As she passed the church where she’d nearly frozen to death, she scanned the black hole suspended over the rubble, assessing size and circumference. It was larger by nearly a third, exuding a gentle pull of distortion. Mac had told her she could hear music coming from the black holes, but even with her extraordinary hearing Jada couldn’t detect the faintest vibration.

She considered her current problems: Black holes devouring the world, the Song of Making lost, nearly half her sidhe-seers injured or dead, another attack on the abbey imminent until Cruce was freed or destroyed, the Unseelie King and former queen absent, Mac possessed by the Sinsar Dubh.

Banner day in Dublin. No time to print a daily.

It occurred to her that if they could find a way to control Mac/the Sinsar Dubh, it might not be entirely a bad thing that she’d opened the Book. If they didn’t hurry up and find a way to patch the black holes on their world, or at least find a way to stop them from growing, the human race had no future, and allegedly the Sinsar Dubh, scribed by the Unseelie King, contained information about the legendary Song of Making. She’d pondered that allegation at length, not certain she believed it was possible because, according to all the myths she’d uncovered about the history of the Fae royals, including the many oral stories she’d collected Silverside, the king had never succeeded in re-creating it—so how could anything about it possibly be in his Book? Maybe the Book contained clues? Bits and pieces the king had collected hinting at the true nature of the song that, with Dancer’s help, might be analyzed and improved upon? Speaking of Dancer, she had to somehow get word to him that Mac had gone postal. She wondered if he still checked their hidden cubby at the O’Connell Street Post Office, and made a mental note to drop him a message there, assuming she didn’t run into him before then. He had the uncanny knack of showing up whenever she thought really hard about him.

She eased up into the slipstream and vanished. In that higher dimension, the world slid by without friction. Buildings, people, their many messy emotions, disappeared beyond a beautiful, starry tunnel. If only she could eat enough to maintain the metabolism to fuel it, she’d live in the slipstream and never come down—a superhero, protecting her world, unseen, untouched.

She was nearly to Chester’s when she crashed into a brick wall she’d not sensed—which meant one of the Nine—and dropped back down.

Scent came before sight: Jericho Barrons. She ricocheted off his chest and went flying. With those lightning-fast reflexes that could pluck her out of freeze-frame, he grabbed her arm and stopped her from careening violently down the street.

“Dani,” he said.

She tipped her head back and stared up into eyes black as midnight, a dark, savage face. Every hair on her body stood up on end, as if charged by a sudden surge of electricity. He threw off the same kind of primal energy as Ryodan. She’d once crushed on Jericho Barrons violently. Before she realized he and Mac belonged together like earth and sky, night and day, fire and ice. She’d found tatters of legends about the Nine on some of the worlds she’d traveled Silverside, but never managed to find an origin myth, only songs and tales of nine merciless warriors who battled for gain and, despite dying, came back again and again. Unkillable, unstoppable, unbreakable, she hungered to be those many “uns” herself. No matter the price. She snatched her hand away and smoothed her hair. “It’s Jada.”

“Have you seen Mac?” he said.

That was Barrons. No small talk. She appreciated it and answered in kind. “She’s been possessed by the Sinsar Dubh.”

Barrons went so still she lost him in the early morning gloom. Just when she’d decided he’d left, his disembodied voice murmured, “So, that’s why I can no longer feel her.” Then he was there again, morphing out of the brick wall that had been behind him. He could be a perfect chameleon when he chose. “Are you certain?” he said so softly that she shivered, because she knew what soft meant from this hard, implacable man. It meant every ounce of his energy had just been diverted and channeled into a mother lode of a nuclear missile that was locked, loaded, and targeted on whatever had just offended him, and that he would expend no more energy than was strictly necessary to speak.

“Yes.”

His eyes darkened, eerie shadows swirled in his irises, and a muscle worked in his jaw. “How certain?”

“Unequivocally.”

“What happened?” he said, a bare whisper.

She tightened her ponytail, pulling it up higher. Her hair was curling again, or trying to. She hated it curly. It made her feel like Dani, out of control. Those at the abbey didn’t know the Sinsar Dubh was once again roaming Dublin, and she had little time to fortify what was left of the fortress against the next attack, whether instigated by those trying to free Cruce or Mac herself. “We have to get to the abbey, Barrons. We can talk on the way.”

He pulled out his cellphone, thumbed up a contact, and held the phone to his ear. “Do you feel the Sinsar Dubh?”

Jada heard a woman’s frantic voice carrying clearly from his phone. She knew that voice. She heard it in nightmares, crying, begging, and finally screaming. She shivered, reached for another protein bar and wolfed it down.

“Barrons, I’ve been trying to call you! I felt it about an hour ago! Here. In Dublin. What’s going on? You said it was locked up. How did it get out?”

“Where is it right now?”

“It headed north, into the country, then I lost it. Where are you? Where’s Mac? I’m coming with you.”

“No you’re not. Find your parents. Stay with them until you hear from me.”

“But M-Mom and D-Dad d-don’t know I’m alive,” Alina stammered.

“Fix that. And if you feel the Sinsar Dubh approaching, take Jack and Rainey to Chester’s and call me. If you can’t get to the club, go to ground wherever you can.”

“What’s going on?” Alina demanded. “I have a right—”

“Do what I said.” Barrons hung up.

Jada listened to the exchange with narrowed eyes, realizing the woman Mac had said was walking around Dublin looking and acting like her sister somehow was on Barrons’s autodial. He seemed to believe it really was Alina and, like Mac, the woman could sense the Sinsar Dubh. But he didn’t trust her entirely. Either that or he didn’t want one more liability to worry about.