“Maybe it would help me understand you.”

“He died. I felt grief. End of story.”

“But it’s not quite that simple, is it, Barrons?” I narrowed my eyes. “It’s not the end of the story.”

“Try, Ms. Lane. Just try.”

I inclined my head appreciatively. I hadn’t even really reached out to test the edges of his mind; still, he’d felt it.

“I let you off easy last night. You punched into my head.”

“You invited me. Got all rubby up against my mind.”

“I invited you to slaughter. Not to where you went from there. There’s a price for that. Don’t think you’ve escaped. I’ve merely delayed sentencing.”

I shivered on a cellular level, refused to identify the emotion behind it. “Try, Barrons,” I mocked. “Just try.”

He said nothing. I looked over at him. There was a strange tension in his upper lip. It took me a second to realize Barrons was trying not to laugh.

“You’re laughing at me,” I said indignantly.

“Look at you, all puffed up on yourself. Took a push into my head last night and now you think you’re the Shit.” He gave me a hard look. It said, Get in my skin, go as deep as I go, then you can puff about something. Until then, you’re feeble, Ms. Lane. “And, for the record, I could have stopped you.”

He could have? He wasn’t a boaster. Jericho Barrons had let me see his grief? Why? Just what the hell did that mean?

We both saw the floater at the same time.

He yanked the wheel. We barely missed the drifting IFP.

“Those things are dangerous! Where are they coming from? Are they new or are the stationary ones somehow getting cut loose?”

He kept his gaze on the road. “Looks like they’re getting cut loose by someone. Probably the Unseelie, just to add to the random chaos.”

We drove for a time in silence, occupied with private thoughts. I suspected he was still brooding about the drifting IFPs, but I’d moved on to alternately worrying and being excited about the woman we were on our way to see.

After last night’s exhausting events, I didn’t stumble to bed until nearly eight in the morning, and then I slept until Barrons pounded on my door at five o’clock this afternoon.

A sidhe-seer was waiting downstairs, he told me.

I’d tugged on jeans and a sweatshirt and rushed downstairs, expecting to find Dani.

It was Kat, exuberant with information. They’d found a woman who might talk to us, a woman who could tell us about “unholy doings at the abbey” that had happened twenty-some years ago. They’d stumbled on her by accident while scouring the countryside for survivors. She refused to leave her cottage. Wasn’t about to go anywhere near that “befouled parcel o’ land” and insisted they not breathe a single word to the Grand Mistress about her or she’d seal her lips for good. She’d waved a walking stick forged of purest iron in her gnarled fist and said she knew a thing or two about the Old Ones and was just foine on me own, so get ye awa!

“What did she tell you?” I’d demanded.

“Not a blasted thing. She said we had to bring her something to prove we weren’t in cahoots with those dark daoine sidhe running amuck.”

“Like?”

Kat had shrugged. “I’d the feeling she was meaning something of the Seelie. We thought of Dani and the sword, but …” She trailed off, and I understood her concerns. Of the two of us, I inspired a little more confidence than the impulsive teen. “She seemed afraid we were working with the Unseelie. She seemed to know quite a bit about Fae lore.”

I’d been raring to go right then and there.

Convincing Barrons had been the hard part.

He was determined to stay close to the heavily warded bookstore, rooted in his territory, until we’d dealt with the Lord Master.

“But I need to know about the prophecy,” I insisted, “and whatever she knows about when the Book escaped. Who knows what this woman might be able to tell us?”

“We know all we need to know,” he said flatly. “We’ve got three of the four stones and four of the five Druids.”

I gaped. “The five that we need are Druids? The five are people? What the hell? Does everybody know about this prophecy but me?”

“It would appear,” he said dryly. “The Keltar, arrogant fucks, believe they are the five Druids: Dageus, Drustan, Cian, Christopher, and Christian. But, Christian’s missing and V’lane has the fourth stone. Frankly, Ms. Lane, I think you’re the wild card that might make all the rest unnecessary. I’m placing my bets on you.”