“Wrecking Ball.” I often felt like one. His taste in music was starting to freak me out. I wanted to know if we were listening to the small, local volunteer-run station or an iPod he’d loaded with personal choices. I wanted to know if he was, like, sending me subliminal messages. He had just walked away. Period. End of subject. No song lyrics could change that.

There was no commercial interruption when the song ended but that wasn’t a tell; nobody advertises anymore. I keep waiting for some kind of underground renegade radio station to pop up that offers both music and biting social commentary, but none has. I’d start one myself if I had more time but I no longer get to do a lot of the things I’d like to do. I have astounding taste in music, it runs the gamut all over the place, the product of watching endless discontinued and frequently retro TV shows.

“Foxy, Foxy” by Rob Zombie came on next. Ryodan snapped the radio off and parked the Ferrari half a block down the street from Elyreum.

I glanced at the club and said something to him I never thought I’d hear myself say. “Ryodan, have you thought this through?”

He laughed, and I lost my breath for a moment, watching him. “What fun would there be in that?”

“You do realize we could start a war?”

He met my gaze and held it. “Don’t you think it’s time we cut everything loose? See what the hell comes of it?”

I narrowed my eyes, not missing his pointed dual message but not about to address it either. “Potential gain?”

“Nothing has happened in two long years, has it? I mean, nothing of any real significance. You’ve changed. The world has changed. But not one bloody, meaningful thing has resulted. You pass through this city, touching everything. And nothing. And nothing touches you. You don’t do a single thing that might cataclysmically alter you or the world’s course. How bloody sick are you of that?”

He was speaking my language. But then he always had.

“We can sit on our hands and wait endlessly, only to find we waited too long and don’t like the outcome. Or we can bloody well shape that outcome. Perhaps Mac and Barrons need help. Perhaps they need us to create a distraction, be a linchpin, turn things on their head, force the Fae court’s hand. You and me, Dani, we’re good at that.”

I could taste the danger on my lips as I met his feral, fierce smile with one of my own. “Objectives?” I said breathlessly.

“Ascertain to what degree the Fae have changed, what we’re up against. Find out where the bloody hell Mac and Barrons are. The Fae are as arrogant as they are immortal. If they have the upper hand, if they’ve somehow captured Mac and Barrons, they won’t be able to resist rubbing it in our faces. One simple tell: if they’re desperate for your sword, we’ll know she’s still alive.”

I inhaled sharply. This was what I’d been waiting for. Backup. Someone to break the bloody rules with me because not even I am a formidable enough weapon against an entire race of immortals. Although there’d been many nights I’d nearly convinced myself I was. “I’m in like Flynn,” I said fervently.

He flashed me a slow, sexy smile. “First, tell me something you missed about me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I told you, I didn’t think about you.”

“I never escaped your box. Not once.”

“Not even.”

“Fine. I’ll tell you what I missed about you.”

“I didn’t ask and don’t want to know.”

“I missed the way your mind works. How you’re willing to make the difficult decisions few people are willing to face, the ones that cost a piece of your soul. How you suffer no hesitation acting on those decisions, despite their price, and each time you hit breaking point, you come up with a new way to put yourself back together again. How you never stop caring, no matter how badly the world treats you, and bloody hell, this world has treated you abominably. How, despite the war you eternally wage between your brain and your heart, you possess the finest of both intellect and emotion I’ve ever seen. You dazzle me, Dani O’Malley. You bloody fucking dazzle me. Top or bottom?”

His question didn’t penetrate at first. I was too distracted by the compliments. He saw my best, the things I was proud of. Flatter my appearance? Not so flattered. I was born in my body. Praise my brain, my spirit? I melt. I’ve worked hard on them both. Then my face screwed up into a scowl and I nearly exploded, What? but swallowed it at the last second. I wasn’t issuing Ryodan an invitation to continue on that topic.

He took it anyway. “Specifically, would you still need to slam down on top of me and vent that endless passion of yours in a hard, savage fuck or have you grown up enough that you could sprawl back on my bed and let me give, while you do all the taking? Who knows, maybe you’d even toss me a few pointers while I was at it. Demand what you wanted. I’d like that. Dani O’Malley taking for a change, thinking only about herself.”

