Free Fever 3 - Faefever by Karen Marie Moning Page A

predatory amusement.
    I flipped to the cover. This photo had been taken forty-one years ago. I flipped back to the photo and studied it carefully, looking for anomalies. There were none. It was either Barrons, or he had a grandfather who’d been his identical twin, and if this was Barrons in the photo, he was currently seventy-one years old.
    Next, Christian passed me a photocopy of a newspaper article with a faded black-and-white photo of a group of uniformed men. Barrons was the only one not wearing a uniform. As was the case in the last two photos, he was angled slightly away, as if trying to slip off before the shot could be snapped. And, as was the case in the last two photos, he didn’t look a day older or younger than he did today.
    “Do you know who that is?” Christian pointed to the big, rawboned, thirtyish man in the center of the photograph.
    I shook my head.
    “Michael Collins. He was a famous Irish revolutionary leader.”
    “So?”
    “He was killed in 1922. This picture was taken two months before he died.”
    I did some rapid math. That would mean Barrons wasn’t seventy-one, he was an extremely well preserved one hundred and fifteen. “Maybe he had a relative,” I offered, “with a strong genetic resemblance.”
    “You don’t believe that,” he said flatly. “Why do people do that? Say things out loud they don’t even remotely believe?”
    He was right. I didn’t believe it. The pictures were too identical. I’d spent enough time with Jericho Barrons that I knew the way his limbs moved, the way he stood, the expressions he wore. It was him, in all those pictures. Inside, a part of me went very still.
    Barrons was old. Impossibly old. Being kept alive by Gripper possession? Was that possible? “Are there more of these?” I wondered how far back Christian’s uncles had traced him. I wanted to take these photographs with me, slap them against Barrons’ chest and demand answers, even though I knew I’d never get any.
    He glanced at his watch. “Yes, but I have to go.”
    “Let me hold on to these a few days.”
    “No way. My uncles would kill me if Barrons got his hands on them.”
    I relinquished them reluctantly. I could begin research of my own, now that I knew what to look for. I wasn’t sure I needed to. What difference if Barrons were a hundred, a thousand, or several thousand? The point was: He was inhuman. The question was: How bad was whatever he really was?
    “I’m leaving for Inverness tomorrow and won’t be back for a week. There are . . . things at home I need to take care of. Come and see me next Thursday. I believe you and I can help each other.” He paused then said, “I believe we may need to help each other, Mac. I think our purposes may be tied together.”
    I nodded as we walked out, although I had my doubts. I’d been turning into a real bottom-liner lately and, regardless of how much Christian might know, or his involvement in maintaining the walls between realms, or how much I might enjoy his company, the bottom line was he was a man who couldn’t see the Fae, and that meant, in a fight, he’d be a liability, one more person I’d have to worry about keeping alive, and lately, I was having a hard enough time keeping myself alive.
     
    I shouldered past tourists, wound my way between Rhino-boys and assorted Unseelie, and was a few blocks from the bookstore, passing one of the countless pubs that characterize Temple Bar, when I glanced in the window, and there she was.
    Alina.
    Sitting with a group of friends in a low-backed corner snug, tipping back a bottle of beer. Lowering it and laughing at something the guy next to her had just said.
    I closed my eyes. I knew what this was, and he needed to get some new tricks. I opened them and glanced down at myself. At least I wasn’t naked. “V’lane,” I said. Did I ever have a bone to pick with him!
    “MacKayla.”
    Ignoring the reflection of the tall, erotic golden creature behind my shoulder, I focused that