There’s no way I’m killing Mac. I’ll take Door Number Two, a thing I never do, and run. Only for her.

I slap up a hasty mental map of the street and get my grid locked down as perfect as I can with all this snow and ice. I slit my eyes half closed in intense concentration and freeze-frame.

Nothing happens. My feet are rooted in the exact same spot, and I’m still feeling the tip of Mac’s spear in my back.

My superpowers just disappeared in a moment of need for the third time. Un-fecking-real! What’s the commonality? Why does it keep happening?

“I said drop your fucking sword.”

I exhale gustily. Not because I feel sorry for myself. Self-pity is wasted emotion. It merely prolongs whatever trauma you suffered by keeping it alive in your head. Dude, you survived it. Move on.

But there are some things I wish had been different like, say, Ro had never taken me to the abbey after Mom died, made me her personal assassin and taught me to kill before I got around to figuring out what I thought was right and wrong, because when you do figure out what you think is right and wrong—if it’s foursquare against the things you been doing—you got some tricky minefields in your head to dodge. Guilt, regret—things I almost don’t even know how to spell they’re so alien to me—I about drown in them every time I look at Mac.

Fortunately she’s behind me at the moment, so I don’t have to think about how she looks so much like her sister, don’t get smashed upside the head by visuals of the last night I saw Alina, on her hands and knees in an alley, begging me not to let her die.

“Seriously, kid, drop it. I won’t say it again.”

“Not a kid. Dude.”

“Danielle.”

Gah! She knows I hate that wussy girl name! I test my freeze-framing abilities. They’re still absent. There’s no telling how long it’ll be until they come back. Five seconds. Five minutes. Maybe five hours. I got no clue why it’s happening and it’s beginning to worry the crap out of me. I turn to face her, coat back, hand on the hilt of my sword, steeling myself for a whole-body flinch, and still I jerk.

She’s different from the Mac I met a year ago. Glam girl turned sleek warrior woman. She was pretty when she came to Dublin; now she’s lean, strong, and beautiful. Once, she said I was pretty and that I’d grow up to be beautiful, too, one day. As if I give a rat’s arse about that kind of thing.

What is she thinking, pulling her spear on me, ordering me around? There’s no way she knows I’m stuck in slow-mo. No one knows it happens to me. Cripes, if word of that got out!

She stares at me, green eyes narrowed with fury. She has every right to try to kill me. A better person might even cooperate a little out of guilt and remorse. I’m not a better person. I wake up every day with a single imperative: live. By any means necessary. The only way Death will ever get his slimy bastard hands on me is over my dead body.

I wonder if she has some new sidhe-seer skill I haven’t heard about that makes her willing to hit me up like this, so cool and confident. My superspeed guarantees my victory in any battle against another sidhe-seer unless I make a mistake, and I don’t. She isn’t wearing a MacHalo, which perplexes the feck out of me. Nobody walks Dublin, dark. Not even me. Maybe the ZEWs on the rooftops are her private army now, defending her against the Shades and assorted nasties.

I frown when another thought occurs to me. Did she set me up for quid pro quo down to the dirty details?

Dark alley nearby—check.

Me—check.

Hungry Unseelie—check.

I get a mental snapshot of me dying just like Alina. It’s practically glowing on Mac’s pupils.

I want to tell her revenge is a devil you don’t want to worship. In destroying your enemy you become it.

You will take the girl to an alley on the south side of the River Liffey. Unseelie will meet you there. Sometimes I still hear Ro’s voice in my head even though we burned her body and dumped the ashes in the sea. Not like a true haunt, just ghosts of memories still swimming down deep in my subconscious where I keep most of what I did for her when I lived at the abbey.

Why? I want to ask her, but she touches my forehead with something that’s wet and smells bad, and mutters words I don’t know, then I can’t talk.

I know you’re in there, I hear Ro saying, as if from a great distance. Remember the hell you endured. You’re the one I want.

I don’t know what she’s talking about. I’m right there. Looking at her. Even though it feels like from a million miles away.

Och, child, she says, I couldn’t have raised you better myself to fragment you into usable pieces. When I found you when you were five I knew God had forged the beginning of a very special weapon. Just for me.