Had he killed her just for fun?

My intuition wasn’t buying it.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what my intuition was worth where he was concerned. If there was one thing I’d learned about Barrons, it was that speculating about him was as pointless as tap-dancing on quicksand, with no solid ground in sight.

Speaking of solid ground …

I glanced around. I was below it. I can feel belowground in my bones. I hate being there. I hate confined, windowless spaces. Yet, for a time, this space belowground had been my harbor in a brutal storm.

What had happened to Dublin while I’d been Pri-ya, clawing my way back to sanity? What had happened to the world?

How was Ashford? Were Mom and Dad okay? Had anyone gotten the Book? What was happening out there with all the Unseelie free? Was Aoibheal, Queen of the Seelie, okay, or had the Unseelie gotten to her, too, on Halloween? She was the only one with any hope of ever reimprisoning them. I needed her to be alive. Where was V’lane? Why hadn’t he come for me? Was he dead? I felt a moment of pure panic. Maybe he’d tried to rescue me after all and that was one of those confused imprints, and the LM had taken my spear and—

My fingers clenched on emptiness. Oh, God, where was my spear? The ancient Spear of Destiny was one of only two weapons known to man that was capable of killing an immortal Fae. I remembered throwing it away. I remembered it hissing and steaming at the foot of a basin of holy water.

Where had it gone from there?

Was it possible it was still lying there, in the church? Could I be so lucky?

I needed it back.

Once I had it, I could get to work on other things. Like figuring out how the Unseelie Princes had managed to turn it against me at the critical moment. True to Fae lore—which held that the Unseelie couldn’t touch any of the Seelie Hallows, and vice versa—they hadn’t been able to physically take it from me, but they’d managed to coerce me into turning it on myself, forcing me to choose between stabbing myself with it or tossing it, putting me completely at their mercy.

I not only needed my spear back—I needed to learn how to control it.

Then I was going to kill every Unseelie I could get my Nullifying hands on, slaughtering my way straight up the chain of command, not stopping until I’d taken out all the Unseelie Princes, the LM, and maybe even the Unseelie King himself. And the Seelie, too, with the exception of those I needed to restore order to our world. I was sick of the terrifying, inhumanly beautiful, homicidal interlopers. It had been our planet first and, although V’lane didn’t seem to think that should count for much, it was all that mattered to me. They were scavengers who’d damaged their own world so badly that they’d had to go find another one—and now they were doing the same thing to ours. They were arrogant immortals who’d created an immortal abomination—the Unseelie court, the dark mirror of their race—and they’d lost control of them on our planet. And who was paying the highest price for all their mistakes?

Me. That’s who.

I was going to get tougher, smarter, faster, stronger, and spend the rest of my life killing Fae, if that was what it took to put my world back the way it used to be.

I might not have a spear at the moment, but I was alive and I was … different. Something irrevocable had changed inside me. I could feel it.

I wasn’t entirely certain what it was.

But I liked it.

I ransacked the room before I left it, looking for weapons. There were none.

Apart from what looked like a hastily plumbed shower in a corner of the room, the rest of it was filled with my belongings that I’d kept at the bookstore.

Wherever we were now, in his efforts to restore my memory, Barrons had gone to some lengths to re-create pretty-in-pink Mac’s world. He’d plastered the walls with blown-up pictures of my parents, of Alina, of us playing volleyball with our friends on the beach back home. My driver’s license was stuck to a lamp shade, next to a photo of Mom. My clothes were draped all over the place, arranged in outfits, complete with matching purses and shoes. Every shade of pink fingernail polish ever made by OPI was lined up on a shelf. Fashion magazines covered the floor, along with some other ones I really hoped he and I hadn’t looked at together. There were peaches-and-cream candles—Alina’s favorite—scattered on every surface. There were dozens of lamps in the room and a blazing Christmas tree.

My backpack was nowhere to be found, but Barrons had obviously been counting on me regaining my sanity, because there was a new leather one, crammed with batteries, LED lights, and a MacHalo. He’d used a black helmet to build it. All the lights were black, except two. Guess he figured I’d’ve graduated from pink if I survived. I still liked pink. I would always like pink. But there wasn’t anything pink inside me anymore. I might be back, but I was black Mac now.

There was nothing useful here. I took a quick shower—I smelled like Jericho Barrons from head to toe—got dressed, strapped the MacHalo on my head, clicked it on, and headed for the door.

I was locked in.

It took me less than a minute to kick the door down. I not only had muscle now, I had another useful tool in my new black toolbox: rage.

Barrons seems to plan for everything. I want to be like him.

I was in a basement.

I found the guns in the crates, stacked next to the deafeningly loud generators that were powering the room I’d been living in, next to what looked like a year’s supply of gasoline.

There were dozens of crates of guns and twice as many crates of ammo. It seemed a little risky to me to keep so much ammunition next to so much gasoline, but who was I to judge? I was just glad it was all there. I sat on a crate and examined the different guns, finally settling for a semiautomatic with a shorter barrel than the rest. It resembled an Uzi, with a few minor differences.