“Ah, he got in the way.”

I have no idea what happened. I blacked out.

A human would be shocked, horrified, demand to know what happened. Barrons’s gaze doesn’t change and he asks no questions. He tallies debits and credits. “You took two lives and saved thousands.”

Bottom line it all you want, the end doesn’t justify the means, I say silently, pissed that he elevated the conversation I don’t want to be having to a verbal level.

“Debatable.”

I lost control of myself. It took me over and made me kill. Said I’m the car and it’s the driver. The unspoken words hang like knives in the air anyway, cutting me.

“We train harder.”

I hate mys—

“Never say that.”

“I didn’t,” I mutter. Not technically.

“You are what you are. Find a way to live with it.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Someone told you life was easy. You believed them,” he mocks.

“I just don’t see why they all have to come here. Why not hold this little powwow at Chester’s?” I change the subject swiftly.

Like a verbal dancer, he follows my lead, and I know why: as far as he’s concerned the discussion is over anyway. He has the blood of countless victims on his hands, while I’m having a hard time dealing with one. To him, this day is no different than any other: I’m possessed by a malevolent demon and I sinned. Tomorrow I’ll try again. I might sin again. I might not. But tomorrow always comes. For me and the demon. Despite my screwup, my action will ultimately save countless lives. Barrons has the thousand-yard stare and conscience of an immortal. I’m not there yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be there. I ended a life before its time today. A family man. A good man. I must find a way to atone.

“I have wards in my bookstore that neutralize the princes’ power while within my walls,” he reminds me.

“You’re inviting my rapists into my home.” I toss the dual reminder that he wasn’t there to save me the night the Unseelie Princes captured me in the church, and that it’s my bookstore, without inflection, still it detonates in the room.

Abruptly the air is so charged with savagery that I feel squished into a corner on the chesterfield. Barrons saturates space when he’s in a good mood—not that I would ever really call any mood Barrons exhibits “good”—but when he’s furious, it’s hard to breathe. He throws off energy, crams the air with intensity and mass, forcing everything else to retract into itself.

“Or have you forgotten that little fact?” I want them dead. I think he should want them dead. I fondle the spear in my thigh sheath lovingly. “We could kill them together.” I snatch my hand away hastily and busy myself plucking imaginary lint from my black Disturbed concert tee-shirt, which I’m wearing not because I’ve been enjoying their music so much but because it’s how I feel. The images the Sinsar Dubh threw at me the second I touched my spear were graphically detailed and from this afternoon.

“You will not kill them when they come here. Nor will I.” The three words are guttural, accompanied by a thick rattle in his chest. It’s the sound of his beast trying to claw its way out of his skin. I can barely understand his last word. “Yet.”

“Why?”

His chest expands so enormously it threatens to pop buttons on his shirt. He says nothing for a moment, face impassive, his body frozen on an inhalation. Finally his ribs relax and he exhales carefully. I admire his self-control. I want it for my own. I may be more sparing with mention of my gang rape in the future. Although I enjoy baiting this bear, I don’t enjoy his pain. Just his fire.

When he speaks again, his words are precisely enunciated. “They are a known quantity, capable of controlling the masses. I’ve watched countless civilizations rise and fall. I’ve isolated seven components necessary to achieve the future I seek. Destroy the princes at this particular moment and it won’t happen. They are currently linchpins. They will not always be.”

The future he seeks? I want to know what Jericho Barrons plans, to be privy to his goals. I don’t ask. He shares when he’s ready and his reply was already generous for him.

And fascinating. I know what linchpins are.

When I was child, Daddy used to ride me around on his lap when he cut grass. I loved those hot Georgia days, drenched with the smell of a fresh mowed lawn, magnolia blossoms bobbing heavy in the humid, sticky air, a glass jar of sweet tea steeping on the front porch, near two ice-filled glasses topped with a sprig of mint from the garden.