“I see it in your eyes. Deep. You bank it. Wilder than you were before. And, I have to say I like it. But you’re something else, too. Softer in some places.”

He was clearly deranged. There was nothing soft about her.

He put his hand on the bench between them, palm up, fingers relaxed, and gave her a look. It was an invitation. His hand would stay or go, as she wished.

How long had it been since she’d twined her fingers with someone’s, felt that click as they locked into place, the heat of someone’s palm against hers? The feeling that she wasn’t alone, that someone was in life with her. Young, they’d raced through the streets, holding hands and carrying bombs and laughing their asses off.

“When we’re kids,” Dancer said, “we’re made of steel. And we think we’re invincible but stuff happens and that steel gets stretched and pulled and twisted into impossible shapes. Most people are torn apart by the time they’re married and have kids of their own. But some people, the few, figure out how to let that steel heat and bend. And in all the places other people break, they get stronger.”

Eyes narrowed, curious, she moved her hand to his, placed it on top, palm to palm. He didn’t try to lace their fingers together. Just sat there, her hand resting lightly on his. She suspended the moment, absorbed it, tried to wrap her brain around it. But brains didn’t wrap well around hands.

“How did you get wise?” she said. “Nothing ever happened to you. Until the walls fell, your life was charmed.” She didn’t mean to sound cutting. It was simply the truth. It had fascinated and bewildered the teen she’d been. They’d been so much alike, sprung from opposite sides of a wide track. She’d had a nightmarish childhood, and his had been storybook perfect. Yet they’d understood everything about each other without ever having to say much of anything.

“I’ve got a bloody IQ through the bloody roof,” he said dryly. “Besides, you don’t have to suffer what other people have in order to understand. Not if you have half a brain and a willing heart. And where you’re concerned, Mega, my heart’s always been willing. I hate that you got lost in the Silvers and I didn’t even know it. I hate that you suffered. But I can’t say I’m sorry you grew up.”

She stared out over the water, saying nothing. She had no idea what to say. He wanted to be more than friends. He’d made that clear today. She wasn’t there. One day, maybe she could be. In the meantime this was oddly…well, odd. And a little…nice. She’d known the closest thing to safe she’d ever felt, years ago with Dancer.

But there was something in her that was—as others believed—rigid and unyielding, something that couldn’t bear the thought of bending even one inch. And touching and caring meant bending. There was a place inside her where she simply couldn’t let go. She’d let go of the wrong things.

They thought she was fearless. She wished that were true. There were things she feared.

She’d thought the day she got back to Dublin would be the best day of her life.

It had been one of the worst. The cost had been too high.

She drew her hand back to her lap.

Dancer stood up. “What do you say we work on our own map of the anomalies? Screw Ryodan and his monopoly on information.”

And just like that her sorrow ebbed and she stood like the young, strong woman she was, not the woman handicapped by tears locked in a box deep inside her. Fully aware, as Ryodan had said, that it was impossible to seal away a single emotion. Fully aware the price of no pain was no joy.

Because if those tears ever started to flow, she’d drown.

—

Jada hurried through the abbey, books tucked beneath her arm. She had two hours before she would head to Chester’s. She’d spent the day putting up her papers and mapping black holes around Dublin. On the way back to the abbey, she’d stood outside the funnel cloud that surrounded BB&B, staring up at it, forcing herself to remain cold, logical, an arrow toward the goal. Nothing more.

They had their agenda on Earth. She had her own elsewhere.

She wanted to go back into the Unseelie king’s library but wasn’t willing to lose more time Earthside. One never knew the price of stepping through a Silver. Besides, until she spoke with Barrons, she had no way of deciding which Silver would take her into the White Mansion. Five and a half years Silverside and she’d never managed to learn a bloody thing about the mirrors that could so dispassionately give or take life.

Penetrating the funnel cloud wouldn’t be a problem. She’d mastered that magic year two, Silverside. A few well-placed wards could degrade almost any self-contained Fae storm, allowing passage.

For a month now, ever since she’d arrived back in Dublin, she’d been looking for a ward, a spell, a totem, some way to mark a Silver, embed something on its shimmering surface, something visible from both sides.

Her efforts had yielded no fruit.

Now, as she moved through the corridors of the abbey, she gathered recent news from the sidhe-seers and dispatched orders, impatient to be in her chambers, craving Shazam’s warm, irascible presence and time alone with him to analyze and refine her plans.

He was slumped in a mound of fatness and foul mood. He didn’t even lift his head when she came in.

“I brought you something,” she said, removing an oily brown paper bag from her pack. His head shot up. He was insatiably curious.

He was insatiable, period.

His whiskers trembled with anticipation and he burped.