“No!” Christian roars. “As if I would,” he adds defensively.

  “You wanted to,” the librarian says. “You only got funny about it because I look like her.” She glances at me. “He was extremely hard.” She glances past me at Barrons. “Oh, my goodness,” she murmurs. “Aren’t you quite the…whatever you are. Gracious.”

  “More than I wanted to know,” I murmur. But I do know, I saw him that way once, myself, in the Unseelie king’s stadium-size bed. I disregard her comment about Barrons and the way she’s looking at him. It’s justified.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Lor says. “Why does it look like Mac?”

  The librarian bristles. “I’m not an ‘it.’ I have a name. Lyryka. And I look like Mac because Death hates it when I look like the one called Dani.” She gathers steam as she goes, growing even surlier. “And since Death is my new master, I have to obey him, because apparently I’m always going to have a master. I have no idea why I’m always going to be imprisoned, enslaved, and bullied when clearly no one else is, but there you have it, the sorry state of my existence.”

  “She looks like Dani sometimes,” Ryodan repeats icily. “Naked. She was in your bed, too.” He turns a gaze sharp as knives on Christian.

  “No, she bloody well wasn’t. And it’s not my fault,” Christian thunders. “I broke a bottle. Breakage of a bottle does not equate liability for leakage. I can’t be expected to control the contents of every damned bottle in the world.”

  “Didn’t you break the Crimson Hag’s bottle, too? Bitch killed Barrons and Ryodan,” Lor reminds.

  “That was Dani,” Christian says irritably, “and she didn’t break it, she uncorked it.”

  “I had that one perfectly well labeled,” the librarian says disbelievingly. “Why would you open it? What is wrong with you people? Can’t you read?”

  Christian bristles. “Dani opened it before I even saw it. Besides, who the hell puts the labels on the bottom? They belong on the side.”

  “They obscure my view on the side. Besides, you can’t even remember which bottles you put your beer in,” the librarian says irritably. “I thought Death was supposed to be brilliant. To what further indignities must I submit in order to remain free?”

  Lor begins to laugh.

  The librarian turns to study him a moment then says, “Death won’t give me sex. Perhaps you will?”

  Lor stops laughing instantly. “Been with one of you crazy Fae fucks. Ain’t never gonna happen, babe.”

  The librarian sniffs and turns back to Christian.

  I decide I must be losing my mind, because it actually offends me that Lor rejected the librarian. There’s the whole lumping of all people into a rejected category because of a single unsavory experience that is completely unfair.

  I drift inward, opening my senses, probing delicately at Lyryka. What is she? Where did she come from? Why is she currently reasonably sane, when the rest of the Fae aren’t? “You’ve never drunk from the Cauldron, have you?”

  She whirls on me. “Stop that!”

  Interesting. She feels me poking about her edges, trying to ferret out her secrets. For all her externally imposed constraints, she’s powerful. I wonder if she was bottled for that very reason.

  I keep prodding lightly at her essence. Inexplicably, Cruce pops into my mind. Perhaps because I’m currently wishing he were alive so he could either take over the Fae or teach me the things I don’t know.

  Her eyes widen; she looks stunned and blurts, “You know my father?” Then she claps a hand over her mouth, looking astonished and horrified.

  I narrow my eyes. “Cruce was your father?”

  She’s quiet a long moment, eyes narrowed, as if thinking furiously, expression morphing from fear to anger and back again. Finally she shakes her head vigorously, as if completing an argument with herself and says, “So he says.”

  “Says,” Barrons says pointedly.

  Present tense. Not past. “Did he—does he let you out?” I press.

  She lapses into frowning silence again then says, “I’m forbidden to speak of him.”

  “You just did.”

  “You startled me and I blurted. An image formed in your mind while you were prodding at mine.”

  She gleaned an image from the High Queen’s mind. Barrons cuts me a warning look. Get your mental barriers up, he growls silently. Now.

