I felt your grief and rage and came. And yes, Severina will try to destroy you. But you’re wrong as well. I will not. The queen will do the same to my court that she’s done to yours. We will stand together. You have the human. The queen will bring the Elixir in exchange.

  Why would I trust you?

  I just healed you. Thawed you with my heat.

  No, you didn’t. I did it myself.

  Ix, you couldn’t summon heat if your existence depended on it. As you just proved.

  Never call me that.

  But he was right and she knew it. It wasn’t her. She was far too cold and had been for too long. She would have exploded if Azar hadn’t sensed her pain and come. But why save her? It was the way of rulers, of all the Fae, to turn on those weaker and destroy them. She was indisputably weaker.

  Princess of none.

  For now, be consort of Autumn. I will leverage my court’s power behind you. We’ll take back the Elixir and restore both our kingdoms.

  Ixcythe searched the banked embers of his gaze. Why would you do that?

  Once, he said slowly, we were lovers.

  She flinched. She recalled that time, had been astonished and horrified to discover it nestled within her memories. She also recalled the many times Severina had tortured her, when Ixcythe’s power was diminished by the queen’s punishment. Memories, begone, she wanted to scream.

  She remembered, too, what happened at the end.

  Ice was indomitable. Ice was peace.

  Once, I meant the compliments I paid you. Once, Azar said heavily, I loved you.

  Ixcythe jerked as his words knifed through her breast. She despised emotions and everything they did to her. They made her weak, vulnerable, foolish, and always ended in betrayal.

  You remember. Say it, Ixcythe.

  Never. She’d blow herself up before admitting that, once, she’d loved him, too.

  Love was the greatest weakness of all.

  I don’t need you, she snarled.

  You have no one, Ix.

  I have the human. And if you try to take it or my castle, I’ll destroy you. You’ve never been a match for me.

  Azar sighed, gusting another warm breeze around her, one that lingered caressingly on her icy curves. I’ll be at the Grove when you come to your senses. We will summon the imposter queen together.

  He vanished.

  20

  Hail, Hail, the gang’s all here

  MAC

  939 Rêvemal Street.

  The irony isn’t lost on me. In French, rêve means “dream” and mal means “bad.” How it must have amused Ryodan, eons ago, to set up base camp on a street called Nightmare. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’d hoisted the original sign himself.

  Ryodan did more than rebuild Chester’s aboveground. The underneath was treated to a face-lift, as well. The entrance to the subterranean club no longer lies beneath two heavy trapdoors and down two awkward-to-navigate ladders. Now an elegant (albeit cobweb-dusted with more of those sticky webs that seem to be on everything lately) ivory staircase descends to a luxurious modern foyer, tastefully appointed with ivory and charcoal furnishings. A black marble floor, so highly polished it serves as an obsidian mirror, leads to black matte doors embellished with panels of wrought iron twisted into complex designs that open to reveal dozens of unique sub-clubs below.

  The past washes over me in waves as I stand in the inner foyer and stare past the balustrade at surprisingly busy clubs (although it should no longer surprise me; the party not only continues rocking at Chester’s through the worst of times but rocks even harder then). I remember when I first discovered the club, back when I was too naïve to understand the necessity of keeping your friends close, your enemies closer.

  Over there, I chatted with the bartending Dreamy-Eyed Guy while the Fear Dorcha lurked menacingly on a stool next to me; there, down to the left, I stood behind a bar myself and mixed drinks during a time of crushing indecision; and there, high above, I shattered the glass floor of Ryodan’s office, while under the control of the Sinsar Dubh.

  Despite having some of the worst times of my life inside these walls, Chester’s is part of me. My home has become an amalgamation of many places: Barrons Books & Baubles is my bedroom, Chester’s is my living room, my parents’ townhome in Dublin is my kitchen, a water tower that overlooks the city, with Dani at my side, is my favorite coffee shop. Arlington Abbey is my library. And somewhere, a few miles to the south of Nana O’Reilly’s cottage by the sea, the grave of one of my ancestors, Patrona O’Connor, is my chapel. I’d like to light a candle there and say a prayer one day. Hopefully, by the time I do, I won’t have betrayed my entire bloodline.

