“We bloody well did not,” Barrons snaps. “And I said, Ms. Lane, we will discuss this later.”

Barrons and Ryodan disappear then reappear in the middle of the group of armed sidhe-seers and guns go flying. Finally my line of vision is unobstructed! From within a blur of motion, I hear thuds of fists landing and savage female grunts. Then I see a dozen women sprawled on the floor, some holding bleeding noses, others squinting through rapidly swelling eyes, one clutching an arm to her chest that’s obviously broken. Their guns are gone, in a broken pile near the far wall.

Ryodan is standing motionless in the middle of the fallen sidhe-seers, as if he’s carved of stone, staring at the woman that must be Jada. He makes a sound like a soft implosion, a noise I’ve never heard before from any of the Nine, a ragged gasp of pure astonishment and … anguish?

Unable to fathom what could possibly elicit such a reaction from the cold, controlled man, I repress all I’m feeling—betrayal, shock, horror, bewilderment, and no small amount of fury—and move forward for a better look at the focus of his attention.

My age or slightly younger, tall, with a killer body that’s long and lean and muscled and curvy in all the right places, it’s the eyes that get me. They’re emerald ice. They lock with mine for a long, frigid moment. Stone-cold eyes, they chill me, and I’m not easily chilled.

I look down, around me, and realize all the women in the room, including Jada, are staring at me.

Belatedly, I process the comments that were being made while my world was unraveling.

Guess the “away team” ain’t so “diluted” after all. So much for my “rare” ability to sense the Book. One more way I’m no longer quite so special.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter.

“She has the Sinsar Dubh!” a brunette in green camo cries, pushing herself up. “Get her!”

“Bloody. Fucking. Hell,” Ryodan says.

Women lunge up, straight for me.

Barrons moves in front of me like my personal shield. “Over my dead body.”

“It happened before,” Jada says tonelessly. “I’m certain it will again. And again. But that’s how it works with your kind, isn’t it.”

“Bloody. Fucking. Hell,” Ryodan says again.

“I can’t believe you did that to me,” I say numbly.

“Dani,” Ryodan whispers.

“For fuck’s sake, now isn’t the time. Either of you. I said we’ll discuss it later, Ms. Lane. And Ryodan, we’ll find her.” Barrons snarls, “Focus on the moment.”

“I am,” I clip stiffly. “Forgive the fuck out of me if this moment got tangled up with the one you stole from me.”

“Easy to thieve that of which one was so eager to be quit,” he barks, harsh and rapid as hostile fire.

Ryodan says carefully, “We just did.”

“Did what?” I snap, not following him at all. Things are happening too fast. My brain is rubber cement, sticky and nonabsorptive.

I should run. I’m in the abbey. They know what I am. They’re going to lock me up. Imprison me next to Cruce.

“Find Dani,” Ryodan says.

“What the fuck are you nattering about?” Barrons practically shouts.

“Who even says words like ‘natter’?” I know the answer. Men who steal people’s memories.

“I don’t natter.”

“Spell it the fuck out,” Barrons snarls.

“Jada,” Ryodan says tightly, “is. Dani.”

Part II

I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I don’t tell anybody about.

The observer.

She can’t feel hunger in her belly or cramped muscles from being in a cage for days on end.

She isn’t Dani.

She can survive anything. Feel nothing.

See what’s in front of her for exactly and only what it is.

Her heart doesn’t break a little every time her mom leaves.

And she holds no price too high for survival.

I don’t let go of myself and seek her often because once I got stuck there and she took over and the things she did …

I live in terror that one day I won’t get to be Dani again.

—From the journals of Danielle O’Malley

22

“I have lived behind walls that have made me alone”

KAT

In the five days since Ryodan interred me beneath his nightclub, I have neither heard voice nor experienced another’s emotion.

I should worry. I should care. I should be hammering on the door, demanding to be freed, but in these rooms I have experienced the first peace of my existence.

The entry room is unfurnished but the rest are not. There are four others: a bedroom with a soft pillow-top mattress so uniformly surfaced I know it was never used prior to my arrival; a bathroom with a large, gentle rain shower; and a kitchen stocked with food and beverages that tell me as surely as condemning words that Ryodan had been planning this for me, perhaps for quite some time.

The fourth and final room is the largest, walled with mirrors, housing a state-of-the-art gym.

Kasteo has not spoken a word.

Nor have I.

I’ve spent five days and nights simply feeling myself, my unborn child, without the constant drone of interference I’ve endured my entire life.

Kasteo lies on the floor.

He gets up and works out.

Occasionally he showers.

He doesn’t speak and I haven’t seen him eat. Perhaps he cooks while I’m asleep. I’ve seen no dirty dishes.