  I fortify my mind against her. “When did you last see him?” I ask.

  “It’s forb—”

  “Answer the queen’s question and I won’t put you back in the bottle,” Christian cuts her off.

  She’s quiet, glancing at each of us, then counters warily, “For how long?”

  “Each day you obey me, I’ll grant you one more day,” Christian says.

  She stares into the distance a long moment before murmuring, “My father will do worse things to me than you, if I disobey him. If he learns that I told you he sired me…” She trails off, swallowing audibly. “You must never tell him.”

  I don’t need Christian’s lie-detecting skills to confirm she’s afraid of Cruce, whether he’s her father or not. I cut Christian a hard stare, and he interprets it correctly.

  “I’ll stand between you and Cruce if he tries to harm you.”

  The librarian’s gaze flies back to him, eyes wide, and her face lights up like a small sun. “You would protect me? Not let him punish me?”

  I give Christian another pointed look.

  He sighs heavily and says, “To the best of my ability, yes—”

  “Your ability is everything!” the librarian exclaims.

  “—I will keep you safe and let no man—”

  “Or woman or being of any kind,” she clarifies hastily.

  “—punish you. I won’t allow anyone or thing to harm you. However, if you betray me or any of my friends, I’ll harm you myself.”

  “That was a formal vow,” the librarian says, looking awed. “Exchanged between royals.”

  Christian sighs again. “Aye, I ken it.”

  “That means you’re my protector now. Bound to that oath.”

  His gusty sigh ruffles my hair, and he cuts me a glare. “Aye. I ken it, bloody hell.”

  Lyryka turns back to me and says in hushed tones as if she fears even speaking the words aloud, “I saw my father earlier today.”

  “Truth?” I ask Christian.

  He nods.

  To be absolutely certain we’re on the same page, same paragraph, and same bloody word, I say, “You saw Cruce today. In the very much alive flesh.”

  Peevish again, which I’m beginning to think is Lyryka’s natural state, she snaps, “Which word didn’t you understand?”

  “Spell it out for me,” I command coolly.

  Rolling her eyes, she says, “I saw Cruce today. In the very much alive flesh.”

  PART II

  Rarely do we achieve the exquisite clarity of recognizing, with our intellect, a moment in time as pivotal; a moment upon which we can reflect, from a distant point in the future, and say: if not A, then not B.

  Such as, if my car hadn’t broken down that night, I would never have met my husband, subsequently our three children would not have been born. Or if I’d not failed the bar exam, I’d never have chased my dream of becoming a concert pianist. Or if I hadn’t decided I couldn’t possibly go to sleep without ice cream, as PMS as I was, and dashed out to the convenience store late at night, I wouldn’t have gotten mugged and knifed and left with PTSD.

  Those kinds of moments.

  I think we feel them in our bones as they present themselves.

  It might be a sudden chill at the nape of your neck, or an unexpected internal shift of pressure inside your skull, accompanied by a brief light-headedness; perhaps it’s merely a puzzling sense of foreboding and dread.

  I think so much more goes on in our subconscious than we know but, because we’re driven by a desperate need to perceive life as manageable, rational, and within our control, we reject those inexplicable warnings that root our feet to the ground (for no reason our brain can discern—and doesn’t the brain always win that argument) and make us deeply uneasy about whatever we’re going to do next.

  You must listen for those moments.

  You must pay close attention.

  If an elevator door slides open and you get a sudden, mystifying chill as you gaze in at a “perfectly normal” man, don’t board. Don’t let good manners subdue the atavistic wisdom of your beast. Walk away. Take the stairs. Surround yourself with other people as quickly as you can.

  Run when your blood tells you to run.

  From the Journals of MacKayla Lane-O’Connor

  High Queen of the Fae

  BLOODDREAM

  Time after time

  It’s the fog that gets me lost.