  Barrons and I hurry through packed dance floors and bars, up the wide glass-and-chrome stairs that lead to Ryodan’s office.

  “You didn’t sift?” Ryodan growls the moment the door hisses open. He’s seated at his desk in the dimly lit office, a study in shadows. Lor stands behind him, arms folded. Christian is to his left, an enormous, dark, winged silhouette against the backlit glass wall. “You sifted to see your father, but now you fucking take your time. Dani is missing.”

  “So is my father,” I growl back. “And they were both in your care, under your watch, with your wards for protection.”

  We stand glowering at each other a moment, then Ryodan smiles faintly. “Good to see you again, Mac.”

  I return the smile. “You, too.” I incline my head at Lor, uncertain of my reception. The last time I saw him, I used the queen’s power to manifest a machine gun and killed him.

  “Mac.”

  “We good?”

  He flashes me a grin that doesn’t meet his eyes. “Got serious doubts about you. Babes never get enough of me.”

  “I mean after—”

  “Yeah,” he cuts me off tightly. “We’re good.”

  The ghost of Jo stands between us. He gives me a long look and speaks inside my mind in the way the Nine have. You didn’t say you were sorry.

  And you didn’t say you forgive me, I reply.

  But he knows I am.

  And I know he will.

  To Christian, I say, “You’re wearing prince again.”

  “Anger makes it more difficult to maintain my Highlander form. They took Dani. I may be stuck as prince for a while.”

  “It appears the Fae regained their memories.” Barrons eschews niceties and gets straight to the point. “That’s why they were able to sift past your wards,” he says to Ryodan. “Powers that were forgotten long ago have been rediscovered. This isn’t the playing field we’ve known for millennia. We’ve no idea what they’re capable of.”

  Not entirely true, I think. One court isn’t capable of anything any more. I saw to that.

  Ryodan says, “Are you certain?”

  “As certain as I can be without direct confirmation from a Fae.”

  Which, for Barrons, was 99.9 percent certain, and I agreed. It was the theory that best explained the anomalies we’d encountered.

  “How much memory, how far back?”

  Barrons replies grimly, “Quite possibly, all the way.”

  Christian unleashes a string of curses. I feel the same. We always had an advantage: Barrons and Ryodan could hold all the Fae at bay with their dark magic. Now we’re sitting ducks, and the Seelie can find us anytime, anyplace they want.

  “Why take Dani and Jack? What are they after?” Christian says.

  “My mother, too,” I add tightly.

  “Your mother is fine,” Ryodan says. “At least, last time I checked on her.”

  “What?” I say blankly.

  “She wasn’t abducted. She drove into one of those drifting pieces of Faery that are difficult to see.”

  “IFPs. Interdimensional Faery potholes,” I murmur. While the Song of Making eradicated the black holes and healed the Earth, it didn’t do anything about the places where Faery and the mortal realm crashed into each other on Halloween, creating distorted pockets of reality that are nearly impossible to spot. Once I figured out how to use the Song to sing the walls back up, and separate realms again, the IFPs would presumably disappear.

  Lor says. “She got turned around and couldn’t find her way out. Took her two days to get back.”

  “Two days?” I was aghast at the thought of my mother being lost alone in Faery for so long, but I also knew, depending on what fragment she’d gotten lost in, she was lucky she survived at all. There were fire cyclones, ice tornados, slices of underwater worlds. Relief floods me. Mom is okay—the Seelie don’t have her. “I thought you’d tethered them all.” The Nine had used their arts to bind the IFPs into permanent positions, and the sidhe-seers had passed out maps (I’d snagged one for each of my parents) letting people know where they were and how to avoid them.

  “It was a drifter. We think the old gods are cutting them loose again. Doing something that makes them faster, trickier to dodge,” Ryodan says.

