The only thing I’d managed to learn about the song so far was that it had come from a completely different source than the True Magic. The Fae had no idea who’d given it to them or why. It had been gifted with a single imperative: use it only when you must and remember there is always a price.

The second part of that imperative made me uneasy. What was the price?

My imagination ran wild. Would it kill whoever sang it? If we discovered the song, would I die using it?

The rest of what I’d absorbed were nothing but vague myths and legends, some claiming the song was divine, the beginning of life as we knew it, that it had incited the “Big Bang.” Others claimed it came from a race even more technologically advanced than the Tuatha De Danann who had evolved to a higher state of being and passed off the song as a gift to a race they’d viewed as having potential.

Each myth, however, shared the common contention that it called due a price. Several seemed to imply that if the race “wielding it” (there was that damn word again) hadn’t done anything wrong, the price would not be high.

“Wrong” was an exceedingly vague word. I’d done many wrong things. Likewise, “high” was a highly nebulous degree, relative to the person it affected.

My phone vibrated with a new message from Dancer.

Done. Ready to try it. Meet here or there?

BB&B, I texted back.

I’d written several long letters a few months back: one for my parents, one for Barrons, one for Dani. That was before Alina came back, or I’d’ve written one for her, too.

They were upstairs in my bedroom, tucked between two of my favorite books, partially visible. I knew if I died, either my mom and dad would come look through my things or Barrons would make sure it got to them.

I texted him now.

Meet me and Dancer at BB&B. He finished inverting the music. It’s ready to try.

If I was going to die today, I wanted Barrons’s face to be one of the last ones I saw.

I didn’t, however, want my family to watch it happen.

Barrons arrived wearing muddy jeans and a dirty black tee-shirt, looking big, rugged, and sexy as hell. I almost never see him “slumming,” and it always takes my breath away. He somehow looks even more exotic and animalistic in all the right ways in casual clothing. I knew he’d been out there, lying on his stomach, scraping mud from beneath black holes, and I loved that he didn’t hesitate to get as down and dirty as necessary to protect the things he cared about. Harshly chiseled, muddy, earthy, and anachronistically human and savage, he turned me on when he looked like this. Who was I kidding? The man always turned me on.

Fresh black and red tattoos covered most of his right arm and part of his left, and I knew that while I’d slept, he’d either been tattooing himself or he and Ryodan had been tattooing each other.

“Do you have any idea how to do this?” he asked, storming in. Then he drew up short, stopping abruptly at the edge of his priceless, restored antique rug, scowling down at his muddy boots.

I shook my head. Then smirked a little and invited the mud to vanish from his boots.

He raised his head and looked at me, returning the smirk. “Who’s Bewitched now? Did you text the others?”

“That would be me,” I said pertly. “And no. Let’s just do it, see what happens. I figured we’d try the sphere by the church. It’s the closest.”

Dancer arrived a few minutes later, carrying a laptop. “I don’t know if we need speakers or if this is good enough.”

I glanced at him sharply, startled by the dark circles beneath his eyes, and thought again of the Elixir of Life. As he handed me the laptop, I said, “If there was a Fae potion that could make you immortal, would you drink it?”

He cut me a sharp look and scowled. “Christ, does everybody know now?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “And don’t get prickly about it. We care.”

“Don’t treat me like an invalid,” he said levelly.

“Not about to. Would you?”

“No. I’ve done my share of research into the Fae. Did you know the potion allegedly destroys a human’s immortal soul?”

I did, and I’d wondered on more than one occasion if Cruce’s elixir had the same effect. I hoped not. If so, it was too late now, and I had other issues to deal with. I’d worry about the state of my soul later.

“I died once. I know what comes next. No way I’m missing it. I’ve known most of my life that I could die pretty much anytime. I’m in no hurry but it doesn’t bother me either. So, are we going to do this? Can we wait for Mega? I texted her, too. She should be here any minute.”

Tucking the laptop beneath my arm, I headed for the door. Over my shoulder I tossed, “There’s some kind of price for using it. I’d prefer neither of you came with me.” I considered sifting, to prevent them from attending, but decided against it. I’ve become a big believer in free will.

Then Barrons and Dancer were beside me and we hurried from the bookstore, into the sunny Dublin afternoon.

Not only did the song have absolutely zero effect on the black hole near the church (although I’d sat dreamily mesmerized, feeling like it was definitely doing something to me), when I went to play it a second time, even louder, it was gone. It simply didn’t exist on the laptop anymore.

“What do you mean, it’s not there?” Dancer exclaimed. “Give me that thing,” he demanded, reaching for his laptop. “Clearly, you’re looking in the wrong place.”

When I handed it to him, he scanned it rapidly then began opening folders, digging into root files.

I sighed and leaned back against a trashcan. The three of us were sitting on a curb, in the gutter, ten feet from the sphere, as close as we should get, Dancer had warned.

After a few minutes of “bloody hells” and Batman quips, Dancer snapped the laptop shut. “None of my files are here. Not a single one. Every note of the song I recorded, every conversion, inversion, extrapolation, is gone. Even my Word docs with theories are gone!”

“How is that even possible?” I’d been sitting here, wondering if the black hole had somehow managed to eat the music we’d played, right down to the source. But if so, it had taken much more than merely the origin of the music, operating like a super-stealth spy, wiping out even Dancer’s notes about it.