  The fog in Dublin is unlike any I’ve ever encountered. It seems almost sentient, as if intentionally seeking out the darkest, most unnerving corners to infiltrate and obscure, and has a way of transforming even the most familiar landscape into something ominous and sinister.

  Distracted by inner turmoil, one moment I think I’m headed straight for the Clarin House, plowing blindly down block after block, the next I’m in a dwindling crowd on a street in an unrecognizable part of town. Good grief, I’ve been in Dublin less than twenty-four hours, and already I’m lost.

  Abruptly, I’m one of only three people on an unnaturally quiet, fog-obscured lane that affords only intermittent glimpses of my surroundings. Mist encases me, wisping in tendrils, gusting in thick banks, swirls about my ankles, and clings damply to my face.

  I have no idea how far I’ve walked. By now, I might be miles from my lodgings.

  Vowing to never go blasting blindly down unknown streets again, I make the quick decision to follow one of the other pedestrians; surely they’ll lead me back to the Temple Bar District.

  Buttoning my jacket against a light drizzle, I pick the nearer of the two, a fiftyish woman in a beige raincoat and a blue plaid scarf. I move in close, worried I’ll lose her.

  Two blocks later, she’s clutching her purse to her side and darting nervous glances over her shoulder. It takes me a few minutes to figure out what she’s frightened of: me.

  Belatedly I recall what I read in my guidebook about crime in the inner city on my flight from Georgia to Dublin, two days ago. Innocent-looking youths of both genders are responsible for much of it.

  I try to reassure her. “I’m lost,” I call. “I’m trying to get back to my hotel. Please, can you help me?”

  “Stop following me. Stay away,” she cries, quickening her pace, coattails flapping.

  “All right, I’m staying.” I stop where I stand. The last thing I want to do is chase her off; the other pedestrian is gone, so I need her. The fog is growing denser and more menacing by the second, and I’m in an unknown country with no idea how to find my way back to the only place with which I’m familiar. “I’m sorry I scared you. Can you just point me toward the Temple Bar District? I’m looking for the Clarin House. Please, I’m an American tourist, I just arrived in Ireland yesterday, and I’m quite lost,” I say, with growing desperation.

  Without turning or slowing in the least, she flings an arm in a general leftward direction then disappears around the corner, leaving me alone in the fog.

  I sigh. Left it is.

  Taking stock of my surroundings as I go, I step up my pace a bit. I’m heading deeper into a dilapidated, industrial part of town. Storefronts with the occasional apartment above give way to run-down warehouses on both sides of the street with busted-out windows and sagging doors. The sidewalk whittles to a narrow catwalk and is increasingly trash-littered with every step.

  I begin to feel strongly nauseated, I suppose from the stench of the sewers. There must be an old paper factory nearby; thick husks of porous yellowed parchment tumble and drift down the streets. Narrow, dingy alleyways are marked at entrances with peeling painted arrows, pointing to docks that look as if the last time they received a delivery was twenty years ago.

  Here, a crumbling smokestack looms, vanishing into the fog. There, a car sits empty with the driver’s door ajar. Outside the door is a pair of shoes and a pile of clothing, as if the driver got out, stripped, and just left it all right there to go for a walk through the neighborhood nude.

  Creepy.

  It’s eerily quiet. The only sounds are the muted muffle of my footsteps and the drip-drip of gutters emptying into drainpipes. The farther I walk into the decaying neighborhood, the more I want to run, or at least give way to a jog, but I worry if there are unsavory denizens of the human sort in the area, the rapid pounding of my heels against pavement might draw attention.

  I’m afraid this part of the city is so deserted because the businesses moved out when the gangs moved in. Who knows what lurks behind those broken windows? Who can say what crouches beyond that half-open door?

  The next ten minutes are some of the most harrowing of my life.

  I’m alone in a bad section of a foreign city with no idea whether I’m going the right way or headed for something worse.

  Twice I think I hear something rustling about in an alley as I pass. Twice I swallow panic and refuse to run.