  “Why would they?” Christian says.

  Ryodan shrugs. “Add to the chaos.”

  “Where is Mom now? Here?” My voice rises and my hands ball into fists. “Tell me she’s not here. Clearly, you can’t protect anyone here.”

  “Careful,” Ryodan says softly. “I gave Christian the fight he wanted for those words. Happy to give you the same.”

  “You wanted it, too,” Christian growls. “I merely accommodated.”

  “You won’t touch a hair on her head,” Barrons says just as softly.

  “Rainey’s not at Chester’s,” Ryodan tells me. “I don’t know where she is at the moment and prefer to keep it that way. Fade, Kasteo, and Daku are guarding her. They won’t leave her side. They won’t rest. They won’t eat. They’ll keep her safe.”

  I blink. My mother is with three of the Nine. That’s got to be as weird for her as her being stuck in an IFP.

  “She’s probably cooking for them, the lucky fucks,” Lor grouses. “Woman makes hoecakes like no other.”

  “You can’t possibly be talking about food at a time like this,” I say.

  Lor shrugs. “Man’s gotta eat.”

  “I know what men like you eat, and it isn’t hoecakes.”

  “Nobody’s calling you on the carpet for your eating habits, honey. Get all of Jo outta your teeth?”

  “Need I remind you of another time, another place, Bonecrusher?” Barrons murmurs with silken menace.

  “Dani,” Ryodan says flatly, “Is. Missing.”

  “So,” I say just as flatly, “Is. My. Father. Can’t Dani use your version of IYD? The spell will take you to wherever she is, even in Faery.” It would, unfortunately, also put Barrons out of commission, as he’s linked to that spell and would be drafted to the same location so he could kill Ryodan and get Dani out.

  “She was taken nude from our bed. No sword, no cellphone. The tattoo vanishes when she shifts. I’ve stopped putting it on her.”

  Shit.

  After a moment of silence, Christian says, “Your time in Faery was four days mortal-time. Notice anything strange when you walked into Chester’s?”

  “Yes. There’s not a single Fae in here,” I say. “Wait,” I add, frowning. “We were only gone four days?” I glance at Barrons. “Shouldn’t more time have passed, considering how long we were in Faery?” An afternoon once cost me a month.

  Christian says, “I’ve been hearing rumors for the past few years that ever since you sang the Song of Making, the passage of time in Faery began to change, slowly at first, then escalating. It would seem the ancient melody deemed the temporal disparity between our realms, with no walls to divide them, a flaw and has been correcting it, bringing both realms into alignment.”

  Fascinating. And good. I wholeheartedly agreed with the Song’s assessment.

  “There’s not a single Fae left in Dublin,” Ryodan continues. “According to my sources, there’s not a Fae left anywhere in the mortal realm, and that disturbs me. They live to prey on humans. Yet every bloody one of them is gone.”

  “Which can only mean one thing. They’re preparing for war,” Christian says.

  I say, “The Winter Court was already at war. With itself.” Quickly, I detail what Barrons and I discovered in the icy kingdom, omitting the action I took once Christian’s missive arrived.

  “One more reason you think they got their memories back,” Ryodan says. “I’m inclined to agree.”

  “Let me make sure I got this straight,” Lor says, grinning. “The Song restores their powers and memory and what do they do—go to war with each other over ancient feuds. Man, gotta love this shit.”

  “It’s possible the princess was on the battlefield, unrecognizable,” Barrons says.

  I shake my head. “She turned day to night.”

  “That wasn’t you?”

  “No. She was in the castle. I could feel her. Somehow, she’s not as afflicted as the rest of the Fae.”

  “Royalty are the oldest, with the longest memories, but they’re also the strongest, more capable of controlling their lust for vengeance over ancient slights,” Barrons says.

  She’d better be able to control it, I think darkly. If she hurts my family…

  “I’m royalty,” Christian says. “And I’m not afflicted.”

