3. Talk to Dani about Shazam. Determine if he’s real, and if so, figure out how to help her. If he’s not real, figure out how to help her times ten.

4. Barrons.

I didn’t elucidate on the Barrons personal goal. It was purely selfish, as were all my personal goals, but since the world might cease to exist in the very near future, I intended to spend at least some time with the people I loved.

The bell on the door tinkled as it opened and banged shut again.

My body tightened with familiar tension and I smiled.

Barrons was there, behind me, reading over my shoulder in silence. After a moment he said, “Ah. So I’m a personal goal of yours.”

“Something like that.”

“Care to elaborate?”

I did. Tossing aside my notebook, I turned around on the sofa, knelt on the cushions and looked up at him. I’d intended to pull his head down and kiss him but I ended up just sitting there, gazing at him.

What a creature you’ve become. His dark eyes gleamed.

I know, right?

Nice hair, Mac.

Thanks. What happened to “Ms. Lane”? I’m not dying, I don’t think you’re about to kill me, and we’re not having sex.

She doesn’t live here anymore.

She doesn’t? Was he throwing me out? Would he do that? Tell me I had to go live with the Fae now?

It’s nice to meet you. Finally. Mac. His eyes glittered with unguarded appreciation and passion.

I stared up at him then shook my head with a wry smile, resisting the urge to slap a hand to my forehead. It was so simple, so clear, and had mystified me for so long. I’d told myself it was just the way we were, preferring a persona of distance in public and another, intimate, sacred one in private.

But that had never been it at all. Or at least not all of it.

I might never know if it was the Sinsar Dubh’s presence inside me that kept me so conflicted about everything for so long and, once it was gone, I finally gained that long-sought clarity of being, or if it had been through the very process of standing my ground and defeating it that I’d achieved such clarity. But it didn’t matter. The end result was the same.

Some shadowy, self-destructive, confused place no longer existed inside me. I was of a single, clear mind. There were goals, and there were methods to attain them. There were my chosen responsibilities and those things I was willing to do to honor them. There were the things I was willing to live with and the things I wasn’t willing to live without. There was a quiet, deep abiding love of myself—flaws and all, and I had plenty—and the world around me, and it had plenty, too.

My eyes shimmered, and later Barrons would tell me they’d glowed with iridescent fire. It’s nice to meet you, too, Jericho.

I pulled his head down and kissed him.

SINSAR DUBH

My enemies underestimate me.

Encumbered by emotion, their faulty brains fail to apprehend the altered variables, particularly the new one introduced by MacKayla walking away from me.

WALKING AWAY FROM ME WILL NEVER BE PERMITTED! SHE IS MY HORSE TO BREAK AND ALWAYS WILL BE!

The force field erected by the stones was designed to hold my essence, doubly trapped: first by the covers of the spelled tome, second by the field. Or first by a body, second by the field. Without the primary barrier, I exceed the prison’s capacity to contain me.

Although it takes time to divine the method and is perilous—for an instant I nearly dissipate into a storm of black dust shaped like a cube—my will is equal to the task.

A small, dark cloud, I hover above the cocooned Unseelie princess.

So thoughtful of them to leave me a body. I would lose cohesion quickly in this form.

Again, the universe favors my supremacy, colludes with me to attain my desires. It recognizes the supremacy of my being.

The runes I plastered upon the dark Fae’s skin fall away at my command, and the princess stirs. When she rolls over, mouth slightly ajar, I aim myself at the aperture and drive myself in.

She goes rigid, screaming, as she resists. But she is puny and I am vast. I possess her quickly, saturating every atom.

I realize the moment I attach to her neural network, unlike MacKayla, who I will torture for all eternity, this Unseelie is incapable of holding me for long. My refusal to jump bodies yesterday was wise.

The only reason MacKayla was able to WALK AWAY FROM ME AND LEAVE ME was because she had a force field with which to winch us apart.

But the stones are here in the White Mansion, where time flows differently. And she is out there where I will soon be.

It would take a month or more, Earthtime, for anyone to retrieve them.

I require very little time to execute my new plan. The bulk of it will be lost making my exit from this place.

My new vessel jerks clumsily when I command it to hurry for the door. Weak, puny thing. But it will last long enough.

I hurry out onto black marble floors, turn left then right, seeking crimson, cursing the ever-changing White Mansion the bastard king fashioned for his concubine. Each wrong turn I take equates to days slipping away Earthtime. A month or more will have passed by the time I escape this maze.

MacKayla will be able to feel me coming once I exit the Silvers but she will believe me body-bound, giving me the advantage.

I will take back what is mine.

Then I will destroy this motherfucking world.

INVISIBLE

* * *

I suppose she must have begun thinking about how different her life would be without me.

She couldn’t travel, couldn’t really make friends or have company in, or even go out at night because what kind of mother would she be if she left her daughter locked in a cage, and didn’t come home?