Barrons had adopted a similar posture, head back against the seat, studying it through narrowed eyes. “Mac may have sent it. I’ve seen those runes before.”

“What runes? There aren’t any runes on it. It’s a bloody red blob.”

“The whole thing is made of runes fused together. And it’s not entirely a blob. There’s a foot jammed up against my window.”

“What kind of foot?”

“What do you mean ‘what kind of foot?’ How the bloody hell many kinds of feet are there?”

“Among the Unseelie alone, thousands: hooves, tentacles, claws, pincers. Then there’s the Seelie castes. Humans. Animals. Be precise.”

“A human foot. I see toes.”

“Painted nails?”

“No.”

“Hairy?”

“No hair. Big feet. Male.”

Jada frowned. She’d never seen anything like it. Not here, not Silverside. She lightly prodded it.

It instantly stung her fingers and tried to latch on, much as the stinging sentences from the Boora Boora books in the Unseelie King’s library had once done. “Barrons, we’ve got to get this thing out of here!”

When he kicked open the door, the blob expanded instantly, exploding out, dangling from the Hummer, and Jada finally had enough room to shove it off her lap and vault from the vehicle.

Barrons maneuvered himself from beneath it, dragged the blob to the ground by a foot, and they stood staring down at it.

“What the hell is it?” she demanded.

Barrons paced a tight circle around it, examining it from every angle. “The question is ‘who?’ ”

“Well, whoever it is was either enormous to begin with or the runes caused it to grow and expand once employed.” She still couldn’t see any runes.

Without another word, Barrons grabbed it by a foot, dragged it around to the back of the Hummer, hefted it and quickly thrust it in. When the rear doors wouldn’t close, he stripped off his belt, looped it through the handles and tied them together.

“What are you doing? What if it keeps growing? The Blob did.” She’d loved that movie, had gorged on jellybeans and Snickers, watching it with Dancer, a long time ago, in another lifetime. Snickers. How could you not love a candy bar that was named after a good chortle? “It could absorb us both. Then who will save Mac?”

“Shut. Up,” Barrons said flatly. “And get in.”

Arlington Abbey was the first taste of life Jada had experienced beyond a cage. It had been as magical and mysterious to the eight-year-old girl who’d known neither friends nor freedom as Hogwarts to Harry. Exhilarated to be free at last, she’d zoomed about like a drunken Energizer Bunny, unable to stop, unable to eat enough, talk enough, see enough, live enough. No collars, no chains, no bars. Just the great big wide open. Toilets—not bedpans that piled up outside a cage. Choosing what to eat—not living in dread that nothing would be brought. Having a drink of water whenever she wanted it. Simple things. Priceless things.

Initially she’d considered Rowena’s stifling control inconsequential, given how her life had been, until she began to see how much damage resulted from the headmistress’s machinations, that the sidhe-seers were becoming less, not more—weak, not strong—because of her dominance, subtle manipulation, and sinister experiments. There were the cages you could see and those that weren’t so easy to spot before you were lured into them with sweet promises and lies until you were stuck like a fly on sticky tape with only your shattered innocence for company.

Then Mac had come along and seen it, too—the certain destruction of their order if drastic measures weren’t taken.

Upon escaping the Silvers, Jada had made drastic measures one of her top priorities.

She’d begun shaping the women into teams of skilled fighters with the clear goal of becoming strong, focused, empowered warriors on behalf of Dublin and the world. She’d worked with each sidhe-seer in turn, identifying their strengths and working to enhance them. She fortified the abbey with magic she’d learned Silverside. She found herself somewhere she fit and could always return to—which she’d never had before—a place where she was valued and respected. Five and a half years of wandering had changed her perspective on many things.

The abbey was a ruin.

“We’ll rebuild.” She stared as they entered the long drive, past the Fae corpses to the smoking shell of the once mighty fortress. Near the front entrance of the abbey women tended the injured and wept over the slain. Her gaze lingered on the piles of the dead and her hands fisted. She’d just been getting to know many of them, had quietly reveled in each step they were taking toward becoming empowered warriors. And just like that—their lives were over. Gone. Ash and dust, as if they’d never been, their only future now to become a name chiseled on stone, a catchall for confidences, tears, and belated regrets.

She forcibly dragged her gaze away and turned it to the black hole on the grounds, the large inky sphere suspended against a slate sky, and was relieved to note the abbey wall had collapsed and no longer posed a threat.

Barrons stopped the Hummer inside the gate, got out, untied the doors and replaced his belt then dragged the blob by its feet out onto the grounds of the estate, away from the vehicle. He shouted in an unintelligible language to a shadowy figure patrolling the wall, flanked by three of the enormous black-skinned beasts that had fought beside the sidhe-seers last night.