“It sent it back in time,” Jada says quickly.

“Fuck! So that part of the legend was true, it can manipulate time.” Mac explodes: “Lock me down now!”

Barrons is on her. He simply vanishes then reappears with his hands on her shoulders, as if he, too, can sift. What the fuck are the Nine? Rather, ten, now. Great, Dageus was a handful before. Now he’s out there somewhere and able to move like the Nine. If he hunts, nothing will see him coming.

They both freeze for a long moment, Mac looking up, Barrons looking down. Then she says softly, “You’ll figure something out. This won’t be permanent. Or maybe I’ll figure something out. But you have to do it. I can’t guarantee that if I kill myself, it won’t simply jump to another body. Please, Jericho, don’t let me kill anyone else. I don’t want to live with the death of people I love on my conscience. I don’t want to live with the fate of the world on it. I can’t. This is the only way and you know it.”

“Hush,” he says softly and closes his eyes.

“Jericho, don’t,” she says. “I don’t know what it might do to you. Don’t go inside me after it.”

“Fucking trust me to be able to survive.”

“I can’t carry your death,” Mac says. “It would turn me into the same kind of monster that inhabits me. Once before I was willing to destroy the world just to get you back!”

He opens his eyes and a faint smile curves his lips. “I know,” he says, dark eyes glittering.

“That is not a good thing,” she hisses.

“In my book it is.”

“Well it’s bloody well not in mine,” I growl. “You heard her. Barrons, give us the stones.” If he doesn’t, I’ll be on him in seconds, take them from him.

They ignore me. Jada stands, watching them with apparent fascination.

“Fucking try to relax, Mac,” Barrons growls. “Let go. You’ve got walls up. Drop them,” he demands. He opens his eyes, his dark gaze boring down into hers.

She locks her jaw and stares stubbornly up.

“Mac,” he says softly. Then his eyes say something to her I can’t read, but whatever it was, her lips curve with a slow smile of delight. “I thought you didn’t believe in words,” she says with a husky laugh.

“I believe in you. And sometimes you’re so obtuse I’m forced to resort to them. Let me in.”

With a soft sigh, she closes her eyes and goes limp against him, melding their bodies together.

And that’s when all hell breaks loose.

DELETED MAC/RYODAN SCENE FROM FEVERSONG:

“She kissed me. She wanted…” He trailed off.

I shot him a venomous look. “Tell me you did not have sex with Dani.”

“Of course I didn’t,” he growled.

I said indignantly, “Well, why not? What’s wrong with Dani? You sleep with everyone else.”

He gave me a blank look that turned instantly to annoyance. “You don’t get to have it both ways, Mac. You can’t be pissed at me because you think I did it then get pissed at me because I didn’t. What the fuck’s with that?”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I said, scowling. “Dani shouldn’t be sleeping with you, at least not now. But how dare you reject my girl? She’s the best thing you could ever hope to get.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Then he said softly, “She’s a virgin.”

“Oh!” Thank God. A knot I hadn’t even been aware of in my stomach loosened. I’d been so afraid she’d had it taken from her as a child, or taken from her Silverside, or given it away as coolly and impersonally as a porn star. “Wait,” I said, scowling again, “so that’s the only reason you didn’t?”

“I had a lot of fucking reasons. I told you she was a virgin because I thought you’d want to know. Figured I wasn’t the only one worried about what might have happened Silverside. The meltdown at the abbey about Shazam made me think she might have had a child.”

I softened. “Oh. So, how did it end up between you two?” My darling Dani. She’d gotten rejected first time out of the gate. I hated that. I didn’t want her to ever be rejected. Why on earth did she have to pick Ryodan? When she’d first come back as Jada, I could have seen it. But she wasn’t that icy woman anymore, and the more she thawed, the younger she appeared. I groaned, understanding her motive. “She always said she wanted her first time to be epic. That’s why she wanted you. None of her other options were available. Barrons was out of the running and V’lane turned out to be Cruce.”

