"I didn't believe in magic. I'm living in a city of it, jam-packed with dark magic, evil spells, twisted Fae, and I have absolutely no problem believing in all of them. But somehow I stopped believing in the good magic." I prodded him in the ribs, where black and red tattoos stretched across his hard stomach and trailed down to his groin. "Like Bewitched. Or The Wizard of Oz-"

"An untrained witch and a charlatan," he said irritably. "Did you just bloody poke me in the bloody ribs?"

"Okay, or Dumbledore, he's the real thing. My point is you can't believe only in Voldemort. You have to believe in Dumbledore, too."

"Or you could just believe in me." He caught my hand and put it exactly where he wanted it.

I smiled. I excelled at that.

- Hours later I was holding my cellphone in that hand, staring at my recently created contact.

The good magic, including those possibilities that weighed in on the side of the positive, not the negative, was heavy on my mind.

Barrons was gone, back to Chester's, where we would meet soon. I bit my still-swollen lower lip and worried it as I punched the Call button. It rang only once and she was on the line.

"Mac?" Alina said quickly. "Is that you?"

Fuck. Instant pain. How many times had I sat in my room in Dublin, dialing her damned number to listen to her recording, wishing just one more time to hear her answer? More times than I cared to count. Yet here it was. I could get addicted to this alone. Merely being able to call and hear something that sounded like my sister answering. I wondered where she was. Where Barrons had no doubt set her up, probably warding the place to keep her alive, too.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey, Jr." She sounded happy to hear from me, but wary.

"Where are you?"

"My apartment."

I closed my eyes, wincing. I could walk over there, bound up stairs I'd once sat on sobbing as if my soul was being hacked in two, slowly and with a chain saw. She'd open the door.

And instantly double over, puking, because even if she really was my sister, I couldn't hug her, because I was anathema to her now.

"Want to come over?" she said hesitantly.

"So I can make you puke some more?"

"Your boyfriend-"

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Okay, the man you love," she said flatly, "brought me some pages photocopied from the Sinsar Dubh. He said you used them to learn to manage the discomfort. I'm practicing. I don't like puking any more than you like making me puke."

Working with those pages had helped me only to a point. But unlike the corporeal Book-which had enjoyed tormenting me-I had no desire to hurt Alina. If she really was. And if she practiced enough with them, maybe one day I'd get that hug. If she really was. "When did Darroc give you the engagement ring?" It was bothering me, a nagging detail.

She made a soft sound that was equal parts irritation and acceptance. A so we're going to play this stupid game? coupled with I love you, Mac, and I know you can be totally neurotic, so I'm going to humor you. "A couple of weeks before I lost time. Or whatever happened."

"The body I buried wasn't wearing it."

"That makes sense," she said pointedly, "because it wasn't mine."

If the Book was trying to trick me, it might have made that mistake, putting a ring on her finger that hadn't been on her when I'd buried her, skimming my acknowledgment that they'd been in love and embellishing it with a perfectly human touch. I doggedly pursued my line of questioning. "Were you wearing the ring in the alley?"

"No. I'd taken it off that afternoon. I'd discovered some things about him. We'd had a fight. I was angry."

"What kind of things?"

"He was into some stuff I didn't know about. I don't want to talk about it."

"When did you put it back on?"

"When I went home to change. After the alley, the next thing I knew, I was standing outside the Stag's Head, wearing the most bizarre outfit. I didn't even bring it with me to Dublin. I have no clue how I ended up with it on. Remember the dress I wore my last Christmas at home? The one I hated but you thought looked so good on me? The one that made my ass look flat."

I pressed a suddenly trembling hand to my mouth.

"That's what I had on with the ugliest shoes. I'd never even seen them before, and I was freezing. And pearls. You know I haven't worn those things in years. I wanted to find Darroc, so I went home to change and go hunt for him but when I got there my place had been totally trashed. Did you do that? Did you freak out when you thought I was dead?"

I cleared my throat. Still, it took me two tries to get words out and when I did I croaked like a frog. "Why did you put the ring back on? According to you it was what-like only ten hours earlier that you'd taken it off?" I knew why. I'd have done the same thing with Barrons.

She said softly, "I love him. He's not perfect. I'm not either."

