Alina walked slowly to join us, pausing a few feet away. “How much do you remember of that day?”

“More than enough.”

“What I remember is that you were screaming at the end, tearing at your hair, vomiting all over yourself. Dani, honey, it wasn’t your fault. And if you don’t quit blaming yourself I’m going to kick your ass all over this city and back. You’re not stupid. Get a grip on it. Rowena was a sadistic old bitch and you were a child. A good child. End of subject. Let it go.”

I mouthed a silent Love you, sis at Alina. She’d said exactly the right words. Not too much, not too little. Not too nice, not too harsh.

Dani said nothing for a long moment, just sat there in silence. Then she said, “You really mean that. You don’t hate me.”

“No. And I didn’t then. I felt sad. For both of us. For being trapped in circumstances beyond our control. It was obvious you were being controlled and you were fighting it with everything you had. Come off world with us tonight, Dani. Start a new life. Mac’s coming in a few days. We’ll be sisters.” She beamed. “The three of us.”

Oh, fuck, that drove a knife through my heart. Dani would go to Shazam. Alina would go with Mom and Dad. I would die. The three of us would never be peas in a Mega Pod. That time had passed.

But for a while we could pretend.

I said quickly, “What do you say we go for a stroll around our city? Take in the sights one last time? The three of us.”

Dani turned and looked from me to Alina, back to me, and back to Alina again. Then she said slowly, “I’d like that.”

I got another slice of heaven for a few hours that day. We walked around our deserted town and talked and reminisced. It was stiff at first between Dani and Alina but my sister and I are so much alike that Dani didn’t stand a chance.

We detoured into the Dark Zone, stood outside 1247 LaRuhe and swapped stories about it. We climbed Dani’s water tower and looked out over the city as she told us about the night Ryodan first “offered a job.” Then she filled me in on all I’d missed with the Hoar Frost King. We dropped by Alina’s old place and Dani showed us a couple of her favorite hidey-holes and we finally ended up at Chester’s standing forty feet away from what was now an enormous roiling black hole, descending into the dug-out pavement beneath it. The entire sphere, except for a tiny walnut-sized blot of absolutely still blackness at the center, had become a whirling ergosphere. We held on to one another, our jackets flapping briskly in the breeze it was throwing off.

“Do you hear it, Mac?” Alina said grimly.

The music was horrifying and I more than heard it. I felt it in my bones.

I knew then.

Whatever happened to this planet was going to affect far more than merely our world. It was going to have a catastrophic impact on our entire galaxy.

But it wouldn’t stop with our galaxy. It would spread beyond that.

This Song of Unmaking would slowly but inevitably unmake everything.

It would take time. But it would happen.

And it was my fault.

I felt the blood draining from my face. I looked at Alina.

“What?” she demanded.

I shook my head. “Just didn’t expect it to be so big. The song hurts me. Does it you?”

She nodded.

I lied, “I forgot to get a couple of things for the party. See you guys later?”

They nodded and I hugged them both fiercely and whispered “I love you” in their ears before we went our separate ways.

Over the course of my many encounters with Cruce, I’d attempted repeatedly to describe him in my journal, as V’lane or as himself. I’d used words like: terrifyingly beautiful, godlike, possessing inhuman sexuality, deadly eroticism. I’d called him lethal, I’d called him irresistible. I’d cursed him. I’d lusted for him, even writhed beneath him. I’d called his eyes windows to a shining Heaven, I’d called them gates to Hell. I’d filled entries with scribblings that later made no sense to me, comprised of columns of antonyms: angelic, devilish; creator, destroyer; fire, ice; sex, death.

I’d made a list of colors, every shimmering shade of black, raven, blue, and ice known to man. I’d written of oils and spices, scents from childhood, scents from dreams. I’d indulged in lengthy thesaurus-like entries, trying to capture the sensory overload that was Cruce.

I’d failed at every turn to truly capture him.

Because I’d been describing his body. Not his essence.

If I was good and he was evil…or perhaps if I was Light and he was Dark…had I done enough to try to bring those two together in truce?

No. I’d written him off as a lost cause.

Are we being tested? I’d asked the DEG.

Always, was his reply.

I stood in the empty museum because it was the site of one of my encounters with V’lane, and because BB&B was sacred and I wouldn’t summon Cruce there.

If I could summon him at all.

But I was damned well going to try. Despite what it might cost me.

I sat on a small pedestal that had been looted of its artifact long ago, probably shortly after the walls fell. Holding my journal, I made another series of notes because writing things down helps me think.

Cruce was proud, vain, ruthless, deceptive, a consummate liar, powerful, power-hungry, cunning, and committed. He’d manipulated and set into motion the very events that had precipitated the king creating the Sinsar Dubh and the destruction of the walls between our worlds and led us straight to our current disaster. He’d tried to control me. He’d used me every chance he’d gotten. He’d raped me.