The other man stops on the sidewalk, bathed by the exterior lights of the bookstore. He’s about thirty or so, six foot two or three, with dark hair and golden skin. His features are strong, chiseled. I can’t pinpoint his nationality, perhaps Old World Mediterranean or Basque ancestry. He wears an elegant dark gray suit, a crisp white shirt, and a tie. He’s not handsome. That’s far too calm a word to ever describe him. He’s carnal, he attracts, radiating strength, and self-possession. A man who knows exactly who he is, what he wants, and would swagger into Hell to get it, the kind who divides people into three camps: on his side, by his side, or in his way. And pity the fool that gets in his way. He’s intensely magnetic. I’m both drawn and repelled.

  He glances up, down, all around, as if sensing something, looking for something. I get the oddest feeling that he’s…not quite human.

  Abruptly his head whips my way, and he gazes into the shadows, directly at me, with eyes as black as midnight. For an instant, I think I see a flicker of crimson in them. But it was only a trick of rain and reflection.

  Electricity crackles in the air between us.

  “He’s dangerous,” the man in the shadows murmurs.

  I remain frozen, pierced by the weight of the dark man’s regard, an insect pinned to his paper. I can’t look away. I can’t move.

  We stare at each other a long moment. Then he murmurs, barely audible, “You. You’re here.”

  “What?” I whisper.

  “Are you coming in?” He gestures to the door.

  “How do you know me?” I manage.

  “It’s a long story.”

  To the shadows, I say very quietly, “And you—how do you know me?”

  “It’s a long story,” the man in the shadows replies with a soft laugh.

  I’m immobilized by indecision, by the weight of the moment.

  “He owns the apartment your sister leased,” says the voice from the shadows. “Beware, MacKayla. He’s dangerous.”

  I turn toward him as he speaks. “Show yourself.”

  I shiver when the man steps forward into a pale pool of light. Tall, golden hair and skin, exotically beautiful, dressed in jeans, boots, and an ivory sweater, he’s the epitome of civility, elegance, and courtly manners. “I am V’lane, MacKayla. I will help you with your quest, answer your many questions. But we must go, now, before he—he’s coming! Choose, MacKayla. You must choose now!”

  I glance back at the dark man, who’s stalking toward me, shaking my head as if I might somehow shake a decision into it.

  My heart is thundering, deafening in my ears.

  Who are these men? How do they know me? What do they know about my sister?

  How do I choose?

  I don’t know what to do.

  As the man from the bookstore nears, I waffle in indecision. The dark man frightens me. The blond man seems somehow less…dangerous to me, both in body and soul. The dark man gave me little to go on, the blond offered information about my sister. The dark man rattles me in ways I don’t understand. The blond man doesn’t affect me on the same visceral level.

  At another time, in another place, I would know that’s because the dark man could lay siege to my heart.

  I will never know such a time after this night.

  “You must hurry, MacKayla,” V’lane urges. “Come. I will tell you of Alina. I will teach you all I know. I will help you get revenge.”

  Somewhere in this city is the monster that brutally murdered my sister.

  I want his head on a platter. I want him dead and six feet under. He will not be permitted to walk this world, take the life of another innocent, shatter another young woman’s world.

  Revenge. Yes. That’s what I want.

  I turn to V’lane.

  “No,” the dark man roars. “You can’t trust him. He’s dangerous!”

  It’s too late. I’ve made my decision.

  When V’lane offers his hand, I take it, and, together, we vanish into the night.

  21

  Give him a pair of eyes with a “come-hither” gleam

  MAC

  Mom is safe.

  Dad is missing.

  Dani is missing.

  Where is Shazam/Y’rill? Ryodan has no idea. Shaz was out hunting when Dani vanished. Is he missing as well? What kind of being is capable of capturing the last remaining Hel-Cat/Hunter? The thought is inconceivable. But with Dani missing, if Shaz wasn’t taken, why hasn’t he appeared?

  Cruce has a daughter, Lyryka, who was sealed in a bottle, according to Christian, nearly three quarters of a million years ago. Keeper of the Unseelie king’s library. A wealth of information or a mess of myth with little basis in fact? Who is her mother? Why did he put her in a bottle?

  It appears the Seelie have regained their memories. Why didn’t they just drink from the Cauldron again?

  For that matter, where is the Cauldron? It’s mine. I should know where the queen’s things are. Must locate Cauldron, Stone, and miscellaneous OOPs.

  I blew up the Winter Court. I’m concerned the remains are still aware and in pain. Must address that but each time I go to Faery I lose too much time in the mortal realm. Put that on brief hold?

  I suspect Winter has Dad and Dani. But why? What does she want? Why hasn’t she sent word to me, demanding ransom? If she gives them back unharmed, I’ll re-create her court and negotiate a truce while we come to terms about my reign.

  Barrons is right, assumptions are dangerous. The ward I hit trying to sift to mom was not a ward at all but the impenetrable cosmic distortion of an IFP. They’re impossible to sift into or out of. I gave up too easily on Winter’s ward, because I didn’t recognize it and thought it was what I’d hit earlier. Can I sift to Dad and Dani?

