I raise my palm and prepare to press it to the wall.

“Seriously, honey, I promise I’ll only take a few weeks to get better. I won’t drag it out. I’m sitting on the jackpot right now. I’ll do something for you. Anything. Name it. Well, not anything. But there’s gotta be something you want.”

I smile and retract my hand before it touches the panel.

Five minutes later I open the door and shake my head, tears welling in my eyes.

“We didn’t get to him in time,” I tell Ryodan. “She’s gone but I was too late. She’d already turned him Pri-ya. Send all the blondes you can spare to take him somewhere private. Hurry. And I wouldn’t go near him if I were you. It’s not pretty. You won’t want to remember him this way.”

“She can turn us Pri-ya.” Ryodan says.

“Afraid so.”

There’s a bounce in my step as I rejoin Barrons. I got what I wanted tonight, after all. A favor owed from one of the Nine is worth its weight in pure Faery dust. And now I finally get to go have sex with Barrons, and from the way he’s looking at me, it’s going to be one seriously long, hot night.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Ryodan says behind us.

I glance over my shoulder. “What do you mean? We’re going back to the bookstore. I did what you asked. I got rid of her.”

“You just told me she can turn us Pri-ya, and our wards don’t prevent her from sifting while within the walls of my club. You will remain in residence, guarding against all princesses until we resolve the situation. You’ll find ample quarters in that direction.” He points the other way. “Perhaps you’ll do what you should have done this time, and kill her next time.”

My bounce vanishes “You didn’t tell me to kill her.”

“It was self-evident.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I say pissily. “I took a page from your negotiating-with-the-princes book. And you sent all the others into Faery. They’re not even here to protect.”

“I’m still here.”

I look up at Barrons, who stopped walking and is regarding me intently, eyes narrowed. He looks as if he’s about to speak, debates, folds his arms and says nothing.

“You could stand up for me,” I grouse. “Tell him we’re going back to the store, period.”

He smiles faintly. “It would hardly be fair if you ‘protected’ only me.”

His light emphasis on the word “protected” gives him away. No idea how, but he knows I lied. And he’s amused. And he’s going to sit back and watch it play out, see how stuck I get in the sticky spiderweb I’ve begun to spin.

Guess he really is sick of my “idiotic passivity.”

So am I.

But as I learned today, it’s way the hell better than idiotic activity.

Confined to Chester’s with no escape from my carrion stalkers, forced to contend with Ryodan on a daily basis, surrounded by monsters, inhabited by a monster, I’m afraid there’s more of it coming.

13

“I was ducking down to reload”

JADA

She needs to kill.

Purpose is strength and hers was impeded tonight.

No matter, when one avenue is blocked, another is revealed.

There are two on her list in the direction she’s headed. They will be dispatched differently than her prior intended target, swiftly, with more mercy than they deserve. Though their crimes are many, unlike the Unseelie she seeks, they are human. She eliminates humans quickly.

She takes no pleasure in the kill. There is satisfaction in seeing debts collected, ledgers balanced. There are those she will protect at any cost.

As she turns a corner and enters a dimly lit street, her gaze lifts to the shattered streetlamp, then down to lightly misted cobblestones and back up again.

She pauses to absorb the scene: the Unseelie blood dripping from the jagged glass that housed the light; the many pieces of unmoving Fae flesh tossed in a heap; the small pile of human parts with wilted flowers placed carefully on top; the footsteps in the scattered debris, trails of blood and smears of green that map out movements.

She moves closer. Someone placed the human’s picture ID on top of the flowers so he would be found and identified, bestowing the blessing of closure so those who cared might not wonder endlessly if their husband or father might one day walk in the door again.

If not for the blossoms, she would think it an act of vengeance, not compassion.

A killer followed by a merciful passerby?

She closes her eyes, analyzes, assesses, processes all she saw and factors in what she has come to understand about humans and monsters in her years of war. Working methodically, logically, she re-creates the events that transpired in this street.

She eliminates the possibility of two separate actors. This was the work of one.

Someone killed a Fae and butchered a human by accident in the process.

Someone killed her Fae.

If she felt, which she doesn’t, her emotions would run the gamut from stunned to furious.

Neither disrupts her serene features.

Someone else adjusted her ledgers.

She wants to know who.

She steps closer to the pile of Unseelie flesh, notes the suckered fingers, the gray skin.

The individual spear wounds in each small piece by which the dismembered-yet-still-alive Unseelie was granted death.

From the shape of the wounds, she knows the killer.

Her name is also on her list.

She covets the weapon. Once she has acquired it, she will be unstoppable.