“Irrelevant,” Cruce said impatiently. “Sifting to that place is impossible and for good reason.”

Barrons smiled faintly, smugly, looking pleased for no reason Jada could discern, and said, “I assume you know where the Unseelie princess is?”

Cruce said coolly, “Earlier today, while I was sifting your sidhe-seers about, I took the time to drop an ancient scroll into an interested party’s hands. It contained the princess’s True Name. The bitch is already trapped in a cage of iron and wards and believes one of the new, young Seelie princes acquired the power to summon her from a long-forgotten scroll. He is another that foolishly didn’t question sudden good fortune, too busy brooding about what he deems unfair bad fortune. He awaits one of the immortal weapons to slay her.” Cruce shot Jada a look. “You will not be obliging him.”

“Why would I? I’d never give a Seelie prince the spear or the sword.”

“You might this one,” Cruce said with an amused look.

“You already summoned and trapped her without telling us?” Christian said, incensed. “What else have you done that you’ve not seen fit to inform us about?”

Jada frowned. “Won’t the Book have to eliminate the Seelie prince, too?”

“As I have already told you, fledglings don’t signify and will not for some time. They are not strong enough to attract the True Magic. Only Mac, myself, and the Unseelie princess are powerful enough to be contenders.”

“Where is the Unseelie princess and who is this new Seelie prince?” Barrons demanded.

“You will find them both at Dublin Castle. The young Fae princeling is the current leader of your New Guardians. But he will not be for long. Soon his transformation will become noticeable to humans, and they will never follow what they trap and kill.”

“Inspector Jayne is turning Fae?” Jada exclaimed, horrified. “A Seelie prince?”

“One and the same. He has been cannibalizing our race far too long to escape without price. Even now I feel birth pangs as others begin the transformation.”

“Who?” Christian demanded.

The prince said laconically, “I do not as yet know.”

“Why can’t I feel them?”

“Woof, woof,” was Cruce’s cool reply. “Embrace it. Or soon even they will surpass you. Like sharks, we circle when we smell blood. Get hungry. Or get eaten.”

MAC

Here, drifting in nothing, my thoughts sparkle like diamonds, translucently clear.

Perhaps it’s because I have no physical distractions. Perhaps it’s because, for the first time since I was a fetus, I’m completely alone, free from the ever-present influence and malevolent manipulation of the Sinsar Dubh.

Out there, beyond my box, in the world, the Book is walking around, controlling my body, doing God knows what with it (I refuse to indulge that train of thought, I can’t do anything to stop it, and the horrific things I might imagine would only dilute my clarity), but once it was trapped. For twenty-three years.

I simply have to replicate its path to freedom.

But first I have to figure out what it did; what I did, that enabled it to take control of my body away from me. Barrons says possession is nine-tenths of the law. So what did I do that allowed the Book to exploit its one-tenth possibility?

I understand how it got me the day I killed the Gray Woman but I don’t understand how it evicted me this time.

Something about the moment I used one of its spells gave it the ability to overpower me, but what?

I turn my thoughts back to the instant it gained control and sift through my motives. Unlike that gloomy day I’d killed the Gray Woman, I hadn’t been trying to make myself feel better, nor had I been seeking to improve my life.

At the moment I reached for the spell, all I’d been thinking of was Dani, that I wanted her to live out loud and in every color of the rainbow, unchanged, unaltered by a dispassionate entity that believed itself so superior that it could re-create her according to its own design—and who the hell was it to judge? I’d been thinking that I’d do anything to see her happy, hear her belly-laugh again, snicker, crack herself up, maybe fall in love and—who knows, if Shazam was really real, she’d save him and they’d swagger around Dublin, doing superhero things together. I’d even gone so far as to imagine her having children of her own someday, thinking how brilliant and amazing they’d be and what a terrific mother she’d make. I’d wanted her to get up off that fucking table, unchanged, unharmed. She’d already been through so much in her life.

My motives had been pure, as altruistic as I believed possible. I hadn’t been thinking about myself at all. I’d made the decision with a strangely detached calm, a serene “Fine, take me, just let her live.” I refuse to believe doing something out of pure love makes us weaker.

Then how had such good intentions landed me here?

I consider the question from every angle, finally able to draw a single conclusion: They hadn’t.

There was something else, some other nuance that tipped the scales in favor of the Sinsar Dubh.

I peel myself like an onion, seeking the pearly core, determined to isolate precisely what had been in my mind at the moment I’d made the decision to open the Book. I shuck vanity, pride, ego, lay my heart bare and study it.

At the moment I’d opened the Book—as if it was something that could even be opened or closed or anything that implied corporeality—I’d been thinking that I believed in good magic, that even if the Book’s power stemmed from an evil source, I could use it for the right reasons, without price.

Wait. Not exactly.

There was something deeper, beneath that thought.

Oh, God, I’d still been afraid.

I’d been saying I believed in the good magic but in my heart lurked the insidious fear that I would lose control again like I had the day I killed the Gray Woman. Only things would go much worse this time.

Hope builds a stairway to Heaven. Fear opens an abyss to Hell. We stand in front of those two possible apertures at all times; choose which one to go through.

Was it possible the only thing that had given the Book control over me in that moment—was me?

I’m stupefied by my next thought: What if the war between us has always been nothing more than a battle of will? And it knows it. I’m the only one that doesn’t. That would give it one hell of an advantage over me; all the advantage it needed. The corporeal Sinsar Dubh had trafficked in guile and sleight of hand. My internal one would be no different. Since the moment I learned of the Book, I’d heard nothing but tales of how all-powerful it was, how its will was impossible to resist, and damn it all, I’d believed it. Despite Barrons trying to make me see that the legend of a thing was often far greater than the thing.