I swallowed. “And you came for my blessing?”

He got to his feet and stalked for the door, tossing over his shoulder, “Nope. Telling ya to stay the fuck outta my way tonight. I’ll take your ass down, too, if you get in it.”

The door banged shut behind him.

I sat unmoving for a moment, allowing myself to wallow in shame and grief and regret and pain, meeting it measure for measure.

Then I stepped away from crushing emotion and played out scenarios, isolating the likely one: Lor finds Jo’s remains, smells that I killed her, kills me, the song can never be sung, the Earth gets destroyed.

All because I killed Jo.

Barrons had once killed a Fae princess. No doubt Lor could kill a queen. Especially a new, young one.

He was going to have to wait to kill me until after we saved the world.

It occurred to me, as I pulled out my cellphone, that my decision might seem every bit as cold and ruthless to the casual observer as the things Barrons and Ryodan often did. Covering my ass. Deceitful, even.

My fingers flew over the letters:

Lor’s on his way to dig up Jo’s grave to sniff out the identity of her killer. He’s the Bonecrusher again.

The reply from Barrons was instantaneous:

I’ll take care of it.

JADA

I dropped out of the slipstream and blasted in the door of the physics building, shoving damp hair from my face, aware that I looked the same way I felt—not in control—but there wasn’t enough time to do everything I wanted, and something had to give. Since it took forever to dry and straighten my hair, I’d often skipped showers for days, but I’d had to take one today and wasn’t in the mood to waste time, so my hair was a mass of tangled curls just like the old days, minus slippery guts tucked into a few. Mac becoming the Fae queen had put a temporary courtesy-damper on my killing sprees. All my emotions were on the surface, and I couldn’t kill anything. It was a recipe for disaster.

When I’d left Dancer earlier, telling him I was going to the abbey, I was sidetracked by Mac’s call and ended up spending the day with Christian, getting drenched then muddy. Although he was able to move the earth out from beneath the black holes, the one at Chester’s was especially challenging, as close as it hung to the ground. He’d had to gently loosen a half inch of compacted soil at a time, without disturbing it so much the hole sucked it up. I’d alternated between seeping water beneath the sphere with a hose to keep the ground wet and sprawling on my stomach using a rake I’d modified with a super long handle, to delicately ease the loosened mud free.

Being so close to the hole had been intensely disconcerting. I didn’t hear music coming from it like Mac, but I’d been acutely aware of instant death hovering just above my shoulders the entire time. I’d plastered my hair with mud to weigh it down and flattened myself pancake thin to the ground, but it wasn’t as easy as it used to be at fourteen. Boobs were sometimes a serious pain in the ass.

We’d lost some of the soil to the hole. It was inevitable.

But when we’d left it, the sphere hung a full ten feet from the vast crater beneath it.

Christian had been four square against me raking, but it required strength to resist the gravitational pull of the ergosphere up close, and since we had so many blasted holes to work on, he’d finally accepted that everyone with the right amount of muscle was necessary, including me. It had taken us all day to dig it out to our satisfaction.

During a brief break, he’d sifted me out to the abbey, a power I’d heard Mac now had, too. I was floored to discover she’d effortlessly rebuilt the fortress. She’s starting to make the Nine look like not-so-super heroes to me. I want to be Mac when I grow up. Then again, maybe not. I’d heard the Fae had already begun to seek her out with their problems, and I’ve got enough of my own.

I’d hit an old hidey-hole and showered once I returned to Dublin then headed with expeditious velocity for Trinity. I’d been getting a slew of excited texts from Dancer all afternoon.

Dancer.

One day, kid, Ryodan had said to me a long time ago, you’ll be willing to mortgage your fucking soul for somebody.

I devoutly hoped that bastard wasn’t going to prove right about everything he’d once said.

I remembered battling the Hoar Frost King at the abbey at fourteen, whisking Dancer to safety, dumping him on the sidelines because he was “only human.” Then I’d been whisked and dumped on the sidelines and gotten a taste of how it felt.

Who was I to tell Dancer not to live out loud, and in every color of the rainbow?

There was a special place in Hell for hypocrites, and I had no intention of ending up there.

So, I’d decided to pretend there was nothing wrong with Dancer to the precise degree he wanted me to pretend it. We would enter into an elaborate conspiracy of two. That was what friends did for each other when there was no other option.

Everything about the situation pissed me off. I’d always thought one day we might be more than just friends. I’d been perfectly willing to take my time getting to that point.

But thanks to a genetic flaw that was a treacherously ticking time bomb, coupled with the looming end of our world, there was no other way for me to see it than: one day was here.

I took the chance or I missed it. No guarantees. Fewer promises of tomorrow than I’d thought.

Scowling, I shoved my hair from my face then stopped to glance in one of the windows I was passing in the hallway, using my reflection to untangle the worst snarls.

I realized what I was doing and made a face at myself.

I didn’t care what I looked like. I’d never cared. I wasn’t starting now.

As I was about to walk through the door of the lab, I drew up short, frowning. I had a fluttery sensation in my stomach that I used to get often when I was young, and every time I did, it shorted out my powers. Silverside, I’d finally figured out it happened when I was either feeling extremely emotional or thinking intensely about sex. Why those two things shorted me out was beyond me. But they did.

At the moment I was both.

I inhaled deep. Exhaled slow. Bold. Ruthless. Energy. Action. Tenacity. Hunger. That was what B-R-E-A-T-H was.

Once the fluttering stopped, I did what I used to do—freeze-framed into the room and spooked Dancer right out of his chair.

The look on his face was priceless.