He snapped, “None of her other—wait, she wanted to give her virginity to Barrons? She said that?”

I shrugged. “She was a teenager.”

“Barrons and Dani would never work,” he said tightly.

“Nobody said they would. That would be as wrong as me and you. Ew.”

He bristled. “What the bloody hell is wrong with me?”

“And there you are,” I said. “See? You don’t want to have sex with me but it sure burns when I reject you.”

He shot me an icy look. “You didn’t reject me. I wasn’t offering. But if I felt like it, I could change your mind.”

Oh, God, men. Sometimes there was nothing else you could say.

Barrons growled low in his throat.

“Not that I want to,” Ryodan said hastily. “Or would ever want to.”

Barrons growled again.

“Christ, let’s just end this conversation,” Ryodan said tightly. “It’s going nowhere.”

“Let’s,” Barrons agreed.

“Let’s not,” I said. “How did it end with you and Dani?” I pressed, worried for her.

“I left, that’s how the fuck it ended. I got out of there as fast as I could.”

“So, you don’t know where she went?” I needed to find her. Talk to her. See if I could help with her bruised…pride or feelings or whatever she was going through now. I said to Barrons, “I’m going to sift to her and see how she is.”

Ryodan stiffened, sucking in a harsh breath. “Ah, fuck! Don’t,” he growled, turning his back to me, hands fisting at his sides.

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“Don’t sift to her. Your timing would be terrible.”

I stared at him. His back was ramrod straight and he shuddered. He turned and shot Barrons an unreadable look crammed so full of an unfathomable conversation and I desperately wanted an interpretation.

Barrons went still, closed his eyes and rubbed them.

“What’s going on?” I said softly.

Without opening his eyes, Barrons murmured, “Dani is having sex.”

My gaze whipped back to Ryodan. “You can feel that because of the brand on her neck?”

Ryodan said nothing, just stood there like he’d been turned to stone, nostrils flaring, eyes sparking crimson. His fangs extended, protruding from his mouth.

My gaze shot back to Barrons, and I was just about to speak when he said to Ryodan, “You knew when you tattooed her what it would do to you. You knew the price.”

“What price?” I demanded.

“She went straight from me to him,” Ryodan said nearly inaudibly.

“Him, who?’ I practically shouted.

“Her fucking kid genius,” he hissed.

I couldn’t help but smile. She was with Dancer. That was the epic I’d wanted for the woman she’d started to become. For Dani “the Mega” O’Malley epic could only be the one thing she’d never had: normal. Then my heart sank as I remembered the condition of Dancer’s heart. I got lost in my thoughts a moment, hoping she didn’t…well, surely she wouldn’t be too…vigorous. Dani was super strong, she vibrated when she got excited. Oh, I really needed to stop thinking about this. I shook my head to scatter images and said to Ryodan, “You did the right thing. You should never have been her first.”

He looked at me like I was absolutely insane. “Of course I shouldn’t.” Then his face hardened and something I couldn’t define stirred in his ancient eyes. “I’m going to be her last.”

Without another word, Ryodan shifted into the beast and was gone.

DELETED SCENE FROM HIGH VOLTAGE:

Before I began writing the novel, I needed to see the decision Ryodan made to leave, to fully understand the emotion and motives behind it. I wrote this scene between him and Barrons to flesh it out in my mind…

“What are you waiting for?” Ryodan demanded.

Jericho Barrons paced the flagstones with such violence, his boots kicked up stone dust with each step. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Ryodan said coolly, “I didn’t ask you to think. Just do it.”

“And if we need you?” Barrons whirled on him so sharply that the fabric of his long coat cracked like a whip.

“It’s five years.” The corner of Ryodan’s mouth lifted in a mocking smile. “Surely you can muddle through without me for so short a time. In Faery with Mac, it may pass as a mere month or two for you.” Time crawled in that liminal place where the ancient Fae held formal court.

“And if something goes wrong? You haven’t thought this through,” Barrons snarled.