I was having a hard time getting a breath. Pointers. As if. I’d seen Ryodan in action. The man needed no pointers.

“We’re narrowing it down to just those two at the moment. We’ll move on to other positions later. Although I admit to significant interest on the topic of me behind you versus you backed up against a wall, with those long, beautiful, powerful legs of yours wrapped around my waist.”

Behind. First. I grabbed my sword, shoved my door open, kicked my legs out and turned back to look at him, using his own words against him, from long ago. “Some secrets, kid,” I hissed with saccharine venom, “you learn only by participating.”

He threw his head back and laughed, white teeth flashing, eyes glittering.

I closed my eyes, shutting out the vision that had eternally, incessantly, escaped my box.

Ryodan. Laughing.

That was one of the things I’d missed the most about him. The rare moments I’d startled him into a laugh. Glimpsed unadulterated joy blazing in his eyes.

I definitely preferred the top. But that was none of his business. When he stopped laughing, I opened my eyes again.

“Unfortunate,” he said. “Of the two, top is my preference as well.”

“Stay out of my head.” If he’d thought about me so bloody much, he should have called.

“We’ll have to fight for it. See who wins.”

An image of Ryodan and me, stripped naked, sweat-slicked and lust-driven, battling for dominance, slammed into my brain, stupefying me for a moment. “In your dreams.” As I surged from the car, I concentrated on shutting the door gently. If I slammed it, he’d know how much he’d just gotten to me.

The window shattered, glass tinkling to the pavement at my feet. I sighed. Brain/hand disconnect was clearly one of my unwritten rules around him.

His laughter—that very laughter I’d missed so much—floated out the broken window into the night.

Bright side: I couldn’t be more in the mood for war.

When they come for me

KAT TUCKED THE BLANKET snugly around her sleeping daughter, retrieved the worn copy of The Little Engine That Could from the bed, and turned to slip it back on the shelf.

As she moved to the door and turned off the lights, she glanced back at Rae and, as it always did, her heart swelled inside her chest with more love than she’d believed a single person could hold.

Rae had spent most of the afternoon into the late evening in the gardens, playing with the Spyrssidhe. I love the Spur-shee, Mommy, she’d said before she drifted off. They’re not like me. They’re so light inside.

Other mothers would have asked the question her comment implied. If they’re light inside but they’re not like you, what does that make you?

She hadn’t asked. Time would tell. If Rae believed she was dark for some reason, yet loved as instinctively and freely as she did, there was no point in asking.

Using her gift of empathy on her daughter had proved worthless. Rae felt so much love for her mother, Kat could feel nothing beyond it.

The spots on Rae’s tiny shoulders had vanished. She must have stretched out on something, perhaps lain on two rocks in the grass at just such an odd position. An unnerving freak occurrence, nothing more.

When Rae rolled over in her sleep, mumbling inaudibly, Kat’s phone tumbled to the floor, and she realized she’d forgotten it on the bed. She reclaimed it, tucked her daughter back in, kissed her forehead lightly and smoothed her curls.

As she turned back for the door a radioactive cloud of

PANICFEARHORRORFEARGETRAERUN!

exploded in her head. A scream escaped her lungs, clawing its way up her throat. She choked on it to keep from frightening Rae.

Rooted to the spot by terror, she stood, sputtering softly, trembling from head to toe, staring with wide, horrified eyes.

No, no, no, no, no, began the desperate litany in her mind. Please, God, no, I don’t deserve this, Rae doesn’t deserve this. I’m a good person, a good mother, but I can’t protect us from this!

He towered against the door of the bedroom, barring her exit.

Trapping them within.

Enormous black wings curved loosely forward around his body. She knew those wings. She’d dreaded them. Orgasmed exquisitely, over and over again, wrapped in them.

Breathe, breathe, breathe, you must breathe, she told herself. But her lungs refused to cooperate. Everything was locked down tighter than the Sinsar Dubh had ever been.

It wasn’t possible.