"Haven't you had a birthday cake before, Dani?"

She jerked her head.

"From this day forward, there will be at least one birthday cake for Dani Mega O'Malley each year," I proclaimed solemnly.

She beamed, cut the cake, and plunked two huge wedges on plates. I added cookies and a handful of candy.

"Dude," she said happily, licking the knife, "what are we gonna watch first?"

Since I came to Dublin, there haven't been many moments in my life when I've been able to sit back, relax, and forget.

Tonight was one of them. It was bliss. For a stolen evening, I was Mac again. Eating good food, enjoying good company, pretending I didn't have a care in the world. One thing I've learned is that the harder your life gets, the gentler you have to be with yourself when you finally get some downtime, or you can't be strong when you need to be.

We watched a dark comedy and laughed our petunias off, while I painted her stubby fingernails black.

"What's this?" I said, noticing her bracelet.

Her cheeks pinked. "Ain't nothing. Dancer gave it to me."

"Who's Dancer? You have a boyfriend?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Ain't like that."

"What's it like?"

"Dancer's cool, but he ain't...he's got...just a friend."

Yeah, right. The Mega had blushed. Dancer was more than a friend. "How'd you meet him?"

She wriggled uncomfortably. "We watching this movie or being sissies?"

I picked up the remote and hit the pause button. "Sisters, not sissies. Spill, Dani. Who's Dancer?"

"You never tell me nothing about your your sex life," she said crossly. "Bet you and Alina talked about sex all the time." sex life," she said crossly. "Bet you and Alina talked about sex all the time."

I sat up straight, alarmed. "Are you having having a sex life?" a sex life?"

"Nah, man. Ain't ready yet. Just saying. Wanna talk like sisters, gotta do more than read me the riot act."

I breathed again. She'd been forced to grow up so fast. I wanted some part of her life to unfold slowly, perfectly, with roses and romance. Not in the heat of the moment, with the console of a Camaro digging into the small of her back and some guy she barely knew on top of her, but in a way that she'd remember forever. "Remember when I said we were overdue for a talk?"

"And here comes the lecture," she muttered. "Dude, ears up, they didn't tell us all the important stuff about the prophecy. Left out a lot."

She sprang it on me out of the blue, derailing me completely, as she'd known she would.

"And you're just now now telling me this?" telling me this?"

She poked out her bottom lip. "Was getting around to it. You're the one that wanted to talk stupid stuff while I was trying to be professional-like. Just heard it myself. Ain't been hanging around the abbey much. Moved out long time ago."

I'd assumed she'd moved back in! One day I'd learn to quit making assumptions. "Where have you been staying? With Jayne at Dublin Castle?"

She crossed her arms over her chest, preening. "Pop by to kill the Fae fecks they catch, but got my own digs. Call it Casa Mega."

Dani was living on her own? And she had a boyfriend? "You just turned fourteen. fourteen." I was horrified. The boyfriend part was fine-well, maybe, depending on what he was like, how old he was, and if he was good enough for her-but the living on her own part of things was going to have to change, fast.

"I know. Long overdue, huh?" She flashed me that gamine grin. "Got a couple o' places for different moods. 'S all there for the picking. Even got a crotch rocket!" She waggled her fingers. "Five-finger discount. I was made made for this world." for this world."

Who would take care of her if she got the flu? Who would talk to her about birth control and STDs? Who would bandage her cuts and scrapes and make sure she ate right?

"'Bout the prophecy, Mac. There's a whole 'nuther part they didn't tell us."

I shelved parental concerns for the moment. "Where did you hear that?"

"Jo told me."

"I thought Jo was loyal to Rowena."

"Think Jo's got stuff going on the side. She's part of Ro's Haven, but don't think she likes her none. Said Ro wouldn't let 'em tell you the whole truth and they kept it from me 'cause they don't trust me neither. Think I tell you everything."

"So, spill," I urged.

"Prophecy has a whole buncha other parts, more deets about peeps and the ways things'll happen. Says the one who dies young is gonna betray the human race and hook up with those that made the Beast."

I shifted uneasily. A thousand years before Alina had even been born, it had been foretold that she would join Team Darroc?

"Says the one who longs for death, the one that's gonna hunt the Book-that's you, Mac-ain't human, and the two from the ancient bloodlines ain't got a snowball chance in hell o' fixing our mess, 'cause they ain't gonna want to."

I shaped my mouth around words but nothing came out.

"Says the whole gig's got 'bout twenty percent chance o' working, and, if it don't, the second prophecy has about two percent odds."

"Who writes prophecies with such sucky odds?" I said irritably.

She cracked up. "Dude-I said the same thing!"

"Why didn't they tell me? They made it sound like I was virtually insignificant." I'd liked it that way. I had enough problems to deal with.

