“If I respect yours.”

“Yes.”

He held out a cellphone. “Take it. IISS won’t work yet but the other numbers will.”

She slipped the cell into her pocket as she slipped out the door.

He closed it behind her, remaining inside, allowing her to leave unattended because she’d given her word. He’d taken her word as covenant.

She turned for no reason she could discern and placed her hand, palm flat, to the door.

Stared at it, head cocked, wondering what the hell she was doing.

After a moment she shook herself and strode briskly down the hall, swiped the panel and entered the elevator. The teen she’d been would have barged into every one of Ryodan’s private places on these forbidden lower levels she could invade before he managed to stop her. And, she understood now, she’d have done it mostly for the rush of their confrontation when he finally did.

The woman had her own business to attend.

Inside the room, Ryodan removed his hand from the door.

—

“Is it the day yet? Is it? Is it? IS IT?” Shazam exploded from beneath a tangle of blankets and not one pillow, later that night when she entered their chambers.

“Soon,” she promised. “And keep your voice down,” she reminded.

“You smell again,” Shazam fretted, turning circles in agitation. “I don’t like the smell of him. He’s dangerous.”

“He’s necessary. For now.”

When she stretched out on the bed, Shazam pounced, landing on her stomach with all four paws, hard. “Not one thing more? Just necessary?”

“Ow! Good thing I didn’t have to go to the bathroom!” She knew from too many enthusiastic early-morning greetings that forty-odd pounds of Shazam was hell on a full bladder. Not to mention the tenderness of a fresh tat pressing into the bed. “Not one thing more,” she assured him.

“Did he finish it?”

“Not yet. Soon.”

He deflated as abruptly as the melodramatic beast was wont. “It’s all going to go horribly wrong,” he wailed. “Everything always does.” He sniffed, violet eyes dewing.

“Don’t be such a pessimist.”

He ruched the fur along his spine and spat a sharp hiss at her, working himself into a snit. “Pessimists are only pessimists when they’re wrong. When we’re right, the world calls us prophets.”

“Ew, fish breath!”

“Your pitiful offerings, my bad breath. Bring me better things to eat.”

“We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

He shifted his furry bulk around, parking his rump south of her chest (soft spots he wasn’t allowed to pounce ever), his belly so fat he had to spread his great front paws around it. Then he leaned forward and slowly touched his wet nose to hers. “I see you, Yi-yi.”

She smiled. Everything she knew about love she’d learned from this pudgy, cranky, manic-depressive, binge-eating beast that had been her companion through hell and back, too many times to count. He alone had protected her, loved her, fought for her, taught her to believe that life was worth living, even if there was no one there to see you living it.

“I see you, too, Shazam.”

28

“I would give everything I own just to have you back again…”

I’d left her. The woman that looked like my sister and had far too many of her memories and unique characteristics—I just left her there—in the basement where I’d been Pri-ya, sitting in the middle of crates of guns and ammo and various food supplies, looking unbearably lost and sad.

So, Mom and Dad think I’m dead? she’d asked as I was leaving.

They buried you. So did I, I’d flung over my shoulder.

Are they okay, Jr.? Did Mom lose it when she thought I was dead? Was Daddy—

They’re here in Dublin, I’d cut her off coldly. Ask them yourself. Go try to convince them. On second thought, don’t. Stay away from my parents. Don’t you dare go near them.

They’re my parents, too! Mac, you have to believe me. Why would I lie? Who else would I be? What’s wrong? What happened to you? How you did get so…hard?

I’d stormed out. Some part of me had simply shut down and there’d been no turning it back on. I’d gotten “hard,” as she called it, because my sister had been murdered.

For the past twenty-four hours I’d refused to even think about the imposter. I’d done nearly as good a job of keeping it in a box as I did with the Book.

But when it seeped out, it went something like this:

What if it really was her?

My sister, alone out there, and I’d turned my back on Alina in this dangerous, Fae-riddled city?

What if she got hurt? What if she was somehow truly, miraculously alive and ended up getting killed by a black hole or an Unseelie because I’d stormed away and left her alone, too wary, too suspicious, to let myself believe?

I’d have gotten my second chance—and blown it.

I suspected I might kill myself if that turned out to be the case.

What if she went to see my parents? They wouldn’t be as realistic as me. They’d welcome her back blindly. Daddy might start to feel skeptical in time but I guaran-damn-tee if that imposter knocked on their door, they’d let her inside their house in one second flat.

On the other and just as plausible hand: what if it was an imposter sent to fuck me up royally, get me to trust it, only to do something terrible to me in an unguarded moment? Who could get closer to me (and my parents) than my sister?