Her lambent eyes gleamed. “I’m superfast, remember? You want it, I’ll get it.” She glanced around the bookstore. “But if things get really bad, I’m coming to live with you.”

“Oh no, you’re not.” I said, trying not to smile. She was such a teenager.

“Why not? It looks cool to me. No rules, either.”

“I’d drown you in rules. All kinds of rules. No TV, no loud music, no boys, no magazines, no snacks or soda, no sugar, no—”

“I get it, I get it,” she said sourly. Then she brightened. “So, I can tell ’em you’ll meet?”

I nodded.

Dani watched the counter for me, while I ran upstairs and got my Kodak. I changed the settings so it would take the highest resolution photos possible, and told her to make sure she got the entire pages, so I could download them onto my computer, zoom in on the images, and read. I told her to call me as soon as she had them; we’d set a place and time to meet.

“Be safe, Dani,” I said, as she wheeled her bike out the door. There was a storm brewing in the streets of Dublin, and I didn’t mean those dense black clouds currently crawling across the rooftops. I could feel it. Like a bad moon really was rising, and even worse trouble was on the way. Ever since I’d danced to that song the other night, I hadn’t been able to shake it from my head. It was such boppy, happy-sounding music to be accompanied by such grim predictions.

She glanced back over her shoulder at me. “We’re kinda like sisters, aren’t we, Mac?”

A knife twisted in my gut. There was such a hopeful look on her face. “Yeah, I guess we are.” I didn’t want another sister. Ever. I didn’t want to worry about anyone but me.

Still, I did the closest thing to praying I knew how to do, and whispered a silent invocation to the universe to watch over her, as I closed the door.

The dark clouds creeping over the city exploded, thunderheads crashing, raindrops biting with October’s chill teeth, flash-flooding the pavement, gushing down the gutters, overflowing the grates, and sweeping all my customers away.

I cataloged books until my vision blurred. I made myself a cup of tea, turned on the gas logs, cozied up to the fire, and paged through a book on Irish fairy tales, hunting for truth in the myth, while picking at a lunch that was the UK equivalent of Ramen noodles. I haven’t had much of an appetite since I ate Unseelie. Not for food, anyway.

Last night Barrons and I hadn’t said a word to each other all the way back to the bookstore. He’d dropped me at the front and watched me walk in. Then, he’d given me a smile that was all teeth and nastiness, and driven straight into the Dark Zone, managing to say “Fuck you, Ms. Lane,” without even bothering to open his mouth. He knows how much his refusal to tell me why the Shades don’t eat him irks me.

I want to be so fearless. I want to be so bad and tough that all the monsters leave me alone.

I tugged Alina’s journal entry from my pocket and read it again, more slowly this time.

Her worst fear had come true, and here I was, left alone with a lifetime of things unsaid and undone. I’d never gotten that hug. I knew I needed to push past the emotional punch and focus on the Haven’s prophecy, the five, and the new questions her journal entry raised, but I was detoured by memories. There’d been so many nights that I’d sprawled on my bed, talking to Alina on the phone. Mom was always making good stuff, filling the house with the mouth-watering aroma of yeast, caramel cream sauces, and spices. Dad was always yelling at the Braves with old man Marley during baseball season. I would have prattled aimlessly about boys and school and my idiotic complaints about whatever I used to complain about, believing the whole time she and I were immortal.

What a shock when life ends at twenty-four. Nobody’s ready for it. I missed my rainbow quilt. I missed my mom. God, I missed—

I stood, crammed the page back in my pocket, and pruned my dark thoughts in the seedling stage before they could sprout. Depression gets you nowhere but tangled in an overgrown garden that can choke the life out of you.

I moved to the window and stared out at the rain. Gray street. Gray day. Gray rain, splashing grayly on gray pavement. What was that Jars of Clay song on my iPod? “My world is a flood. Slowly I become one with the mud.”

As I stared, unblinking into the grayness, a brilliant shaft of sunlight splintered the rain, directly in front of me.

I looked up, seeking its source. The beam pierced the dark clouds, a radiant lance shot down from heaven, forming a perfect golden circle on the dreary, drenched sidewalk, inside which there was no rain, no storm, just sunshine and warmth. I thumbed a Tums from my pocket. My tea and noodles were abruptly an unpleasant stew in my stomach.

Speaking of the sidhe-seer’s equivalent of Lucifer . . .

“Funny,” I said. But I wasn’t laughing. Fae-induced nausea coupled with an impossible illusion spelled one thing: V-l-a-n-e. The only thing missing was a frenzy of Fae lust, and I braced myself for it. His name piercing my tongue suddenly tasted sweet as honey, felt smooth and supple and sexy in my mouth. “Go away,” I told the illusory shaft of sun, focusing my sidheseer center on it. It didn’t evaporate.

Then V’lane was standing in it, but he wasn’t Fae, and he wasn’t the biker man. He was a version of himself I’d never seen before: he looked human, and he was definitely muted. Still, he was inhumanly beautiful. He was wearing white swim trunks that contrasted perfectly with his gold skin, and flaunted his flawless body. His hair slid like silk over his bare shoulders. His eyes were amber, warm with invitation.

He’d come to punish me. I knew that. And still I wanted to step outside, splash through the rain and join him in his sunny oasis. Hold his hand. Run away for a while, maybe to Faery, where I could play volleyball and drink beers with a perfectly convincing illusion of Alina. I stuffed that thought back in my padlocked box and checked the chains. They weren’t holding so good today.

I will attend to you later, he’d said last night. You broke our bargain. There is a price for that.

“Leave me alone, V’lane,” I called through the window. It echoed off the glass back at me, and I wasn’t sure he heard. Maybe he could read lips. Suddenly the windowpane separating us was gone. Drops of wind-driven rain needled my face, my hands.

“You are forgiven, MacKayla. Upon reflection, I realized it was not your fault. You were not responsible for Barrons’ interference. I do not expect you to be able to control him. To demonstrate my understanding, I have come, not to punish you, but to give you a gift.”