actually touch the Unseelie, and vice versa? I read on.
Tho sworde doth felle thym bothe, yea een Mastr and Myst! Ay t’hae the blade n ende m’suffrin!
The sword killed both Unseelie and Seelie, up to the highest royalty. I knew that, too. So did the spear.
Sae maye ye trye an ken thym! That The Lyte maye nae tych The Beest, nr The Darke the sworde, nr The Lyte the amlyt, nr the Darke the spyr.
So may you try and know them, I scribbled my translation. The Light (Seelie) may not touch the Beast (Book?) and the Dark (Unseelie) may not touch the sword. “I get it!” I exclaimed. This was important stuff! The Seelie can’t touch the amulet, I wrote, and the Unseelie can’t touch the spear.
What it was saying was that the Seelie couldn’t touch the Unseelie Hallows and Unseelie couldn’t touch the Seelie Hallows—and that was how you could tell them apart!
I’d just found the perfect way to lay my questions to rest about whether or not Barrons might be a Gripper! If he was, he couldn’t touch the spear.
I lay my pen aside, thinking back. Had I ever seen him touch it? Yes! The night he’d stabbed the Gray Man, while I’d hung, suspended by my hair.
I narrowed my eyes. Actually, I hadn’t seen him touch it that night. When he’d returned it to me, the hilt was still stuck in my purse, with the spear protruding from it. He’d handled it through the fabric. And although he’d said he was going to wear it to the auction, strapped to his leg, I’d never pulled up his pants leg and gone looking for it. For all I knew, he might have left it laying on the desk, right where I’d placed it for him, and where I’d later reclaimed it.
Okay, but the night we’d stolen the spear, surely he’d touched it at some point, hadn’t he? I closed my eyes, replaying the memory. We’d gone underground and broken into the Irish mobster Rocky O’Bannion’s treasure chamber. Barrons had made me pluck it from the wall, and carry it to the car. He’d instructed me to break the rotting shaft from the spearhead. I’d been carrying it ever since.
I opened my eyes. Clever, clever man.
I had to put him in a position where he had no choice but to hold the spear. To take it. Touch it. I would settle for no less than skin on steel. If he were a Gripper—or an Unseelie of any kind—he wouldn’t be able to do it. It was that simple.
So how was I going to trick him into taking it?
These pages had been worth Dani’s efforts for this tidbit alone. I was glad the book on V’lane had been gone, and this had been there in its place.
I resumed reading. It was slow going but fascinating.
The author of the pocket notebook was no sidhe-seer. Its scribe was a man, or rather a young boy, who’d been so beautiful he was mocked by the warriors of his time, though loved by the lasses who’d taught him his letters.
At ten and three, he’d had the misfortune of capturing the eye of a Faery princess, while taking a shortcut through a dark and tangled wood.
She’d charmed and seduced him off to Faery, where she’d swiftly transformed into something cold and frightening. She’d kept him locked in a golden cage at court, where he’d been forced to watch the Fae play with their human “pets.” Among their games, their favorite was turning mortals Pri-ya: into creatures who begged for the touch of a Fae, any Fae—in fact, for the touch of anything at all, for the “vilest of things to be done to them, and to do foul things to each other,” according to the young scribe. These creatures had no will, no mind, no awareness of anything but sexual need. They knew neither morality nor mercy, and were as likely to turn on one another as rabid animals. The boy had found them terrifying and feared being given to what had become of his human companions. He had no way of tracking time but he watched hundreds come and go, and began a growth of manly hair, which was when the princess began once more to look his way.
When the Fae were no longer amused with their pets they cast them from Faery to die. In this manner, the letter of the Compact wasn’t violated. They didn’t actually kill the humans they captured. They