Getting the sword hadn’t been difficult, but I hadn’t expected it to be. Truth was, Dani could have taken it anytime she’d wanted. She knew all of Rowena’s hiding places, and blasting down doors is one of her specialties. Rowena had controlled her by simple fear of repercussions, and Dani—thirteen and treated like an outcast so much of the time—was starved for what little approval and attention she got.

Now she had my approval and attention, and it was unconditional. Or at least not predicated on her being subservient to me. I would never do that to her.

The spear had been trickier. As we’d figured, Rowena was carrying it. I never expected to be able to take it stealthily. I just wanted to take it and get out fast. And for that—plus about a zillion other reasons—I’d needed Dani.

I had her slam us both into Rowena at high speed. While I kept the old woman busy trying to get untangled from me on the floor, Dani stayed in high-speed mode, patted her down, snatched the spear from a pouch the old woman had sewn into her robes, grabbed me again, and whizzed us both out.

Rowena’s shouts had roused the entire abbey. We’d fled into the night, followed by cries of “Traitors, traitors!”

“We can never go back to the abbey, Mac.” Dani looked simultaneously exhilarated and as young and lost as I’d ever seen her. I remembered being a teenager and didn’t envy her a bit. Emotions ran so high and changed so quickly, it was hard to know which end was up.

I laughed. “Oh, we’re going back, Dani. I need things there.” Answers. Lots of them. Tomorrow I would begin working on how to get into the Forbidden Libraries and putting together my own troops of sidhe-seers.

“They’ll never take us back, Mac. We ganged up and defied Rowena. We’re outcasts. Forever.” She sounded as miserable as she did proud.

“Trust me, Dani. I’ve got a plan.” I’d been fleshing it out while I was tracking Shades and driving them outside. “They’ll take us back. I promise.” More important, I planned to take them with me. But I needed to make a big statement first. I needed to show them how it could be. I knew what the other sidhe-seers wanted the most and I could give it to them, and that was the key to motivating any pack to follow a leader. Standing in the hall while they voted, I’d felt it in my blood. They were sick to death of menial tasks, of being corralled and ordered about, tired of seeing the world fall apart on their watch while they did the only thing Rowena would let them do: gather what survivors they could find and teach them to do what the pathetic and defeated did—hide.

What they wanted most of all was to hunt and kill Fae. And why wouldn’t they? They’d been born to do it!

During her time as Grand Mistress, Rowena had tried to civilize them, circumscribe them, organize them, but she’d only been polishing their surfaces, changing nothing where it counted, because deep inside every sidhe-seer was a hunter, bred to kill Fae, stalking, snarling, waiting with bated breath for the opportunity to do it. Beneath the skin of even the most timid sidhe-seer was a different creature entirely. Case in point? See pink Mac go black.

I was going to invite them out to play.

I was going to give them the opportunity they’d been jonesing for, show them what we could do together. Having only two weapons wasn’t the most desirable situation, but there were ways to work with it. If I could motivate five hundred sidhe-seers to fight and capture as many non-sifting Fae as possible, Dani and I could focus solely on killing them, instead of having to waste time hunting them ourselves. On our own, Dani and I might be able to take out a hundred a night, but if the Fae had already been captured and rounded up, we could kill a thousand in a few hours! Maybe more. And that was if every sidhe-seer at the abbey managed to find and capture only two apiece!

There was no doubt that Dani and I would be better than the other sidhe-seers at capturing the Fae and that pretty much any sidhe-seer could stab them, but I was never letting my spear go again. I would tell the other sidhe-seers the same thing I’d told Dani: We needed to keep the weapons because we were the only two who could protect them if the Seelie came for them. I would never let any of them know what I knew: that V’lane could take both weapons away from us at any time if he felt like it.

I shoved that thought away and turned to another I was still mulling over. If we began feeding Unseelie flesh to normal humans, we could turn every man, woman, and child into a fighter and arm them with the ability to defend themselves. It sickened me to think of billions out there that couldn’t even see the Shades.

“Are the Unseelie projecting glamour?” I asked Dani. “I mean, are they making themselves invisible to the average human?”