I narrowed my eyes. There was no breeze. Not the merest hint of wind stirred the back alley. Not a hair on my head moved. I licked my finger and held it up. The air was flat, stagnant.

Yet the specter’s robe rippled, buffeted by a draft that wasn’t there.

Great. If I’d been looking for proof that the ghoulish vision haunting me was a delusion, I’d just gotten it. I’d obviously Photoshopped this thing in from stills stored in my memory compiled from movies, childhood ghost stories, and books. In my mind’s media banks its robes always rustled, I never saw its face, and it always carried a sharply curved, lethal blade mounted on a tall pole of ebony wood like the one it was toting now. It was perfect. Too perfect.

Why was I doing this to myself?

“I don’t get it,” I said. Of course, the specter said nothing. It never did and never would. Because Death wasn’t standing in this alley with me, waiting, with patience born of perpetuity, for the right moment to punch my ticket, call in my chip. The Eternal Footman wasn’t holding out my coat, a subtle yet irrefutable signal that the dance, for me, was over, the ball done, the night through.

And if I wanted further evidence that this clichéd spirit was just that—an apparition, a figment of an overwrought imagination—I had only to remind myself that Barrons, Jayne, and Derek O’Bannion hadn’t seen it, when they’d been in its vicinity. Jayne and O’Bannion weren’t necessarily conclusive evidence, but Barrons was. Good grief, the man could smell a kiss on me. He didn’t miss anything.

“Is it because I killed Rocky O’Bannion and his men? Is that why I keep seeing you? Because I collected their clothes and threw them in the trash instead of sending them to the police, or back to their wives?” I’d had my share of psych courses in college. I knew a perfectly healthy human mind could play tricks on itself, and mine wasn’t healthy. It was burdened by vengeful thoughts, regrets, and rapidly multiplying sins. “I know it’s not because I killed all those Unseelie in the warehouse or stabbed Mallucé. I feel good about those things.” I studied it a moment. How honest did I have to be with myself to get rid of it? “Is it because I left Mom back home in Ashford, grieving, and I’m afraid she’ll never get better without me?”

Or had this thing’s dark conception taken place long before that? Had the seeds of it been planted on a warm sunny day by the side of a swimming pool, while I was stretched out, tanning my pampered hide and listening to happy, mindless music while four thousand miles away my sister was stretched out, bleeding to death in a dirty Dublin alley?

Was it because I’d talked to Alina every week for hours, over the course of months, and never once clued in to anything in her voice, never pulled my head out of my happy little worldfar enough to sense that something was wrong in hers? Because I’d dropped my stupid cell phone in the pool, been too lazy to get a new one, and missed her dying call, and my last chance for the rest of my life to hear her voice? “Is it because I failed her? Is that it? Am I seeing you because I’m ashamed that I’m the one that lived?”

Darkness yawed beneath the specter’s cowl, a nameless, blameless, silken darkness that promised oblivion. Was I subconsciously seeking it? Had my life become so foreign and awful that I wanted out and—contrary to torturing myself with fear of death, a death I thought I deserved—was I actually comforting myself with the promise of it?

Nah, that was way too complicated for me. There wasn’t a suicidal bone in my body. I believed in silver linings and rainbows, and all the monsters and guilt in the world weren’t going to change that.

What, then? I couldn’t think of anything else I felt bad about, and frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to keep hunting; psychoanalyzing myself ranked right up there with getting an unnecessary root canal.

I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, my feet hurt from walking all day, and I was tired. I wanted comfort food, a warm fire, and a good book to read.

Wasn’t I supposed to be able to banish my own demons? I felt like the biggest idiot, but gave it a try. “Begone, dastardly fiend!” I flung one of my flashlights at it.

It sailed straight through it and bounced off the brick wall behind it. By the time it clattered to the cobbled street, my Grim Reaper was gone.

I just wished I believed it would stay gone.

TEN

W hy hasn’t the Lord Master come after me yet? It’s been two weeks.” When Barrons stepped into the bookstore Monday evening, an hour earlier than was his usual custom, I voiced the worry that had been on my mind all day.

It was raining again. Unlike the streets, the customers had dried up. Despite the lack of patrons, I felt guilty about having closed early more often than not since I’d started my new job, and was determined not to lock the doors this evening until seven o’clock on the dot. I’d been staying busy restocking shelves and dusting displays.

“I suspect, Ms. Lane,” he said, closing the door behind him, “our reprieve is a matter of convenience. Note the ‘our’ in that sentence, in case you were foolhardily considering striking out on your own again.”

He was never going to let me forget that I would have died that day I’d gone off into the Dark Zone by myself, if he hadn’t come after me. I didn’t care. He could dig at me all he wanted to. His heavy-handedness was beginning to roll off me. “Convenience?” It was certainly convenient for me, but I didn’t think that was what Barrons meant.