I swallowed a laugh. It would only encourage her. “Stop cussing,” I said. Before she could get pissy, I added, “Because pretty girls don’t have ugly mouths, okay? I cuss sometimes, too. But I do it sparingly.”

“Who cares if I’m pretty?” she sneered, but I saw right through her. The first time I’d seen her she’d had makeup on and been in street clothes and I’d thought she was older than she was. In her uniform and without all that black eyeliner, I could see she was thirteen, fourteen at the most, and frozen briefly at that awkward stage all of us suffer for a time. I’d had a gangly period, too, where I’d been convinced the Lane genes had betrayed me, and unlike Alina, I was going to grow up ugly and have to spend the rest of my life eclipsed by my older sister while people said sadly, and never quite quietly enough, “Poor MacKayla, Alina got the brains and the beauty.”

Dani was trapped in adolescent limbo. Her torso hadn’t yet caught up with her legs and arms, and although her hormones were wreaking havoc on her skin they had yet to shape her hips and bust. Caught between child and woman was a rough place to be, and she had to fight monsters on top of it. “You’re going to be gorgeous one day, Dani,” I told her, “so clean up your language, if you want to hang out with me.”

She rolled her eyes, leaned her bike against the counter, tossed a rolled-up wad of mail on the counter, and sauntered cockily off toward the magazine rack, but not before I caught the startled, thoughtful look in her eyes. She would remember what I’d said. She would cling to it during her worst moments and it would get her through, the same way my Aunt Eileen’s promise that I would one day be pretty had gotten me through.

“Found it on the sidewalk,” she tossed over her shoulder. “Fecking postmen can’t even hit the slot.” She punctuated it with a glance that was a dare to correct her, and I might have, but she plucked a Hot Rod magazine from the stand.

Nice choice. I’d gone for the same thing at her age.

“Do you know you’re sitting on the edge of a whole neighborhood of nasty Unseelie?”

“You mean the Shades?” I said, absently flipping through the mail. “Yeah. I call it a Dark Zone. I’ve found three of them in the city.”

“You come up with the coolest names. Doesn’t it creep you out that they’re so close?”

“Creeps me out that they exist at all. Have you seen what they leave behind?”

She shuddered. “Yeah. Rowena sent me out with a team looking for some of us who didn’t make it home one night.”

I shook my head. She was too young to be seeing so much death. She should be reading magazines and thinking about cute guys. As I thumbed through the fliers and coupons, I spotted an envelope stuck in the middle. I’d seen that kind of envelope before: thick, plain, off-white vellum.

No return address.

It had a Dublin postmark, stamped two days ago.

MacKayla Lane c/o Barrons Books and Baubles, it said.

I ripped it open with trembling hands.

I talked to Mac tonight.

I closed my eyes, mentally braced myself, then opened them again.

It was soooo good to hear her voice! I could picture her lying on her bed, sprawled across the rainbow quilt Mom made for her years ago that’s frayed at the edges from a hundred washings, but she refuses to give it up. I could close my eyes and smell the caramel-apple pie with pecan crumb crust Mom was baking. I could hear Daddy in the background, watching baseball with old man Marley from next door, yelling at the Braves as if the batter’s ability to hit the ball depended on how loud they could shout. Home feels like it’s a million miles away, not four thousand—a mere plane ride, eight hours and I could see her.

Who am I kidding? Home’s a million lifetimes away. I want to tell her so badly. I want to say, Mac, come over here. You’re a sidhe-seer. We’re adopted. There’s a war coming and I’m trying to stop it, but if I can’t I’m going to have to bring you over here anyway, to help us fight. I want to say, I miss you more than anything in the world, and I love you so much! But if I do, she’ll know something’s wrong. It’s been so hard to hide it from her, because she knows me so well. I want to reach through the phone lines and hug my baby sister. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll never get to do it again. That I’ll die here and there’ll be a lifetime of things left unsaid and undone. But I can’t let myself think that way because—

I fisted my hand, crushing the page into a wad. “Watch the counter, Dani,” I barked, and raced for the bathroom.

I slammed the door, locked it, sat on the toilet, and hung my head between my knees. After a moment, I blew my nose and dried my eyes. Her handwriting, her words, her love for me, had slid an unexpected knife straight through my heart. Who was sending me these stupid, painful pages, and why?

I uncrumpled the page, smoothed it on my legs, and continued where I’d left off.

—if I do, I’ll lose hope, and hope’s all I’ve got. I learned something important tonight. I thought I was hunting the Book, and that would be the end of it. But now I know we’ve got to re-create what once was. We’ve got to find the five foretold by the Haven’s prophecy. The Sinsar Dubh alone isn’t enough. We need the stones and the book and the five.

That was the end of the page. There was nothing on the other side.

I stared at it until it blurred out of focus. When did grief end? Did it ever? Or did you just get numb from hurting yourself on it so many times?

Would I grow emotional scar tissue? I hoped so. At the same time I hoped not. How could I betray my love for my sister by not suffering every time I thought about her? If I stopped hurting, would that mean I’d stopped loving her a little?

How had Alina known about the Haven? I’d only recently learned of its existence and what it was: the High Council of sidhe-seers. Rowena claimed she’d never met my sister, yet Alina had written in her journal about the governing body of the very organization Rowena ran, and she’d somehow learned of a prophecy foretold by them.

What were the five? What was the Haven’s prophecy?

I clutched my head and massaged my scalp. Evil books and mysterious players and plots within plots, and now prophecies, too? Before I’d needed five things: four stones and a Book. Now I needed ten? That wasn’t merely absurd, it was unfair.

I stuffed the page in the front pocket of my jeans, stood up, freshened my face, took a deep breath, and went out to relieve Dani of her clerk duties. If my eyes were too bright when I stepped behind the counter, either she didn’t notice, or she understood a thing or two about grief, and left me alone.