He releases it.

Curses.

Takes another breath but says nothing again.

He grunts and punches his pillow. He is divided, this strange man, as if he both wants to speak and wants not to.

Finally, he says tightly, “What did you wear to your senior prom, Mac?”

“Pink dress,” I mumble. “Tiffany bought the same one. Totally ruined my prom. But my shoes were Betsey Johnson. Hers were Stuart Weitzman. My shoes were better.” I laugh. It is the sound of someone I do not recognize, young and without care. It is the laugh of a woman who knows no pain, never did. I wish I knew her.

He touches my face.

There is something different in his touch. It feels like he’s saying good-bye, and I know a moment of panic. But my dream sky darkens and sleep’s moon fills the horizon.

“Don’t leave me.” I thrash in the sheets.

“I’m not, Mac.”

I know I am dreaming then, because dreams are home to the absurd and what he says next is beyond absurd.

“You’re leaving me, Rainbow Girl.”

We’re “Tubthumping” again. He makes me dance around the room, shouting: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.

He dances with me. We shout the lyrics at each other. Something about seeing this man, this big, sexual, powerful—and, some part of me knows, highly dangerous and unpredictable—man, dancing nude, shouting that he’s never going to be kept down, completely undoes me.

I feel as if I am seeing something forbidden. I know without knowing how I know that the circumstances under which he would behave in such a fashion are incalculably few.

Suddenly I am laughing and cannot stop. I laugh so hard I cannot breathe. “Oh, God, Barrons,” I finally gasp. “I never knew you could dance. Or have fun, for that matter.”

He freezes. “Ms. Lane?” he says slowly.

“Huh? Who’s she?”

He stares at me, hard. “Who am I?”

I stare back. There is danger here, in this moment. I do not like it. I want more “Tubthumping” and tell him so, but he turns off the music.

“What happened on Halloween, Ms. Lane?” He fires the question at me, and I now have the strangest feeling he has been asking me this question over and over for a long time but I block it every time he asks it. Refuse to even hear it. And that perhaps there are dozens of questions he’s been asking me that I have been refusing to hear.

Why is he calling me that new name? I am not she. He repeats the question. Halloween. The word gives me chills. Something dark tries to bubble up in my mind, to break the surface I keep placid and still with sex, sex, sex, and suddenly I am no longer laughing but my body is trembling and my bones are so soft I fall to my knees.

I clutch my head in my hands and shake it violently.

No, no, no. I do not want to know!

Images bombard me: A mob shouting, surging out of control. Rain-slicked, shiny dark streets. Shadows moving hungrily in the darkness. A red Ferrari. Glass breaking. Fires burning. People being driven, herded into hell.

A place of books and lights that falls to the enemy. It mattered to me, that place. I’d lost so much, but at least I had that place.

A gruesome meal. A weapon I both need and fear. People rioting. Trampling one another. A city burning. A belfry. A closet. Darkness and fear. Finally, dawn.

Holy water splashing, hissing on steel.

A church.

I shut down. Walls slam in my heart, my mind. I will not go there. There is/was/will never be a church in my existence.

I look up at him.

I know him. I do not trust him. Or is it me I do not trust?

“You are my lover,” I say.

He sighs and rubs his jaw. “Mac, we have to leave this room. It’s bad out there. It’s been months. I need you back.”

“I am right here.”

“What happened at the”—he breaks off, his nostrils flare, and a muscle works in his jaw—”church?”

It seems he does not want to hear about what happened at this church any more than I want to know about it. If we are in agreement on this, why does he push?

“I do not know that word,” I say coolly.

“Church, Mac. Unseelie Princes. Remember?”

“I do not know those words.”

“They raped you.”

“I do not know that word!” My hands are fists; my nails hurt me.

“They took your will. They took your power. They made you feel helpless. Lost. Alone. Dead inside.”

“You should have been there!” I snarl, but I have no idea why. I was never at a church. I am shaking violently. I feel like I might explode.

He drops to the floor on his knees in front of me and grabs my shoulders. “I know I should have!” he snarls back. “How the fuck many times do you think I’ve relived that night?”

I beat at him with my fists, hard. I punch him and punch him. “Then why weren’t you?” I shout.

He does not resist my blows. “It is complicated.”

“‘Complicated’ is just another word for ‘I screwed up and am making excuses!’” I yell.

“Fine. I screwed up!” he yells back. “But I only ended up stuck in Scotland because you asked me to go help the bloody damned MacKeltars!”

“And there you go making excuses!” I stare at him, furious, betrayed, and I do not know why.

“How was I supposed to know? Do I look omniscient?”

“Yes!”

“Well, I’m not! You were supposed to be at the abbey. Or back in Ashford. I tried to send you home. I tried to get you to go to Scotland. You never do what I tell you to do. Where the fuck was your fairy little prince? Why didn’t he save you?”

“I do not know those words—fairy, prince.” They burn my tongue. I hate them.

“You do, too! V’lane. Remember V’lane? Was he there, Mac? Was he at the church? Was he?” He shakes me. “Answer me!”

When I say nothing, he repeats in that strange multilayered voice he sometimes uses, “Was V’lane there when you were raped?”

V’lane failed me, too. I needed him and he did not come. I shake my head.

His grip on my shoulders relaxes. “You can do this, Mac. I’m here. You’re safe now. It’s okay to remember. They can never hurt you again.”

Oh, yes, they could. I will not remember, and I will never leave this room.

Here there are things that keep the monsters away.

I need those things. Right now.

His body. His lust. Erases it all.

I push him back on the floor, frantic with need. He responds savagely. We explode at each other, grabbing fistfuls of hair, kissing, grinding our bodies together. Rolling across the floor. I want to be on top, but he flips me over and pushes me forward, spreading me. Licks and tastes me until I come and come, then carries me to the bed and covers me with his body. When he pushes himself inside me, in my anger I push, push, push back at him with that magic place inside my head, because I am sick of him stirring up things inside me. It is my turn to stir things up inside him, and

— we are in his body, both of us, and we are killing violently, and our cock is hard while we do it. It never felt good to kill before. It never felt bad, either, but now it exhilarates. Now it is power, it is lust, it is being alive. The children are dead, the woman cold, the man dying. Bones crunch, blood sprays—

He knows I am there. He shoves me out with such violence that it flattens my magic completely. I am awed by his strength. It excites me.

Our sex is primitive.

It exhausts me. I sleep. I do not know who I am anymore.

I thought I was an animal.

I am no longer so sure.

It’s hard to say what makes the mind piece things together in a sudden lightning flash.

I’ve come to hold the human spirit in the highest regard. Like the body, it struggles to repair itself. As cells fight off infection and conquer illness, the spirit, too, has remarkable resilience. It knows when it is harmed, and it knows when the harm is too much to bear. If it deems the injury too great, the spirit cocoons the wound, in the same fashion that the body forms a cyst around infection, until the time comes that it can deal with it. For some people, that time never comes. Some stay fractured, forever broken. You see them on the street, pushing carts. You see them in the faces of the regulars at a bar.