• Figure out how to contain the Sinsar Dubh!

I nibbled the tip of my pen. Then what? During my first encounter with V’lane, he’d made it clear he felt there was only one option, that there was no one else who could be trusted with it.

• Take the Sinsar Dubh to the Seelie Queen so she can re-create the Song of Making to rebuild the walls and reimprison the Unseelie?

I worried about that one. It wasn’t in my blood to trust anything Fae, but I wasn’t exactly flush with alternatives. I could drive myself crazy wondering what to do with the Sinsar Dubh once I’d gotten it. I decided to focus on one impossibility at a time. Get the Book, then figure out the next step.

I crossed out the last bullet and wrote another one:

• Kick their fecking Fae asses off our world!

I liked that one. I underlined it three times.

O ye of little faith … you didn’t even try.

I winced, closed my journal and my eyes. Since Barrons had left, I’d been trying not to brood over his parting comment. For the past twenty-four hours, while I’d been running around half of Ireland, I’d been replaying the events of Halloween in the back of my mind, indulging myself in an exercise in futility, torturing myself with all the choices I might have made that night that could have yielded a different outcome.

Then Barrons had gone and fired the real killer at me: I’d had a way to reach him the whole time, right there in my backpack.

I opened my eyes, pulled out my cell, and thumbed through the three numbers that had been preprogrammed into the phone when he’d given it to me. I pressed the first one—Barrons’ cell number. I knew it wouldn’t ring. It rang, startling me.

I disconnected quickly.

Mine rang.

I flipped it open, snarled at Barrons, “Just testing,” and immediately disconnected. How in the world were these cell phones working? Was service back up in certain areas?

I changed my settings to private and dialed my parents’ number so they wouldn’t know it was me, reserving the right to hang up if they answered and I couldn’t bring myself to speak. It didn’t go through. I tried The Brickyard, where I’d bartended back home. No connection. I tried a dozen other numbers, with no success. Apparently Barrons had some kind of special service.

I thumbed up IYCGM and pressed it.

“Mac,” a male voice growled.

“Just testing,” I said, and hung up.

I scrolled to IYD.

My phone rang. It was IYCGM. I answered it.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Ryodan said.

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Test the third one.”

I didn’t bother asking how he knew. Like Barrons, he was on top of my every thought. “Why not?”

“There’s a reason it’s called If You’re Dying.”

“What’s that?”

“So you use it only if you’re dying,” he said dryly.

Also, like Barrons, I could go around in circles with him forever. “I’m going to call it, Ryodan.”

“You’re better than that, Mac.”

“Better than what?” I said coolly.

“Lashing out because you hurt. He’s not the one who hurt you. He’s the one who brought you back.”

“Do you know what his idea of bringing me back was?” I snapped.

There was a smile in Ryodan’s voice. “I volunteered for the job. He didn’t seem at all touched by my offer.” The smiled faded. “Don’t lose yourself in anger, Mac. It’s gasoline. You can burn it as fuel, or you can use it to torch everything you care about and end up standing on a scorched battlefield, with everybody dead, even you—only your body doesn’t have the good grace to quit breathing.”

Deep inside, his words resonated. I was straddling a fine line and I knew it. But there was a part of me that wanted to go over the edge. Wanted to scorch the battlefield. Just to watch the damned thing burn.

“Stay focused, Mac. Keep your eyes on the prize.”

“What the bloody hell is the prize?”

“We work together. Take back our world. We all win.”

“What are you, Ryodan?”

He laughed.

“What are the nine of you?” I pressed. He said nothing. “I’m going to call it,” I threatened. “‘Bye now.” I didn’t hang up.

He stopped laughing. “I’ll kill you myself, Mac.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Woman,” he said, and his voice was suddenly so hard and cold and ancient-sounding that the fine hair at the nape of my neck lifted and prickled all the way down my spine, “you don’t know the first thing about me. The Mac that would call IYD when she’s not dying isn’t the Mac I’ll protect. Choose carefully. Choose wrong, and it will be the last choice you ever make.”

“Don’t you threaten—” I held the phone away from my ear and stared at it disbelievingly.

He’d hung up. On me. The only one who could track the Book. This season’s MVP! And I hadn’t even gotten around to asking him what Chester’s was and where to find it!

My hair gusted, raised straight up in the air around my face in a tangle. Sheets flapped on the furniture. The flames of the fire flared, crackled, then nearly went out.

Dani stood in front of me, guzzling orange juice and cramming her mouth with what looked like Little Debbie cakes.

“We got trubs, Mac. Ro’s at the bus, and so’s half the abbey. Shit’s hittin’ the fan big-time. S’time to go,” she mumbled around a mouthful. She sniffed the air and looked crestfallen. “Dude, they were both here? Why’n’t’cha call me?”

If Ro and half the abbey were at the bus, “trubs” were troubles. I was exhausted. I was wired. I was as ready as I was going to be. I stood and shoved my cell phone into my pocket. “You have super hearing. Why didn’t you hear them?”

“S’not that good.”

My eyes narrowed. “You really can smell that they were here?” What I’d give for her supersenses.

She nodded. “I’m gonna give one of ‘em my virginity one day.” She preened.

I was momentarily dumbstruck. I couldn’t begin to enumerate all the things that were appalling about that possibility. “We so have to talk,” I finally managed. I added pointedly, “Danielle.” Her gamine grin faded and I hated to see it go, so I added, “I don’t know why you don’t like it. It’s such a pretty name.” I knew why. Her toughness was all she had.

“Ow. Sorry I duded you. Man.” She held out her hand.

“No, thanks, I’m walking.”

She snickered, grabbed my arm anyway, and we were gone.

It was complete chaos, and Rowena wasn’t having an ounce of success taking control of the situation.

When Dani stopped, I headed straight for the front of the bus. Biting back the urge to puke, I climbed up on the bumper and hauled myself onto the hood, where I stood, looking down.

Hundreds of sidhe-seers stared back at me, with expressions ranging from disbelief that we’d dared return, to curiosity and excitement, to fear and blatant distrust.

If I’d been an attorney like my daddy, the bus would have been my opening argument and—filled to overflowing as it was with dead Unseelie and automatic weapons—it would certainly be swaying the jury. The sidhe-seers had opened the doors and begun unloading it. Guns were piled on the lawn, between dead Fae. I doubted they’d ever seen so many of our enemy up close and personal, sequestered as Rowena kept them. They couldn’t seem to take their eyes off them, poking at them with their toes, turning them this way and that, examining them.

Initially, I’d planned to fill the back of the Range Rover with dead Unseelie heads, to show the sidhe-seers what effect a mere two of us could have in a single night out on the town. But then we’d learned about iron, and raided Barrons’ stash of guns, and we’d had to swap rides.

Dani blew the bus horn to silence the crowd. When a few short bursts did nothing, she laid on it, making it impossible to hear. Finally, there was silence.