“I said I didn’t think we should have to choose, or shut out a sister sidhe-seer when times were as dangerous as these, and I didn’t understand why she despised you so much. And she said she can see moral decay as clearly as she can see the Fae, and you’re . . .”

“I’m what?”

Kat cleared her throat. “Rotten to the core.”

Unbelievable! My rate of moral decay was about as high as my tooth decay—I didn’t have a single cavity. The woman hated me. She’d disliked me since the first, and my visit with V’lane had only made things worse.

I eyed the Orb, resting on the counter in a box padded with bubble-wrap. I was glad I’d refused to turn it over until I’d secured an invitation to return to the abbey from the Grand Mistress herself. “Then she can’t have the Orb,” I said flatly.

“She said that was what you’d say, and that it proved her point. She said you’d choose your pride over saving our world from the Fae,” said Kat.

What a clever, manipulative old bat! She’d had decades to perfect her politics. Until a few months ago the only politics I’d ever worried about were the two waitresses who always pretended they’d had terrible nights so they wouldn’t have to tip me out, as if my flair for swift, exceptional drink-making had played no part in their financial success.

“I told her she was wrong. That you care about us, and about the world. She’s being unfair, Mac. We know that. But we . . . well, we still need the Orb. We may not be able to get you inside the abbey, but we’ll . . . uh . . .” her voice dropped to a near-whisper, “we’ll help you as much as we can. Dani said she thinks she can get more pages from the book. And we might be able to slip a few others out, if you tell us what you’re looking for.”

My hand curled and uncurled. The spear felt heavy in my harness. “I need to know everything there is to know about the Sinsar Dubh. How you guys got it in the first place, how you were keeping it contained and where. I want to know every rumor, legend, and myth that has ever been told about it.”

“Those books are in the forbidden libraries. Only the Haven has access!”

“Then you’ll have to figure out how to break in.”

“Why don’t you ask, er . . . you know . . . him . . . to sift you in?” Kat said.

“I don’t want to involve V’lane in this.” I’d considered that already, and the mere thought of him in the same room with all those books about his race made me cringe. Arrogance alone might make him destroy them. Humans have no right to know our ways, he would sneer.

“You don’t trust him?”

His name was bittersweet, invasive on my tongue. “He’s Fae, Kat! He’s the ultimate in self-serving. We may be after the same goal of keeping the walls up, but to him humans are just a means to an end. Besides, the entire abbey would know we were there, and I’d be looking for a needle in a haystack, without enough time and seven hundred sidhe-seers closing in.” It was a bad idea, all the way around. “Do you know who the members of the Haven are, and if any of them might be persuaded to help?”

“I doubt it. Rowena selects them, for their loyalty to her. It didn’t used to be that way. I heard we used to vote on the council members back in the day, but after we lost the Book, things changed.”

Talk about tyranny. I really wanted to know what had happened twenty years ago, how the Book had been lost, who was to blame. “I also need to know about the Haven’s prophecy, and the five.”

“I’ve never heard of either,” Kat said.

“See if you can dig up something. And anything about the four translation stones, too.” I had a lot of questions I needed answered. Not to mention all the ones about where I’d come from. But for now, those were going to have to wait.

“Will do. What about the Orb, Mac?”

I stared broodingly at it. If I toughed it out until Halloween, and refused to let Rowena have it, might she relent and share information with me? I doubted it, but even if she did, what would that accomplish? What good would information serve at such a late hour? As the old woman had said, time was of the essence. I needed information now.

If the walls crashed, would the LM send every Unseelie in existence out hunting for the Book? Would the streets of Dublin run so thick with dark Fae that no sidhe-seer would dare enter them, not even me?

We couldn’t let things get that far. The walls had to stay up.

Maybe having the Orb in advance would help Rowena perfect the ritual she planned to perform. Between the sidheseers, Barrons, and the MacKeltars, surely they could get the ritual right one more time, and buy me until next Halloween—an entire year—to figure things out. I swallowed my pride. Again. I was really beginning to resent the greater good.