His face tightened, and the temperature plunged so sharply my breath frosted the night air. “I have honored you. I have never before given such a gift. Do not belittle it.”

“How do I use it?”

“Need me, open your mouth, and I will be there.” I didn’t see him move but suddenly his lips were against my ear. “Tell no one I gave it to you. Mention it, and I will take it away.” He vanished before he finished speaking. His words danced on the air like the Cheshire cat’s smile.

“Hey, I thought you wanted to know about the Sinsar Dubh!” I was so startled by his abrupt departure that I spoke without thinking. I regretted it immediately. My words hung as heavy as Georgia humidity in the night. “Sinsar Dubh” seemed to echo sibilantly, soughing on the night wind, racing the darkness to darker ears, and I suddenly felt as if I’d stamped a red X on myself.

I had no idea where V’lane had gone, or why he’d disappeared so suddenly, but I decided I’d be wise to do the same myself.

Before I could move, a hand closed on my shoulder. “I do, Ms. Lane,” Barrons said grimly. “But first I’d like to know what the fuck you were doing kissing him.”

FOUR

I turned, scowling. Barrons has a habit of popping up, without warning, when I least expect it, at the most inconvenient times. I absorbed him in slow degrees, the only way to look at him. As a whole, he’s jarringly present in the space he occupies, as if ten times the man occupies a normal man-sized space. I wonder why. Because there’s an Unseelie stuffed inside him? I wonder how old he really is.

I should be afraid of him. And sometimes in the middle of the night when I’m alone and I think about him—especially when I picture him carrying the dead woman’s body, and the look on his bloody face—I am.

But when he’s standing in front of me, I’m not.

I wonder if it’s possible for a person to do some kind of “numbing” spell, create a glamour so complete that it deceives all the senses, even sidhe-seer ones.

“There’s something on your lapel.” I dabbed at it. He’s also meticulous, never a man to sport lint or stains on his clothes, but tonight his dark suit had a shiny spot on the left side. I was dabbing at a . . . man, for lack of a better word . . . who’d had birthdays untold, and walked in Unseelie Hallows, carrying around corpses. It felt as absurd as brushing a wolf’s teeth, or trying to mousse his fur. “And I wasn’t kissing him.”

And I’d like to know what the feck you were doing with that woman in that mirror, I thought. But I didn’t say it. There’s a legal term my dad likes to use: res ipsa loquitur—the thing speaks for itself. I knew what I knew, and now I was watching him. And my back. Very carefully.

He knocked my hand away. “Then why was his tongue in your mouth? Was he conducting a clinical test of your gag reflex?” He smiled, but not nicely. “How is your gag reflex, Ms.

Lane? Are you a hair trigger?”

Barrons likes to use sexual innuendo to try to shut me up. I think he expects the well-raised southern belle in me will think eew and back off. Sometimes, I do think eew, but I don’t back off. “I’m a spitter, if that’s what you’re asking.” I flashed him a too-sweet smile.

“Didn’t look that way to me. I think you’re a swallower. His tongue was halfway to China and you were still taking it.”

“Jealous?”

“Implies emotional investment. The only investment I have in you is my time, and I’m expecting a big payoff. Tell me about the Sinsar Dubh.”

I glanced at my hand. It had come away from his lapel wet. I angled it in the light. Red looks black at night. I sniffed it. It smelled like old pennies. Gee, blood. No surprise there. “Have you been in a fight? No, let me guess; you saved a wounded dog, again?” I said dryly. That was the excuse he’d used last time.

“I had a nosebleed.”

“Nosebleed, my petunia.”

“Petunia?”

“Ass, Barrons. As in you are one.”

“The Book, Ms. Lane.”

I looked into his eyes. Was there a Gripper in there? Something very old looked back. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Why did you call after him?”

“I haven’t seen him since the last time we saw the Book. I keep V’lane informed. You’re not the only shark in the sea.”

He raked me with a contemptuous glance. “It’s a Fae prince’s fundamental nature to enslave a woman with sex, Ms. Lane. It’s a woman’s fundamental nature to be enslaved. Try to rise above it.”