What if I passed out when I sliced myself? Or while digging? I’d probably heal before I regained consciousness.

Surely I was tougher than that.

Clenching my teeth, I sliced.

Moaning with pain, I dug.

I passed out.

The last thing I did before losing consciousness was hastily retract the blade with my thumb.

I woke up to a healed leg.

Bugger.

I could always get Barrons to dig it out. I could spray paint while he cut. Or use flour or something my body would absorb. Well, until I passed out. No telling when he’d be back. Or how many necessary tendons, muscles, or veins he might slice. Besides, I was sick of not taking care of things myself. This was my problem. I was going to fix it. I was tired of being saved by others or, as in this latest case, by divine Jayne intervention. It chafed.

I needed a higher pain threshold. Not that mine was low to begin with.

I had no intention of eating Unseelie again.

I’d eaten it three times to date—after Mallucé had tortured and beaten me to the edge of death, in the middle of the riots on Halloween, and eight days ago when I’d descended the cliff to save Christian. Each time I’d eaten it, I’d been painfully aware that I had no clue what the long-term ramifications were. Christian told me it was the combination of dark magic gone awry plus eating Unseelie flesh that turned him into one of the dark princes. I figured I already was a bang-up candidate to turn Unseelie princess.

Then again, Christian had only eaten it one time and I’d eaten it three so far. The damage was probably already done.

At least that’s the excuse I gave myself, rationalizing that the temptation of recent withdrawal had nothing to do with my current need-based decision to partake. After the rape, I’d despised the idea of having anything Unseelie in my mouth ever again. Then I had to eat it on the cliff and remembered how it felt and, oops, well, no longer suffering that revulsion.

It was a painful hike to the spilled contents of the fridge and back. I made it wearing only my boots so I wouldn’t get paint all over my bare feet, pausing to nudge them off before I reentered the clean part of the bookstore.

Once back in the bathroom, I dropped back down on the towel and leaned against the wall. I wiped off the lid of the baby food jar and unscrewed it. Without allowing myself time to reconsider, I tossed the contents into my mouth.

It was as disgusting as ever.

The taste of the gray, gristly, pustule-laced flesh was straight out of a nightmare. It was rotten eggs and castor oil, maggoty flesh and tar.

It wriggled in my mouth, tried to escape from behind my clenched teeth. I froze like that for a moment, with jumping beans of slimy Unseelie on my tongue, refusing to open my mouth yet unable to quell my gag reflex.

I pounded the floor with a fist to distract my recalcitrant throat muscles and swallowed. After a few moments icy heat flushed my body and a burst of power hit my heart like a shot of adrenaline.

Abruptly all my muscles slid smooth and sure and sexy beneath my skin, my spine straightened to perfection, my shoulders drew back, my breasts went out, my hips canted in, my stomach smoothed. It was like having all the tiny niggling imperfections of humanity ironed out of my body. If this was how Fae felt all the time, I envied it. I may have been given an elixir that changed me, but, unlike Fae, I still suffer everyday aches and pains, still need to sleep and eat and drink.

The squirming flesh wriggled all the way down to my stomach, where it fluttered like a flock of maddened moths determined to flap their way to freedom.

My heart thundered, my brain felt as if a vacuum had sucked it clean of all confusion and fear, my body was a live wire.

It was exhilarating.

It was sexy as hell.

I stretched euphorically, drunk on Fae power. Wondering how I’d been living without it since that night on the cliff. Really, I was probably already as altered as I was going to get from the stuff, wasn’t I?

Then I realized I had an entirely new problem.

I could no longer feel the bullets. And now I had only a vague idea where to dig.

I have no clue why what happened next did.

Since a wish was what had started it all, maybe I was wishing it so hard the Book finally decided to humor me.

Or maybe the Sinsar Dubh didn’t like the idea of me cutting myself up.

Or maybe it knew something I didn’t, and I really could die and was about to kill myself by slicing a necessary vein.

Whatever the reason, I was abruptly visible.

I gazed down at my body, so happy to see myself that I didn’t move for a few seconds. Then I stretched a leg and admired it. Flexed my toes. Examined my fingernails. They were a mess. Short, ragged, and unpolished. Criminy. I needed to trim. And my skin was dry. How could my skin be dry when it rained all the time here?

Okay, so maybe I was postponing my barbaric surgery a bit by reveling in the lovely vision of my badly groomed body. I’d missed me.

God, it was good to be back!

I studied my thigh clinically, with a complete absence of fear, pain, or really any kind of concern at all, made a deep surgical slice and started digging around. Blood pooled, evaporated, pooled.

Wow, it was rather interesting in there. I’d never looked at myself on the inside before. What a miracle the body was. What a shame the composition was organic and stamped with such a finite expiration.

But not me, I marveled as I dug. For the first time since learning I’d been tampered with via an unidentified Fae elixir, I felt a small flush of pleasure at the prospect of a longer life. Hated the things that might be done to me in my enhanced condition, loved the idea of more sunrises, more nights with Barrons, more time to try to figure life out.

“Focus, Mac,” I muttered. The bullets were only my most immediate problem. I had a whole list of others, the least of which was discovering who’d ratted out all my secrets.

My skin was already trying to close around the blade. With Unseelie flesh in me, I was healing even faster than I had before. I realized I had to keep slicing while I had the knife in there, moving the blade back and forth. It was curiously like operating on someone else’s body. I barely felt it.

It took me two tries to get the bullet out of my thigh. Three to get the one in my arm out.

Of course, that’s how he found me.

Sprawled on the floor with a couple of chunks of misshapen metal nestled in the valley between my leg and hip, a switchblade in one hand, alcohol which I hadn’t had time to use in another, a feral look of triumph on my face. I might have even been laughing a little.

Butt-ass naked.

6

  “Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving, too…”

I felt drugged. I was drugged, high on my victory over the bullets, blood pounding with immortal strength, stamina, and lust.

My mind registered Barrons, my body said: Let’s get down and dirty. I’m in the perfect condition for it. Last time I’d eaten Unseelie flesh, he’d been killed a few minutes later. I’d suffered both the high and withdrawal alone. Had endured most of the high getting home from Germany, trying not to think or feel too much.

How long had it been since we’d devolved into an animalistic, no holds barred fuck-fest? What in the world had been wrong with me?

I knew the answer to that question. It was the thing I was keeping to myself, cocooned inside, a voracious worm in the rotten apple that was MacKayla Lane O’Connor.

Now, with the impunity and belligerence of an Unseelie-flesh high riding me, Barrons standing there looking half savage, half man, and no immediate threats to my existence, I had a single imperative. I was clarified—the Mac I used to be, back in more ways than one. Maybe this was what I needed to do to get through the days until I’d sorted out my many messes. Become an addict.