Cool wood. My sister’s home now.

I dusted it lovingly, brushing away clods of dirt.

Months ago I’d stood with Christian near another casket, both determined to open it and dreading it, just like today. But that had been a coffin of ice, containing the concubine/Seelie queen.

This casket was mortal, not Fae. I remembered the day I’d chosen it, the fancy one with the elaborate inlaid burl, the elegant pin-striped cream silk. Funny how you obsessed over funeral details when you lost someone you loved, as if they might somehow see all the care you were putting into the last things you would ever be able to do for them. I’d chosen the one with the many hidden compartments, into which I tucked treasure after treasure, so she could take them out in Heaven and smile. I know, foolish to an extreme. Assuming there was a Heaven and assuming she went, I highly doubted the coffin went, too. It had been a time of madness. It had cost a fortune. I hadn’t cared. Only the best for Alina.

I remembered closing the lid myself, I’d even insisted on turning the crank to seal it. I’d tucked the key into my pocket for some absurd reason. As if I might someday visit her, dig her up, and talk to her or something. That key was in a jewelry box in my bedroom, a mile away.

“I need you to break the seal,” I told Christian. “Make it open.”

The casket exhaled a soft plosive and the lid shifted slightly.

I stood there every bit as woodenly as I’d stood there a little over a year ago, feeling as cold and hard as her new home. Tears spilled from my eyes.

With shaking hands, I raised the embossed upper panel of the casket.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

By this time I’d thought myself beyond all surprise.

There was nothing inside.

I’d lost my sister.

Now I’d lost her corpse, too.

15

“I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes, the words are maps…”

I stalked into Chester’s in a shit of a mood, leaving Christian at the Sinatra club with yet another whiskey in his hand. He’d declined my invitation to join our meeting. Said he had more immediate problems than the fate of the world and he was sure we’d figure it out, considering how controlling and micromanaging Ryodan was about everything he owned—and as he believed he owned the entire world and everything in it, and could play with it all like his personal chess set—the bastard would surely find a way to patch things up to his liking. He’d added that at least we were now both in the same boat, with missing corpses, and maybe I should ask Ryodan about mine.

I wasn’t sure who was pissier, him or me. He was certainly more loquacious about it.

I pushed through the crowd, grateful for the first time that Chester’s was off the grid in terms of morality and legality. Although many eyes in the crowd observed me with shock and a good bit of fear, no one tried to mess with me.

I was almost sorry about that.

My sister’s casket was empty.

I knew for a fact that I’d buried her.

I knew for a fact it was her.

I knew every inch of my sister. The barely-there stretch marks on the sides of her hips that she’d hated whenever she wore a bathing suit after having lost twenty-five pounds rapidly when she caught mono, then gaining it back again. The birthmark so similar to mine. The funny shape of her second toe, longer than the big one. The fingernail on her right hand that never grew right because she’d gotten her finger slammed in a car door and the nail had darkened with a blood blister and fallen off.

I’d buried Alina.

If I hadn’t, nothing in my entire existence was certain.

I slapped my palm to the wall of Ryodan’s office and stormed in.

“Ms. Lane,” Barrons said.

“I need to talk to you,” I snapped. “Alone. Now.”

Ryodan said, “We’re having a meeting—”

“I. Don’t. Give a damn.” I said to Barrons, “Now.” I forced myself to add, “Please?”

He was on his feet before I even added the please. I turned and stormed back out, down the stairs, through the club, feeling him behind me all the way. I stopped only when I reached the corridor that led to the server’s wing. Then I spun sharply to face him. “Do you know where there’s a private closet?” I demanded with a touch of hysteria.

“I’m not sure I know the difference between a private closet and a public one, Ms. Lane,” he said dryly.

“Someplace there are no bloody cameras!”

He went motionless, swept my body with that dark, inscrutable gaze, and the shape of his mouth changed. “Ah, Ms. Lane, did you pull me out of there to fuck?”

“You bet your ass I did.”

“Bloody hell. I don’t know what happened to you—”

“I don’t want to talk about it! Are you going to cooperate or not?” I snarled.

“—but goddamn woman. I like you this way.”

He shoved me back against a wall, palmed open a door I hadn’t even noticed, backed me in, spun me around, and crushed me against the wall, kicking the door shut behind us.

Then my jeans were down and he was inside me with a rough growl, and I was ready for him because I’m always ready for him, pushing deep and hard, and I was flattened against the wall with my hands over my head, shoving back with my ass, and that was all I needed to find a lifeline, to connect, to remain sane.

—

When we returned to Ryodan’s office, I felt remarkably better. I could think again. I wasn’t a raw mass of pain and confusion and fear. I’d dumped all that on Barrons’s big hard body. I’d turned the savagery I was feeling toward myself and the world on him. I’d nipped and fought and fucked and cleansed.