“Did V’lane tell you anything?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, biting it off there. I’d obeyed the compulsion to the letter. I didn’t have to offer more.

“What did he tell you?”

“That the Lord Master was once a Fae, named Darroc.”

He snorted. “Old news. Did he tell you anything about me?”

Old news? He’d been sitting on information about the Lord Master that he hadn’t shared with me? And he got pissed at me for not telling him everything I knew? If he didn’t kill me when he was done with me, he was dead. He was a walking encyclopedia with a cover I couldn’t crack. Useless.

Dangerous. “No.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“No,” I gritted.

“Have you ever fucked him?”

“No,” I ground out. I’d never had two men more obsessed with what was happening in my sex life, or rather, not happening.

Some of the violence in the air abated.

My eyes narrowed. Was this it? The source of his rage? Was Barrons jealous? Not because he cared, but because he thought of me as a possession, his personal and private sidhe-seer, and there would be no other men’s erections interfering with her OOP detections?

He gave me a cold look. “I needed to know if you were Pri-ya. That’s why I asked.”

“Do I look Pri-ya?” I snapped. I had no idea what a Fae addict looked like, but I somehow doubted I was the Poster Girl for it. I figured them for something more like the Goth girls I’d seen hanging out at Mallucé’s vampire lair: pierced, tattooed, and heavily made-up, dressed in vintage clothing, mostly black.

He started, measured me a moment, then laughed. “Good for you, Ms. Lane! You’re learning.”

I started, myself, realized what I’d just done. I’d said something that hadn’t been an answer to a direct question! I tried to do it again, mentally forming the words, but I couldn’t force them out. I didn’t know how I’d done it in the first place.

“Who were you going to see the night you saw the Sinsar Dubh?”

Oh, no. This wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to know everything. “A guy that knew Alina,” I said between clenched teeth.

“Tell me his name.”

No, no, no. “Christian MacKeltar.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He exploded from his chair and glared down at me.

Since he’d used Voice, I was obligated to say, “No,” although I knew the question had been rhetorical. The killing violence was back, over a simple name. Why? What significance did Christian’s name have to him? Did he know him? Closing my eyes, I sought the sidhe-seer place in my head. It was no help. I still couldn’t speak. How could I feel so much power in that hot, alien part of my mind, yet find nothing there of use to me in this situation?

“How did you meet Christian MacKeltar?”

“He works at the ALD at Trinity. I met him when you sent me to pick up the invitation to the auction from his boss, but she wasn’t there.”

His nostrils flared. “He must be a recent hire. They’ve been spying on me.”

He hadn’t used Voice, nor had he asked a question, so I said nothing.

“Have the MacKeltars been spying on me?”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I said, “Yes.”

“Have you been spying on me, Ms. Lane?”

“As much as I can.”

“What have you learned about me?”

I went poking around in my head again but whatever place I was supposed to discover remained a mystery to me. Aware that I was digging my own grave, one spadeful of information at a time, I told him. That I knew he wasn’t human. That I knew he was impossibly old. That I’d watched him step out of the Unseelie Sifting Silver he kept in his study, carrying the savagely brutalized corpse of a woman. That, like the Shades, the demons in there had fled his path.

He laughed. As if it was some kind of joke that I knew all his dark secrets. He didn’t try to explain or justify one bit of it. “And I didn’t think you could keep your own counsel. You knew these things and never said a word. You’re becoming interesting. Are you working with the MacKeltars against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with V’lane against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with the sidhe-seers against me?”

“No.”

“Are you working with anyone against me?”

“No.”

“Where do your loyalties lie, Ms. Lane?”