So, my sister had the same epiphany I did when it came to relationships. Not surprising. But my inner Book knew I'd had that epiphany. She'd spoken in present tense about Darroc, refusing to believe he was really dead. Again, like me. If someone told me my fiance was dead and I'd never seen his body, I'd have a hard time believing it, too. I was intimately acquainted with the stages of grief: denial being the first.

"Tell me exactly what happened again. Every detail you remember from the night in the alley to the precise moment you were...here again." I was struggling to stay focused on logistics when my heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might rupture.

"Why? Have you figured something out, Mac? What do you think's going on? Oh, God, are you finally starting to believe me? Jr., I'm scared! I don't understand what's happening. How could I lose a whole year? How did I end up in that stupid dress?"

I closed my eyes and didn't say: Well, gee, sis, it's like this: your baby sister has a big bad Book of black magic inside her and she wanted you back so badly, she brought you back from the dead. In the dress she chose to bury you in because she thought you looked so good in it-and hey, nobody's looking at your ass when you're lying in a coffin anyway-along with the pearls Mom and Dad gave you for your sixteenth birthday because you said they made you feel like a princess. And by the way, you're wrong-those shoes totally rocked that outfit. I know. I bought them at Bloomingdale's for you, after you died.

Jay-sus.

I'd nearly fallen off my chair when she mentioned the dress. But of course, if I'd brought her back from the dead, she'd be wearing what I buried her in. Ergo, no body in casket.

And my inner Book probably knew that, too. If we were, as Barrons seemed to think, embedded together. Total clusterfuck.

"I'm not sure," I said finally. "But can we meet somewhere and talk?"

She laughed and said breathlessly, "Yes, Mac. Please. When? Where?"

I had a meeting tonight that I wasn't missing and I wasn't sure how long it would take.

So we made plans to meet at her place first thing in the morning. She'd make coffee and breakfast, she said.

It'd be like old times, she said.

31.

"Rise, rise, rise in revolution..."

"Have you planted the icefire?" Cruce asked, striding impatiently across the cavern to meet him as soon as he'd finished flattening his flexible carapace and wedging it beneath the door.

Minutes passed while the roach god assumed form. It was never easy but then little was for a roach, living on the refuse and remains of others. Being chased and hunted and exterminated. Considered an enemy by one and all. In the history of man, he'd never met a human that welcomed a roach into its home, or anywhere for that matter. He was pestilence and vermin, nothing more. Yet.

"Yes," he finally grated. It had taken time to distribute the tiny pods Cruce had given him containing the blue flames, but he'd seen them well-positioned where they'd not be discovered, and when the moment was right, numerous roaches would be standing by, each with tiny plastic vials Toc had provided, which they would chew through with their heavily sclerotized mandibles to mix a drop of Unseelie blood with the flame.

"Where?" Cruce demanded, and the roach god wondered briefly if he'd merely traded one arrogant, belittling bastard for another. The prince was restless tonight, radiating dark energy, eyes bright. He preferred a cool ally, not a hot one.

The roach god repeated the three locations his ally had chosen: an old library where they stored the largest number of ancient scrolls; the chambers once occupied by the prior Grand Mistress; and the chambers occupied by the current one.

"Well done," Cruce said. "And you have Toc's blood?"

The roach god nodded, holding himself together with eons of discipline and relentless hunger for a better way of life.

"Toc had the papers printed as I instructed, and dispersed?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. When they come-"

"Will they come?" the roach god demanded.

Cruce smiled. "Oh, yes, they'll come. My name is synonymous with rebellion, and the Unseelie have long memories. We fought for freedom once before and nearly attained it. I will not fail this time. I will rule both the Fae and human realms. They are already mine. I'm merely trapped in a spiderweb for the moment and that will soon change."

"This world is dying. If it does, I want to go with you where you go."

Cruce's gaze locked on him and the roach god shuddered faintly. Ah, yes, this Fae had power. He hid it well.

"This world will not die. My realms are tied to it. When they come and the battle begins, watch and wait. If our side appears to be suffering losses, set the fires."

"You said it burns hotter than human fire. How hot?" Fire was one thing to evade, Fae fire might be entirely another.

