it.
“Brokke understood the darkness, Meryl. He told me he had been studying it for years. That’s why I’m down in the archives. If Brokke found answers, I can find them, too.”
“If he understood it, why didn’t he lift a finger to stop Vize? He knew Vize has the darkness in him, too,” she said.
“Just because he didn’t understand it doesn’t mean he was wrong. I can’t dismiss him. I might not agree with his methods and motives, but Brokke told me more about the dark mass than anyone else did,” I said.
“And you’re still no closer to the answer,” she said.
“So what am I supposed to do? Sit around with a dark mass and a stone in my head, and pretend they’re not there?”
“Not acting is just as much of a choice as acting,” she said. “Maybe you need to take a break. You’re stressed. You’re tired. You’re the target of every law-enforcement agency in the city. Maybe doing nothing for a while is what you need. The dark mass hasn’t killed you in over three years. The faith stone has been in there a few weeks. Enjoy not being dead for a while.”
“Maybe you’re right. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s doing nothing,” I said.
She leaned across the table and patted my hand. “Sounds like someone needs some self-esteem sex.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, and someone needs I’m-right-again sex.”
She grinned with basil in her teeth. “Are we the perfect couple or what?”
3
The next morning, Murdock and I waited inside the doors of the international terminal at Logan Airport as armed security positioned themselves nearby. The plane from Ireland had landed over an hour earlier, and its passengers had not been processed through customs yet. More guards filled the concourse, and the baggage area had been closed to the public. Only people on an approved list had been let inside, and we had been ID-checked several times. With the number of high-level Guild staff and important members of the Seelie Court aboard the plane, the government was not taking any chances.
Before he died, Donor Elfenkonig had been going to great pains to blame the solitary fairies under the leadership of Eorla Elvendottir for the attack on the Boston Guildhouse. He had come to Boston in disguise in order to discredit Eorla. It worked, to an extent, but Eorla was a member of the elven royal house, and many people made no distinction between her and her deceased cousin, the king. The general public didn’t know that Donor was dead.
High Queen Maeve fed the paranoia. Anything that made the elven fey look bad made her look good by comparison. The human government had been swayed by what they called credible threats against the Celts. If I knew the way Maeve operated, she had made the threats herself.
Murdock had taken to wearing a black tactical uniform when he was off duty. It intimidated the hell out of people, and they gave us a wide berth. He felt more like a bodyguard than a friend, but I wasn’t going to complain if it kept someone from taking a shot at me.
In the roped-off area near the gate, various fey waited for their loved ones and friends to arrive. Body signatures jostled for my attention. I tamped down my sensing ability to ease the noise. Since the faith stone had lodged itself in my head, the pain from the black mass had diminished. It still wanted essence, but with the stone helping out, I didn’t need to eat ibuprofen like candy anymore.
When I had lost my major abilities, my sensing ability had become more acute. At first, it was a confusing side effect, a curious piece of the puzzle of what had gone wrong with me. As the black mass had grown and changed inside me, the reason for the acute sensing became clear. The black mass wanted essence. That was how it worked. It absorbed essence from the world around it, around me, seeking out the most intense sources to drain. What had been a nice little investigative tool for me to use had become a means for the black mass to hunt.
The