Chapter Twelve

TWELVE

Even Rowena will have to believe in you, then.’ Isn’t that what you said, Kat? I did what you asked. I got the Orb. And now you’re telling me the old woman still won’t let me into her libraries?” I was so furious I nearly slammed down the phone.

“She said you’ll be welcome once the Orb has served its purpose, and the walls are standing strong.” Kat had been apologizing for several minutes, but it had done nothing to defuse my temper.

“That’s bogus and you know it! What if the walls come down anyway? I can’t help it if whatever she plans to do doesn’t work! I kept my part of the bargain.”

On the other end of the phone line, Kat sighed. “She said I had no right to speak for her in the first place. And I’m sorry I did, Mac. I didn’t intend to mislead you, please believe that.”

“What else did she say?” I asked tightly.

She hesitated. “That we were to cease all contact with you until after Samhain, and if we didn’t, then we no longer had a home at the abbey. That we could live in Dublin with you. She means it, too.”

I had a momentary flash of Barrons Books and Baubles overrun by young sidhe-seers, and the look on the intensely private owner’s face. A fleeting smile touched my lips before anger erased it. “And what did you say?”

“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.