“Good, then you can explain it to me! ’Cause it sure looks like every shade of stupid from where I’m standing!”

She’s distant again, talking soft, like I’m not even here. Even with my superhearing I lean in to catch it.

“There are men you build a future with, Dani. And then there are men that you know, going in, that you’re only making a memory with. I know the difference.”

Doesn’t look like it to me.

“Some memories are worth the price. I’ll deal with it.”

But she won’t. I know she won’t. I know Jo. She’s brilliant and kind and has the heart of a warrior but she doesn’t have ice and razor blades inside where your soul is supposed to be. She loves. And she doesn’t know how to take it back when you have to, because sometimes you sure as feck have to. Got to grab it up with both hands and pull it back before somebody turns it into knives and uses it to cut you to pieces. She’s not going to be able to deal with it good at all. And I’m going to have to clean up the mess he made, and kill him. I suck in a breath. “You’re too stupid to live and I’m not talking to you anymore. You need to pull your head out.”

“You need to quit judging everyone.”

“You don’t know shit about me. And I’d rather judge people than be a pansy-ass that can’t make her mind up about anyone or anything and gets sucked into all kinds of stupid shit.”

“Dani, please don’t—”

“My ears are full. I can’t hear anymore!” I turn away and start to slip into freeze-frame. I have no idea what makes me look up. Kind of like a rubber-band feeling, like it’s fused into my gut, and like something at the top of the stairs is pulling at my opposite end.

Ryodan is standing at the top of the stairs looking down at me. And I think what Jo said about him being big and powerful and beautiful.

We lock eyes.

Mine say, “Don’t you ever choose her again. You leave her alone.”

His say something I don’t get at all. Then he does that ocular-shiver thing all over me and I get a real clear: “Go home, kid.”

He looks right past me at Jo.

And he nods.

We’re not so different, you and I, Cruce says as he moves inside me. Both born to lead.

I try desperately to wake myself. I’m in the Dreaming and he has me in his wings. The moment I fell asleep, he was there, waiting for me at the end of a white marble path in a garden of exquisite blood roses. He lays me on them, with a crush of velvet petals. I brace for the thorns.

You must not rue it, Kat. The sun does not rue that it rises.

He goes deep, filling me completely, making every nerve ending in my body vibrate with erotic ecstasy. I arch my back and hiss with pleasure.

We will rule the world and they will love us. We will save them.

“Dreaming of me, are you now, my sweet Kat?”

Like a dropped snow globe, my dream world shatters and I remember why I asked Sean to stay the night with me at the abbey. Why I slipped him around back and into my suite of rooms. To save me from Cruce. To ground me to the world I know and love.

I roll into Sean’s arms and press against him, shuddering with fear that I pretend is desire. We make love quick and hard and fast. He never knows I’m trying to erase someone else.

Someone that makes me come harder. Better. More.

Sean, my love, my childhood friend, teenage sweetheart, mate to my soul. I’ve never known life without him. We shared a playpen and went to our first day of school together. We got the measles the same week, swapped our first flu snuggled in blankets in front of the TV. We got pimples and got rid of them. He was there the night I started my period, and I was there the day his voice began to change. We know everything about each other. Our history is rich and long. I love his dark eyes, his black hair and fair Irish skin. I love the way he wears a fisherman’s sweater with faded jeans and always has a quick smile. I love how strong his arms are from years of pulling fishing nets, and the way his long-limbed body moves, how he looks when he’s lost in a good book, the way he feels moving inside me.

“Are you all right, love?” He brushes a tangle of hair from my face.

I lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beating, solid and sure. Sometimes I think he has a touch of my sidhe-seer gift, he reads me so well. He’s known about my emotional empathy since we were children. Nothing about me disturbs him, a rare gift from those who fully understand what I do. Few can lie to me. I sense their inner conflict, unless they suffer no guilt or scruple about anything, and I’ve been blessed to encounter only a handful of those in my life — all of them in or near Chester’s, recently. I don’t know the truth, only that there is a lie. It takes a scrupulously honest man to love me. That’s my Sean. We learned to trust each other completely before we were old enough to have learned suspicion.

“What if I can’t do it?” I say. I don’t elaborate. With Sean few words are necessary. We’ve been finishing each other’s sentences since we were young. We were virgins when we made love the first time. There’s never been anyone else for either of us.

Now I have an invisible lover violating everything I hold dear. Making me want him and not my Sean.

He laughs. “Kat, sweetheart, you can do anything.”

My heart feels like a rock in my chest. I burn with shame, and deceit. I’ve made love in my dreams in exquisite detail with another man, and have done so every night for over a week. I’ve taken him in my mouth, felt him at the entrance of my womb, places that are Sean’s alone. “But what if I can’t? What if I make mistakes that cost lives?”

He rolls onto his side and pulls me back into him, spooning. I press in. We fit together perfectly. Like we were carved from the same piece of wood, from the same tree.

“Hush, sweet Kat. I’m here. I’ll always be here. Together we can do anything. You know that. Remember our vows.”

I pull his arms tighter around me. We were young, so young. Everything was simple then. We were fifteen, deliriously and passionately in love, delighted by our developing bodies, growing up together into one. We stole off to Paradise Point out by the lighthouse, dressed up like it was our wedding day, and took vows with each other. We came from broken families, temperamental fighting families, and we learned from watching them. Too much passion burns. Tenderness fuses. We knew what it took to stay together. It was nothing fancy. Common sense, really.

If you weaken, I’ll be strong. If you get lost, I’ll be your way home. If you despair, I’ll bring you joy. I will love you until the end of time.

“I love you, Sean O’Bannion. Never leave me.”

“Wild horses, Kat. Couldn’t drag me an inch. You’re the only one for me. Always.” There’s a smile in his voice.

We make love again, and this time, when dark wings try to shadow me, they fail. There’s no one else in bed with me but my Sean.

I watch him dress while dawn paints pale white rectangles around the heavy drapes. I have young charges at the abbey and we are not wed. We’d begun making plans to marry before the walls fell but our families interfered. The O’Bannions tried to stop it. When they realized Sean was having none of it, they tried to take over and turn it into the spectacle of the decade.

An O’Bannion marries a McLaughlin!

It would have been a grand step up for my family. We were small-time criminals. His family controlled nearly all Dublin’s mob underbelly. I grew up with Sean because my mother was his nanny.

We’d been fighting bitterly with our parents for months before the walls fell and billions died.

Including our families. Where else would they have been than out in the riots, watching the chaos, trying to profit from the lawlessness?