“Fine. Tell the old woman I’ll be there in two hours,” I said, and hung up.

FIVE

The Viper isn’t the most expensive or fastest car on the market, but it delivers on everything it promises. It’s got great lines, a wicked attitude, and hits sixty in under four seconds. If I ever get home again, I won’t know what to do with my Toyota. I’ll need to pull a Fred Flintstone, and poke my feet through the bottom.

The last Viper that Barrons let me drive, and the one I thought I was getting this time, was gone. In its place was one of the new ones, hot off the assembly line, sleek, low, and muscley: the SRT-10 with 90 additional snorting horses for a total of 600 feisty stallions, and 560 ft-lb of torque.

It was black on black with heavily tinted windows, and looked like some kind of crouching metal beast, waiting—no, begging—to be taken and tested to its limits. I was momentarily awed to be holding its reins in my hands.

I stood for a moment, absorbing Barrons’ incredible car collection, listening hard, alert for any sounds or vibrations in the floor. There was nothing. Whatever creature dwelled beneath the garage either slumbered or lay sated. I envisioned a hulking darkness surrounded by a mound of cleanly picked bones, and shook my head to dispel the image.

I slid into the black leather interior of the two-seater, cranked it, listened to the engine, smiled, shifted into first, and pulled out of the garage. A complaint about the Viper (by people who would be better off sticking to 4-cylinder automatics and living vicariously through reality TV shows) is that the passenger compartment gets too hot because of the exhaust, and that it’s excessively noisy when you open it up on the road.

I revved the engine. The throaty growl was magnified by the close quarters of the alley, and I laughed out loud. That’s what the Viper’s all about, muscle and machismo, and when you’ve got it in spades, you strut it.

Down to my right, the huge Shade puffed up, nearly eclipsing the building behind it. I muttered something that would make my mother cringe, but kept my hands on the steering wheel and gearshift. There would be no more flipping of the bird at monsters of unknown parameters. I’d heard of road rage cases resulting in murder over less, and I saw no point in antagonizing an already antagonistic Shade that was far more aware of me than I would have liked.

Driving a hot car is a lot like sex to me, or a lot like I keep thinking sex should be: a total body experience, overwhelming to all the senses, taking you places you’ve never been, packing a punch that leaves you breathless and touches your soul. The Viper was way more satisfying than my last boyfriend.

I cranked up the music and barreled into the night. I didn’t think about what had happened today. I’d had all afternoon to think about it and had made my decisions. The time for thinking was over. It was time for action.

Twenty minutes from the abbey, in the middle of what we call B.F.E. back home, surrounded by too many sheep and too few fences for my comfort in such an expensive car, I pulled over to the side of the dark, narrow, two-lane road, looked around to make sure there was grass and foliage growing, reassuring myself it was a Shade-free zone, left the headlamps blazing anyway, and stepped out.

The thing on my tongue had been bothering me since V’lane had put it there. I didn’t know how long I was going to be able to stand it. But at the moment, I was glad I had it.

Need me, open your mouth, and I will be there, he’d said. I’d never have believed I’d be using it less than twenty-four hours later, but there was something I had to do tonight, and I needed backup. Serious backup. I needed something that would rock Rowena’s world, and Barrons just didn’t fit the bill the way a Seelie prince did.

I tried to decide what might constitute needing him, in a way that would release whatever was piercing my tongue. Merely thinking about him? Couldn’t be that. I’d been half thinking about him all day. He’d been simmering on the back burner of my mind’s stove ever since he’d put his pot there, as he’d known he would. Maybe, in time, I’d grow inured to the intruder. I doubted it.

“V’lane, I need you,” I told the night, and darned if the thing in my mouth didn’t move.

I gagged. The thing uncoiled and slammed against the back of my teeth. I spit it out convulsively. Something soft and dark exploded from my mouth, hit the air, and was gone.

“Sidhe-seer.”

I spun. V’lane was behind me. I opened my mouth and shut it again, pining for the good old days of cell phones. Perhaps, as experts warned, radiation really would fry my brain after decades of repeated use, but I was feeling fried already from using Fae methods of communication a single time.