Dani shrugged. "Whole thing about Ro never telling us we might be an Unseelie caste-said if you knew, it might be like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I say you gotta know what'cha are, know? Look in the mirror, eyes gotta meet eyes or quit looking."

"What else?" I demanded. "Was there more?"

"There's like this whole other...sub-prophecy. Says if the two from the ancient bloodlines are killed, things'll play out different and the odds of success'll be higher. Younger they're killed, the better."

A chill slid up my spine. That was brutal and to the point. Who would go how far to skew the odds more strongly in favor of the human race? I was surprised we hadn't been killed at birth. Assuming I'd had one.

"So I was thinking that's prolly why you and Alina got gave up. Somebody didn't wanna kill you guys as little kids, so they sent you away."

Of course. And we'd been forbidden to return. But Alina had wanted to go to Dublin to study abroad, and Daddy had never been able to deny us anything.

One decision, one tiny decision, and the world as we knew it began to fall apart.

"What else?" I pressed.

"Jo said they been talking to Nana O' behind Ro's back. Said the old woman was at the abbey the night the Book got out. Saw things. Sidhe Sidhe-seers ripped to pieces, hacked apart. Said they only found little pieces of some. Others, they never found."

"Nana was there when the Book got out?" She hadn't mentioned a word of it the night Kat and I had talked to her at her cottage by the sea. Short of calling me Alina, telling us that her granddaughter, Kayleigh, had been Isla's best friend and fellow Haven member, and that she'd felt dark stirrings in the soil, she'd told us little else.

Dani shook her head. "Showed up after. Said her bones told her her daughter's immortal soul was in peril."

"You mean her granddaughter, Kayleigh."

"I mean her daughter." Dani's eyes sparkled. "Ro."

My mouth shaped a silent O. "Rowena is Nana's daughter?" I finally managed. Rowena was Kayleigh's mother? How much more had Nana O'Reilly neglected to tell me?

"Old woman despises her. Won't claim her. Kat and Jo searched Nana's cottage while she slept and found things-pictures and baby books and stuff. Nana thinks Ro's part of how the Book got out. Said Kayleigh told her they'd created a backup mini-Haven that Ro knew nothing about, with a leader that didn't even live at the abbey. Name was Tessie or Tellie or something funny like that. Case something happened to the Haven members that lived at the abbey."

My head was spinning. They'd been keeping me completely out of the loop. If I'd postponed celebrating Dani's birthday, I never would have learned any of this. Here was the mysterious Tellie that Barrons and my father had both mentioned! She'd been leader of a secret Haven. She'd helped my mother escape. I needed to find her. Have you located Tellie yet? Have you located Tellie yet? I'd overheard Barrons saying. I'd overheard Barrons saying. No? Get more people on it No? Get more people on it. It seemed Barrons had once again beat me to the punch and had his men out hunting for her already. Why? How did he know about the woman? What had he learned that he hadn't told me? "And?"

"Said your m-well, supposedly you ain't human, so I guess she ain't your mom-Isla got out alive. Nana O' saw her leaving that night. Ain't never gonna guess with who!"

I didn't even trust myself to speak. Rowena. And the old bitch had probably killed her. Whether she was my mom or not, I still felt tied to her, protective of her.

"Aw, c'mon, you gotta guess!" She was getting blurry around the edges with excitement.

"Rowena," I said flatly.

"Guess again," she said. "This one's gonna fry your mind. Nana never woulda known, 'cept you stopped by with him. Well, she don't call him a him, she calls him an it."

I stared at her. "Who?" I demanded.

"Saw Isla getting in a car with something she calls the Damned. Dude that drove off twenty-some years ago with the only survivor of the abbey's Haven was Barrons."

I was so wound up after everything Dani told me that there was no way I was going to be able to do something as lethargic as curl on a sofa and watch a movie. Plus, I had so much sugar running through my system I was nearly vibrating like Dani.

After she dropped the Barrons' bomb, she hit play and began cracking up again. The kid is resilient.

I sat and stared at the screen, not seeing a thing.

Why would Barrons keep from me that he'd been at the abbey when the Book escaped twenty-odd years ago? Why hide from me that he'd known Isla O'Connor, my sister's mother? I could relinquish a mother I'd never had, but I couldn't give up my sister. Whether she was mine or not, that was how I was thinking of her, period. The end.

I remembered coming down the back stairs, catching him talking to Ryodan on the phone, hearing him say, After what I learned about her the other night After what I learned about her the other night. Had he been referring to the night we'd gone to the cottage? Had he been as surprised as I was to hear Nana tell me the woman he'd left the abbey with two decades ago had supposedly been my mother?

Had he taken her to this Tellie woman, who'd then helped Alina and me find an adoptive home in America? If Isla had left the abbey alive, why, how, when had she died? Had she even made it to Tellie, or had the woman agreed in advance to get her children out if anything happened to her? What part had Barrons been playing in all this? Had he killed Isla?

