“Stay the hell out of my head!” I barked. Or had there been a roach or three, lurking beneath his desk, reporting back?

“Don’t give it away so easily. You saw the forbidden.”

“You did the forbidden,” I said flatly. “And believe me, I keep quiet about a lot of things I see.”

He looked at Barrons. “She knows about the Highlander.”

Barrons said, “Yet said nothing and could have.”

“Did you skim it from my head, too?” I asked Barrons sourly.

“I accord you greater respect. And henceforth, Ryodan will, too.” It was a warning.

Ryodan said to me, “If you turn invisible again, I’ll ward you from my club. Permanently.” To Barrons, he said, “I’ll break as many rules as you do, brother.”

I supposed he also knew somehow that I was aware they were brothers, since he was no longer hiding it from me.

None of us said anything then. I sipped my drink and glanced back at Jada, but she was gone. “Speaking of the Highlander,” I couldn’t help but meddle, “you should tell Christian. He may be able to help.” I should have left it there, because the only thing that would motivate Ryodan was if there was something in it for him, but I couldn’t help adding, “Besides, it’s his family. He deserves to know.”

“Be wise, Mac. Never mention to me that you know again.”

“Fine,” I said irritably. Then, “Shit!” The Alina-thing was on the dance floor, turning in a circle, standing tall as if to peer over the sea of heads. Looking for someone. Looking as distraught and worried as she had the first time I’d seen her. Looking as if she’d been crying her eyes out. Looking so achingly like my sister that I wanted to burst into tears myself.

Beside me, Barrons tensed. I glanced at him. He was staring where I’d been staring.

“That woman looks like she could be your sister, Ms. Lane.”

He could see the Alina-thing, too?

I was so flabbergasted for a moment that I couldn’t draw breath to speak. “Wait, how do you know what my sister looks like?”

“Your albums. The photo you put in your parents’ mailbox, Darroc later hung on my door.”

Ah, I’d forgotten about that.

“Perhaps a Fae throwing a glamour?” he said, assessing me.

I hadn’t thought of that. If he could see her, too…well, I’d positively cotton to the idea if I hadn’t opened an empty casket in Ashford earlier today.

But…maybe it was a Fae and the same Fae had stolen her body just to play some kind of sick trick on me. Both Seelie and Unseelie could cast flawless glamour. And so long as I had Unseelie flesh in me, I couldn’t use my sidhe-seer senses to see past it.

Well, damn. That was a darned plausible explanation.

Except, I realized glumly, the first night I’d seen the illusion had been before I’d partaken of forbidden fruit.

I had no idea what to think.

Barrons could see my illusion.

Did Ryodan see it, too? I turned to look at him. He was staring directly at her. “Lovely woman,” he murmured.

“Stay away from her,” I snapped before I could stop myself. Whatever this thing was, I simply wouldn’t be able to stand seeing Ryodan get it on with something that looked like my sister. “I mean,” I added hastily, “because we have more important things to do.”

“You made time for it.”

“A Fae?” Barrons prompted again. Prompting was an unusual demonstration of interest on his part. Uh-oh.

“Who knows? Could be.” I shrugged. “Then again, don’t they say everyone has a doppelganger somewhere?”

Barrons gave me a level look. Something you want to talk about?

Nope. Not a thing, I said lightly.

Another thing I love about the man: he dropped it. That was going to be a hard favor for me to return when it was time.

“I assume you’re ready to look in that lake,” Ryodan said, tossing back the last of his drink.

I was only too happy to escape the apparently visible-by-all illusion on the dance floor before we collided again, further wrecking my tenuous grasp on reality. Alina was dead. I knew it in my bones. I knew it with utter and complete certainty. And if she wasn’t dead, nothing I thought I knew could be trusted. Not one damn thing. Easier to turn away from the illusion than confront it.

I tossed back my drink and stood.

Why not? I thought acerbically. Could things get any worse?

16

“What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive…”

I should never think that.

I know better.

Still, I persist, and every damned time the universe seizes the challenge on bullish horns, stomps its hoof, and snorts, “Hey, MacKayla Lane just said she doesn’t think things can get worse. We’ll show her!”

Ryodan took us to the dungeon level I’d glimpsed yesterday on his office monitors. Not to Dageus’s cell but to a small stone room down a narrow passageway.

I trailed my fingers along the cool damp stone of the corridor, skimming a marbling of brightly colored moss on the walls. Apart from the nearly iridescent algae staining a strangely luminous skein on the stone, it was gloomy, gray, and cold in the subterranean chamber.

I despise being underground. I wondered if anyone was with Dageus or if they’d left him alone to deal with his transformation. Although I listened intently, I heard no sound, no anguished baying, no tortured groans.

“Uh, Barrons, why are we in the dungeon?” I asked, looking around for ancient manacles bolted into the stone or something of the like, perhaps an iron maiden or a few bloodstained racks.

“Precaution. Nothing more. If you go, as you call it, batshit crazy, there are fewer people to kill down here.”

“I’d still leave through the club.” Meaning I could still destroy everyone within it. “Maybe we should go out into the middle of a field. Far from any town.”

He slanted me a look. You’re not going to lose it. You’re not going to open the Book tonight. We merely want to get the lay of your inner landscape.

I heaved an audible sigh of relief. “Then let’s get on with it.” I shot Ryodan a look as he closed us in the narrow stone cell. “Since you know I know everything, what the heck is the deal with Kat and Kasteo?”

“Another thing a wiser woman wouldn’t mention.”

“I’m only mentioning it to you, not anyone else,” I said. “So, what gives?”

He kicked a straight-backed chair toward me. “Sit.”

I clamped my mouth shut on I prefer to stand. No point in wasting energy just to vent my dissatisfaction with the current state of my life on everyone around me.

I sat. After a moment I let my lids flutter closed, although I didn’t need to. I remembered all too well, during that time I’d been a darker version of myself, letting my eyes go only slightly out of focus to drift into the place of power I called my dark glassy lake. Scooping up runes floating on the surface, power I’d naïvely believed my birthright, some part of my sidhe-seer heritage, only to learn they’d been temptations strewn by the Sinsar Dubh, gifts to seduce and entice.

Never mine at all.

I wondered, for perhaps the first time with my intellect, precisely where my inner lake actually was. Talking about it to Ryodan made me perceive it differently. Instead of seeming normal, I’d found it peculiar.

Why did I have a lake inside me? Did every sidhe-seer? Was it simply my chosen visualization of an inner power source, different for all of us? With constant calamity around me, I’d never gotten time to sit down with the sisters of my bloodline to ask questions, compare notes.

I frowned. Now that I’d added my brain to the mix, trying to pinpoint the metaphysical coordinates of my dark glassy lake—as if I might establish some quantum latitude and longitude—was difficult. The place proved abruptly elusive.

I inhaled deep, exhaled slow, willing myself to relax. Sink, sink, don’t think, I murmured in my mind.