“What are you doing on my water tower?” Jada demanded.

Mac looked up at her. “I don’t see your name on it anywhere.”

“You know it’s my water tower. I used to talk about it.”

“Sorry, dude,” Mac said mildly.

“Don’t fecking ‘dude’ me,” Jada said sharply, then inhaled long and slow. “There are plenty of other places for you to be. Find your own. Have an original thought.”

“I watched the Unseelie princess kill one of the Nine about an hour ago,” Mac said, as if she hadn’t even heard her. “She’s carrying human weapons now. Marching with a small army. They shot the shit out of Fade. Started to rip his body apart.”

“And?” Jada said, forgetting her irritation that Mac was here. She’d tried to strike an alliance with the Unseelie princess but the powerful Fae had chosen Ryodan instead, striking a deal for three of the princes’ heads. Apparently that alliance was over, if she was now killing the Nine.

“He disappeared. The princess saw it happen.”

Jada went still. She knew the Nine returned. Somehow. She didn’t know the nuts and bolts of it but she certainly wanted to. “Why are you telling me this? Your loyalties are with them, not me.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive. My loyalties are to you as well. Coffee?” Mac nudged a thermos toward her.

Jada ignored it.

“Got doughnuts, too. They’re soggy, but hey, it’s sugar. It’s all good.”

Jada turned to leave.

“I saw Alina the other night.”

Her feet rooted. “Impossible,” she said.

“I know. But I did.”

Jada relaxed each muscle by section of her body, starting with her head and working down. Opponents tended to focus at eye level, so she always eradicated signs of obvious tension there first. She didn’t want to talk about this. She didn’t think about this anymore. “I watched her die,” she said finally.

“Did you? Or did you leave before it was over?” Mac held out a doughnut.

Jada ate it in two bites, wondering if this was some kind of twisted joke Mac was playing on her. Then, in a single swallow, she tossed back the little plastic cup of coffee Mac had offered.

“Fuck,” she exploded. “That was hot.”

“Duh. It’s coffee,” Mac said, arching a brow.

“Give me another doughnut. Where did you find them?”

“Little vendor a few blocks from BB&B. And I didn’t.” She frowned. “I had to ask Barrons to go get breakfast, and believe me, every time I ask for anything, I get this freaking lecture on how he’s not my fetch-it boy. I have to slink through the damn streets to go anywhere, hiding from everyone. They’re hunting me.”

“Despite my paper retracting the accusation, they’re hunting me, too,” Jada admitted. “We had a small mob at the abbey yesterday.”

“What did you do?”

“I wasn’t there. My women told them none of the accusations were true. Although they didn’t believe it, my sidhe-seers are formidable and the mob’s numbers were small. They’ll be back in greater force at some point,” she said, not certain why she was even having a conversation.

But sliding through dawn over Dublin this morning, for the first time since she’d returned, she’d felt…something…something to do with being here, home, back, and that maybe, just maybe, everything would work out all right. She’d find a place for herself and Shazam here.

She took the second doughnut Mac was holding out. “They’re not bad,” she admitted, eating slowly enough to taste it this time.

“Better than protein bars. I hear music coming from the black holes. Do you hear it?”

Jada looked at her. “What kind of music?”

“Not good. It’s pretty awful, frankly. I couldn’t hear anything for the past few days, but once the Unseelie-flesh high wore off, it was there. Not all of them. The small ones give off a kind of innocuous hum, but the larger ones give me a serious migraine. Did you see Alina gouge something into the pavement?”

Jada said nothing.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mac said.

“I did it,” Jada said coldly. “My action.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t. I’m saying there were extenuating circumstances. Just trying to unskew your self-perception.”

“My perception is not skewed.”

“You have responsibility dysmorphia syndrome.”

“You should talk.”

“You were a child. And that old bitch was an adult. And she abused you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t need absolution.”

“My point exactly.”

“Why are you on my water tower again?” she said icily.

“Best view in the city.”

There was that. Jada crouched on the edge and looked down. “I didn’t see her gouge anything into the pavement.”

“Then she may have lived,” Mac said slowly.

“No. Absolutely not. Rowena never would have let me leave until she was dead. She always made me stay until the last.” She looked at Mac. “Alina’s not alive. Don’t let someone play you.”

Then she stood and turned for the ladder.

“If you see someone who looks like her in the streets, do me a favor and leave her alone,” Mac said. “Until I sort this out.”