I shifted restlessly. He'd seen the cake. He knew I had a birthday party planned. He hated birthdays. There was no way he'd show his face tonight.

I picked at a piece of chocolate mousse icing. I stared around the bookstore. I contemplated the mural on the ceiling and fiddled with the cashmere throw. I plucked crumbs from the corner of the sofa and lined them up on my plate.

Rowena was Nana's daughter. Isla and Kayleigh had practically grown up together. Isla had been the Haven Mistress. They'd felt it necessary to form a Haven behind Ro's back. One that didn't even live at the abbey. Isla had run the formal one, and the mysterious Tellie had run the secret one. All these years my mom-Isla-had been taking the blame for the Book escaping, and now it looked like it had been Rowena behind things.

She'd let us all take the blame: first Isla, then Alina, then me.

...the two from the ancient bloodlines ain't got a snowball chance in hell o' fixing our mess, cause they ain't gonna want to.

I sighed. When I'd overheard my mom and dad in Ashford that night, talking about how I might doom the world, I'd felt condemned. Then Kat and Jo had showed me the prophecy-what I now knew was an abbreviated version-and I'd felt absolved.

Now I was back to feeling condemned. It was more than a little disturbing to hear that the sooner my sister and I got killed, the better off the human race would be.

If she'd lived, would Alina have chosen Darroc? In a fit of grief, I'd wanted to unmake this world for a new one with Barrons in it. Were we both fatally flawed? Instead of having been smuggled from the country for our own good, had we been exiled for the sake of the world? Was that why the DEG had given me THE WORLD THE WORLD card? To warn me that I was going to destroy it if I wasn't careful? That I needed to look at it, see it, choose it? Who was he, anyway? card? To warn me that I was going to destroy it if I wasn't careful? That I needed to look at it, see it, choose it? Who was he, anyway?

When I'd first arrived in Dublin and begun finding things out about myself, I'd felt like a reluctant hero, questing on an epic journey.

Now I just hoped I wouldn't end up screwing things up too much. Big problems demanded big decisions. How could I trust my own judgment when I wasn't even sure who I was?

I crossed my legs. Uncrossed them and raked a hand through my hair.

"Dude-you watching or doing couch calisthenics?" Dani complained.

I gave her a stark look. "You want to go kill something?"

She beamed. She had a chocolate ice-cream mustache. "Man, I thought you'd never never ask!" ask!"

Each time Dani and I have fought back-to-back is a golden memory I've tucked away in the scrapbook of my mind.

I can't help but think it's what things would have been like if Alina had trusted me and we'd gotten to fight together. Knowing that you've got somebody watching your back, you're a team, you'd never leave each other behind, you'd break each other out of enemy camps, is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Knowing that no matter how bad the trouble is you've gotten yourself into, that person will come for you and go on with you-that's love. I wonder if Alina and I were weak because we let ourselves get divided, separated by an ocean. I wonder whether she'd still be alive if we'd stayed together.

I may never know where I came from, but I can choose my family from here on out, and Dani's a non-negotiable part of it. Jack and Rainey are going to love her when they finally meet her.

We blasted through the rain-slicked streets, killing Unseelie with a vengeance. With each one I stabbed, I grew more convinced I wasn't the king. I would have felt something if I had been: remorse, guilt, something something. The king had been unwilling to give up his shadow children. I felt no pride of creation, no misguided love. I felt nothing but satisfaction at ending their immortal, parasitic existences and saving human lives.

We ran into Jayne and the Guardians and helped them out of a tight spot with a couple of sifters. We saw Lor and Fade on the prowl. I thought I glimpsed a Keltar on a rooftop, but he vanished so quickly I was left only with the impression of sleek tattooed muscle in the darkness.

Near dawn, we ended up a little too close to Chester's and I decided we should probably call it quits for the day. I was finally tired enough to sleep and I wanted to be at my best to track the Sinsar Dubh Sinsar Dubh.

Tonight, it would finally end. Tonight we would seal the Book away forever. Then I would pick up the pieces of my life and begin rebuilding it, starting with my mom and dad. I would continue with my missions to find out who'd killed Alina and who I was, but once the Book was locked down again, I'd finally be able to breathe a little easier. Take more time like tonight for myself, time to live...and love.

"Let's head back to the bookstore, Dani."

A strangled sound was the only reply.

I spun and sucked in a screech of breath. I didn't think. I just lunged and slammed my palms into her to Null the bitch.

The Gray Woman froze, but I was too late.

I stared in horror. While I'd been lost in my own thoughts, the lesion-covered, beauty-sucking Gray Woman had sifted in, grabbed Dani unaware, and begun devouring her. Right behind me, and I hadn't even noticed!

All I could think was, But this isn't her MO-the Gray Woman devours men! But this isn't her MO-the Gray Woman devours men!