I thought of Alina, and wanted to protest that it wasn’t true, but what had she betrayed to her lover, believing them to be on the same side? “I’ve never had sex with Barrons,” I told him again. “Satisfied?”

His gaze was remote, a tiger assessing its prey. “Answer one more question, and I might be: Do you want to have sex with Barrons?”

I gave him a hard look and stormed from the room. It was such a stupid question, and so far out of line, that I refused to dignify it with a response.

Halfway down the hall, I drew up short.

Dad’s told me all kinds of wise-sounding things over the years. I haven’t understood a lot, but I filed it all away because Jack Lane doesn’t waste breath, and I figured one day some of it might make sense. You can’t change an unpleasant reality if you won’t acknowledge it, Mac. You can only control what you’re willing to face. Truth hurts. But lies can kill. We’d been having a talk about my grades again. I’d told him I didn’t care if I ever graduated. It wasn’t the truth. The truth was I didn’t think I was very smart, and I had to work twice as hard as everyone else to get passing grades, so I’d spent most of high school pretending not to care.

I turned slowly.

He was leaning in the doorway, arms folded, looking young and hot and everything a girl could want. He arched a dark brow. What a gorgeous guy. He was the one I should be thinking about having sex with.

“No,” I said clearly. “I don’t want to have sex with Jericho Barrons.”

“Lie,” Christian said.

I headed back to the bookstore, flashlights on, watching everyone and everything. My brain was too stuffed with thoughts to be able to sort them out. I walked, and watched, hoping my gut would piece things together into a plan of action, and notify me when it was done.

I was passing the Stag’s Head pub when two things occurred: the black ice of a Hunter dusted me, and Inspector Jayne squealed to a stop in a blue Renault, flung open the passenger door, and barked, “Get in!”

I glanced up. The Hunter hovered, great black wings churning ice in the night air. It terrified me in my special sidheseer place. But I’d seen and done a lot since my last encounter with one of them, and I wasn’t the same anymore. Before it could speak in my mind, I sent it a message of my own: You’ll choke on my spear if you make one move toward me.

It laughed. With a whuf-whuf of leathery, midnight sails, it rose into the twilight and vanished.

I got in the car.

“Slump,” Jayne fired at me.

Raising both eyebrows, I slumped.

He drove to a brightly lit back parking lot of a church—I could see the steeple from where I crouched—pulled in between cars, and turned off the lights and engine. I sat up. The parking lot sure was packed for a Thursday night. “Is it some kind of religious day?”

“Stay down,” he barked. “I won’t be seen with you.”

I withdrew to the floorboards again.

He stared straight ahead. “The churches’ve been packed for weeks. The crime hike is scaring people.” He was silent a moment. “So, how bad is it? Should I get my family out?”

“I would, if it were my family,” I said frankly.

“Where should I take them?”

I didn’t know what the rest of the world out there was like in terms of Unseelie, but the Sinsar Dubh was here, an evil centrifuge, distilling people to their darkest essences. “As far from Dublin as you can.”

He continued staring straight ahead in silence, until I began to fidget impatiently. I was getting a cramp in my leg. There was something else he wanted. I wished he’d hurry up and get to it before my foot went to sleep.

Finally, he said, “That night, that you . . . you know . . . I went back to the station and . . . saw the people that I work with.”

“You saw that some of the Garda are Unseelie, “ I said.

He nodded. “Now I can’t see them anymore but I know who they are. And I tell myself you did something to me, somehow, and it was all a hallucination.” He rubbed his face. “Then I see the reports coming in, and I watch what they do, or rather don’t do, like investigate a bloody damn thing, and I . . .”

When he trailed off, I waited.

“I think they killed O’Duffy to shut him up, and tried to make it look like a human did it. Two more Garda have been killed. They’d begun asking a lot of questions, and. . . .” He trailed off again.

The silence lengthened. Abruptly, he looked straight at me. His face was red, his eyes bright and hard. “I’d like to have tea with you again, Ms. Lane.”