  “You’re young. You’ve never dumped memory,” Barrons says.

  “Besides, you’re not Seelie. You’re the last living Un,” I say.

  “I prefer to think of myself as a singularity, neither court,” Christian says. “It’s reasonable to conclude the same thing that’s happening in the Winter kingdom is happening everywhere in Faery. They’re all missing because they’re too busy trying to kill each other.” He laughs. “Lor’s right. How bloody perfect is this? Christ, I’d’ve ordered an internal war up myself if I’d thought it was possible.”

  “It’s not funny,” I say. “You didn’t see what they’re doing to each other. It’s horrific.”

  “If it keeps ’em the fuck outta our hair, honey, who gives a shit?” Lor says. “Besides, if it’s true, that leaves you only a handful of royalty to bring to heel.”

  “Or push over the edge and get them to try to kill each other, too.” Christian laughs again. “Mac, it’s perfect. Problem solved. Let them keep fighting each other while you figure out how to use the Song and seal them away forever.”

  “Rabid and insane, just like the Unseelie?” I demand. “I’m trying not to repeat the mistakes that were made in the past.”

  “Are you saying you think the Unseelie shouldn’t have been sealed away?” Christian says. “They killed billions of humans the night they broke free.”

  I sigh. “If they’d never been imprisoned to begin with, they might have had a chance. The odds were against them from the beginning. Mistakes were made from the moment the king created them.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending the Unseelie,” Christian says.

  “Not defending. Just saying there is no black or white in this world. Everything, and each of us, is shades of gray. And you are Unseelie.”

  “Leavened by my humanity. Majorly, hugely leavened. Gray listing fiercely toward white.”

  “This isn’t about the Unseelie.” I try to steer the conversation back on track. “They’re gone. It’s about the Seelie—”

  “Who turned on each other over ancient grudges. Fucking idiots. Let them war. Move on,” Lor growls.

  “I’m ready to discuss the terms of my freedom.” Naked not-Mac manifests in the middle of the office, nude and beaming.

  For a moment, none of us moves then, “What the fuck?” Lor explodes. “You got a doppelgänger, Mac.”

  “It’s Fae,” Ryodan growls. “Another bloody fucking Fae sifted past my bloody fucking wards. What the bloody fuck.”

  “Christian, get her out of here,” I snap. “This isn’t the time or place.”

  “I didn’t bring her here.” To the librarian, he says, “You choose now to appear? It’s been days since you drifted into that bottle. I haven’t heard a peep from you since.”

  “I was mulling my options.”

  “Well, go mull some more.”

  “I’ve quite finished.”

  “How did you even find me here?”

  “I imprinted on you,” naked not-Mac says. “I can find you anywhere.”

  “That’s disturbing as hell,” Christian growls.

  “I’m ready to be free,” she says brightly. “Let’s discuss.”

  “Who the bloody hell is she, why does she look like Mac, and why the fuck is she naked?” Barrons says in a dangerously soft voice.

  “She’s the librarian of the Unseelie king’s library,” I tell him hastily. “I forgot to tell you about her.” To Lor I say, “Stop staring at her like that. Christian, dress her. And tell her to keep her clothes on.”

  Abruptly, the librarian is clothed in a simple, short shift that’s nearly translucent.

  “I apologize,” the librarian says. “It’s difficult for me to get used to draping things about myself. I’ll try to remember.” Her face clouds, and she says fervently to Christian, “I will remember, from now on, I promise.”

  “You will return to your bottle,” Christian growls.

  The librarian blanches. “You said I could be free.”

  “You told her that?” I exclaim disbelievingly. “Are you crazy? I told you to cork her.”

  “It’s complicated. She came to my bed, and, well…it’s a long story.”

  “It’s not that long,” the librarian says with a roll of her eyes. “Certainly not what I expected. Lasted all of two minutes.”

  “You had a Mac-facsimile in your bed,” Barrons says with silken menace. “You fucked her.”