“Place is huge and deadly weird, Mac,” she told me. “There’s parts of the abbey don’t make sense. Wasted space where you think something should be but ain’t.”

I wanted to see all those places, but right now I needed to focus on the libraries. I’d barely slept last night. The conversation I overheard between my parents had played like a stuck record in my head. Baby, I’m sorry to tell you this, but according to some ancient prophecy, there’s something wrong with you and you’re going to doom the whole world. …

I’d been anxious to get my hands on the prophecy before. Now that it was supposedly about me, I was desperate. I wouldn’t believe it was about me until I saw it with my own eyes, and even then I probably still wouldn’t, unless it spelled out my entire name and said something as indubitably incriminating as: Beware of that evil MacKayla Lane; she’s a piece of work. Gonna doom the whole world, that wench.

I snorted. Absurd. Had Alina learned any of this? Was that why she’d kept me so far away? Not just for my own good but because she’d learned something about me that made her afraid to get me involved, for the world’s sake?

“Nah,” I said derisively.

“Is, too,” Dani defended. “I can show you ‘em.”

I snapped back to the present. “Sorry, I was thinking out loud. I believe you, and I want to see those places. But first the libraries.”

We wound down one corridor after the next. They all looked the same to me. The abbey was huge. Without Dani, I might have wandered for days, trying to find my way around. Before I came to the abbey the first time, I’d researched it and learned that the enormous stone fortress had been constructed on consecrated ground in the seventh century, when a church originally built by St. Patrick in 441 A.D. had burned down. That church had been built to replace a crumbling stone circle some claimed had, long ago, been sacred to an ancient pagan sisterhood. The stone circle had been predated by a shian, or fairy mound, that had allegedly concealed within it an entrance to the Otherworld.

Translation: This specific spot of earth, this precise longitude and latitude, had been a place of great importance, sacred and protected, as far back as records went and—I had no doubt—even further. Why? Because a book of unspeakable power had been trapped beneath it for thousands and thousands of years?

The abbey was plundered in 913, rebuilt in 1022, burned in 1123, rebuilt in 1218, burned in 1393, and rebuilt in 1414. It was expanded and fortified each time.

It was added on to in the sixteenth century and again extensively in the seventeenth, sponsored by an anonymous wealthy donor who completed the rectangle of stone buildings, enclosing the inner courtyard and adding housing—much to the astonishment of the locals—for up to a thousand residents.

This same unknown donor bought the land around the abbey and turned the enclave into the self-sustaining operation it was today. If I ever had the time to act instead of always being so busy reacting, I wanted to find out who that unknown donor was.

I glanced at my watch. It was three P.M., and my schedule was tight. I was supposed to meet the sidhe-seers in Dublin at seven, then Barrons at ten, for who knew what purpose. Further hampering my appointment calendar was the LM’s threat to return for me in three days, which put an uncomfortable squeeze on, because I couldn’t decide what day that was going to be. Was he counting all day yesterday, which meant he would return on Saturday morning? Or had he meant to begin counting on Friday, which meant he would return Sunday? Maybe he’d meant to allow me three full days and planned to come back on the fourth. It was all irritatingly vague. Not only had he threatened me, but he’d not even given me a specific date and time for my impending … whatever.

I planned to discuss it with Barrons tonight. He was my wave. I was counting on him to keep the LM from making good on any threats.

Back to my time crunch. “Take me to the corridors you’re barred from, Dani. What’s keeping you out?” I envisioned thick stone walls blocking them off, maybe vault doors with combinations as long as pi.

I couldn’t have hoped for a better answer.

She gave me a sour look. “Stupid fecking wards.”

Dani knew where eighteen of the libraries were. There were three places in the abbey she’d never been able to get near. The first spot she took me to, wards were etched in the stone floor at ten-foot intervals along the length of the hall, vanishing around a corner.

I sauntered down the warded corridor, barely even flinching, while Dani hooted triumphantly behind me. I turned the corner, passed through another few wards, and came to a tall, ornately carved door.

The door wasn’t as easy to get through. It was loaded with wards and strange-looking runes. I tried the handle. It wasn’t locked, but the moment I touched it I suffered the horrifying sensation of falling from a great height and instantly felt I was being watched/vulnerable/targeted in someone’s crosshairs, an instant away from a bullet in the back of my head.

I snatched my hand away, and the feelings vanished.

I took a deep breath and tried the knob again. I immediately felt as if I’d been stuffed into a small dark box underground and had only moments before I suffocated!

I snatched it back.

I was breathing shallowly and shaking but standing in the hall, perfectly fine.

I peered at the runes on the door and suddenly realized what they were. Since I’d come to Dublin, I’d become a voracious reader of books on the paranormal, devouring articles on topics ranging from Druids to vampires to witches, looking for facts in the fiction and answers in the myths. These were repelling runes! They worked by amplifying the innate fears of whoever tried to cross them.

The third time I grasped the knob, my body was covered with fire ants, biting viciously, and I remembered how, at seven years old, I thought the silky red dirt of the hill would be fun to play in. I’d been terrified of them ever since.

It’s not real.

I braced myself and forced the knob to turn, while the ants shredded the flesh of my fingers away.

The door opened and I stumbled through, choking down a scream, on the verge of clawing my skin off.

All sensation stopped the instant I crossed the threshold.

I looked back. The wood of the threshold was also engraved with repelling runes.

I was through! I was in one of the Forbidden Libraries!

I glanced around eagerly. It wasn’t particularly impressive. Not compared to BB&B. The room was small, windowless, and, despite a number of dehumidifiers, musty. Between shelves and tables filled with books, scrolls, and collectibles, dozens of lamps blazed. Rowena was taking no chances with Shades getting into her precious libraries.

I moved into the room and began searching the tables first, while Dani stood watch far down the corridor. As I’d feared, there were no card catalogs in the Forbidden Libraries. Even though the room was small, a thorough search could take days.

Ten minutes later, Dani yelled, and I hurried out into the hall, jerking as I crossed the spelled threshold, to find a mob of sidhe-seers pushing and shoving at the ward line.

Kat stood in the front of the mob. “Rowena said you managed to pass through some of her wards and were in forbidden archives. She sent us to stop you.”

Well, that answered one of my questions. I’d wondered—now that I could move through wards at will—if I still tripped them when I did. I was surprised Rowena hadn’t come herself.

“To stop me, you’d have to be able to cross the ward line, and”—I glanced down at her toes, on the edge of the line of nearly invisible symbols—”it doesn’t look to me like you can.”

“I can get past most,” Barb said, shoving past her. “You’re not so hot. Jo can, too.” She turned around. “Where’d Jo go?” She looked at Dani. “Wasn’t she just here?”