“I’m not so sure of that,” Barrons disagreed.

“But he’s the Sinsar Dubh, too,” she said.

“I’m not so sure of that either. I think he absorbed the knowledge of the Book, whereas Mac may have been absorbed by it. Cruce read it in the First Language, the spells passed up his arms. From what you described, that’s not at all what happened to Mac.”

Jada saw nothing to be gained by assuring him Mac had definitely been absorbed. She hadn’t been in the cavern the night the corporeal Sinsar Dubh was interred and didn’t know the details. But Cruce wasn’t throwing off anything like what had been palpably emanating from Mac, the dark whirlwind energy of a pure psychopath. “We have to find Christian. If he wasn’t first, he’ll be next.”

Barrons sliced his head in curt negation. “Without the spear or sword, the Book can’t kill Christian and these beasts can release him. We must determine the significance of Cruce appearing in the Hummer.”

On the ground, the Unseelie prince stirred, groaning.

Barrons prodded him with the toe of his boot. “Wake the fuck up, Tink, and tell us what happened.”

Cruce opened his eyes, blinked up at Barrons.

And vanished.

Jada shot him an incredulous look. “You just set him free. I thought you left a few runes on him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“They prevent the Fae from sifting.”

“And you’re just now telling me this?” he said with equal incredulity.

“I thought you knew everything. You always know everything. You recognized them.”

“That doesn’t mean I know every blasted detail of what they bloody do,” he snapped.

“Well, I suggest you grab a few before the beasts finish them off. If we don’t get the chance to use them on him, they might be of use holding Mac.”

While Barrons dispatched Fade to fetch a container, Jada closed her eyes and pinned Cruce’s sudden appearance in the Humvee on her mental bulletin board. Around that inexplicable event, she tacked up every fact she knew about him, stepped back and studied the big picture, seeking logic. The world around her vanished, leaving what she loved best: a mystery, an unexplained event, and her fierce, consuming desire to riddle it out. Everything in the universe made sense, if one gathered enough information and examined it properly.

Up went the impaired state of Cruce’s prison, the closed doors of the cavern, the cuff she’d worn for months without it ever closing, the apparent release of Cruce by the Sinsar Dubh (or had it caught him wandering the grounds, already free?), the cuff abruptly closing—as if responding to a signal it had previously been unable to receive—the legend that in addition to affording a protective shield, the cuff of Cruce had served as the concubine’s way of summoning the Unseelie King. For that reason alone, Jada had deemed it worth stealing from Cruce’s arm, but it never worked.

Suspicion took the cohesive form of a valid premise. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she murmured.

“What?” Barrons demanded.

She opened her eyes. “We were talking about him right before he appeared. When I took the cuff from his arm, he was still imprisoned, his power contained. A short time ago, before he was turned into a blob, he must have been free for at least a brief time.”

Long enough that the cuff might have responded to its creator and established a bond between them?

Trusting that Barrons was correct and she wasn’t summoning another version of what Mac had become, Jada tested it. “Cruce.”

The prince was back again, standing in the middle of them, swaying slightly, his hand at his throat, looking shocked and startled before his expression turned thunderous.

He vanished.

“Cruce,” she said again.

He was back again, coldly furious. “You will stop doing that, human, and you will give it back to me. It was never meant for you.” He stalked toward her, hand outstretched, but froze when she slid the sword from behind her back.

She scrutinized him closely but detected none of the enormous malevolence she expected from the Sinsar Dubh. “Your deceit doesn’t work on me anymore.” She’d felt the intense pressure of the illusion he’d just tried to force on her, to convince her that he’d taken her sword and she was defenseless against him. “I’ll only bring you back, each time. We can do this all day.”

“Give me my cuff or die, human.”

“Explain,” Barrons fired at Jada.

She smirked. “It seems I’ve got the all-powerful Cruce on a leash.”

“That same leash tethers you, human,” Cruce purred, and vanished.

“Bloody he—” was all Jada managed to get out before she, too, was gone.

Jo offers me a smile when she sees me approaching. “That’d be great, Mac,” she says, accepting my offer of aid. “We’re trying to collect what supplies remain and move them below.”

“Isn’t that water over there?” I say, nodding toward the half-collapsed pantry. “Looks like a dozen or more jugs.”

Her smile brightens. “We need to get that out to the women. Most of them haven’t had anything to eat or drink since last night.” She moves to the collapsed structure and begins removing the jugs.

She doesn’t know she’s handling poison, death. Idiot. She doesn’t understand that nothing can be taken for granted in this world, would undoubtedly refuse to believe we even exist—those of us that see through others as if they’re cardboard cutouts with their simplistic needs scribbled in Sharpie on their flat, one-dimensional faces.