Read Online Bailey Morgan [2] Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes - Free Book Online Page B

own—would come to me. Slowly, painstakingly, my fingers typed a single word.
    R-e-c-k-o-n-i-n-g.
    I hit enter, knowing as I did that there probably wasn't a website that explained an ancient Sidhe ceremony that took place in the world beyond the Nexus.
    The first thing that popped up in the search results was some movie I'd never heard of about a crime-solving priest. Then there were a couple of e-zines, a page about zombies, and finally, a simple definition. I clicked on that last one, and words soon filled my screen.
    Reckoning: noun.
    Counting or computing a specific sum.
    An itemized bill.
    A settlement of accounts, as in “a day of reckoning.”
    “Okay,” I said, as I processed this information and came to three very important conclusions: first, that there was a distinct chance that I'd be spending my first night in the world beyond doing the equivalent of Other worldly math homework; second, that the phrase “a day of reckoning” was distinctly creepy and made me think of cheery things like the end of the world and Judgment Day; and third, that there was a distinct chance that watching the movie with the crazy priestmight have been more helpful than what I was doing now.
    Since I didn't have a copy of the movie, I settled for moving on and trying again, this time with a different word, one that I didn't really expect to tell me anything more than
Reckoning
had.
    N-e-x-u-s.
    It was Annabelle's word. I'd spent months referring to the place I went each night to weave as “the place I go each night to weave,” but Annabelle had started calling it the Nexus, and the name stuck. I probably could have just asked her where she got the word and what exactly it meant, but for some reason, I wanted to see for myself.
    Nexus: noun.
    The connection between items in a series.
    A little more digging told me that it came from a Latin word meaning “to bind,” and with that single piece of information, I found myself flashing back to the first time I'd gone there, and the second, and the third. Everything I knew about that place and Sidhe history hurried busily to the forefront of my mind, each detail elbowing the others for room in my thoughts.
    Once upon a time, the two worlds—the one the Sidhe lived in and the human world—were just barely offset from each other in metaphysical space. Over time, the barrier between the two became harder and harder to cross, and the more complete the separation between the worlds became, the more the Sidhe began to fade away, their power weakened by their distance from our world.
    I tried to remember how the rest of the story went. I'd only heard it once, back when I'd first found out that the entities we were dealing with during our tattoo crusade were actually the mythological Fates. The specifics were a little fuzzy in my mind, but some details—like the fact that the barrier between the worlds had become harder to cross—were as solid and firm as they would have been if someone had spoken them to me just a moment before.
    “As their connection to the human world weakened, so did their powers,” I murmured, trying to remember if that was the exact phrasing the woman who'd told me this particular tale had used. “So they did something to make sure that they'd never lose that connection completely.” I paused and gave up on repeating the story word for word, settling for my own version of what had happened. “They built the Nexus— the realm in between two realms—and they sent three small Sidhe children there, to watch humans live and to become permanently connected to those lives in the most intimate way possible.”
    That was how Adea, Alecca, and Valgius had become the Fates. That was why, when I went to the Nexus each night, the Sidhe in me connected with the human souls in this world. Because in the Nexus, Adea, Valgius, and I were the connection between this world and the world of the Sidhe. The power inherent in human lives ran through us, and that made the rest of the