  I stop writing and nibble the cap of my pen.

  While Barrons and Ryodan are busy reinforcing the wards that protect Chester’s, I’m sitting cross-legged on a plush charcoal sofa in a seating cozy located in an atrium of sorts (more of his new decor) on the same floor as Ryodan’s office, trying to make sense of things by resorting to an old habit: writing down bulleted lists on a notepad I pilfered from Ryodan’s office.

  Last I saw Barrons, he was getting tattooed, which means he’s going to employ dark arts to create a place for us to shelter. Despite the bookstore’s relocation in the clouds, we are forced to admit it may no longer be effectively warded.

  I’m surprised I made it this far without yet writing down the fact that disturbs me even more than Dad and Dani’s disappearance, because I believe, if Winter is sane enough to have escaped her court’s carnage, she’s also sane enough not to harm them.

  I turn the page to a fresh one, carefully inking the thought I’ve been putting off. It’s a mindblower.

  Cruce is alive.

  I was certain the Song of Making killed Cruce when I released it, along with the rest of the Unseelie. Aoibheal had been adamant the melody would destroy the entire Shadow Court. I stare at the words, trying to make myself believe anything other than the worst about this staggering fact.

  It doesn’t work.

  We had a deal, which Cruce hungered to see through to completion with every ounce of avarice he possesses, and that’s pretty much all the avarice in the world. Cruce is avarice. More than anything, he wants the True Magic of the Fae, hungers for the crown. He plotted, deceived, and manipulated for a small eternity to seize it, and nearly succeeded. As V’lane, he interred Aoibheal in a prison of ice, to finish her off, believing the True Magic would then choose him. He went ballistic when Aoibheal escaped her fate and bequeathed her legacy to me. He would only help me learn to use the queen’s powers to save our world in exchange for a full transfer of the power and crown to him, once the Earth was safe.

  I agreed.

  Fifty-two pages of complicated legal jargon penned by my father and Ryodan detail that agreement. Signed in blood. Sealed by exchange of precious metals. The Compact is ironclad, and we are irrevocably bound by it.

  Which means he has every right to walk in here this very moment, saunter to my couch (because apparently Fae aren’t warded out anymore, which offends me as deeply as it incenses Barrons and Ryodan), and demand that I transfer my power to him immediately.

  I can’t welch. I discovered, while sequestered, that if royals negotiate a properly executed compact then try to renege when the other party demands their due, the reneging royal’s power is suspended, allowing the compliant party to forcibly seize their pledged boon. Compacts are the only inviolate thing I’ve discovered about the Fae. All else is up for grabs to he or she with the most power.

  If Cruce takes the True Magic from me now, my ability to search for Dad and Dani will dwindle to virtually nil, along with what leverage I possess to negotiate an exchange with Winter. I’ll be unable to restore her court. I’ll be powerless, with nothing to offer. Cruce will have all the power. I’ll have to negotiate with him for help. Beseech his aid. How he’d love that!

  How I’d hate that. I’d be in a subservient position, and Cruce would exploit it endlessly.

  I wouldn’t even be able to sift to Faery. I would no longer be able to sift at all! I’d have to rely on Christian or Inspector Jayne or even Cruce himself. And without the power of the queen, how well could I protect my two human-turned princes? This is a mess. Despite recently wishing he were alive, I’m furious that he is.

  If he’d shown himself years ago, come to me shortly after the Song was sung and demanded his due, it would have felt up-front and trustable. We’d made a compact, fulfilled the terms, delivered payment.

  But after hiding from us for all these years, never showing himself or coming for the power, if he were to saunter in now, I wouldn’t trust a thing about it.

  In exchange for the magic, he agreed to remove the Fae from our planet forever and never harm us. (I have no clue how he planned to get them off-world. Their power would be enormously diminished in the process.) I wonder if that’s why he hasn’t come—because if he never requests the transfer, he’s not bound to his agreed-upon duties, and he’s decided he’d rather have something else. It occurs to me that he, too, draws his power from the Earth. Did we actually spell out that he had to leave this planet, or did we use a vague word like “world”? If the Compact contains a single nebulous, twistable phrase, he’ll work it into any shape that benefits him and only him.

  I nibble my pen, musing.

  Barrons said the Unseelie king’s power is still undecided. Perhaps Cruce is waiting because he thinks the king’s magic will choose him, and he’d rather have that than the queen’s. But what would be the point? There is no Shadow Court. Cruce would be ruler of none. I don’t see the Seelie embracing an Unseelie king any more enthusiastically than they’ve embraced me.

  Any way I look at it, secreting himself away spells trouble for us all.

  I force myself to write:

  If Cruce demands the True Magic from me, I have to relinquish it.

  That hurt to write. Years ago when I’d agreed to the Compact, I couldn’t have foreseen a time like this. I believed things would return to relative calm, even near normalcy eventually.

  As if.

  Besides, if I hadn’t agreed to the Compact, our world would have been devoured by black holes, and I wouldn’t even be here to bitch about things.

  I stare at the page for a few seconds before forcing myself to bottom-line another truth, one that’s disturbing me on a far deeper level than I’d anticipated.

