“Stop leaping to faulty conclusions, Mac. You’ll fall. And I’ll let you. I was watching Dani that night. She lost me. I didn’t find her again until it was too late.”

“Impossible. Dani can’t outrun you.” She was always bragging that one day, however, she would.

“She can give me a run for the money when she chooses.”

“No, she can’t. She used to complain about it all the time.”

“Get your fucking hand off my throat.”

“You first.”

We drop our hands at the same time and I recoil to my side of the Humvee. Belatedly, the full impact of what he just said sinks in. “Wait a minute, you knew since the day I got here who killed my sister and didn’t tell me?” I say incredulously. “You let me waste all that time, hunting others?”

“Dani didn’t kill Alina.”

“She told me herself she did,” I refute instantly.

“It’s not what you think.”

“What is it, then? Because the Unseelie that ate Alina sure thought so, too. They asked if Dani would bring them another ‘blondie’ like my sister.” My hands fist at the memory, nails digging deep. I have Mick O’Leary’s blood on my hands. I may as well have my own.

I search his profile. A muscle ticks beneath his left eye. Both hands are on the steering wheel, knuckles white. For an instant I see Barrons in him, a violently passionate man who controls it flawlessly, so the world thinks him ice.

“Answer me,” I snap. “Did she or didn’t she kill my sister?”

His only response is a rattle deep in his chest, the kind Barrons makes when he’s deeply disturbed.

“Have I fallen down a rabbit hole into an alternative reality where you actually have feelings?”

He gives me a feral look and I glimpse fangs. He closes his mouth swiftly, is motionless a moment, then says carefully, “I protect the best and brightest.”

IYCGM, Barrons’s shorthand for If You Can’t Get Me, is a number I can call on my cell phone that Ryodan always answers, but it’s never proved useful. Eyes narrowed, I tell him that.

“Precisely.”

“Do you sit around thinking up things to say to antagonize me?”

“Back at you, babe. When did you see her last.”

Why doesn’t he want her to know he was there that night, following her? Why is he saying Dani didn’t do it? What does he mean by “It’s not what you think”?

Since he’s already refused to answer those questions, I try another. “Why would you deny it if I told her?” When he says nothing, I say, “Quid pro quo, Ryodan. Take it or leave it.”

“There are things Dani doesn’t know about herself,” he says finally. “It’s a delicate situation.”

I frown, not liking the sound of that. “What kind of things? What are you saying?”

“I answered your question. Answer mine.”

I want to find Dani. Now doubly so. Is there something I don’t know about the night Alina died? Something that might change everything? I should have enlisted his help from the beginning. The man has his ways. I sigh. “The night I chased her through a portal into Faery.”

He grits, “Talk. Now.”

By the time we get to Chester’s, we’re not speaking. Hostility is a wall between us. He blames me for chasing her through. He says if she dies, it’s on my head. Like I don’t know that. He insists I go looking for her. I tell him Barrons vetoed that for good reason.

He gets on his cell phone, which shouldn’t work, and barks orders to his men. Says they’re better off in Faery right now than at the club and orders them to start searching for Dani.

Then he’s talking to Barrons and arranging for him to meet us at Chester’s. I don’t like that one bit. I have no doubt he’s putting Barrons in the presence of at least one, perhaps multiple Unseelie Princesses, to encourage me to deal with the situation swiftly. It’s one of his demands with which I intend to fully comply. I’m too starved for Barrons myself to tolerate the idea of another female touching him.

I stalk into Chester’s, hand on my spear, a wave of grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous Unseelie trailing me like a morbid bridal train.

JADA

At the top of the chrome and glass stair, the woman pauses and looks down. The air inside Chester’s just altered, charged by the presence of powerful newcomers.

She is highly attuned to subtle nuances from years of training and meditation. She has battled blind and deaf. And won.