in a low voice. “And I get that you don’t want to tell me. I scrubbed before you came. I know what I must have done to end up that way. Please, Christian, you have to neutralize me.”

“It’s what I came for, lass.” I extend my hand. When she rushes toward me, I flinch, because I also feel a dark wind rushing at me, a chilling, icy, voracious dark wind that then slices into me even more savagely than the biting wind in the Unseelie prison, chilling my already too cool heart. But she takes my hand and hers is warm, and she doesn’t slap any runes on me so I focus on Chester’s and blink us off into that strangely malleable liminal place the Fae can access and we’re gone.

* * *

π

When we reappear in Ryodan’s office, she says nothing at first, just stands and spins, her face lighting up as she observes Barrons, Jada, and Fade. She exhales gustily and seems to relax, like she’s taking her first deep breath in a long time.

Then she locks gazes with Barrons and says nothing for several long moments, and I somehow know they’re having an entire conversation without speaking.

Christ. The emotion I see, hell, can almost feel in the molecules of air between them—it convinces me like nothing else could that this is really Mac. I observe Barrons curiously. Does he feel? Is he capable of it? I can’t get a solid read on him but the abyss that I felt within him previously is abruptly no longer empty.

She fills it somehow. And in the filling, redefines it. And him.

Her face changes then, and she scowls. “I said, who did I kill, Barrons? Don’t lie to me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“Every life matters.”

“You killed only Unseelie and a single sidhe-seer.”

“Who?” she snaps.

Barrons shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Describe her,” Jada demands.

When he does, Jada murmurs, “Margery,” to Mac.

Mac drops her head and deflates.

Barrons moves toward her and she stiffens and draws back. “Don’t touch me. You have to contain me with the stones. I think it’s asleep but I suspect it won’t be long and I have no idea what will happen then.”

“Mac,” he says softly, “I need to touch you so I can get inside—”

“No!” she snaps. “Lock me down first, then touch me if you want to.”

“I might not be able to reach you then,” he snaps back.

“You’re going to have to risk it. I know what the thing is capable of. I feel it inside me. Not right now, but I felt it when it took me. It’s…amused by suffering. It feeds on it, thrives on it, draws energy from it. It’s beyond sadistic and sick but it’s floundering right now. It’s not at its strongest. But it will be soon.” Her head whipped to Jada. “The cuff is what was keeping the ZEWs from being able to find you. Never take it off. I don’t know what the Book did to the Sweeper. It could be out there still.”