“You know what the tribunal will do.”

“There will be no tribunal. We’ll keep him hidden.”

“You can’t hide him forever. He won’t agree to stay hidden forever. He has a wife, a child.”

“He’ll get past it.”

“He’s a Highlander. Clan is everything. He won’t ever get past it.”

“He’ll get past it.”

Barrons mocked, “Repetition of erroneous facts—”

“Fuck you.”

“And because he won’t get past it, you know what they’ll do to him. What we’ve done to others.”

How many others? I wondered. What had they done?

“Yet you have Mac,” Ryodan said.

“I didn’t turn Mac.”

“Only because you didn’t have to. Someone else extended her life. Giving you the easy way out. Maybe our code is wrong.”

“There are reasons for our code.”

“That’s a fucking joke, coming from you. You said yourself, ‘Things are different now. We evolve. So does our code.’ Either there are laws or there aren’t. And if there are laws, like everything in the universe, they exist to be tested.”

“That’s what you’re after? Establishing new case precedence? Never going to happen. Not on this point. You want to turn Dani. Assuming she’s ever Dani again.”

“Nobody’s turning my fucking honey,” Lor muttered darkly.

“You took the Highlander, as your test case,” Barrons said.

Ryodan said nothing.

“Kas doesn’t speak. X is half mad on a good day, bugfuck crazy on a bad one. You’re tired of it. You want your family back. You want a full house, like the old days.”

Ryodan growled, “You’re so fucking shortsighted, you can’t see past the end of your own dick.”

“Hardly short.”

“You don’t see what’s coming.”

Barrons inclined his head, waiting.

“Have you considered what will happen if we don’t find a way to stop the holes the Hoar Frost King made from growing.”

“Chester’s gets swallowed. Parts of the world disappear.”

“Or all.”

“We’ll stop it.”

“If we can’t.”

“We move on.”

“The kid,” Ryodan said with such contempt that I knew he was talking about Dancer, not Dani, “says they’re virtually identical to black holes. At worst, consuming all objects within to oblivion. At best, from which there is no escape. When we die,” he carefully enunciated each word, “we come back on this world. If this world doesn’t exist, or is inside a black hole…” He didn’t bother finishing. He didn’t need to.

Lor stared at the monitor. “Shit, boss.”

“I’m the one who’s always planning,” Ryodan said. “Doing whatever’s necessary to protect us, ensure our continued existence while you fucks live like tomorrow will always come.”

“Ah,” Barrons mocked, “the king wearies of the crown.”

“Never the crown. Only the subjects.”

“What does this have to do with the Highlander?” Barrons said impatiently.

Exactly what I was wondering.

“He’s a sixteenth-century druid that was possessed by the first thirteen druids trained by the Fae—the Draghar.”

“I heard he was cured of that little problem,” Barrons said.

“I heard otherwise from a certain walking lie detector who told Mac his uncle never managed to exorcise them completely.”

I scowled, pressing my fingers to my forehead, rubbing it as if to agitate my memory and recall exactly where I’d been when Christian told me that—and if there had been any damned roaches around. That was the problem with roaches: they were small and could wedge themselves into virtually any crack to eavesdrop unseen.

“You know what Christian told Mac when you weren’t present?” Barrons said softly.

Ryodan said nothing.

“If I ever see roaches in my bookstore…” Barrons didn’t bother finishing the threat.

“Roaches?” Lor muttered. “What the fuck’s he talking about?”

“The Seelie queen is missing,” Ryodan said. “The Unseelie don’t give a shit if this world is destroyed. They aren’t bound to this planet like we are. Fae magic is destroying the world. It may be the only thing that saves it. The Highlander wasn’t supposed to die on that mountain. It wasn’t part of my plan. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my fucking vagina to be inside a black hole.”

That was certainly a visual.

“Me neither,” Lor muttered. “I like my vaginas pink and smaller. Much smaller,” he added. “Like way the fuck tight.”

I rolled my eyes.

Ryodan said, “This could be the end of us.”

The end of the Nine? I’d always kept in the back of my mind that if things got really bad on this world, I’d just grab everyone I love, along with everyone else we could round up, and travel through the Silvers to another planet. Colonize, start fresh. Unfortunately, erroneously, I’d only been thinking if things on this world got “really bad,” assuming there would still be a dangerous planet the Nine would certainly be able to battle their way off of again. I’d never considered that there might be a time this planet didn’t even exist. I knew the black holes were a serious problem but I hadn’t fully absorbed what the small tears in the fabric of our universe really signified and what they might do long term. I’d overlooked the ramifications of the Nine being reborn on Earth.