"There's nothing disfigured about you. Except your aim. Work on that."

She was silent then. She was wary around this new Ryodan; the one that didn't push and poke and prod but treated her like...well, she wasn't sure what he was treating her like, and that was the crux of it. She couldn't get a handle on how to respond to him when she didn't understand his overtures. It was like trying to return a tennis ball on a court when someone had changed the rules and you didn't know which spot you were supposed to smash the ball back into. Once, they'd lobbed that ball back and forth like pros, intuiting each other's every move. Now when he swung, she spent too much time staring at the ball in the air.

In his office, she'd kissed him. He hadn't kissed her back. Now he was touching her intimately, with her shirt off, but made no move or comment to indicate it was anything but business. Not that she would have entertained anything but business. Why had he said "Kiss me or kill me" that day in his office? Had it been merely another of his position-clarifying tactics, like the night she'd discovered that, although the Crimson Hag had killed him, he'd somehow come back as good as new and insisted she choose between being disappointed that he was still alive or being loyal to him?

He'd brought her to what she was fairly certain were his private quarters, a spartan set of rooms deep beneath Chester's. She was also fairly certain it wasn't his only place and, like her and Dancer, he had many well-stocked lairs in which to retreat from the world.

Ultramodern, ultrasleek, the room was shades of chrome and slate and steel. Black, white, and, like the man himself, every shade of gray. In the room adjoining the one in which they sat was a bed with crisp white sheets and a soft, dark velvet spread. The bedroom had smelled of no one but him, which didn't surprise her. He would never take a woman to one of his places. It was never that personal. The decor was tactile, complex but simple. The kitchen was white quartzite and more steel. The bathroom sculpted of thick, silver-veined marble and glass. Everywhere she looked, the lines were straight, clean, sharp, hard, like the lines of his face, and his philosophy.

"So if I call IISS what happens again?" she fished.

He didn't reply and she hadn't expected him to, but nothing ventured nothing gained. Sometimes you could trick an answer out of someone. He'd already given her as much of an answer as he would and it had been a complete nonanswer: hope you never find out.

His finger moved slowly over a long thin scar close to her spine. "Knife?"

"Whip with steel points."

He touched a spray of white bumps. "Shrapnel?"

"Blow-dart gun." Filled with tiny crystalized rocks. Blown by a beast on a planet of eternal night.

"This?" He touched a messy, shallow one near her hip.

"Fell down a cliff. Did that one myself."

"Stay or go?"

"The scars? Stay. I earned them."

He laughed. After a moment she felt something very like the tip of a knife at the base of her spine. "I'm one inch away from ripping out your throat," she said softly.

"Blood binds. I need some of yours to set this layer of the spell."

"How much?"

"Minor."

"You're mixing yours with it."

"Yes."

Blood spells had nasty, pervasive side effects. This man's blood in hers was not something she wanted. His tattoo, however, was. "Proceed," she said without inflection.

He did, and she found herself slipping back into that strange, almost dreamy place she'd been in since he'd begun inking her. As he'd worked, his big strong hands moving with precision against her skin, the angry thrumming in her body had faded, her muscles had stilled, her tension calmed. She was having a hard time remembering what had driven her out into the streets today on such a murderous rampage. Languor infused her limbs and her stomach no longer hurt. Her psyche was beginning to feel drowsy and relaxed, as if she could just stretch out and sleep for a long, long time and not have to worry while she did because this man would stand guard and she could rest knowing that whatever predators were on this world, the world's greatest predator was right next to her and she was sa- She sat up straighter, flexed her muscles and snapped back into high alert.

There was no such thing as safe. Safe was a trap, an ideal that could never be achieved. And hero worship was pointless. There were no heroes. Only her.

Behind her, he said, "You don't have to be on guard all the time. Nothing can hurt you here."

He was wrong. Anytime there was another person in the room with you, the possibility for hurt existed.

"You're doing something to me," she accused.

"I can have a certain...agitating effect on a woman."

He meant "whip her into a frenzy." She'd seen him do it.

"I can also have a gentling one."

"Stop it. I didn't ask for it."

He pressed his wrist to the base of her spine, held it a long moment, no doubt melding blood with blood, then said, "That's it for tonight."

"Finish it," she demanded. "I know you can." There was a sudden coldness behind her as the heat of his body vanished.

Her shirt hit her in the shoulder, and after a moment she yanked it on over her bra, knowing it was pointless to argue. She stood, stretched, and turned around.

"Tell me what happened to you in the Silvers and I'll finish it."

They looked at each other across the space of the chair. "I grew up," she said.

"The long version."

"That was it. You said you'd give me the map."

He tossed it to her and she caught it with one hand, slipped it into her pack. Of course he'd give it to her now. He knew she'd return for the tattoo. She'd wanted the map for two reasons: to test theories on the smallest of the holes, and alert people of their precise locations to avoid inadvertent deaths. Of far greater importance was finding a way to remove the cosmic leeches from the fabric of their reality.

"Tomorrow night, same time?" she said.

"I'm busy tomorrow night."

Fucker. He was going to dick with her about finishing the tat?

He herded her to the door with his presence, subtly yet irrefutably.

