“Is anyone in this room?” Barrons said irritably. “What’s your point?”

“She’s safest here,” I said succinctly.

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Barrons growled. “This level is warded the same way the bookstore is. Nothing can sift in—”

V’lane hissed.

“—or out. Nothing Seelie or Unseelie can get to her. We don’t let anyone enter the room clothed. Rainey is nursing—”

“You put her in with my parents?” I said incredulously. “People are visiting naked?”

“Where else would I put her?”

“The queen of the Faery is in that glass room with my mom and dad?” My voice was rising. I didn’t care.

He shrugged. His eyes said, Not really, and we both know that. You aren’t even from this world.

Mine said, I don’t give a shit who I might have been in another lifetime. I know who I am now.

“It takes time and resources to ward a place as well as the room where Jack and Rainey are. We’re not duplicating our efforts,” he said.

“Castle Keltar was warded by the queen herself,” Dageus said. “Far from Dublin, where the Sinsar Dubh seems inclined to prowl, ’tis the better choice.”

“She stays. Not open to discussion. You don’t like that, try to take her,” Barrons said flatly, and in his dark eyes I saw anticipation. He hoped they would. He was in the mood for a fight. Everyone in the room was. Even me, I was startled to realize. I had a sudden, unwanted appreciation of men. I had a problem I couldn’t fix. But if I could create a manageable problem, like a fistfight, and kick the shit out of it, it sure would make me feel better for a while.

“If she stays, we stay,” Dageus said flatly. “We guard her here or we guard her there. But we guard her.”

“And if they stay, I stay, too.” V’lane’s voice dripped ice. “No human will protect my queen so long as I exist.”

“Simple solution to that, fairy. I make you stop existing.”

“The Seelie are not our enemy. You touch him, you take us all on.”

“You think I couldn’t, Highlander?”

For a moment the tension in the room was unbearable, and in my mind’s eye I saw us all going for one another’s throats.

Barrons was the only one of us that couldn’t be killed. I needed the Scotsmen to perform the re-interment ritual and V’lane and his stone to help corner the Book. A fight right now was a very bad idea.

“And that’s settled,” I chirped brightly. “Everyone’s staying. Welcome to the Chester’s Hilton! Let’s get some beds made up.”

Barrons looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

“Then let’s go out and find some things to kill,” I added.

Dageus and Cian growled assent, and even V’lane looked relieved.

I stepped out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror. Since dragging my aching body up the back stairs of BB&B to my bedroom twenty minutes ago, my bruises had faded by forty percent. I traced my fingers across a particularly bad one on my collarbone. I’d thought I heard a crack and was worried something had broken, but it was only a hot, swollen contusion and was healing remarkably fast.

What was with me? I might have suspected it was something to do with my being … well, Not the Concubine, but I’d never healed like this when I was a kid. I’d run around with skinned knees constantly.

Was McCabe one of my parts? Was that why he hadn’t frozen, too? Could the dreamy-eyed guy be a part? Who else? How many parts did Not the Concubine have?

“I am not the king,” I said out loud. “There’s some other explanation.” There had to be. I simply wouldn’t accept it.

Tonight had been a rush. We’d run into Jayne, his guardians, and Dani near Fourteenth and cut a wide swath through the city. Dageus, Cian, and V’lane had pummeled; Dani and I had sliced and diced. Barrons had done whatever it was he did, but he’d done it too fast for me to see. After a time I’d stopped trying, too lost in my own bloodlust.

When I’d finally quit counting, the death toll had been in the hundreds.

How could it feel so good to kill Unseelie if I was their creator?

“See? More proof I’m not,” I told myself in the mirror with a nod. My reflection nodded sagely back. I selected the medium heat setting on my dryer and began to blow-dry my hair.

The Unseelie had retreated. Word of us had spread through the streets and they’d withdrawn from combat, flapped, sifted, and slithered away. I guess after being locked up for their entire existence, they were in no hurry to die now that they were free. I’d left Barrons, the two Keltar, and V’lane looking remarkably unsatisfied and about to fall at one another’s throats. I’d been tired, sore, and beyond caring. If they were stupid enough to kill each other, they deserved the resultant problems it would create.

As I slipped into pajamas, a pebble rattled against my bedroom window.

I was so not in the mood for V’lane right now. Yes, I had questions, but tonight was not the night to ask them. I needed rest and a clear head. I kicked away the backpack, crawled in bed and pulled the covers over my head to block out the blazing light from five lamps. The Shades were supposedly gone. “Supposedly” isn’t a word I live with well.

Another pebble.

I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it to stop.

Five minutes of incessant pebbles later, a stone crashed through my window, spraying glass and scaring the hell out of me.

I shot up in bed and glared at the mess on the floor. I couldn’t even march over and snap his head off. I had to dig around for shoes first.

A chilly breeze flapped the curtains.

I tugged on boots and crunched to the window. “I’m not talking to you until you fix the damned glass, V’lane,” I snapped. Then, “Oh!”

A cloaked, hooded figure stood in the alley below, and for a moment it reminded me of Malluce. Dark robes swirled in a gossamer cloud as the figure moved jerkily forward, as if every step was agony. The exterior spotlights gleamed across the cloak, and I saw it was fashioned of frothy light chiffon.

My first thought was of the Sinsar Dubh, hiding somewhere beneath those many secretive folds.

“Drop the cloak. I want to see hands, everything.”

I heard a sharp inhalation, a wheeze of agony. Arms moved with arthritic carefulness, loosening a brooch at the throat. The hood fell and the cloak rustled to the ground.

I nearly vomited. I bit back a scream. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was Fiona, in the badly mutilated flesh.

“Merssseee.” Skinned lips parted on a sibilant hiss.

I turned away from the window and leaned back against the sill, hand over my mouth. My eyes were closed, but there was no escape. I could see her on the backs of my lids.

She’d tried to kill me, in what seemed another lifetime. She’d taken up with Derek O’Bannion, then Darroc.

All because she loved Jericho Barrons.

The night the Book had brought her to my balcony, skinned alive, I’d wondered if all the Unseelie she’d eaten would keep her from dying. Eating Unseelie has remarkable healing properties. But apparently growing a new human skin—or maybe healing from any magical injury the Sinsar Dubh had inflicted—was beyond its ability.

“I thought the Book killed everyone it possessed,” I said finally. My words rang out in the hushed night.

“It has … different appetites for … us … who eat Unseelie.” Her pained voice floated up.

“It killed Darroc. He ate Unseelie.”

“Silencing … him. For what … he knew.”

“Which was?”

“If only … I knew. I would …” She made a garbled sound, and I assumed from the wheezes and moans that she was stooping to retrieve her cloak. I tried to imagine what would hurt worse on flayed flesh—the cold night breeze or clothes. Both would be a walking hell. I couldn’t imagine how she stood the pain.

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.