"Not too hot for you," Cruce said. "Light all three at the same time. I want the fires to divide the humans and scatter them across the abbey. The fools will try to put it out rather than fight."

"If they don't?"

"They are governed by emotional attachments. Even the brightest among them suffers this weakness. Go. Now. Watch and wait. When the time is right, burn this fucking place to ash."

The roach god nodded and let his form collapse abruptly to the floor, disintegrating instantly, a trick he'd perfected in human homes, moving through their houses when they weren't around, as if he were one of them, sitting on their beds, fondling their combs and toothbrushes, even perching on their toilets, wondering what it would feel like to be whole and large and not a bug.

Thousands of glistening insects rippled across the stone chamber, vanishing into every crack and crevice.

32.

"I will burn for you with fire and fury."

When the Hunter circled above Chester's preparing to land, I was surprised to see there wasn't the usual boisterous crowd gathered outside the club, jostling and bribing and arguing to get in.

Fewer than fifty humans loitered near the rubble of the former club at a safe distance from the cordoned-off black hole.

There wasn't a single Fae in sight. Normally, there were more Fae than humans, the lower castes that Ryodan wouldn't permit into the club, trying to seduce the bored, hungry clientele denied entry with an immediate, less potent (and far less attractive!) fix.

As I slid from the Hunter's back, I was the target for dozens of sharp, envious glares. Jealous of my "ride," that I had such a powerful beast seemingly at my command, wondering what magical gifts it bestowed-and if it could be eaten for a high probably.

I wasn't afraid of fifty humans. Not this close to Chester's.

I had guns, Voice, a Hunter, and Barrons a text away. Still, I stayed near my ride, one thickly insulated glove on its icy flank. I shivered from cold. Without Unseelie flesh in me, it wasn't nearly as comfortable to be so close to one of the icy beasts. My thighs were numb and my ass was completely frozen. I rubbed it briskly with my palm, trying to thaw it and restore sensation.

"Where are all the Fae?" I demanded, glancing at the underground entrance, surprised to find it was unguarded.

"The doors are locked," a woman said. "Does it let you eat it?" she asked with a frighteningly bright smile, shooting a greedy look at my satanic ride.

The Hunter swung its great horned head around and snorted a stunningly precise tendril of fire at the crowd.

The woman's hair went up in flame. She ran off screaming, clutching her head. The rest of the crowd backed warily away from me.

"The door to Chester's is locked?" I said incredulously. No one answered me and I got a brief bizarre flash of myself as I must look from their point of view: blond Barbie as Barrons had so pithily said, with crimson-streaked hair tangled wild from the wind, coated from head to toe with a light dusting of black ice, standing next to a demonic-looking winged dragon-beast, weapons bulging in my pockets, spear strapped to my thigh, and a snub-nosed automatic I'd tossed over my shoulder as I left for no reason I'd been able to fathom. Just a bad feeling I might need more weapons than usual tonight, or maybe all that kinky, rough sex with Barrons had made me feel more like my badass self. "Chester's never closes," I protested. That would be like the sun not rising.

Suddenly the door in the ground rattled and shot open from below. "Ms. Lane," Barrons growled as he stepped out. "About bloody time. Let's go." He closed the door then bent and traced a symbol on it, murmuring softly.

People began to hem him in, chanting, "Let us in, let us in!"

"Get the fuck out of here!" Barrons roared in Voice that staggered even me, and I felt my feet begin to move of their own volition. Not you, Ms. Lane, he shot me a look.

I stopped and stood, watching in astonishment as fifty people turned like zombies and trudged woodenly down the street. The most I'd ever managed was four with a single command.

Then I scowled at him. "One," I snapped, "how did you do that to fifty people at once. Two, why did it work on me when I thought I was supposed to be immune to you, and three-"

"The abbey is under attack. Get on the Hunter, Ms. Lane. And read this." He thrust a paper at me. "We didn't understand why the club was so empty. One of the patrons brought this in. Then Jada called. The others have already gone ahead."

He'd waited for me. That must have driven him bugfuck crazy, knowing a battle was being fought and he wasn't there. Waiting for his girlfriend.

"You're not my girlfriend, Ms. Lane," he said coolly.

"You could have gone without me," I said just as coolly.