By the time I reached the landing of the first-floor stairwell, I was feeling downright cocky about my ability to clear the store of the Unseelie infestation.

I stepped briskly into the back parlor, heading for the light switch on the opposite wall. Three steps into the room, a damp breeze ruffled my hair. I swung my flashlight in that direction. A window was open onto the alley behind Barrons Books and Baubles! The truth was inescapable—interior and exterior lights off, a window propped open? Someone was trying to kill me!

I stomped toward the window and sprawled headlong over an ottoman that shouldn’t have been there. My flashlights went flying in all directions, casting a dizzying strobe light effect as they spun out of control across the floor. Shades erupted like panicked pigeons, flocking through the open window to the sanctuary of night.

Ha. Good riddance. Now I just needed to slam the window on them.

I scrambled up onto my hands and knees and froze right where I was—face-to…er…blackness-where-a-face-wasn’t—with a Shade that hadn’t fled. It wasn’t one of the smaller ones, either. It had contorted itself to occupy the darkness between the flashlights, coiling snakelike over, under, and around the beams. I didn’t want to think about the frighteningly quick reflexes it must have to have managed the trick. It was as high as the ceiling in several places, at least twenty feet long, and pulsated like a dark cancer, pressing at the edges of the light.

I sucked in a breath. I’d seen one do this before—test the light. I’d not stuck around long enough to learn the outcome of its test. I muttered a fervent prayer it had gotten an F. My flashlights were scattered across the floor. Two were shining on me, flanking me, left and right. I was far enough between them that the combined pool of light narrowly bathed my entire body, but if I were to crawl toward either one, the beam would dwindle the closer I got, leaving large parts of me in darkness. It was a risk I couldn’t take with this abnormally aggressive, gigantic Shade crouching over me.

As I huddled there, it snaked inky tendrils of itself forward, one toward my hair haloed weakly in light, the other at my fingers splayed in a pale pool on the floor.

I yanked my hand back, fumbled the matches from my pocket, and struck one. The pungent smell of sulfur soaked the damp air.

The tendrils retreated.

Though it’s tough to tell with something that has no face, I swear it studied me, seeking my weaknesses. The match was burning down between us. I dropped it to the floor and lit another. There was no way I could strip off my jacket to set it on fire without my arms and part of my torso protruding into the dangerous darkness. Likewise, the ottoman over which I’d fallen was too far behind me to be of use.

But…the priceless Persian rug beneath me was starting to smolder. I exhaled a gentle puff on the glowing embers of the dropped match. It wentout.

If Shades snicker, this one did. It expanded and contracted, and I swear I felt its mockery. I really hope I’m wrong. I really hope they aren’t capable of complex thought.

“It would seem you are in need of assistance, sidhe-seer.” A musical baritone drifted through the window, otherworldly, sensuous, and punctuated by a forbidding growl of thunder.

THREE

S till no knight errant.

It was V’lane. And here I’d been thinking things couldn’t get any worse.

Not a knight, but a Prince. Of the Seelie or Light Court, if anything he says can be believed. And hardly errant, V’lane is a death-by-sex-Fae. They don’t wander in search of adventure and romance, they incite killing ardor.

I glanced down at myself to see if I still had my clothes on. I was relieved to find I did. Fae royalty exude such intense sexuality that they override every survival instinct we have, clouding a woman’s mind, provoking her erotic senses beyond anything she was meant to experience, turning her into an inhumanly aroused animal, begging for sexual release. The first thing a woman does when one shows up is start stripping.

In a romance novelist’s hands, that might come off as hot, campy, even sexy. In reality, it’s icy, terrifying, and most often ends in death. If the woman is left alive, she’s Pri-ya, barely able to function, a Fae sex-addict.

I glanced back at the Shade and hastily lit another match. If anything, it was watching me even more intently now.

“So, assist me already,” I snapped.

“Does that mean you accept my gift?”

During our first encounter several weeks ago, V’lane had offered me a mystical relic known as the Cuff of Cruce, a gesture of goodwill, he’d claimed, in exchange for my help finding the Sinsar Dubh for his ruler, Aoibheal, High Queen of the Seelie Court. According to him, the cuff protects the wearer from assorted nasties, including the Shades.

According to my intractable host and mentor, with a Fae, Light or Dark, there’s always a catch, and they don’t believe in full disclosure. In fact, they don’t believe in disclosure at all. Would we disclose our intentions to a horse before we rode it, or a cow before we ate it?

Perhaps the cuff would save me. Perhaps it would enslave me.

Perhaps it would kill me.

During our last encounter, V’lane tried to rape me in the middle of a public place—not that being raped in a private place would have been any better, just that, adding insult to injury, I’d regained control of myself only to discover I was nearly naked in the middle of a crowd of voyeuristic jerks. It was a hurtful, hateful memory. I’d been racking up a lot of them lately.

Mom raised me better, I want that noted for posterity’s sake: Rainey Lane is a fine, upstanding woman.