“You dead.” My cell phone rang. It was Barrons. I thumbed IGNORE.

“That’s not what you want most. You want that because of what you want most: Your sister back.”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“I called to offer you a deal.”

Deals with the devil, Barrons had recently reminded me, never went well. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What?”

“Get me the Book, and I’ll get you your sister back.”

My heart skipped a beat. I held the phone away from my ear and stared at the receiver, as if seeking some kind of inspiration, or answer, or maybe just the courage to hang up the phone.

Your sister back. The words hung in the air.

Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it. I returned the phone to my ear. “The Book could bring Alina back from the dead?” I was chock-full of superstitions inspired by childhood fables; resurrecting the dead was always accompanied by gruesome caveats, and even more gruesome results. Surely something so evil couldn’t restore something so good.

“Yes.”

I wasn’t going to ask. I wasn’t. “Would she be the same as she was before? Not some scary zombie?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that, when you’re the one who killed her in the first place?”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Maybe you didn’t do it yourself, but you sent them after her!”

“I wasn’t done with her.” There was the barest hesitation. “And I had no plans to kill her when I was.”

“Bull. She found you out. She followed you into the Dark Zone one day, didn’t she? She refused to help you anymore. And you killed her for it.” I was certain of it. I’d thought about it every night before I went to sleep, for months. It was the only conclusion that made sense of the voice mail message she’d left me, a few hours before she’d died. He’s coming, she’d said, I don’t think he’ll let me out of the country.

“You’ve felt the power of my coercion. I might have lost her willing cooperation, but I never needed it to begin with.” Imperious arrogance dripped from his voice, as he reminded me how easily he’d controlled me. No, he wouldn’t have needed her cooperation. With that terrible, will-stealing Voice, he could have made her do anything he wanted, anything at all.

My cell phone rang again.

“Answer it. Barrons hates waiting. Think about my offer.”

“How do you know Barrons?” I demanded.

The line was dead.

“Are you all right?” Barrons growled, when I answered my cell.

“Fine.”

“Was it him?”

“The great LM?” I said dryly. “Yes.”

“What did he offer you?”

“My sister back.”

Barrons didn’t say anything for a long moment. “And?”

I was quiet for an even longer moment. “I told him I’d think about it.”

Silence fell between us and lengthened. Strangely, neither of us hung up. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. I strained my ears but couldn’t hear any background noise. Either his cell phone had great noise reduction capabilities, or he was somewhere very quiet. An image flashed through my mind: Barrons, big and dark, naked against white silk sheets, arms folded behind his head, phone propped at his ear, crimson and black tattoos ranging across his chest, down his abs. Leg tangled with some woman’s.

Nah. He’d never let a woman stay the night. No matter how good the sex was.

“Barrons,” I said at last.

“Ms. Lane.”

“I need you to teach me to resist Voice.” I’d asked him this before, but he’d only given me one of his noncommittal replies.

There was another of those long silences, then, “In order to attempt that—and I assure you it will be no more than an attempt, one at which I highly doubt you’ll succeed—I’ll have to use it on you. Are you prepared for that?”

I shivered. “We’ll lay some basic ground rules.”

“You like those, don’t you? Too bad. You’re in my world now, and there are no basic ground rules. You learn how I teach you, or not at all.”

“You’re a jackass.”

He laughed, and I shivered again.

“Can we start tonight?” I’d been safe today, with the Lord Master on the phone. But if, instead of calling, he’d strolled up behind me on the street and commanded me to be silent, I wouldn’t have even been able to open my mouth long enough to release V’lane’s name.

I frowned.

Why hadn’t he walked up behind me? Why hadn’t he sent his army after me? Now that I thought about it, the only two times he’d ever tried to capture me were when I’d practically delivered myself to him, and he’d believed I was alone, almost as if I’d been an opportunity too convenient to pass up. Was the Lord Master in no hurry to get close to me? Did he fear my spear after seeing what it had done to Mallucé? I’d feared it intensely when I’d eaten Unseelie. I hadn’t wanted it anywhere near me. But with Voice he could easily strip it away. He’d wanted Alina’s willing participation, and now he seemed to want mine. Why? Because it was easier if I was willing, or was it more complicated than that? Did Voice work only to a certain extent, and there was something he needed from me that he wouldn’t be able to coerce? Or maybe—a chill of foreboding accompanied this thought—I was only a small part of his much larger plans, and he’d already made other arrangements for me, and it just wasn’t the right time yet. Maybe he was even now constructing a cage around me that I couldn’t see. Would I wake up one morning, and walk straight into it? I’d been duped by Mallucé. I’d believed him a figment of my imagination until the last.

I shoved my fearful thoughts away before they could multiply. I certainly wanted to get close to him. I was going to kill him. And his nasty trick of Voice was a barrier I was going to have to be able to get past.

“Well,” I prompted, “when can we start?” I didn’t trust Barrons, but he’d had plenty of opportunities to use Voice on me in the past, and hadn’t. I didn’t believe he’d use it to harm me now. At least not much. The potential gain was worth the risk.

“I’ll be there at ten.” He hung up.

It was nine-fifteen by the time I finished my invention, forty-five minutes before Barrons was due to arrive.

I turned it on, sat back, scrutinized it a few moments, then nodded.

It looked good.

Well, it didn’t really. It looked. strange, like something out of a sci-fi movie. But it worked, and that was all that mattered to me. I was sick of not being safe in the dark. I was sick of watching my flashlights go spinning away from me. This couldn’t spin away. And if I was right about its capabilities, I’d be able to walk straight through a Shade-wall with it on.

There was one final test I needed to perform.

It was a great invention and I was proud of it. The idea had come to me this afternoon, during a slow spell. I’d been stressing over the enormous Shade outside the bookstore, when suddenly a light had gone off in my head, or rather, several dozen.

I’d flipped the sign and locked up at seven on the dot, raced down the street to the sporting goods store on the corner, and bought everything I needed, from the biking helmet, to batteries, to brackets and caving lights, to tubes of superglue, to Velcro bands as an added precaution.

Then I’d come back to the bookstore, dialed my iPod to the latest playlist I was crazy about, cranked it up to a smidge below deafening, and gone to work.

I shook my invention. I dropped it. I kicked it, and still all parts remained intact. Superglue: after duct tape, a girl’s best friend.

I was satisfied. With three quarters of an hour until my Voice lessons, I had time to test the device, and still make it upstairs to freshen up a bit, not that I cared how I looked around Barrons. It’s just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it’s time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.