“That’s because he looks like an angel,” Tara says.

“Tara Lynn, don’t you go there for even a second,” Kat says sharply. “Cruce would have destroyed us all if he’d thought he had something to gain by it, and that was before he read the Book and absorbed its power. Now, he is the Sinsar Dubh—the darkest, most twisted magic of the Fae race. Have you forgotten what it did to Barb? Don’t you remember how many people the Book massacred when it didn’t have a body? Now it has one. And it’s beneath our abbey. And you think it looks like an angel? That it’s pretty? Have you lost your mind?”

I wasn’t beneath the catacombs last night so I didn’t get to see what happened with my own eyes. I’d been keeping a distance from that person whose name I’m not saying. I heard what happened, though. It’s all anyone’s talking about.

Dude, V’lane is Cruce!

He isn’t even Seelie. He’s the worst of all the Unseelie princes.

I can hardly believe it. I had the wickedest crush on him! I thought he was the one who was going to save us all, fighting the good fight, on the human side of the war. Turns out he was war — literally, as in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’s War, riding alongside his three Unseelie prince brothers: Death, Pestilence, and Famine. Sure enough our myths were right. When they rode our world again everything went straight to hell. Nobody even knew he was alive. Cruce was supposed to have been killed three-quarters of a million years ago. Instead he was masquerading as V’lane all that time, disguising himself with glamour, infiltrating the Seelie court, manipulating events, orchestrating the prime opportunity to take what he wanted — dominion over both races.

Fae have patience like beaches have sand. ’Course, I guess patient is easy to be when you live, like, for-fecking-ever.

I also heard he was one of the four who raped M — that person whose name I’m not thinking — that day at the church when the Lord Master turned the princes loose on her.

And I’d told him I was going to give him my virginity one day! He’d brought me chocolates, been all flirty-flirty!

V’lane is Cruce. Dude. Sometimes that’s all you can say.

Tara holds Kat’s glare defiantly. “That doesn’t mean I want to set him free. I’m just saying he’s beautiful. Nobody can argue with that. He has wings like an angel.”

He is beautiful. And we have big, big problems. I went down to the catacombs last night, the instant everyone finally cleared out. I made my way through the underground maze until I found the chamber that once held the Sinsar Dubh. And still holds it — just in another skin.

V’lane doesn’t look like V’lane anymore. He’s sealed in the center of a block of ice, surrounded by a cage of glowing bars. His head is back, his eyes are iridescent fire, he’s roaring, and his enormous black-velvet wings are spread wide. Brilliant tattoos snake beneath skin that shimmers like gold dust. And he’s naked. If I hadn’t seen other penises in movies, I’d be worried about losing my virginity.

“Black wings, Tara,” Kat says. “As in black magic, as in ‘deadly.’ He was dangerous before. He’s a thousand times worse now. The King never should have let him read the whole Book. He should have stopped him.”

“Mac said the King didn’t want to leave the Sinsar Dubh split up,” says Colleen. “He was worried we wouldn’t be able to keep it locked down in two places.”

I dig around in a pocket of the backpack I always got over a shoulder — you never know what you might need when, and I’m always on the go — and pull out another Snickers bar. There’s that fecking name again. Eating soothes the bruise I’m getting from repeated sucker-punches to my belly.

“We couldn’t keep it locked down when it was in only one place,” Kat says.

“Because Rowena let it out,” Val says.

I learned that part of the story earlier this morning, listening to sidhe-seers talking in the showers. When the Sinsar Dubh took possession of Rowena last night, that person I’m not naming killed her. But not before Ro bragged about how she set the Sinsar Dubh free. And still, some folks are talking about having a service for the old bat! I say the Grand Mistress of the sidhe-sheep is dead. Hoo-fecking-rah! Break out the cake and party hats!

“It weakened Rowena,” Kat says.

Rowena was born weak. Power-hungry witch.

“Maybe Cruce will weaken us,” Kat says.

I plaster a sigh around a bite of candy bar and swallow it. The new temporary leader of the abbey and interim Grand Mistress of sidhe-seers around the world just made a big mistake. I learned a thing or two from that unnamed person when we used to hang together. Sidhe-sheep need a firm hand. Not firm like Ro’s, which was bullying, belittling, and tyrannical, but firm in a way that doesn’t make the herd stampede. Fear and doubt are major stampeders. Kat should have said something like what a good thing it was they were all so much stronger than Rowena. Even a kid can see what’s going on in the room down there. The sidhe-seers are afraid. Rowena is dead. Dublin is a riot-ravaged mess filled with monsters. One of the good guys turned out to be the bad guy. Their lives changed too quickly in too many ways for them to deal with. They’re easy targets to be swayed by the most persuasive, strongest leader, and that means Kat needs to become one, fast.

Before somebody a lot less capable and kind does.

Somebody like Margery, who’s even now watching the crowd through narrowed eyes, like she’s got a thermometer up its butt, taking its temperature. She’s a year older than Kat, and was part of Ro’s inner circle when the old witch was alive. She’s not going to put up with a changing of the guard that doesn’t include her. She’ll make trouble every chance she gets. I hope Kat knows how treacherous she can be. Anyone that was ever close to Ro for longer than like — one second — has something seriously scary about her. I know. I was closest to her of all. Sidhe-sheep politics. Dude, I hate them. They tangle you up like sticky spiderwebs. I love living on my own!

Still, I miss the abbey every now and then. Especially when I think about them baking cookies and stuff. Hearing voices in the background when you doze is nice. Knowing even if you are misunderstood, you aren’t totally alone in the world isn’t the worst thing.

Kat’s right: the Sinsar Dubh we used to have locked up and magicked down beneath our abbey is nothing compared to what we’ve got under our floorboards now.

The problem is it doesn’t look like the Sinsar Dubh anymore.

All of the darkest magic and power of the Fae race is no longer trapped between the covers of a book. It’s in the body of a Fae prince in all his naked, winged glory. And if you’ve never seen a Fae prince before, that’s one jaw-dropping, eye-popping, mind-scrambling amount of glory.

It’s only a matter of time before somebody sets him free.

Kat hasn’t even made her way around to the killer-critical fact yet: lots of people know he’s down there now, crammed to the gills with every last bit of the deadly magic of the Fae race.

I know people. I’ve seen all the shapes and sizes they come in. Somebody’s going to be stupid enough to believe they can control him. Somebody’s going to find a way through that ice.

Jericho Barrons is only one of a lot of different folks that hunted the Sinsar Dubh for thousands of years. None of them ever knew where it was. If they had, they’d have descended on our abbey back in the dark ages when a rough-piled, round stone tower was all that concealed the entrance to our underground city. And they would have pulled it, stone from stone, into rubble, until they got what they came for.

Now a whole bunch of humans and Fae know exactly where the most powerful weapon ever created is being stored.