  I’ll be just-Mac again.

  A woman with no queenly powers, only sidhe-seer gifts, the boon of rapid healing and extreme longevity.

  Funny how, so often, we don’t fully appreciate the things we have until we’re about to lose them. I hadn’t realized how much I enjoy having the perks, like sifting, that accompany the crown. I love the connection I feel to the planet. I was looking forward to learning more about what I could do with the True Magic. As much as I would prefer not to hold responsibility for the Fae, as fraught with challenges as my reign is, I like the benefits of the power Aoibheal bequeathed me. Besides, who’s to say I won’t succeed? Challenges motivate me, intrigue me, make me work harder. I might get the walls sung back up between realms, create a sort of governing party within the Seelie, then attend on infrequent occasions for dispute resolution and seasonal feasts. There’s a part of me that hungers to succeed at this, to find the way forward for both species, no matter the difficulties.

  A chill kisses my nape; the air behind the sofa crackles with a potent charge.

  Then Barrons’s hands are on my shoulders as he bends over the back of the couch, brushes his lips to my ear, and murmurs, “You will never be just-Mac. You don’t need magic to be a queen. That power is in your heart. Never forget it.”

  “There you go, snooping in my notes again,” I tease as I tip back my head with a faint smile. “I thought you were busy.”

  Eyes dark, face grim, he says, “I felt your distress.”

  Via the link of our brand. I frown. “Barrons, why hasn’t Cruce shown himself? Why hide, why stay off-grid unless he’s doing something he knows we’d try to stop? What is he doing? All he ever wanted was the True Magic. By all rights, it’s his now. He could have taken it at any time.”

  “Perhaps his desires changed.”

  “But why conceal his existence?”

  “Stop worrying. Sleep now. You need your strength. It will all become clear in time. Cruce will never harm you.”

  Because Barrons will never let him doesn’t need to be said. Cruce raped me. Barrons wants him dead. He’ll never let him touch a hair on my body, ever again.

  Then he’s gone, and I return my gaze to the page but realize, as the words begin to blur, that I’m far more exhausted than I realized. Barrons is right, I need to get some rest while I have the chance. God knows what’s coming next or when I might have another opportunity.

  I toss my notepad and pen onto the coffee table, lean back on the sofa, prop my feet on the coffee table, and let my eyes drift closed for just a second.

  I need to try to assail Winter’s ward again, and I have far too many worries on my mind to ever fall—

  I pass out before I finish the thought.

  22

  I’m not no crocodile like the one in Dublin Zoo

  DANI

  I knew, at a young age, exactly what LIFE was, which I always saw in capital letters, smelling of the rainbow-colored cotton candy Mom brought home, back when things were still good.

  LIFE is the most amazing, thrilling, fantastical ride in the amusement park.

  Albeit one with a guaranteed mortality rate.

  You will crash and burn on this roller coaster. It’s inevitable, and you don’t get to know how or when. A slat might break, and the car derails when you’re barely out of the gate. A storm might explode from a perfectly clear blue sky and wipe out everyone on your section of the track. Maybe you’re born with a defective heart and know, from the age of eight, you’re a walking time bomb. Or you’re the last person alive in your car, riddled with pain and ready to see what comes next.

  There are no certainties but one.

  Death will come.

  My philosophy has always been: feckin’ A—all the more reason to ride the hell out of it! Milk life for all you can get. Howl with laughter, scream with fear. Get sloshed on every color of the rainbow.

  My philosophy hasn’t changed.

  My mortality, however, has.

  Thanks to one grumpy, emotional, needy Hel-Cat who is also an epic dragonlike Hunter that soars the deepest expanses of space and contains vast stores of wisdom and power inside her enormous body, this roller coaster ride will never end for me.

  I’m a shapeshifter who will, one day, be fully immortal.

  A shapeshifter who still can’t shift, which offends every ounce of my abundant ego.

  I never fail. That’s practically my middle name: Dani Never-Fails O’Malley. I screw up, do things like unstopper flasks I shouldn’t, but when I set my mind to something, I succeed.

  It’s inconceivable and irritatingly, infuriatingly—I can barely think the word—humbling.

  I’ve been trying since day one but can’t make the leap of converting my one hundred and forty pounds into the massive tonnage of a Hunter, or vice versa.

  I get it on a hypothetical level; I’ve seen it done. I know it can happen. Y’rill has shown me over and over, tried endlessly to talk me through it, telling me to find my “breath of fire” and “heart of scales.”

  I still can’t do it.

  And I really, really, really want to shift right now.

  In human form, which I currently am, I can still die. I have a lot to live for: Shaz-ma-taz, Ryodan, Mac and Barrons, immortality, space exploration, saving the world on a regular basis. The amount of time it takes to become fully immortal varies from Hunter to Hunter. And here’s the real kicker: You don’t even know you’ve passed that threshold and become unkillable in your original form until you almost die—but don’t. I suspect I’m going to need to nearly die quite a few times to be convinced. One or two times might be a fluke, a near miss. Three or four or ten and I might start to believe it.

  Everything comes with bloody uncertainties.