“Well there you go, lass. And Mac never lies or does anything the least bit shady.”

Ignoring the jibe, she turned to Barrons. “There are no Unseelie in Chester’s.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he replied tersely. “Cruce tried to summon a few of the lesser castes. They didn’t appear.”

“Summon how?”

“When he absorbed the spells from the Book, he gained the True Names of the Unseelie.”

She pinned Cruce with a sharp look. “What else did you get?” Obviously the Book hadn’t affected him like it had Mac, but he’d gotten more than names.

“None of your fucking business, sidhe-seer.”

“So, why didn’t the Unseelie come?” she pressed.

“Because your lovely MacKayla now possesses the same knowledge, and they recognize her as more powerful than me. That will change.”

“How did Mac come to be possessed by the Sinsar Dubh in the first place?” Christian said. “I thought there was only one copy and Cruce absorbed it. Where the bloody hell did a second copy come from?”

“Yes.” Cruce seized the topic with avid interest. “How did the lovely MacKayla come by another copy of the Sinsar Dubh?”

“Twenty-odd years ago, while Isla O’Connor was carrying the corporeal Sinsar Dubh, it deposited a copy of itself into her unborn fetus,” Barrons said curtly.

Christian stared at him incredulously. “You’re telling me Mac had the bloody Book all along?”

“I believe it was dormant until she came to Ireland,” Barrons said. “Something about it being here gave it strength it didn’t have before. When she used one of its spells to save Jada from the Sweeper, it took possession of her.”

Cruce’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed to slits. “The entire time I was hunting it, she had it inside her?”

Barrons said, “She didn’t know it was inside her until after we interred you. Jada, Alina was able to locate Mac. Fade tracked and followed her. She’s holed up at Mallucé’s abandoned mansion, with a mile of Unseelie surrounding her on every side. Tens of thousands of the fucks, even more than attacked the abbey.”

“That’s a problem,” she said. “We have to get close enough to position the stones, and that means within ten feet or so. We also have to get her out, once we’ve contained her.”

“Fade said she was staggering when she entered the mansion, appeared to be having difficulty walking,” Barrons said.

Jada told him how clumsy Mac had seemed when she first stood up from the table.

“Now it’s your turn, fairy,” Barrons growled to Cruce. “When you absorbed the spells from the Book, was there something sentient within?”

The temperature in the office dropped sharply and ice crystals glazed the floor. “The correct term is ‘Fae.’ And yes, there was sentience within, but it vanished the moment the Book crumbled. I do not believe the Sinsar Dubh possessed the power to replicate itself. No Fae does. Not the queen. Not even the king. The sentience within the Sinsar Dubh must have found a way to split itself, transferring part into Isla, leaving part behind, weaving a spell to ensure much of what it left behind would expire if the Book was ever read. Fae revile the very notion of duplicate selves. We prize our individuality and position.”

“So, what does that make Mac?” Christian demanded. “How powerful is she?”

Cruce smiled coolly. “Powerful enough to be a threat that must be eliminated immediately. The king cast every spell he ever used to create the Unseelie castes into a single vessel. When the spells commingled, they did exactly what anyone with half a brain would have expected—gave birth to the most powerful Unseelie singularity yet. Then the bloody fool left it trapped inside a book, alone. We do not sleep nor do we suffer solitude well. It is the most dreaded of Fae punishments to be bound in isolation without stimulation. Any Fae imprisoned with nothing for half a million years will go mad. Then come back from it. Then go mad again, worse. Over and over. Even if MacKayla carries only part of the Sinsar Dubh’s sentience, she is still a pure psychopath with immeasurable knowledge and power. That is what you seek to remove from her. There is no way to strip such a being from her body. It will never let her go. It will destroy her if it thinks you might succeed. There is no saving MacKayla. You must accept that you have no choice but to kill her.”

Barrons said softly, “I will never accept that.”

“Then you doom us all,” Cruce warned.

Barrons murmured, “Psychopaths have their weaknesses.”

“And are so savage one rarely gains the offensive long enough to exploit them,” Cruce retorted.

“The two of you should know,” Christian said dryly.

Barrons closed his eyes and rubbed his jaw, the rasp of his hand against stubble loud to Jada’s ears in the hostile silence of the office. Finally he opened them and said to Cruce, “If you were the Mac version of the Sinsar Dubh, what would you want?”

“A better body,” Cruce said without hesitation. “One not human, with no mortal limitations. That would be any Fae’s first priority.”

“How would you get a better body? I already offered mine. It refused.”

Jada inhaled sharply. “Are you kidding me? Do you know what it might do with your—” She broke off, not about to discuss the Nine’s extraordinary abilities in front of Cruce.

Cruce said, “If it can’t seize another body—and it must doubt its ability or it would have taken your offer, or tried to take mine—it will go after the Seelie Queen’s elixir, the true Elixir of Life.”

“Which is where?”

Cruce shrugged. “None but the queen is privy to that information.”

Jada said, “She’s missing and has been since the night you were iced at the abbey.” And they desperately needed her if they were to have any hope of saving their world. She alone possessed the power to wield the dangerous Song of Making.

“Then it would appear the Book is out of luck,” Cruce said lightly.

Christian shook his head. “False. There is something it can do and you know it. What is it?”

Barrons growled, “We’ll hand you to Mac on a bloody platter if you don’t tell us everything you know. Either you’re with me or you’re in my motherfucking way.”