Mine is the bookstore.

I’m safe inside. As long as the lights are on, no Shades can get in. Barrons warded the building against my enemies: the Lord Master; Derek O’Bannion, who wants me dead for stealing the spear and killing his brother; the terrifyingly Satanic Unseelie Hunters that track and kill sidhe-seers on general principle; all of the Fae, even V’lane—and if by some bizarre fluke something did get in, I’ve got an arsenal plastered to my body and I’ve hidden weapons, flashlights, even holy water and garlic in strategic locations throughout the store.

Nothing can hurt me here. Well, there’s the owner himself, but if he’s going to harm me, it won’t be until he’s done with me, and since I’m far from finding the Book, he’s far from done with me. There’s a measure of comfort in that.

You want to know somebody? I mean, really know somebody? Take away their comfort zone and see what happens.

I knew I shouldn’t have been up on the third floor, cataloging books, with an untended cash register and an unlocked front door two floors below me, but it had been a slow day and my guards were down. It was daytime and I was in the bookstore. Nothing could hurt me here.

When the bell over the front door tinkled, I called, “Be right down,” and inserted the book I’d been about to catalog on its side on the shelf to mark my place. Then I turned and hurried for the stairs.

Something that felt like a baseball bat slammed me in the shins as I passed the last row of bookshelves.

I went flying, headfirst, across the hardwood floor. A banshee landed on my back, tried to grapple my wrists behind me.

“I’ve got her!” the banshee yelled.

My petunia, she did. I’m not as nice a person as I used to be. I twisted, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and yanked on it hard enough to give myself a sympathy headache.

“Ow!”

Women fight differently from men. You couldn’t get me to hurt a woman’s breasts for anything. I know how tender my own are when I’m PMSing. Besides, we feed babies with them. Using a handful of her hair as leverage, I wrenched her around, slammed her on her back on the floor, and grabbed her by the throat. I nearly choked her by default when a second banshee landed on my back, but this time, I sensed her approach and pistoned back my elbow, nailing her squarely in the abdomen. She doubled over and rolled away. A third one vaulted herself at me, and I punched her in the face. Her nose cracked beneath my fist and spurted blood.

Three more women appeared and the fight got really vicious, and I lost all my illusions about women fighting differently, or being the kinder, gentler sex. I didn’t care where I hit, as long as my punches connected, and I was hearing thuds and grunts. The louder the better. Six against one wasn’t playing fair.

I felt myself changing like I’d changed that day in the warehouse in the Dark Zone, when Barrons and I had first battled side by side, against the Lord Master’s minions and Mallucé. I felt myself turning into a force to be reckoned with, a danger in her own right, even without the dark aid of Unseelie flesh. It still didn’t stop me from wishing I had a bite of it handy.

I felt myself becoming sidhe-seer, growing stronger, tougher, moving faster than a human could, striking with the accuracy of a trained sharpshooter, the skill of a professional assassin.

Only problem was—their green Post Haste, Inc. uniforms were a dead giveaway—they were sidhe-seers, too.

Fight scenes bore me in movies and since I’m telling this story, I’m fast-forwarding through the details. I was outnumbered, but for some reason, they seemed a little afraid of me. I decided Rowena must have sent them, and perhaps she’d told them I was rogue, unpredictable.

Make no mistake, I took a beating. Six sidhe-seers is an army and they kicked my petunia six different ways to Sunday, but they couldn’t keep me down.

How abruptly a situation can flip from bad to irrevocable, leaving you standing there thinking, Wait a minute, who’s got the remote? Where’s my rewind? Can I just go back a lousy three seconds, and do things differently?

I didn’t mean to kill her.

It was just that, once it penetrated that they were sidheseers, I kept trying to talk to them, but none of them would listen to me. They were determined to beat me unconscious, and I was equally determined not to be beaten unconscious. I wasn’t about to let them drag me to the abbey against my will. I would go on my own terms, how and when I felt safe—and after this underhanded ambush of Rowena’s, that might be never.

Then they started demanding my spear, poking and prodding me, trying to find out if I was wearing it, and something in me snapped as I realized that Rowena had sent my own people after me—not to bring me in, but to take my weapon away from me, as if she had the right! I was the one who stole it. I was the one who’d paid for it in blood. She thought to leave me defenseless? Over my dead body. No one was taking my hard-won power away from me.

I reached beneath my jacket to pull it out and wave it threateningly, to make them back off and listen to reason, and as I yanked it from my shoulder holster, the brunette in the ball cap lunged for me, and she and the spear. collided. Violently.

“Oh,” she said, and her lips froze on the round shape of the word. She blinked, and coughed. Blood blossomed on her tongue, and stained her teeth.

We looked down at my hand, at the blood on her pinstriped blouse and the spear lodged in her chest. I don’t know who was more mystified. I wanted to let go of it and back as far away as I could from the terrible thing it had done to her—those cold inches of killing steel—but not even under such circumstances could I force myself to let go of the spear. It was mine. My lifeline. My only defense in those dangerous, dark streets.

Her lids fluttered and she looked suddenly. sleepy, which I guess isn’t so odd; death is the great sleep. She shuddered, and sort of wrenched herself backward, twisting. Blood gushed from the unplugged wound, and I stood there holding the stopper. Green goo from stabbing Unseelie was one thing. This was human blood, on her shirt, her pants, on me, everywhere. I felt hot and cold at the same time. Too many panicked thoughts collided in my mind, blanking it out. I reached for her but her eyes closed and she stumbled backward.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” I cried.

Two of the sidhe-seers caught her as she fell, and lowered her gently to the floor, snapping orders at each other.

I fished out my cell. “What’s the emergency number here?” I should know it. I didn’t know it. She was still, too still. Her face was white, her eyes closed.

“It’s too late for that,” one of them snarled up at me.

Screw medical help. “I can get something else to save her,” I cried. I should have kept those stupid sandwiches! What had I been thinking? Fact was, I should probably start carrying live Unseelie chunks with me, everywhere. “Just keep her still.” I would rush outside, grab the nearest dark Fae, drag it back here, and feed it to her. She would be fine. I would fix this. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. Unseelie would heal her. As I lunged for the stairs, one of them grabbed me and jerked me back.

“She’s dead, you fecking idiot,” she hissed. “It’s too late. You’ll pay for this.” She shoved me violently and I slammed into a bookcase.

I stared at the green-garbed women huddled around the body, and my future flashed before my eyes. They would call the police. I would be arrested. Jayne would lock me up and throw away the key. He’d never buy self-defense, especially not with a stolen, ancient spear. There would be a trial. My parents would have to fly over. This would destroy what was left of them: one daughter rotting in a grave, the other in a jail cell.