I pressed a hand to my forehead. It was hot. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d eaten and was abruptly aware I was dangerously hungry. “Do you have anything high calorie to eat around here?”

“Always.” He led me to a small room off the back of the laboratory where a fridge was loaded with food. There were boxes and boxes of chilled protein bars. Peanut butter. Even beef jerky and milk!

“Where did you get all this?” I reached for the glass jar of milk, topped with a yellow layer of heavy cream, mouth watering.

“Ryodan,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “He’s bloody well taken over the bloody world and suddenly everyone has food. Which means he had it all along and just wasn’t sharing. Got this, too.” With his foot he nudged a box toward me, filled with canned goods.

Chocolate syrup! I unscrewed the top off the milk, squeezed the chocolate in, recapped the glass bottle and shook the milk hard enough to mix. I guzzled it for several long seconds, only stopping with a twinge of embarrassment when there were a few inches left to ask him hastily, “Did you want any of this?” When he shook his head, smiling faintly, I finished it, and chased it with two protein bars. That was better. I could feel myself cooling down already.

“We have the queen,” I told him.

“What?” he exploded. “And you’re just now telling me this? Where is she? How did you get her to come back here?”

I filled him in on what had happened in the past day, my time, omitting the parts about my meltdown and Shazam and killing Ryodan and Mac calling me a cunt.

He was pacing, repeatedly raking his hands through his hair by the time I finished. “I need to talk to Mac. Now. Like, this very instant.”

“If Mac had any information about the song, she’d already be here, sharing it. I think it’s going to take time for her to decipher what the queen passed on and figure out how to use it.”

“Time is the one thing we don’t have,” he said darkly.

When I left, after promising to return later that night so he could demonstrate his latest invention—“And maybe we could take it out for a test drive,” he’d said, eyes sparkling—I headed down the hall and was about to access the slipstream when I saw Caoimhe hurrying down the corridor toward me. The moment she saw me, her eyes filled with glacial hostility. I considered kicking up and blasting past her with an elbow casually protruding but that was something Dani would have done so I sludged along in slow-mo.

We approached each other with equal coolness. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was his girlfriend now. She sure acted like she was. Or his keeper.

We drew up a few feet apart. “You,” she said with icy disdain.

“Caoimhe,” I said tonelessly.

“Why did you even bother coming back? We don’t need you. And I sure as hell don’t want you here. It was a grand month without you around.”

“I’m just his friend,” I said in a voice void of inflection.

“No you’re not,” she spat. “If you were his ‘friend’ you wouldn’t cause him so much worry, make him take so many careless risks. If you were his ‘friend’ you’d realize he may have a super brain but he’s no bloody superhero. A true friend wouldn’t subject him to constant disappearances and reckless shenanigans with no consideration whatsoever for what’s good for him!”

I studied her objectively, trying to define the origin of her hostility. It seemed as if it had to be more than mere jealousy, and I didn’t see any reason for her to be jealous of me. “I’ve never kissed him,” I finally said, thinking that might defuse the tension between us. Discord was illogical. We had too many problems already. We couldn’t afford to create more for ourselves.

She tossed her head impatiently. “Oooh! You think that’s what this is about? I’m jealous? Why don’t you try pulling your selfish head out of your selfish ass? Yes, I love Dancer. I freely admit it. Most of the women here do, he’s damn near impossible not to love. Funny, sweet, thoughtful, brilliant. But this is about his well-being not mine. That’s what love is, how it behaves, but you obviously don’t know a thing about it. The only person you love is yourself. Did you make plans to dash off and indulge in another one of your little adventures with him tonight? Whiz him about at speeds he was never meant to endure while you ‘goof off’ and play at being superheroes together?”

I guess the look on my face gave me away because she narrowed her eyes and hissed, “If you can’t be selfless enough to protect the health of the one man that has a chance at figuring out how to save our world, then you need to stay away from him. Far away from him. Like go get lost all over again only never bloody come back this time.” She shoved past me and stormed off down the hall.

I whirled and stalked after her. She’d said something I didn’t understand and didn’t like, and it had sent a chill racing up my spine. “What do you mean ‘protect the health’?” I growled at her back. “What are you talking about? Dancer’s young and strong. He works out and looks amazing. He’s perfectly healthy.”

She whirled, eyes flashing. “Aye, he spends hours working out every day while he ponders his theories—and he shouldn’t. It’s not good for him. Know why he does it? To keep up with you. To get you to see him as a man. He can’t do cardio so he does isometrics, pitting muscle against muscle to build strength without overloading himself. Planks, crunches, tension exercises, and the like. He’s obsessed with looking like those men you hang out with. God! I wish he’d just stop wanting you!”

My stomach had turned into a blender on high speed and was threatening to propel the milk I’d drunk out the lid of my mouth. “Why can’t he do cardio? Why isn’t working out good for him?”

She looked at me a long moment then a bit of the fury eased from her face and her eyes widened faintly. She took a few steps toward me and said wonderingly, “For the love of Mary, you don’t even know, do you? All of us do, but not you.”

Apparently not. Pressing a hand to my stomach, I shook my head.

“He never told you?” she said incredulously.

“Repeating the same bloody question in a slightly different way is still the same bloody question,” I hissed. What the bloody hell was wrong with Dancer? What did everyone know that I didn’t know? “Do I fucking look like I have any idea what you’re talking about?” I practically shouted.