Aisling woke up the next morning to gray light pouring in her window. Lightning crackled against the side of the house, shaking the wall. Aisling yawned, and stretched. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

She threw her arm across the bed, expecting to feel Niall’s warm skin and hard muscles. But all she grabbed were cold sheets. “Niall?” She sat up, casting her eyes around the room. He wasn’t there.

Did I dream yesterday?

All the memories of what they had done together flooded back to her. The picnic, the room with the forest, the mind-blowing sex, the hours of talking and laughing and entangling themselves between the sheets. She couldn’t have dreamed it all, could she?

But then, where is Niall?

Aisling glanced around the room, more carefully this time. On the table next to the bed, she noticed a small tray containing her breakfast – a cup of tea and a small bowl of porridge. She dipped her finger into the porridge – it was ice cold. So was the tea. Niall usually woke her up for breakfast. It looked as though he’d just dumped the tray and left again.

What’s going on?

Aisling pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, and padded along the corridor. “Niall?” she called, poking her head into the kitchen. “Where are you?”

There was no answer from among the filthy pots and pans. He wasn’t in the greenhouse, either, or the billiard room.

She found him in the library, curled up in the second chintz chair, his head buried in a thick volume on magic. He didn’t look up when she entered.

“There you are,” she exclaimed. “I was wondering where you got to. I thought I’d come down and put the forest on the map—”

Niall’s head snapped back, and his face tightened when he saw her. Aisling’s heart pounded. Is something wrong with him? Why is he looking at me like that?

“I came here to read,” he growled. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Of course it is. This is your house as much as it is mine, now. You don’t need my permission to read in here.”

“That’s right, I don’t.”

Aisling’s body stiffened. What happened to the Niall from yesterday? The sweet boy who had made her feel so amazing? His whole body dripped with hostility, his icy eyes glaring at her with such hatred. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, but she forced them back. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to her.

“Fine.” She backed toward the doorway. “I … I … I won’t disturb you any longer. Thank you for breakfast.”

Niall leaned forward. Aisling froze, thinking he was going to embrace her. Instead, Niall snatched the phone receiver from the desk. “Why do you still have this?” he snapped, waving the mouthpiece in her face.

Why was he asking about the phone now? That phone had sat on the desk every day since she could remember. He must’ve seen it a hundred times, but now he was acting as though she’d deliberately placed it there to antagonize him. “Grandmother June used to have all sorts of friends and social engagements. When our family came to visit her, I used to sit in the corner here and listen to her cackling away as she spread neighborhood gossip or exchanged recipes. I keep it here because it reminds me of her.”

Niall’s eyes narrowed. He gripped the receiver against his chest. “You’re talking about back in the human world, before the war, before the fae opened the void.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Niall said, his tone accusatory.

“Why not?” Anger bubbled through Aisling’s veins, replacing the despair she’d felt when finding him in this foul mood. How dare he talk to her like this, in her library.

“Because the nuclear war wiped out all life on Earth fifty-one years ago.”

What? What is he talking about?

“No, it didn’t. It was fifteen years ago. I remember it distinctly, because we’d come to Grandmother’s to escape the city—”

Niall shook his head. “That can’t be. You can’t remember it. You’ve been inside this house for my entire life. The Hollow has been sitting on this hill overlooking the city for fifty-one years.”

“Are you saying I’m lying?”

“I’m saying that what you’re telling me can’t possibly be true.”

“Then that makes two of us.” She glared back. “I’ve been in this house since I was five years old. That’s the truth. You’re a fae, so you’re the one who’s lying.”

Niall slammed his book shut and threw it at the wall. Aisling flinched as it bounced off the shelves and clattered to the floor, the pages splaying open. “How come you’ve never tried to get out of this house?” he demanded, his hands balled in fists as he approached her. “How come you’ve never looked at ways to harness the magic buried in these walls to make your own escape?”

“I don’t know how. It takes a whole coven – at least three witches working magic together – to pull off a spell like that. All the words in all these books can’t make me into that kind of witch. I haven’t had the practical experience.” She narrowed her eyes. “You can blame your people for that.”

Niall jabbed a finger at the book. “It’s all right here, Aisling. All of it. You could have siphoned off atern from the house, used that power to cast any kind of spell you want. You could have blown up the entire city, got rid of the lot of us. So why didn’t you? Why didn’t you use the power you had, while you had the chance?”

“Why are you being so horrible?” she sobbed.

“I’m a fae. Maybe that’s just what I am!” Niall screamed. His voice bounced across the high-ceilinged room. Before Aisling could ask him anything more, he’d turned on his heel and stormed from the room, slamming the library door with such force the house groaned in protest.