I narrowed my eyes. “You can’t control a Hunter! Nobody can!”

His dark gaze mocked. “You’re afraid.”

“I am not,” I snapped. Of course I was. The thing might be suspiciously dampened and seemingly oblivious to my presence, but fear of it was in my blood. I’d been born with a deep-seated subconscious alarm. “What if it shakes us off as soon as it gets us up there?” I might not bleed like I used to, but I was pretty sure my bones were as easily broken as the next person’s.

Barrons walked around to the front of the Hunter. Flames leapt in its eyes when it saw him. It sniffed at Barrons, and some of the heat seemed to die. When Barrons withdrew the pouch containing the stones from his coat, the Hunter pressed its nostrils to it and seemed to like the scent. “It knows it would be dead before it could,” he said softly.

“It’s never going to let me on it with my spear, and I’m not giving it up,” I prevaricated.

“Your spear is the least of its concerns.”

“Just how am I supposed to hold on?” I demanded.

“They have loose skin between the wings. Grab it like a horse’s mane. But put these on first.” He tossed a pair of gloves at me. “And keep them on.” They were of strange fabric, thick yet supple. “You don’t want to touch it with bare skin.” He assessed me. “The rest of you should be fine.”

“Why don’t I want to touch it with bare skin?” I asked warily.

“On, Ms. Lane. Now. Or I’ll strap you onto the damned thing.”

It took me a few tries, but a few minutes later I was on the back of an Unseelie Hunter.

I understood why he’d given me the gloves. It radiated such intense cold that if I’d touched it with my bare hands and there’d been any moisture on them at all, they would have frozen to its leathery hide. I shivered, grateful for my layers of leather clothing. Barrons mounted behind me, too close and electric for my comfort.

“Why does it like the smell of the stones?”

“They were chiseled from the walls of the Unseelie King’s fortress. It’s the equivalent of your pecan pie, fried chicken, and fingernail polish,” he said dryly. “Smells like home.”

The Hunter gave a blast of smoky air, filling the alley with the acrid stench of brimstone. Then it unfurled its wings and, with one massive pump of those leathery sails, lifted off and flapped darkly into the night, showering crystals of black ice onto the streets below.

I caught my breath and stared down, watching as the bookstore grew smaller.

We rose higher and higher into the cold, dark night sky.

There was Trinity College and Temple Bar!

There was the Garda station and the park. There was the Guinness Storehouse, with the platform where I’d stood looking down the night I realized I’d fallen in love with this city.

There were the docks, the bay, stretching to the ocean’s horizon.

There was the hated church where my world had fallen apart. I tipped my head back and looked up at the stars, rejecting both vision and memory. The moon was brilliantly white, brighter than it should have been, rimmed with that same strange bloody aura I’d seen a few nights ago.

“What’s with the moon?” I asked Barrons.

“The Fae world is bleeding into yours. Look at those streets north of the river.”

I looked away from the crimson-edged moon to where he was pointing. Wet cobblestones glistened a delicate lavender hue of neon intensity, traced by silvery cobwebs of light. It was beautiful.

But it was wrong and deeply disturbing, as if there was more than mere color to those stones. As if some microscopic, lichenlike Unseelie life-form was growing on our world, staining it, transforming it as surely as Cruce’s curse had mutated the Silvers.

“We have to stop things from changing,” I said urgently. At what point would the changes become permanent? Were they already?

“Which is why one would think you wouldn’t waste time arguing when I procure the most efficient mode of travel.” Barrons sounded downright pissy.

I glanced down at my “mode of travel,” at the inky, leathery skin fisted in my gloved hands.

I was riding an Unseelie Hunter! Had any sidhe-seer in the history of humankind ever done such a thing? Dani was never going to believe it. I watched wisps of fog pass its satyrlike head, crowned with lethally pointed ebony horns. I felt the play of tension in its hide as it flapped its massive wings. I studied the city beyond them.

It was a long way down.

“You do know Inspector Jayne shoots at these things,” I said, worried.