My eyes were unseeing anyway, turned inward as I teased at the small silvery knot spiking tendrils of control into the complex membranes inside my skull, whispering commands to my body.

It was powerful magic. Old magic. Old earth god, I was willing to bet. Perhaps whipped up with a bit of sap from a sacred tree that no longer grew, blended with minerals found deep in the soil, ground with mortar and pestle to a thin, vile poison, enhanced by arcane arts.

I had magic, too. I envisioned a single black vein of the Hunter residue beneath my skin expanding across my collarbone, encouraged it to creep up my neck, where it glided effortlessly, almost eagerly, into my brain, meeting the silvery knot, seeping into it and nullifying—

Holy hell, my head jerked!

“Jaysus, Cal, she bloody jerked!” Alfie exploded, flinching.

“No, she didn’t,” Callum scoffed. “Nothing moves after a hit from one of those darts. Not until he says so.”

“She did, too,” Alfie insisted.

I don’t know what else was said then because for a time I simply wasn’t there.

I was drifting in space, sailing between stars, tumbling head-over-heels through nebula-stained wormholes, gliding along the edges of gaseous rings encircling planets. A deep, hauntingly beautiful gonging resonated in the enormous vacuum of space around me—a technical impossibility—vibrating into my soul, expanding outward to the stars, and the stars answered. Space was a living ocean, lapping gently at the stars, planets, suns, moons, and asteroids. The sound, the vision, was so exquisite a part of me wept. It was…heaven. It was…peace. Nothing hurt, nothing was wrong, everything fit and made sense and I could stay there forever and nothing could ever touch me again.

But. I thought.

My. What was it that mattered to me?

World.

No peace for me.

I thrust away the lovely vision and returned my attention to the silvery knot, cramming it full of Eau d’Hunter.

The spell holding me motionless shattered.

I blessed the day I’d stabbed the Hunter through the heart. It had somehow gifted me a stunning, gargantuan power that I looked forward to exploring further. And learning to control. No more accidents.

“I’m telling you, she moved,” Alfie was still arguing.

I was lying on my back, on a wood pallet that bit into my spine. They’d relocated me while I drifted inside my head. Made us a “bed” of lumber and old magazines; I could smell the musty pages, old ink.

Callum and Alfie towered over me.

I slammed my hands to the floor behind my head, pushed off and vaulted to my feet in a sleek movement, startling them so badly they stumbled backward, gaping at me, slack-jawed.

“Wanna play, boys?” I purred with acid sweetness. “Because you definitely got me in a mood.”

And you are not me, the lengths that I will go to

“WHAT THE—” CALLUM BEGAN.

He never finished.

Right hand around his throat, I crushed his windpipe and watched him die. Quick, a far more merciful death than he deserved; the kindness that separated me from him.

I whirled and caught Alfie, the shorter of the two, by the back of his shirt, flung him across the room, slamming him into a wall so hard it shuddered. Then I lunged for him as he leapt for the narrow black opening a few feet to his right. This Silver leading to that hot, unknown realm was smaller, wider than the last, but the same acrid breeze gusted from it, smelling of wood smoke and blood. Like the last, this had no ornate frame, or wide black border found on Fae Silvers. The mirrors they used for travel were something different.

I snatched Alfie as he was about to plunge into the dark abyss and hurled him back into the room. He crashed into a silent, dark Pac Man upright, shattered the frame, went skidding into a pinball machine, bounced off and hit the floor. He pushed up and tried to scramble away but I kicked him in the side and dropped him back to the floor.

“On your knees, hands behind your head,” I commanded. “Don’t run again or you’re dead.”

“Y-Y-You’re gonna k-kill me anyway!” Alfie cried, clutching his ribs.

“On your knees,” I snarled.

“You killed my brother, you cunt!”

“Last chance,” I said softly, cramming more menace into a whisper than a shout.

“There’s somethin’ wrong with you, bitch!”

“You have no idea,” I agreed.

“Fuckin’ eyes of a psycho!”

“You should talk. Knees. Now.”

Trembling, casting furtive, wild-eyed glances at me, he clambered awkwardly, groaning loudly, to his hands and knees then sat back on his heels, gasping as he placed his hands behind his head. I’d kicked him a little harder than I’d realized. His glasses were broken, askew on his nose, beanie drooping. The glasses were thick with heavy black frames. Thin silver wires were exposed by one broken flange.

As he knelt, trembling with rage and fear, I caught a flash of something metallic in the dark folds of his cap and smiled faintly. Dancer might have created a similar gadget for me.

“Camera on your head, your glasses tie into it. Gives you one eighty vision.”

“Infrared,” he said sullenly.

“You saw my heat behind you.”

“He don’t send us out without tools.”

“Who?”

Alfie’s thin lips clamped together, his jaw jutted defiantly.

“Who do you work for and what is he doing? Answer me or die.”

Still, he said nothing.

“Answer me or I’ll shove your ass through that mirror with a message carved into it that says you spilled everything and I’m coming for him.”

“Fuck you will! You got no clue what you’re messing with! You can’t touch him! Nobody can! And you don’t wanna touch him! You don’t want him to even look at you!”

“Who? I won’t ask again.”

“What’cha gonna do?” he sneered. “You ain’t gonna torture me. I know your kind. Stuck up, tight-ass vigilante, saving worthless kids. Think you’re above the rest of us. Think you’re on the right side, but sweetheart, the right side is the winning side—and you ain’t on it.”

That he was right about part of what he’d said chafed. I needed information. Torture would get it. But I’ve always avoided crossing that murky line. I needed a sidekick that had no such problem. Still, a little pain wasn’t torture.

My switchblade flicked out with a small snick. “Carve. Message. Choose.”

He glanced at his brother, dead on the floor, then behind me at the dark aperture in the brick wall.

“You won’t make it,” I said with an icy smile. “You won’t get past me.”

Brown eyes met mine. Fury burned in them but was diluted by fear, tainted with a grim resignation. He was more afraid of his master than me.

Alfie smiled coldly back. “Then I’ll die trying.”

He did.

* * *

π

The mirror vanished the moment Alfie’s heart stopped, neat trick, that. Whatever master they served, he had formidable power. I felt the temperature in the room drop and spun instantly but I was too late. The wall was brick, the portal closed.

I kicked through faded popcorn sleeves and empty beer cans, scattering roaches, as I retrieved my sword and collected my guns, acknowledging I’d probably not have gone through it anyway.

If their “him” was the same “him” AOZ had referenced, delivering myself straight to his lair, without a plan or backup, without anyone knowing where I was going, bordered on suicidal and that’s something I’ve never been.

Still, I’d have liked time to inspect the glass.

I searched both bodies, patting them down, stripping the cameras from their beanies, hooking the unbroken pair of glasses over the neckline of my shirt for later inspection. I tucked two thin metal cases the size of wallets that contained a few dozen of their lethal quills into my jacket. In an inner pocket of their coats, I found hideous Halloween masks and rubber skeleton gloves. Of course, children thought they were Unseelie. In the dark of night, after the horrors the human race had witnessed, it was a fair assumption.

My search yielded no other particularly useful information but the evening had. I had much to mull over, cull for clues, posit theories. Theories are a fluid road map for solving a mystery and, if broached with an open mind and scrupulous attention to detail, they grant the answers you seek.

At the moment, however, I had a cruelly starved member of the Nine in my bed that might already have some of those answers.

And the blood in the corpses was cooling.

* * *

π

Once, a few weeks back, on a warm, starlit evening, I’d walked the Temple Bar District, doing nothing but enjoying myself. I need to do that every now and then. Keeps me connected to my world.