The first few times I encountered V’lane I’d begun stripping where I stood. I was getting better at resisting, because I was catching my hand every time it moved to the hem of my sweater, before I began pulling it off over my head. Still, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up.

“Mute it,” I demanded.

A slow smile curved his lips. “I am muted. Whatever you feel is not coming from me.”

“You’re lying.” I briefly visited Christian’s charge that I was thinking of having sex with someone. V’lane was not a someone. He was a something.

“I am not. You have made it clear you will not abide my . . . sexing you up. Perhaps you are . . . how do you humans say it . . . in heat?”

“We say that about animals, not people.”

“Animals, people, what difference?”

“Seelie, Unseelie, what difference?”

Silvery flakes crystallized in the air between us, icing the night with royal displeasure. “The difference is too vast for your puny mind to comprehend.”

“Ditto.”

“You are not naked, on your hands and knees, offering me your pretty little ass, MacKayla, which is what you do when I use the Sidhba-jai on you. Would you like a reminder?”

“Try it and I’ll kill you.”

“With what?”

I yanked my hand from the button at the back of my skirt and went for the spear holstered beneath my arm, but it was gone. He’d taken it the last time we’d met, too. I wanted to know how he was doing it. I had to find a way to stop him.

He paced a circle around me. By the time he’d completed it, his gaze was as chill as the night air. “What have you been up to, sidhe-seer? You smell different.”

“I’ve been using a new moisturizer.” Could he smell my recent cannibalization of his race? Though I no longer suffered the dramatic effects of it, did a residue stain my skin, as it had tarnished another, less tangible part of me? I’d eaten Unseelie, not Seelie; would that make a difference to him? I doubted it. The bottom line was I’d eaten Fae to steal the power of the Fae. And I’d just fed it to another human. And I would never admit either of those facts to any Fae. “Like it?” I said brightly.

“You are powerless to defy me, yet stand before me dripping defiance. Why?”

“Maybe I’m not as powerless as you think.” What would a bite of Seelie royalty do to me? I’d find out if I had to. Surely I could Null him long enough to sink my teeth in somewhere. The thought was a little too tempting. All that power . . . mine in one tiny bite. Or ten. I wasn’t certain exactly how much I had to eat to get superstrength, when I wasn’t mortally wounded to begin with.

He considered me a moment, then laughed, and the sound made me feel suddenly ebullient, drunk with euphoria.

“Stop it,” I hissed. “Quit amping up my feelings!”

“I am what I am. Even when I ‘mute myself,’ as you say, my presence overwhelms mere humans—”

“Bull,” I cut him off. “When you were kneeling on the beach in Faery, and touched me, you felt like a man and only a man.” That wasn’t entirely true, but it had been better than this. He could tone himself way down if he chose. “I know you can do it. If you want my help finding the Sin—er, the Book, turn it off, and turn it all off. Now. And keep it off in the future.” I’d picked up a superstition from Dani, the young sidheseer I’d met recently who’d warned me about casting certain words on the wind I didn’t want traced back to me, so now, whenever I spoke of the Sinsar Dubh aloud, out in the streets, especially at night, I tried to remember to call it simply “the Book.”

V’lane shimmered, flashed brilliant white, then faded and resolidified. I tried not to gawk. Gone were the iridescent robes, the eyes that burned with a thousand stars, the body that radiated the fire of Eros. A man stood before me in faded jeans, a biker jacket, and boots; the sexiest man I’d ever seen. A golden, horny angel stripped of wings. This V’lane I could deal with. This Fae prince I could keep my clothes on around.

“Walk with me.” He offered his hand.

Sidhe-seer walk with Fae? My every instinct screamed no. “I’ll Null you if I touch you.”

He considered me a moment, as if debating whether to speak. Then he shrugged, but not well. The human gesture only made him look more alien. “Only if you wish, MacKayla. The desire to Null or the instinct to defend yourself must be present. If you do not desire it, you may touch me.” He paused. “I know of no other Fae who would permit such intimacy and risk. You speak to me of trust. I am giving it to you. Once you touch me, you could alter your intent and I would be at your mercy.”