His hands cup my head, cradle my face. His lips move against my ear. His breath is harsh, shallow, and fast, and I feel the hard press of him against my thigh. My own breath quickens.

I pretend again that he is Barrons and suddenly he feels like Barrons, and I’m fighting to keep my head clear. Images flash through my mind, those long, incredible hours spent in a sex-drenched bed.

I smell Barrons on my skin, taste him on my lips. I remember. I will never forget. The memories are so vivid. I swear I could reach out and touch those crimson silk sheets.

He sprawls on the bed, a dark tattooed mountain of man, arms folded behind his head, watching me as I dance naked.

Manfred Mann plays an old Bruce Springsteen cover on my iPod: I came for you, for you, I came for you …

He did. And I killed him.

I would give my right arm to be back there, for just one day. Live it again. Touch him again. Hear those sounds he makes. Smile at him. Be tender. Not be afraid to be tender. Life is so fragile, exquisite, and short. Why do I keep realizing that too late?

The brand on the back of my skull burns, but I can’t tell if it’s Darroc’s mark that scalds my scalp or Barrons’ brand that burns me because Darroc is touching it.

“Abandon your vows to drag me down and destroy me, MacKayla,” he whispers against my ear. “Ah, yes, I see it in your eyes every time you look at me. I would have to be blind not to see it. I have lived for hundreds of thousands of years in the Court of Grand Illusion. You cannot deceive me. Decry your pointless quest for vengeance, which will only end up destroying you, not me. Let me raise you up, teach you to fly. I will give you everything. And you I will not lose. That is a mistake I will not make again. If you come to me knowing what I am, there need be no fear, no mistrust between us. Take my kiss, MacKayla. Accept my offer. Live with me. Forever.”

His lips move from my ear; he brushes kisses across my cheek. But he stops and waits for me to turn my head that last inch. To choose.

I turn to vomit hatred all over him. He claims feelings for my sister and tries to seduce me, too! Can what he felt for Alina be so easily betrayed? I hate him for seducing her. I hate him for not being faithful to her memory.

Neither of those emotions is anything Barrons would have called “useful.” I have a memory to live up to. Two ghosts to bring back to life.

I focus on the here and now. What can be used. What can’t.

Beyond his shoulder, I see where we are. If I felt anything anymore, I’d double over, fist in my stomach.

Clever, clever ex-Fae. The bastard.

We’re in the alley, catty-corner to Barrons Books and Baubles. He hid a Silver in the brick wall of the first building in the Dark Zone across from my bookstore.

It was right out back, all this time. In my backyard. He was always watching me. Us.

When I was last here, even though I knew I was leaving to walk straight into a trap, there was buoyancy in my step. Barrons had just told me that when I came out, with Darroc dead and my parents alive, he was going to give me BB&B, deed and all.

I’d had no doubt that I was going to get that deed. I was so cocky, so sure of myself.

Darroc watches me carefully.

The games here are treacherously deep. Always were. I just never saw things as clearly as I do now.

He has called me on my hatred of him and done something probably only a being that had been Fae for a small eternity could do—he has accepted it and offered a full pardon. He has proposed far more than a mere business arrangement and waits for my response. I understand his game. He has studied my race with his coldly analytical Fae mind and knows us well.

By agreeing to be intimate with him, I expose myself on two levels: physically I get close enough to him that he could harm me, and emotionally I run the risk that every woman runs when she’s intimate with a man—where the body goes, a tiny piece of the heart tries to follow.

Fortunately for me, I have no heart left. I’m safe on that score. And I’ve grown damned tough to injure.

My ghosts whisper to each other across me, but I can’t hear them. There’s only one way I’ll ever be able to hear them again.

I turn my head for Darroc’s kiss.

As his lips close over mine, the duality inside me threatens to tear me in half, and if it succeeds, I will lose my best chance at accomplishing my mission.

I hurt.

I need punishment for my sins.

I bury my hands in his hair and channel all those feelings into passion, pour them into my touch, kiss him hard, violently, with explosive feeling. I turn us both around and slam him up against the wall, kissing him like he’s all that ever existed, kissing him with a full measure of humanity. It’s a thing a Fae can never feel, no matter the form they wear—humanity. It’s why they crave us in bed.

He staggers for a moment, draws back, and stares down at me.

My eyes are wild. I feel something inside me that terrifies me, and I just hope I can hang on to the edge of this cliff I’m on. I make a sound of impatience, wet my lips, and shove at him. “More,” I demand.

When he kisses me again, the last part of me that could stand myself dies.

8

It took me a bloody fucking month to get back.

I died three times.

It was worse than the 1800s when I had to book passage on a steamer to cross the bloody ocean.

Fragments of Fae reality everywhere, took down every plane I took up.

I consider the possibility that, by the time I return, he will have caught her, cut my brand off her skull, and made her impossible to track.

Then I begin to feel her.

She is alive. She still wears my mark.

But what I sense is incongruent with her situation. I expect grief. The woman killed me and, in humans, familiarity breeds a certain emotional bond.

But lust? On the heels of murdering me, who does she lust for?

I entertain myself with thoughts of searing my brand from her skull.

When I finally arrive at the bookstore, what do I see in the alley behind it?

The woman that summoned me to save her, then stabbed me in the back at the first opportunity, isn’t lost in the Silvers, in need of saving.

She’s standing in my alley, kissing the bastard that had her raped and turned her Pri-ya.

No, let us be perfectly precise: She’s grinding herself against him and shoving her tongue halfway down his throat.

My monster rattles its cage.

Violently.

9

Mac! Hey, Mac! Din’t’cha hear me? I said, ‘What the blimey feck you doing?’ ”