But wait…the prophetic washerwoman had also said there were many stones to be tossed into the great loch of the universe, many possibles. And Kat had said we were only at the beginning of Mad Morry’s predictions. Which implies, despite the dire nature of our current problems, the Earth is going to survive and go on for some time. Humanity is going to make it.

I just need to figure out what my part in ensuring that is.

Am I supposed to kill myself? Is my current age young enough? And on that note, is my sister still really alive? If so, is that why everything went wrong—because neither of us died?

I strip the idea of suicide of all emotion and weigh it as nothing more than an intellectual option. Will it remove all potential threat I present to the world?

If it would terminate the existence of the Sinsar Dubh, then unequivocally—yes.

I don’t want to die.

A sudden familiar tension grips my body. I stare through the dimly lit room at the door.

Jericho Barrons.

He’s alive. I didn’t kill him.

And he’s here.

The door opens and time seems to suspend and spin out in slow motion. I feel like I haven’t seen him in a hundred years, perhaps because I was afraid I would never see him again. The Book had control of me for fifteen hours, and since I know it takes him longer than that to return from wherever he’s reborn, that means I didn’t kill him. Thank heavens. He gets beyond irate when I do, as if somehow it’s a personal insult.

He’s wearing black leather pants and a white shirt, cuffs rolled up, revealing strong forearms and a thick sliver Celtic cuff. His beautiful face is inscrutable as ever. I use the word “beautiful” but to the rest of the world he’s not. The casual observer finds him disturbingly carnal, animal, unsettlingly predatory. The genetic stamp of Jericho Barrons’s face was tossed in the gene pool trashcan eons ago. His bone structure is sharp, primal, his brow prominent, and he can seem downright feral if you catch a glimpse of him when he thinks he’s unobserved. His eyes are so dark they’re nearly black, and when he’s angry, crimson sparks glitter within. His hair is midnight, slicked back. He has one of the most symmetrical faces I’ve ever seen. His body…well, I see the lithe grace and power of the beast in him even in his human form.

He glides into the room in that fluid, animalistic way he adopted around me months ago. He recedes from sight then appears again, standing, staring down at me.

Nice shirt, his dark eyes say. He misses nothing. I smell of Mallucé and he doesn’t like it. I don’t like it either but the vamp’s shirt was preferable to mine. Barrons is both the most and least complex man I’ve ever known.

Mine was dirty. I bite back a laugh because it doesn’t seem appropriate to laugh in the middle of such grim circumstances, but it strikes me as bizarrely funny that on the heels of me turning into a full-fledged psychopath, the first words we speak to each other are about my attire.

He sinks down next to me, leans back against the wall, leg and shoulder brushing mine.

“Did you know I was me again?”

“I felt you regain control.”

I rub the tattoo on the back of my skull. Though I’d initially been furious he’d branded me with his mark, I’ve come to appreciate its advantages. “How did you get through all those Unseelie out there?” He doesn’t look like he’s been in a fight. Or a few thousand.

“The feth fiada. A druid spell of invisibility.”

I scowl. “You never taught me that one.”

“A born snooper like you? Hardly.”

“Did I kill anyone?”

“You injured some but the Book appeared to be having a hard time acclimating to controlling your body. Jada is fine, as are your parents.”

I narrow my eyes. I’d had far too much blood on my hands, hair, face, and clothing to have merely “injured” people. I study his profile. It doesn’t elude me that he answered what should have been a yes or no question with an offer of parallel information that, while pertinent, was deftly evasive. He hadn’t lied. But he hadn’t told the truth either.

He turns his head and looks at me.

I know I killed, I say levelly.

Then don’t waste my time.

Our gazes lock. In his eyes I see a wall I might push through to reveal names, places, and how. But if I get tangled up in who and how I killed, I’ll come undone. I must be a smooth flat stone, skipping lightly on a dark lake that could drown me.

A few moments pass and I realize my heartbeat is returning to normal, my stomach no longer feels queasy, and I’m not nearly as tired and sore as I’d been feeling. In fact, I feel…good. All because this man sat down next to me. Such a simple thing, such a powerful thing. “Did you ever see that movie What Dreams May Come?”

He slices his head to the left.

Barrons always denies watching TV or movies, as if it’s too plebeian a pastime for a man of his ilk. “I loved that film.”

He gives me a cool look. “What the fuck was there to love about it? They all died. First the children. Then the parents.”

I smirk. “I knew you watched it.” The reason I’d loved it was because when the wife killed herself, she was sent to Hell to suffer in madness, alone for all eternity. But her husband refused to let that happen. “You came to my couch and joined me in my hell.”

He smiles faintly. “Maybe you came to mine.”

“Guess it doesn’t matter whose couch it is.” I lift my hand, hesitate, drop it back to my thigh. He’s not a man for physical displays of affection. He’s either having sex or not touching. “So, what am I supposed to do?”