“And it’s not working,” he said, as we stepped into the alcove of Barrons Books and Baubles. “How’s this?” He drew me back out into the street and cupped my head with his hands. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he tipped my head back so I was looking up.

“What?”

“The sign.”

The placard swaying on a polished brass pole read: MACKAYLA’S MANUSCRIPTS AND MISCELLANY.

“Are you kidding me?” I exploded. “It’s mine? But you just said I was on my last chance with you!”

“You are.” He released my head and moved away. “It can be removed as easily as it was hung.”

My sign. My bookstore. “My Lamborghini?” I said hopefully.

He opened the door and stepped inside. “Don’t push it.”

“What about the Viper?”

“Not a chance.”

I moved in behind him. Fine, I could deal without the cars. For the moment. The bookstore was mine. I was feeling choked up. MINE with all capital letters, just like the sign. “Barrons, I—”

“Don’t be trite. It’s not you.”

“I was just going to thank you,” I said crossly.

“For what? Leaving? I changed the sign because I don’t plan to be here much longer. It has nothing to do with you. What I want is nearly within reach. Good night, Ms. Lane.”

He vanished out the back. I don’t know what I expected.

Actually, I do. I expected him to try to get me into bed again.

Barrons has been predictable in his treatment of me since the day I met him. Initially he used references to sex to shut me up. Then he used sex to wake me up. After I was no longer Pri-ya, he’d returned to using references to sex to keep me on edge. Forcing me to remember how intimate we once were.

Like everything else about him, I’d begun to count on it.

Innuendo and invitation. Eternal as the rain in Dublin. I was the one the dangerous lion licked. And I liked it.

Tonight, when we’d walked back to the bookstore, talking, sharing information freely, I felt something warm and new blossom between us. When he’d shown me the sign, I melted.

Then he’d splashed ice water on me.

For what? Leaving? I changed the sign because I don’t plan to be here much longer.

He’d walked off without making innuendo or extending an invitation.

He’d just left.

Giving me a tiny taste of what it felt like. Barrons walking off, leaving me alone.

Would he really go away for good when this was done? Vanish without saying good-bye the moment he had his spell?

I trudged into my fifth-floor bedroom and threw myself across my bed. I usually pretend there’s nothing strange about sometimes finding my room on the fourth floor and sometimes on the fifth. I’ve become so inured to “weird” that the only thing that worries me much anymore is the possibility that my bedroommight one day disappear entirely. What if I’m in it when it goes? Will I go, too? Or be stuck in a wall or floor as it makes its grand exit, yelling my head off? As long as it’s still somewhere in the store, I feel reasonably secure with my parameters. After the way my life has turned out, if it does disappear, I’ll probably just sigh, gear up, and go hunting for it.

It’s hard to lose the things you’ve come to think of as yours.

Was all this going to be over soon? Sure, we’d screwed up tonight, but I wouldn’t screw up next time. We were meeting at Chester’s tomorrow to make a new plan. We had our team; we’d keep trying. Conceivably, we could have the Sinsar Dubh stowed securely away in a matter of days.

And what would happen then?

Would V’lane and the queen and all the Seelie leave our world and go back to their court? Would they manage to get the walls back up somehow and scrape the Unseelie blight from my world?

Would Barrons and his eight close up Chester’s and disappear?

What would I do, with no V’lane, no Unseelie to fight, no Barrons?

Ryodan had made it clear that no one was allowed to know about them and live. They’d been hiding their immortal existence among us for thousands of years. Would they try to kill me? Or just leave and remove all trace of evidence that they’d ever been here?

Could I search the world over and never find any of them again? Would I age and begin to wonder if I’d imagined those crazy, passionate, dark days in Dublin?

How could I age? Who would I marry? Who would ever understand me? Would I live out the rest of my life alone? Become as cantankerous and cryptic and strange as the man who’d made me this way?

I began to pace.

I’d been so worried about my problems—who he was, who I was, who Alina’s killer was—that I’d never looked into the future and tried to project the likely outcome of events. When you’re fighting every day simply for the chance to have a future, it’s kind of hard to get around to imagining what that future might be like. Thinking about how to live is a luxury enjoyed by people who know they’re going to live.

I didn’t want to be alone in Dublin when this was all over!

What would I do? Run the bookstore, surrounded by memories for the rest of my life as those of us who remained painstakingly rebuilt the city? I couldn’t stay here if he didn’t. Even if he left, he’d still be here, everywhere I looked. It would almost be worse than him dying. Barrons’ residue would stalk this place as vividly as the concubine and the king lived in the White Mansion’s inky corridors. I’d know he was out there, forever beyond my reach. Glory days: achieved and gone by twenty-three, like a has-been high school football player sitting in his double-wide, chugging beer with his friends at thirty, two kids, a nagging wife, a family van, and a grudge against life.