I nodded and told him what I hadn’t told most people, cautioning him if he hadn’t already moved his family off world, he needed to see to their safety. Say his goodbyes because even if he left, he wouldn’t survive and his children might end up watching him die.

“Do you know what will happen? Will we simply blip out of existence? Or will we actually die somehow?”

“I have no idea.” I’d wondered that myself.

“I remember the day you fed me your tea and sandwiches. You opened my eyes, showed me what was happening. And you just opened my eyes again. I thank you for that. I’d have died last year, blundered into some alley, probably lost my family, too. I’ll send them through when I must. How long do we have?”

“There’s no telling. A week at best before…” I trailed off, trying to think of a way to explain what I sensed. Not that a black hole was going to touch the Earth but that the distortion they were causing was going to do something wholly new and catastrophic beyond belief. “I’d send them tomorrow night. That’s when my parents are leaving.”

He nodded. “So, you’re the Fae queen now.”

“And you’re a Seelie prince.”

“What the fuck,” he said softly.

“Probably all the Unseelie we ate.”

“No,” he said, tipping his head back and staring up at the stars, “I mean, how can this world be so bloody beautiful and just end? How can we let it?”

I’d admired this man even though he’d driven me batshit crazy at times. He had a good heart. I admired him even more now. Though he was going to die, at the end his sorrow wasn’t for himself but for this incredible planet of ours, this wonderful, magnificent ball spinning in space filled with deserts and mountains, valleys and plains, rivers and caves, glaciers and oceans, animals of every kind that we couldn’t get off world. So many rare and precious species would be extinct in a matter of days.

He looked back down at me and tears glinted in his glowing, quixotic eyes. “How can we lose the Earth, Mac? Is there nothing we can do?”

His words were a punch in my gut. It was my fault. I couldn’t sing the song. Our world would die because of me. I didn’t trust myself to speak so I just shook my head.

He sighed and said sadly, “Ah, well, Mac. Good luck to you and yours.” He gave me a little salute and sauntered briskly into the night. Halfway down the block he called over his shoulder, “You may want to see to Sean O’Bannion. He’s turned Unseelie. He and that young woman of his won’t leave. They’ve taken a townhouse on Mockingbird Lane.” He told me the address then vanished into the gloaming.

“Ah, Kat,” I said, and sighed. Then I trudged into BB&B, carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. Literally.

As I was settling in on the sofa, the doorbell tinkled and I glanced at the entrance.

The Dreamy-Eyed Guy walked in.

I had no idea why he used my door. I was pretty sure he could still sift, unlike the rest of us. Or just ooze in, a great dark stain sliding down my chimney or rising up from the floorboards.

A year ago I’d have gotten excited, believing he was here to help. And if not, that I could surely talk him into it. I knew better now. “Come to sing the song for us?” I mocked anyway.

“Don’t have it. Evaporates when passed. You, Cruce, must put it back together.”

Well, that seriously sucked. So, I couldn’t even talk him into it. I studied him intently as a thought occurred to me. “There’s something about this that’s necessary. What is it? Do good and evil have to work together in some cosmic-balance way?”

“Subjective. Still not seeing. Same source.”

“Are we being tested?”

He flashed me a smile and for a moment I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. “Always. You owe me three boons, Beautiful Girl.”

“I don’t know if I can grant them. My power is fading.”

“Can and will.”

“Who are you?” I demanded. And why did he talk about the king in third person?

“Told you. At Chester’s. Said you’re no more the king than I.”

“Because we both are. In some way.” Me with the Book, but him how?

He stopped at the sofa and fixed his starry gaze on me with a faint smile. “A skin that refused to return when summoned. I demanded my own fate. He is a storm. I am but a drop of his rain.”

“I saw you in the abbey. You became him.”

“Illusion. It amuses him. As does my defiance. He could reclaim me. When you see her, you will say nothing of my origins. She believes me human.”

“Her, who?”

“The concubine.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I thought she was in the White Mansion.”

“You will restore her mortality. I will sift us to a world but you will pretend you’re doing it.”

“And your third boon?”

“One day, either the king or I will come to claim it.”

I nodded, knowing I had so little time left it was doubtful anyone would claim anything further from me.

When he brought Aoibheal inside, her eyes narrowed. “I can’t help you,” she said instantly.

“I’m not asking you to,” I told the woman whose mere existence had caused every single problem I’d had, through no fault of her own but as a pawn on a vast chessboard, in a game played by vast beings. It wasn’t as if there was anything she could do to save us anyway. I would be dead soon, with no True Magic to require advice about. “I’m going to take you somewhere.”

“Where?” she demanded.

I glanced at the DEG and the transition was seamless. Suddenly the three of us stood beneath the triple canopy of a tropical rain forest, and I was hearing the DEG’s voice in my head, telling me what to say.

“The king protected your world,” I told her. “Though your clan is long dead, you will find your planet the same.”

She stared blankly at me, then past my shoulder, then at me again. “My world still exists? I’m home? But how do you know any of this? How did you even know where to find it?”

That was a tricky one. I waited for the DEG to say something and he didn’t so I said, “The Sinsar Dubh knew about it. It was in the king’s memories.”

She spun in a slow circle, absorbing her surroundings with faint wonder.