"Got a date with Jo?" she said coolly.

"Jo's fucking Lor."

She looked at him. "How did that happen? Lor does blondes. And I thought you and Jo were exclusive." She hadn't believed that for a moment. Jo wasn't Ryodan's type.

His cool eyes lit with amusement. "It was a getting-over-the-ex fuck. And now they're both tangled up in it."

She arched a brow. "You dumped her, so she pulled a revenge fuck?"

"She dumped me. And her take on it was 'scraping the taste of me off her tongue.'"

No woman dumped Ryodan. Or scraped the taste off. If Jo had, he'd not only let her, but set the plan in motion. "What are your plans for tomorrow night? Cancel them. This is more important. I could get lost," she ordered.

"I suggest you avoid mirrors until we complete it. Day after. My office in the morning. I'll finish it."

"Tomorrow. During the day."

"Busy then, too."

Why was he delaying? What was his motive? "I'll just let myself out."

"You won't. You have the sword. I have patrons. I plan to keep them."

She was silent a moment then said, "I won't kill any of them, Ryodan. I'll respect your territory."

"If I respect yours."

"Yes."

He held out a cellphone. "Take it. IISS won't work yet but the other numbers will."

She slipped the cell into her pocket as she slipped out the door.

He closed it behind her, remaining inside, allowing her to leave unattended because she'd given her word. He'd taken her word as covenant.

She turned for no reason she could discern and placed her hand, palm flat, to the door.

Stared at it, head cocked, wondering what the hell she was doing.

After a moment she shook herself and strode briskly down the hall, swiped the panel and entered the elevator. The teen she'd been would have barged into every one of Ryodan's private places on these forbidden lower levels she could invade before he managed to stop her. And, she understood now, she'd have done it mostly for the rush of their confrontation when he finally did.

The woman had her own business to attend.

Inside the room, Ryodan removed his hand from the door.

- "Is it the day yet? Is it? Is it? IS IT?" Shazam exploded from beneath a tangle of blankets and not one pillow, later that night when she entered their chambers.

"Soon," she promised. "And keep your voice down," she reminded.

"You smell again," Shazam fretted, turning circles in agitation. "I don't like the smell of him. He's dangerous."

"He's necessary. For now."

When she stretched out on the bed, Shazam pounced, landing on her stomach with all four paws, hard. "Not one thing more? Just necessary?"

"Ow! Good thing I didn't have to go to the bathroom!" She knew from too many enthusiastic early-morning greetings that forty-odd pounds of Shazam was hell on a full bladder. Not to mention the tenderness of a fresh tat pressing into the bed. "Not one thing more," she assured him.

"Did he finish it?"

"Not yet. Soon."

He deflated as abruptly as the melodramatic beast was wont. "It's all going to go horribly wrong," he wailed. "Everything always does." He sniffed, violet eyes dewing.

"Don't be such a pessimist."

He ruched the fur along his spine and spat a sharp hiss at her, working himself into a snit. "Pessimists are only pessimists when they're wrong. When we're right, the world calls us prophets."

"Ew, fish breath!"

"Your pitiful offerings, my bad breath. Bring me better things to eat."

"We'll be fine. You'll see."

He shifted his furry bulk around, parking his rump south of her chest (soft spots he wasn't allowed to pounce ever), his belly so fat he had to spread his great front paws around it. Then he leaned forward and slowly touched his wet nose to hers. "I see you, Yi-yi."

She smiled. Everything she knew about love she'd learned from this pudgy, cranky, manic-depressive, binge-eating beast that had been her companion through hell and back, too many times to count. He alone had protected her, loved her, fought for her, taught her to believe that life was worth living, even if there was no one there to see you living it.

"I see you, too, Shazam."

28.

"I would give everything I own just to have you back again..."

I'd left her. The woman that looked like my sister and had far too many of her memories and unique characteristics-I just left her there-in the basement where I'd been Pri-ya, sitting in the middle of crates of guns and ammo and various food supplies, looking unbearably lost and sad.

So, Mom and Dad think I'm dead? she'd asked as I was leaving.

They buried you. So did I, I'd flung over my shoulder.

Are they okay, Jr.? Did Mom lose it when she thought I was dead? Was Daddy- They're here in Dublin, I'd cut her off coldly. Ask them yourself. Go try to convince them. On second thought, don't. Stay away from my parents. Don't you dare go near them.

They're my parents, too! Mac, you have to believe me. Why would I lie? Who else would I be? What's wrong? What happened to you? How you did get so...hard?

I'd stormed out. Some part of me had simply shut down and there'd been no turning it back on. I'd gotten "hard," as she called it, because my sister had been murdered.

For the past twenty-four hours I'd refused to even think about the imposter. I'd done nearly as good a job of keeping it in a box as I did with the Book.

But when it seeped out, it went something like this: What if it really was her?

My sister, alone out there, and I'd turned my back on Alina in this dangerous, Fae-riddled city?

What if she got hurt? What if she was somehow truly, miraculously alive and ended up getting killed by a black hole or an Unseelie because I'd stormed away and left her alone, too wary, too suspicious, to let myself believe?

I'd have gotten my second chance-and blown it.