Free Feverborn by Karen Marie Moning Page B

redecorate—and yes, I still love decorating, as a brilliant, half-mad king likes to say more often than I like to hear it: can’t eviscerate essential self—my eye was caught by the piece of paper I’d been stooping to collect outside the bookstore when I’d been shot. It had traipsed in stuck to someone’s boot, evidenced by a large red heel print and was stuck by yet more paint to the broken arm of the chesterfield.
    I reached over Barrons to snag it. Smoothed it out and turned it over.
    Between splatters of paint, my name screamed from the page.
    I began to read. Stopped. Cursed. Read and cursed some more.
 
    The Dublin Daily
     
    August 2 AWC
    EMERGENCY ALERT!
    BREAKING NEWS GOOD PEOPLE OF NEW DUBLIN!
    MACKAYLA LANE
    is under control of the deadly Book of black magic known as the
Sinsar Dubh
and is on a rampage in New Dublin! She’s been committing HORRIFIC MURDERS of INNOCENTSand will DESTROY OUR CITY if she isn’t KILLED immediately! Her latest victim was a good man who worked for the New Guardians in a tireless effort to PROTECT us! Mick O’Leary was ripped to pieces by the SAVAGE ANIMAL MACKAYLA LANE .
    See photo of Lane below! She usually has blond hair but may color it, don’t be deceived by one of her SLEAZY disguises!
    If you see her, DO NOT approach! She’s a KILLER, PSYCHOTIC, and EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!!!
    Notify WeCare with any news of her location!
    She used to reside at BARRONS BOOKS & BAUBLES but hasn’t been spotted there for some time.
    It’s rumored the Book can make her INVISIBLE, exponentially increasing the DANGER she presents!
    Help us PROTECT New Dublin!
    Join WeCare today!
     
    Sleazy. I scowled, offended. There was nothing sleazy about me. Well, recent activity aside and that wasn’t sleazy. That was freedom.
    I smiled grimly. “Jada” hadn’t needed to raise a finger against me. All she’d had to do was rat out my
Sinsar Dubh–
compromised state, my invisibility, and location to WeCareto place me squarely in the crosshairs of every vigilante, Fae, and nut job in Dublin. Thanks to Dani’s past papers, in which she’d kept the city informed of every detail of the threats she deemed important, including the
Sinsar Dubh
, the world was fully aware of the astronomical power it contained. Some would hunt me to kill me, others with the futile hope of controlling the iconic, deadly Book. Rather than telling WeCare I was the Book, she’d made them think I
had
a copy, which made hunting me all the more desirable for those who wanted to possess its power.
    I wasn’t psychotic and she knew it. I was holding my own pretty damned well. I’d only killed a single person. By accident. And I regretted the hell out of it. Would give a great deal to be able to undo it.
    I was fuming again, all that lovely hostility I’d managed to vent on Barrons’s body flooding right back into my veins like someone had turned on the mother lode of spigots inside me.
    This was bullshit. I’d been betrayed to the entire city and I was visible. There would be no more sneaking through the streets to get where I wanted to go. No more evading the searching ghouls in tonight’s sky. It struck me as incalculably odd they’d been hunting for me on the precise night I’d become visible again. Could they sense me so easily?
    Not that I wanted to be invisible again, I appended mentally, hastily. If the
Sinsar Dubh
was listening, and I was sure it was, I was not making wishes. No wishes. Not a single one. “You hear that?” I muttered. “This is me, Mac. Not wishing.”
    There was no answer but apparently we were on the outs, the Book and I. Or it was merely intensely occupied doing something nefarious, underhanded, and evil that was requiringall its attention, the results of which would soon bite me in the ass with vicious little teeth. I may as well enjoy the silence and lack of teeth in my ass. Occupy my time with something much nicer in it.
    I glanced hungrily at Barrons. Sex on an Unseelie-flesh high was