  It’s impossible not to think of Alina, of the similar location in which her body was found, a dirty dead-end alley, dotted with murky puddles and piles of trash. My sister died in a heap of refuse. Left alone like a heap of unwanted rubbish. I can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong here, and it’s something far more wrong than mere abandonment and decay. This part of the city doesn’t just feel empty. It feels forsaken. As if I should have passed a sign ten blocks ago that says “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.”

  I’m growing increasingly nauseated, and my skin is starting to crawl. I hurry down block after block, in as straight a general leftward direction as the streets permit. Though it’s only suppertime, rain and fog have turned day to dusk, and the few streetlamps that aren’t broken begin to flicker and glow. Night is falling with alarming swiftness. In moments, it will be as dark as pitch in the long, shadowy stretches between the weak and infrequent pools of light.

  I begin to jog.

  On the verge of hysteria at the thought of being lost in this awful part of the city at night, I nearly sob with relief when I spy a brightly lit building a few blocks ahead, blazing like an oasis of light.

  I break into the run I was resisting.

  As I approach, I see all the windows are intact, and the tall brick building is impeccable, sporting a costly first-floor façade of dark cherry and brass. Large pillars frame an alcoved entrance inset with a handsome cherry door flanked by stained-glass sidelights and crowned by a matching transom. The tall windows down the side are encased by matching columns of lesser size and covered with elaborate wrought-iron latticework. A late-model sedan is parked out front beside an expensive motorcycle.

  Beyond it are storefronts with second-floor residences. There are people in the streets.

  Perfectly normal-looking shoppers and diners and pub-goers.

  Just like that, I’m in a decent part of the city again. Thank God, I think.

  Barrons books & baubles proclaims the gaily-painted shingle that hangs perpendicular to the building, suspended over the sidewalk by an elaborate brass pole bolted into the brick above the door. A sign in the old-fashioned, green-tinted windows announces open. It couldn’t look more like the perfect place to call a taxi if it sported a sign that said “Welcome Lost Tourists/Call Your Taxis Here.”

  A deep, velvety baritone floats from the night while I’m still about twenty yards from the sanctuary of the bookstore. “MacKayla.”

  I skid to a halt, mystified. How could anyone in Dublin know my name? I’ve been in Ireland all of one day. The voice came from a shadowy alley to my left. A chill kisses my nape and my heart pounds and I suffer an intensely disconcerting déjà vu. Although I know I haven’t—I’ve never even left the States—I feel I’ve been right here before, in this precise spot, at this precise moment, and something stupendously life-changing is about to happen. The moment reeks of kairos, a Greek word that means “the opportune moment, a pivotal time, the necessary instant”; a sliver of chronos, the Greek word for time, when great things might be accomplished.

  Great good or great evil.

  I stand, debating. Do I yield to curiosity, glance to my left, and investigate the mystery, or do I hurry toward the building that blazes bastion in the night and beckons me on a level I don’t understand?

  There’s a ponderous, palpable weight hanging about my neck, as if this tiny, seemingly inconsequential moment, this decision and how I make it, could define and redefine the rest of my life.

  It’s possible the man standing in the shadows knew my sister, and that’s how he knows my name—an irresistible temptation.

  “Do you wish to know of Alina?” he says.

  I gasp, and my heart begins to hammer. I turn to stare into the shadows but can make out only the vague silhouette of a tall man. Do I wish to know of Alina? I wish to know everything, and then I wish to kill her murderer with my bare hands! He destroyed my life, my parents’ lives, my entire world when he took Alina from me!

  A bell tinkles as the door of the bookstore opens, and my gaze flies back down the street.

  A tall, dark, powerfully built man steps out. I go unnaturally still as if every cell in my body just devoted one hundred percent attention to him, sapping all my energy, leaving nothing left for essential bodily function.

  The man to my left curses softly. “MacKayla, you must come with me now! Time is of the essence.”

  I can’t move. My feet are glued to the sidewalk.