Never hurt you, Mac, the Sinsar Dubh croons in my mind.

I inhale sharply. The air is so bitterly cold it burns my throat and lungs.

“You just did,” I grit.

I feel its curiosity. It doesn’t understand how it hurt me. Skin heals.

That was not pain.

I stiffen. I don’t like its tone. It is too silky, too full of promise. I try desperately to get to my dark lake in time to arm myself against it, to defend myself, but a wall erupts between me and my watery abyss, and I can find no way around or through it.

The Sinsar Dubh forces me to my knees. I strain against it every inch of the way, teeth clenched. It whips me around and I collapse onto my back. My arms and legs fly out as if I’m making snow angels. I’m pinned to cold metal girders.

This, Mac, the Sinsar Dubh purrs, is pain.

I drift in agony. I have no idea how long it tortures me, but the entire time I’m excruciatingly aware of one thing: Barrons isn’t going to save me.

He isn’t going to roar me back to reality like he did the last time the Book crushed me in the street, the last time it “tasted me.”

He isn’t going to carry me back to the bookstore when it’s over, make me cocoa and wrap me in blankets. He isn’t going to make me laugh by demanding to know what I am or later cause me to weep when I steal a memory from his head and see him shattered by grief, holding a dying child.

While the Book keeps me spread-eagled against the cold steel of the balcony floor, while every cell in my body is charred, and every bone is systematically crushed one by one, I cling to memories.

I can’t get to my lake, but I can get to the outer layers of my mind. The Sinsar Dubh is there, too, examining my thoughts, probing. “Learning me,” as it said once before. What is it looking for?

I tell myself I just have to survive it. That it isn’t really harming my body. It’s only playing with me. It came for me tonight. I hunt it. And for some reason beyond my fathoming, it hunts me. The Book’s idea of a macabre joke?

It’s not going to kill me. At least not today. I guess I amuse.

It will only make me wish I was dead, and, hey—I know that feeling. Been walking around with it for a while.

After an indefinite, endless length of time, the pain finally eases and I’m yanked to my feet.

My hands grab the railing, and my upper body is contorted over it.

I curl my fingers tightly. I lock my legs down. I summon every ounce of energy I have to make my bones whole and strong again. I stare out at the rooftops, fortifying my will.

I will not die.

If I die tonight, the world will stay the way it is right now, and that’s unacceptable. Too many people have been killed. Too many people will continue to die if I’m not here to do something about it. Fueled by the need to defend something greater than myself, I gather my will and launch myself like a missile for the lake inside my head.

I slam into the wall the Sinsar Dubh has erected between me and my arsenal.

A hairline fracture appears.

I don’t know who’s more startled, me or the Sinsar Dubh.

Then suddenly it’s angry.

I feel its fury, but it’s not angry because I cracked the wall it erected. It’s angry for some other reason.

It’s as if I, personally, have pissed it off somehow.

It’s … disappointed in me?

I find that inexpressibly disturbing.

My head is ratcheted around on my spine and I’m forced to stare down.

A person stands below me, a dark splash against the brilliant snow, a book tucked beneath its arm.

The person tilts its head back and looks up.

I chomp back a scream.

I recognize the hooded cloak that swirls softly back, teased by a light breeze. I recognize the hair.

But I don’t recognize anything else because—if it really is Fiona, Barrons’ ex-storekeeper and Derek O’Bannion’s mistress—she’s been skinned alive. The horror of it is that, because O’Bannion taught her to eat Unseelie, she hasn’t died from it.

Instinct makes me reach for my spear. Of course it’s not there.

“Mercy!” Fiona screams. Her skinned lips bare bloodied teeth.

And I wonder: Do I have any mercy left in me? Did I reach for my spear because I pity her?

Or because I hate her for having had Jericho Barrons before me, and for longer?

The Book’s anger with me grows.

I feel it spilling out, filling the streets. It’s immense, barely contained.

I’m baffled.

Why does it hold itself in check? Why not destroy everything? I would, if it would just hold still long enough to let me use it. Then I’d re-create it all the way I wanted it.

Suddenly it morphs into the Beast, a shadow blacker than blackness. It expands, soars, towers up and up, until it is eye level with me.

It hangs there in the air, flashing back and forth between its own terrible visage and the meat of Fiona’s flayed face.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

When I open them again, I’m alone.

“Stupid feckin’ stupid feckers!” I kick a can down the alley. It whizzes into the air, hits a brick wall, and flattens into it. And—dude—I mean “into” it. Couple inches deep. I snicker, knowing somebody’ll walk by one day and be like: Dude, how the feck did that can get embedded in the wall?

Just one more Mega O’Malley Mystery! City’s full of ’em.

I leave traces of me all over Dublin. My way of saying “I was here!” I been marking it up for years, ever since Ro started sending me out on my own to do stuff for her. Used to stick with little things, like bending sculptures in front of the museum just enough that I knew they were different but nobody else would prolly notice. But since the walls came down, it don’t matter no more. I embed things in brick and stone, rearrange chunks o’ rubble to spell out MEGA, hammer lampposts into twisty Ds for “Dani” and “Dangerous” and “Dude.”

I put a little swagger in my step.

Superstrength is me.

I scowl. “Stupid feckin’ feckers,” I mutter.

Hormonal is me. Up one minute, down the next. My moods change quick as my feet fly. One minute I can’t wait to grow up and have sex; the next I hate people, and men are people; and, dude—isn’t semen about the most disgusting thing you ever seen? Like, eew, who wants some dude to squirt snot in their mouth?

Been on my own for a couple days now, and it’s swee-eeeet! Nobody telling me what to do. Ain’t gotta go to bed. Nobody telling me what to think. Just me and my shadow—and we are two cool fecks. Who wouldn’t wanna be me?

Still … I worry about those stupid sheep at the abbey.

Feck, no, I don’t! If they don’t wanna pull their heads outta their asses, ain’t my trubs!

Too bad some peeps don’t know to take me seriously. Gonna have to mess up their world to get ’em to see me.

Been at Chester’s again.

Took seven of the slithery fecks to keep me out this time. Kept telling ’em I needed to talk to Ry-O, ’cause I think he’s their leader when Barrons ain’t around.

And Barrons ain’t around.

Hunted high and low for him last night after my eyeballs got grossed out by Mac swapping nasties with the Lord Monster.

Dude—what’s with that? She could have V’lane or Barrons! Who’d wanna swap spit with an Unseelie-eater? ’Specially the one that caused this whole fecking mess! Where’d she go for so long? What happened to her?

They wouldn’t let me into Chester’s. A-fecking-gain! Getting old, real old, it is. Ain’t like I wanna drink or nothing. Stuff’s poison. Just wanted to clue ’em in.

Finally told ’em to tell Ry-O I think Mac’s in trouble. Hanging out with Darroc. Two princes protecting him.

Think he’s brainwashed her or something. Gotta get her back again. Wanted backup to cover me while I take ’em all out. Ain’t got my sidhe-sheep behind me. Since leaving the abbey, I’m Persona Non Grovel, and groveling’s the only way you get anything from Ro and her herd. Even Jo wouldn’t leave the abbey. Said it’s too late for Mac.