It laughed inside my head. I closed my eyes and forced it out again; this time it wasn’t easy. It knew where to find me inside myself. Was that why we feared them so deeply—because these Fae could get inside our heads?

Would a sidhe-seer that wasn’t as strong as me be able to withstand it, or would it rip her mind to shreds, one memory or personality trait or dream at a time, sift its talons through the tatters, before destroying her body as almost an afterthought?

I opened my eyes.

My personal Grim Reaper stood in the alley, directly in front of me, a dozen feet away, dark robes rustling softly in the unnatural wind generated by the beast’s wings.

It stood in silence, as always, regarding me from beneath its deep black cowl, though it had no face, no eyes, nothing beneath that hood I could discern, with which to regard me. It was shadows and night, like the Hunter above me, only it wasn’t there, and the Hunter was. What an absurd time to torture myself for my failings.

Ignoring it, I pushed back my jacket, slipped my spear from its holster, and fisted my hand around the hilt. It wasn’t my problem. Dragon-boy from hell was.

Black hail began to fall, tiny pellets stinging my skin. The Hunter was incensed; its displeasure iced the night.

How dare you touch our Hallows? roared in my head.

“Oh, screw you,” I snapped. “You want me? Come and get me.” I focused on that foreign place in my mind, stoked the strange fire, and boxed up my mind as securely as I could. The thing’s roar had nearly split my head.

Could the Hunter cram itself into the tight alleyway? Could it sift or resize itself?

We would see, and if it did, the moment it got close I would freeze and stab it.

I waited.

It hovered.

I looked up…and smiled.

Fury blazed in its fiery eyes, yet it made no move toward me. It wasn’t about to risk getting near my spear, and we both knew it. I could kill it. I could take forever from it, and the thing’s arrogance was immense as its wingspan; it didn’t consider any master it might choose to serve worth dying for.

I realized then, or had some surfacing of a shred of collective memory, that the Hunters were feared even among their own kind. They had something…I wasn’t sure what…but something that even their royal brethren didn’t mess with. They were of the Fae…but perhaps not completely. They served whomever they wished, only if there was something in it for them, and stopped serving whenever they felt like it. They were mercenaries in the purest sense of the word.

It feared the spear. It would not risk death. I had a chance.

I broke into a run.

So long as the soldiers didn’t find me, so long as more Hunters didn’t show up, I would survive tonight. I could make it to the bookstore and Barrons would have some plan—he always did. Perhaps we could get out of the city for a few days. Perhaps, loath though I was to consider it, we would hook up with other sidhe-seers. There was safety in numbers.

As I sped past my Phantom Reaper, it did something so utterly unexpected and incomprehensible that my mind failed to process it.

It swung out its scythe and the blunt of the wood caught me in my midsection.

In my mind I screamed—but you’re not real—even as I doubled over and lost the breath in my lungs.

Real or not, its scythe was.

For the second time tonight, my paradigm was brutally shifted: My Grim Reaper was corporeal.

Impossible! I’d thrown a flashlight through it, had watched it tumble end over end before crashing into a wall. It had no substance!

Laughing, it moved toward me. Now that I knew it was real, I could feel its malevolence, a dark, pulsating hatred, barely contained beneath the voluminous black shroud. Directed at me, all for me.

I stared in disbelief, laboring to suck air into my lungs. I’d exhaled to a painful point. My chest was locked down tight, my lungs deflated.

I’d been played. Lulled into believing my enemy wasn’t an enemy, until it had been ready to make its move. Had it been spying on me all those times? Watching and waiting for the right moment?

I’d talked to it. I’d confessed my sins to it! What was it?

I wheezed violently, sucking down air.

It approached, dark robes shifting as it glided forward.

I sensed Fae—I didn’t sense Fae. Perhaps I could nullify it, perhaps I couldn’t.

It swung its scythe. I leapt. It whirled and parried, I ducked and jumped. The wood staff zinged as it sliced through air, and I knew if even one of those blows landed on me it would turn bone to dust.

It wasn’t trying to get me with the curved blade. It wanted to pulverize, to maim. Why? Did it have a special death planned for me?

As we danced our macabre waltz, suddenly the alley was flooded with Rhino-boys; the rank and file soldiers had found us.

I was moments away from being hemmed in by dozens of Unseelie. Once they did that, I was doomed. I could freeze them but there were too many. Eventually they would overwhelm me. I needed Dani, I needed Barrons. I’d be absorbed into a horde of soldiers, borne on the crest of their dark wave, delivered to their master.

I did the only thing I could think of: When all else fails, try to take out the top dog. At this point, I was pretty sure Mr. Grim—heretofore utterly underestimated by me—was top dog, remaining innocuously in the background until now.

I charged the specter.

It parried my spear arm with inhuman speed, and the flat of its scythe caught me. I felt the bones in my wrist powder. As I crashed to my knees, in spite of blinding pain, I managed to slam the palm of my other hand into its dark robe.

It didn’t freeze.

In fact, what my hand encountered wasn’t…quite…solid.

When I was five, I found a dead rabbit that had somehow gotten itself trapped in our playhouse. I guess it starved to death. It was spring, not too hot yet, and the animal hadn’t begun to smell or show visible signs of decay—at least not side-up. It had looked so pretty lying there on my blanket, with its silky bunny fur and cottony tail and pink nose. I’d thought it was sleeping. I’d tried to pick it up to take in the house and show Mom, ask if we could keep it. My tiny hands had slid deep into its body, into a warm yellowish stew of decomposing flesh.

I’d hoped never to feel or smell such a thing again.

I felt and smelled it now.

My left hand slid straight into its abdomen, buried in its flesh. But the thing wasn’t entirely rotted. Its arm wasn’t soft at all when it snaked around my throat, but hard and unyielding as a steel cord.