The fourth stone explodes from the blur of motion, skitters across the floor, sliding toward that fourth corner, sliding …

I brace myself for what’s about to happen.

I accept that it’s necessary.

I’m afraid. I hate being afraid.

I won’t get paralyzed looking that way. I square my shoulders, straighten my spine, tuck in my stomach and angle my head, notch my chin slightly upward. What’s that saying? Die young and leave a pretty corpse.

I wish I were as invisible as this battle raging around me makes me feel, fought by opponents with whom I can’t hope to compete because at least then I’d be able to—

About fucking time, the Sinsar Dubh growls. Your wish. My command.

Then it roars, RUN.

Part III

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

25

“No one sees my face, sees me coming”

MAC

After the walls fell last Halloween (and I was no longer Pri-ya), with most of Dublin’s inhabitants dead or gone, I got to indulge one of my greatest teenage fantasies: I walked into Brown & Taylor and shoplifted everything I wanted.

An Alexander McQueen scarf of black skulls on pink leopard silk, a pair of totally come-fuck-me Christian Louboutin heels adorned with silver spikes that perfectly complemented the black dress I snatched off a Chanel rack, a classic Burberry raincoat lined with checked silk, a glamorous smoky faux-fur stole. A Louis Vuitton limited edition satchel, Prada wallet and purse, Dolce & Gabbana python boots, lingerie to die for!

Then I went next door and raided Estée Lauder’s makeup counter, before moving on to Lancôme. I’d crammed my backpack with all those expensive moisturizers I’d never been able to afford and filled another with foundation and blush, eye shadow and mascara.

I’d commandeered two rooms on the fourth floor of Barrons Books & Baubles (last time I saw them they’d decamped to the fifth and switched sides) and set up my own private store stocked with feminine essentials: nail polish and remover, cotton balls and lotions, makeup and perfume and insanely expensive jewelry. (Over time, I added three diamond-crusted Rolexes I found lying in the streets to my hoard.)

I’d packed four enormous closets full of boxes of tampons and those invaluable skinny liner pads for heavy days when a tampon isn’t enough. I’d lugged home crates of vitamin D, aspirin, cold medicine, and soap. Then I went back for more and piled mountains of toilet paper in the second room. I raided three pharmacies and stashed away antibiotics and various medicinal supplies and ten years of birth control and condoms. At that point I figured I’d be lucky if I lived that long.

But there’s a second fantasy I never got to indulge that I’m fairly certain I won’t outgrow: wanting to go places I’m not allowed to go so I can see things I’m not supposed to see.

I can now.

I’m invisible.

I’M FREAKING INVISIBLE!

It’s incredibly difficult having something inside you that’s sentient and pretty much brilliant, and not at all nice, that can skim your mind to an uncertain degree, observe everything you do, study and analyze you, and wait forever for the perfect moment to seize the upper hand.

It’s worse than sleeping with the enemy, it’s living with a parasite inside you that is pathologically obsessed with a single goal: take you over, annihilate your will, and do whatever it chooses with what used to be your body. We’re conjoined twins, forced to share blood and oxygen, battling daily, sneakily to be the one who controls the supply.

Last night, when I stood in Rowena’s study bluffing the Book, outwaiting it, trying to force its hand to save us, that’s all I was initially doing.

Bluffing.

But my bluff became conviction, and the moment it did, the Book stepped in and saved our asses by turning me invisible.

Not just invisible—undetectable!

I’m no longer stalked by suffocating, smelly wraiths. Last night, they vanished, and I haven’t seen them in eighteen blissful hours.

I’m still corporeal—that was the first thing I tested after I dashed from the study, a split second before the fourth stone was placed. I didn’t look back. I ran faster than a demon from Hell breaking out with Cerberus snapping at its heels. I ran until I burst through the front doors of the abbey, into the steamy, nearly tropical night beyond, where I’d stood in the driveway, gasping for breath. I’d looked down and seen nothing but two small indentations in the grass where I was fairly certain my feet were.