“Blank. Her eyes filled with…anguish and…grief then…just empty. Like she wasn’t even…alive anymore.”

“You think it’s like that Tom Hanks movie,” Lor said, “where he got stranded on an island and talked to a goddamn ball for years?”

“Only Jada forgot it wasn’t real,” I said, horrified.

“Don’t know,” Ryodan said. “Maybe it’s…how she survived and…why she came back Jada. She kept saying he was so…emotional. Moody. He needed her to take care of him. Possible she survived by…divvying herself up…creating an imaginary friend with…Dani’s attributes…while becoming Jada.”

I closed my eyes. Tears slipped down my cheeks.

“I made her see…he wasn’t real. Then she…was just…gone. Bloody hell…I did it to her.”

We sat in silence for a time.

Finally, I got up.

Ryodan would survive. He had his brothers.

Dani needed a sister.

—

Lor followed me out. “What the fuck was up at Chester’s, Mac? Why was an Unseelie prince in our club? And where the bloody hell was he hiding?” he demanded.

I stopped walking and turned to face him. When I’d asked him to capture me a sifter to take me to Chester’s, he’d insisted on coming along. I’d demanded he remain in one of the subclubs with the sifter while I went to get Christian. I’d called it due as part of my favor, thereby keeping my oath to Ryodan that his secrets were mine.

I gave him a frosty look. “You asked me a favor and I gave it to the best of my ability in exchange for one from you. We’re even. If you try to push me on this, I’ll fight you with everything I’ve got. And I’ve got more than you think. Like you, Lor, my loyalties are to Ryodan. Give me space on this.”

He measured me a long moment then inclined his head. “I’ll leave it. For now.”

Together, we went upstairs to stand vigil over Jada.

—

Over the next several hours, visitors came to see Jada. I don’t have any idea how they got into the store with the funnel cloud around it. I assumed Lor was bringing them in somehow. Living with the Nine around means accepting endless mysteries. Jo came and sat with me for hours and we talked and tried to figure out what to do to help Jada/Dani heal. Jo told me she’d been to the abbey twice to see her, but Jada had kept herself surrounded by her closest advisors both times, and acknowledged her only to enlist her aid in continuing the modernization of their libraries.

Jada’s sidhe-seers took shifts coming, sat grimly with us and kept us updated on conditions at the abbey, which I barely heard, staring at the bed, lost in sadness deep enough to drown.

Barrons intermittently came upstairs, checking with grim dark eyes to see if anything had changed.

Jada lay unmoving in the bed, as if carved from stone, holding on to the charred stuffed animal as though her life depended on it. I was surprised Ryodan hadn’t dropped it. He’d been burned beyond belief but somehow managed to hang on to both Jada and the stuffed bear with which she was obsessed—and keep them both from burning. Any other man would have dropped the thing in the fire.

Finally, I was alone with her, and I moved to sit on the bed. As I pulled the covers up, the glint of Cruce’s cuff caught my eye and I suddenly couldn’t get it off my arm fast enough.

She’d given it to me when she kept my spear. Hadn’t wanted me walking around unprotected, even then. And it had kept me safe from all harm in battle tonight.

It should have been on her arm.

There were so many should-have-beens.

I tried to pick up her arm to put the cuff on her wrist but I couldn’t break her death grip on Shazam. I laid it on the table next to the bed so when she woke up she could have it back.

I touched her hair softly, smoothing scorched auburn tendrils from her face. It was still pulled back in a ponytail but had slipped down to her nape, and I could see the natural curl in it. I smiled faintly, sadly. One day I’d like to see her wearing it curly and wild and free again.

I stroked her cheek, wiping away a smudge of tear-streaked soot, then got a washcloth from the bathroom and gently cleaned her face. I dampened her hair and smoothed it back. The water made it even springier, with little curls forming. She didn’t move at all.

“Dani,” I whispered. “I love you.”

Then I stretched out on the bed behind her, wrapped my arms around her, and held her like she was holding Shazam.

I didn’t know what to do, what else to say. Apologies were pointless. What was, was. Dani had always lived by the motto, “The past is past. The present is now, and that’s why it’s a present. ’Cause you got it, and you can do stuff with it!”

I pressed my cheek to her hair and whispered the same words against her ear that I’d heard her say earlier. Although I had no idea what they meant, they obviously meant something to her.

“I see you, yee-yee,” I said. “Come back. Don’t go away. Please don’t leave me.” I started to cry. “It’s safe here. We love you, Dani. Jada. Whoever you need to be. It’s okay. We don’t care. Just please don’t leave. I’ve got you, honey, I’ve got you.” I cried harder.

—

You never see it coming.

That final, fatal blow.

You think the shit has already hit the fan and exploded all over your face. You think things are so bad they can’t get any worse. You’re walking around tallying all the things that are wrong with your world when you discover you have no clue what’s really going on around you and you’ve only been seeing the tip of the iceberg that sank the Titanic—at the precise moment you hit the iceberg that sank the Titanic.