And if the price was me, the price was me.

I guess that’s what love is. You care more that they live than you care about whether you do. Dani’s light would never be extinguished. Not on my watch.

Panic was pressing at the outer edges of my mind and I knew the Sweeper was almost on us. I could smell the noxious odor of the wraiths hemming us in.

I hurried to the Book and turned the pages rapidly, scanning, looking for anything I could use.

“Mac,” I heard from a distance. “Don’t do it for me. Don’t lose your soul for me. You know I have responsibility dysmorphia syndrome. You’ll make it worse.”

I laughed in the cavern as I thumbed through page after page. Who said I would lose my soul? Good magic, I reminded myself.

There! A bit of a double-edged sword, but it would work.

Triumphantly, I shouted the words of the ancient spell I’d just found. The syllables echoed sharply off the stone of the cavern, amplifying, growing, shimmering in the air around me. I could feel the power flooding me, ready, able, and more than willing. It filled me with euphoria, and I knew something that felt so good couldn’t possibly be bad.

As I finished the final syllable, the Book abruptly collapsed into a pile of shimmering gold dust.

I stared at it wondering what had just happened. Looking for the same winking red gemstones I’d seen in the cavern.

Had I absorbed it? Was I one with it? I’d been reading it in the First Language. Had I succeeded in doing what Cruce had done?

I didn’t feel any different.

I knew that, beyond me, in the warehouse, the Sweeper and its minions were gone. The spell had done what I’d intended it to do. Well, essentially.

And most importantly, Dani was free and safe.

Even now she was rising from her gurney, restraints falling away as she stood up. I could see her movements in my mind’s eye.

Music began to play in my cavern and I frowned. It was a Sonny and Cher song that I’d always hated. They say we’re young and we don’t know…

My blood turned to ice in my veins and I could feel it, oh God, I could feel it!

Inside me, expanding, cramming every nook and cranny of my being!

Blighting everything, blacking out the tiniest most essential parts of me, draping my soul in homicidal rage and bottomless hunger and madness and horror, shoving me back and down, cramming me into a tiny box with no holes for air, packing me in there as tightly as a sardine.

Just before the lid slammed down, I used the last bit of control I had over my mouth to scream, “Run, Dani. RUN!”

Got you, sweet thing, the Sinsar Dubh purred.