I seriously doubt we’re going to be able to hide it long. If they’re still too small to spot, it’s only a matter of time before they’re not. People will start seeing them, messing with them, vanishing.

I half expected Barrons and Ryodan to say: screw it, pack up, we’re leaving. They’re immortal and there are countless worlds. There’s nothing to stop them from circling their wagons and heading off for the universe’s vast, untamed Wild West.

Yet, they stay and I’m glad they do because there’s no way I’m giving up on my world. This is what we’ve been fighting about since the dawn of time when the Fae first arrived on our planet and began messing with it. Earth is ours. I’m not letting them have it. I’m not letting them destroy it.

Not on my watch.

Too bad I have no idea how I’m going to back up my ballsy position, but I’ve been in impossible situations before and got out of them.

My brain processes what I just watched happen. Apparently I couldn’t keep my eyes off the pathetic excuse for a bartender and turned back toward him at some point without realizing it. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you just ruined that drink! Who taught you to pour?”

“Fuck you, bitch. Ain’t your bar.”

I stand and hurry around the counter. My flock rustles in behind me. “It is now. Get out. I’m taking over.” I can’t let him tarnish my profession anymore. He just served a smoked martini that had begun promisingly, with gin and a dash of single malt Scotch—then apparently forgot what he was doing and added vermouth, and insult to injury, an olive, pimento intact, instead of a lemon twist. Yellow was Alina’s favorite color and I used to take my time making my lemon twists as complex and pretty as they could be, little origami fruit peels. My mouth puckers in sympathy for the silver-haired gentleman sipping the drink. It’s no wonder the world no longer knows what martinis are.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the bleary-eyed bartender snarls drunkenly as I approach. “This is my bar. Get your ass back on that stool and buy a drink or leave, you stupid cunt. And get those smelly fucks out of here!”

I see red. Like I’d drink anything he poured. And I really hate the c-word. No clue why. It just doesn’t work for me. Seems I have my own event horizon: inactivity, worry, and frustration have devoured my patience, sucked it away into a deep dark hole from which it may never return.

I walk straight for him and pop him in the face with my fist. Not too hard. Just hard enough to get him to go away.

His nose spurts blood—

YES BLOOD YES! the Book explodes. Kill him, worthless piece of human trash! Take this bar and take the club and we will K’VRUCK THEM ALL!

I rummage for my seventh-grade performance—where did I leave off? I remember being eleven. I was happy then, in a much simpler world. Or so I thought.

Bloodred like the blood of Mick O’Leary, the man you RIPPED to pieces with your bare hands then CHEWED—

For a second I can’t find my place, the word “chewed” throws me off so badly, and instead of focusing I wonder if I had blood in my mouth that day and didn’t notice. Panicked, I plunge into my recitation at the first place I can think of and shout, “ ‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil, prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore—’ ”

The bartender clutches his nose and stares at me like I have three heads. I toss him the positively filthy bar towel he’d been using to dry clean glasses. Well, as clean as they could be considering the water in the sink behind the bar is disgustingly black with weak gray soapy suds. I realize I’m still spouting poetry and terminate mid-twelfth stanza.

“You’re off your fucking rocker!”

“You have no idea. I don’t have a rocker anymore. I don’t even have a fucking porch to put it on. And there certainly aren’t slow paddling fans or magnolia trees blossoming above aforementioned missing chair.” God, I get homesick for the South sometimes. A sunny day. A polka-dot bikini and a swimming pool. One day I’m going back to Ashford. I’ll walk around and pretend I’m a normal person. Just for a day or two. “I’ll punch you again. So move.” I crowd him with my body and force him to walk backward through my throng of Unseelie, out from behind the lovely bar I realize I’m really looking forward to tending.

It’ll feel like old times, soothe me. Ground me to the real Mac Lane again.

“I’m telling the boss, you freaky bitch!”

“You do that. Tell him the name’s Mac when you talk to him and see how well that goes over. Now get out. And stay out.”

I turn to the gentleman who’s completely unfazed by our bizarre altercation—this is Chester’s—and is currently studying his awful martini as if trying to decide what went so wrong with it, and pluck the glass from his hand. It wasn’t even the right glass.

“Smoked?”

He nods.

“Be right up.”

I pull the drain on the filthy water, rummage beneath the bar for clean towels, wash my hands, grab a chilled glass, and stir a perfectly proportioned smoked martini. I’m so used to dealing with my wraiths, I slide smoothly through them.

When he tastes it, he smiles appreciatively and the ground beneath my feet solidifies just like that. Familiar routine is balm to a fragmented soul.

I begin rearranging the liquor on my shelves the proper way, humming beneath my breath.