I let him finish both pages before reclaiming my notebook.

“So,” I said brightly, “now that you know I’m nuts—” I broke off and stared at him. “You do know I’m nuts, right?” There was something very wrong with the way he was looking at me.

“MacKayla,” he said softly, “come somewhere with me, somewhere…safer than this. We need to talk.”

I sucked in a breath. “I didn’t tell you my name was MacKayla.” I stared at him, a little too toasted to deal with the panic I was feeling over this unexpected paradigm shift. I’d been trying to destroy my chances at normalcy only to find out I’d never had any chance at normalcy in this situation because the normal boy wasn’t normal.

“I know who you are. And what you are,” he said quietly. “I’ve met your kind before.”

“Where?” I was bewildered. “Here, in Dublin?”

He nodded. “And elsewhere.”

Surely not. Was it possible? He’d known my name. What else did he know about me? “Did you know my sister?” I was suddenly breathless.

“Aye,” he said heavily, “I knew Alina.”

My mouth dropped. “You knew my sister?” I practically screeched. How did he know us? Who was this man?

“Aye. Will you come with me, somewhere private we can talk?”

When my cell phone rang, even buried as it was in my purse, it was so loud it nearly scared me out of my skin, and pub patrons three booths down turned to glare. I didn’t blame them; it was an obnoxious ring, a blaring band of celestial trumpets, set on full volume. Obviously Barrons hadn’t wanted me to miss a call.

I fumbled for it, flipped it open, and pressed send. Barrons sounded pissed. “Where the fuck are you?” he demanded.

“None of your business,” I said coolly.

“I saw two Hunters in the city tonight, Ms. Lane. Word is more are on the way. A great deal more. Get your ass home.”

I sat there frozen with a dead line. He’d said what he had to say and hung up.

I can’t explain what the word “Hunters” does to me, but it gets me where I live. It gets me in my most sacred place, the one where I used to feel safe but never will again so long as there are Fae in my world. It’s as if certain things are programmed into a sidhe-seer’s DNA and we have gut reactions that can’t be diminished, controlled, or overcome.

“You’ve gone white as a sheet, lass. What’s wrong?”

I considered my options. There were none. The pub I was in closed early on weeknights. It was either make a run for the bookstore now, or wait a few hours, and if more Hunters were on the way, in a few hours it would only be more dangerous.

“Nothing.” I slapped down a few bills and some change. Why hadn’t Barrons come after me? My phone rang again. I dug it out.

“I would only make us a bigger target, and I’ve got my hands a bit full at the moment,” he said. “Stay close to the buildings, under overhangs when possible. Lose yourself in throngs of other people when you can.”

What was he—a mind reader? “I could catch a cab.”

“Have you seen what’s driving them lately?”

No, but I sure was going to be looking now that he’d said that.

“Where are you?”

I told him.

“You’re not far. You’ll be fine, Ms. Lane. Just get here fast, before more arrive.” He hung up again.

I stuffed my journal and phone in my purse and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Christian said.

“I have to leave. Something’s come up.” Whatever crimes I might lay at Barrons’ feet, I believed he could protect me. If there were Hunters in the city tonight, I wanted the most dangerous man I knew at my side, not a twenty-something Scottish guy who’d known my sister—who was, grim case in point, dead—so obviously he’d been of no help to her. “I want to know everything. Can I come see you at Trinity?”

He stood. “Whatever’s going on, Mac, let me help you with it.”

“You’ll only slow me down.”

“You don’t know that. I might be useful.”

“Don’t push me,” I said coldly. “I’m sick of being pushed.”

He assessed me a moment, then nodded. “Come see me at Trinity. We’ll talk.”

“Soon,” I promised. As I left the pub, I marveled at my ignorance. I’d been sitting there, believing Rowena the final, critical piece. While I’d been busy analyzing my board, making judgments and decisions, feeling pretty smart about myself, a player I’d known nothing about had strolled up and sat down, and like everyone else, he knew a great deal more about me than I knew about him.

I was back to feeling dumb.

Just where on the game board was I supposed to place Christian MacKeltar?

I took a mental swipe at it, toppled all the pieces, and stepped into the night. The heck with it. Right now I needed to get back to the bookstore, undetected by my mortal enemy, monsters whose sole purpose was to hunt and destroy people like me.

My dad had this thing he used to say to me when I’d try to convince him that a D on my report card was really close to a C. He’d say, Mac, baby, close only counts in hand-grenades and horseshoes.

I was really close; in fact, I was almost home when the Hunter found me.

FIFTEEN

I t was as if a new Dublin had been born while I was inside the pub, and I realized, with the exception of our brief drive through Temple Bar the other evening, I’d not walked through the district in over a month. It had been that long since I’d taken a good look at my world.

Night was their time and they came out in droves.

Rhino-boys were driving the cabs.

A caste of Unseelie new to me, ghastly white and painfully thin with enormous hungry, wet eyes and no mouths, was running the street vendor stands.

Where had the original owners gone? I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.

There was one Unseelie for every ten humans on the street. Many of them wore glamours of attractive people and were paired off with real people, and I knew they were going into bars wearing the guise of sexy tourists and picking up the real tourists.

And doing what with them?

I didn’t want to know that, either. I couldn’t kill them all. In these numbers, I was useless against them. I forced myself to look straight ahead. There were too many Unseelie around me and I’d had too much to drink. My stomach was a roiling, queasy mess. I had to get out of here. Somewhere I could breathe. Maybe throw up.