“Now you understand why we must do it. Not only is it possible the Book could destroy our planet far more quickly than the black holes, there are things it could do while in possession of your body that would leave you irrevocably scarred. I don’t mean physically. Once you’re contained, I’ll move you to a place where I can remove the stones and you’ll have the freedom to fight.”

I open my eyes. “What do you mean? What kind of place?” Who did I kill? I fist my hands at my sides, desperate to know. Desperate not to know. He’d specifically said Jada and my parents were “fine.” So, it was someone else. Not one of the Nine, because they would be reborn. Sidhe-seers? Children? Innocent bystanders? Christian? Jayne? All of them? Did I slaughter thousands in a single crushing blow?

“A place where your battle can take as long as it must without consequence, without you having to worry about destroying worlds. Even those you think don’t matter,” he adds dryly.

“And you just so happen to know a place like that?” I narrow my eyes. “Oh, God, you were so certain I’d fail, so sure I’d open the Book that you prepared for it!”

“You had an undiscovered country inside you. That gave you two options: pretend it doesn’t exist and never set foot inside it, even though you know it’s governed by a maniacal little Hitler determined to chip away at your borders and conquer you—or march in and start a war. I’d have been disappointed had you done anything less.”

He’d just put into words exactly how I’d felt from the moment I realized the Book was inside me, and both options had terrified me. I’d begun leaning more and more toward the “starting a war” option. Then, at least, I wouldn’t be vacillating. Living in fear of two options would always be harder than biting the bullet and choosing one to confront.

Because living in fear isn’t living.

“But you stopped me from taking a spell for your son. I could have marched in then.”

He smiles faintly. “I never said I was in a hurry for you to start a war. Come.” He extends his hand again.

Instead of taking it, I reach up, lace my fingers in his dark hair and pull his head down. Brush my lips to his, a whisper of a kiss, breath and warmth, barely any friction. I lean against him, motionless, opening all my senses, absorbing the moment, every nuance, committing it to my memory in flawless detail so once I’m trapped in whatever manner I’m about to be trapped, I can re-create him, us together, in my mind. I tip my head back and put all my love in my eyes. Let it pile up and blaze there.

He stares down at me a long moment. A muscle works in his jaw and crimson sparks flare deep in his irises. “Your bloody timing bloody sucks,” he says tightly.

“I thought we’d just established this moment is all we have. That means my timing can never suck,” I say lightly.

He splays his fingers across my jaw, tilts my head back and slants his mouth over mine in a hot, hungry kiss that knifes straight to my soul.

When we finally move apart, I slip my hand into his.

He speaks the words of the feth fiada and we vanish into the night.

To imprison me. Quite possibly forever.

CAGED

* * *

My mother sat on the other side of the bars, crying.

She said she didn’t have a choice: her parents were dead, my dad was gone, she had no friends who could handle me, there was no dog that could keep me safe while she went to work, and somebody had to pay our bills.

She told me I was an especially good girl and she knew I couldn’t help freeze-framing because I was too young to understand the danger it put us in. She said even though I had a mega brain, certain concepts were still beyond my grasp. I don’t think anything was beyond my grasp. I just didn’t have any fear.

She told me one day I would be grown up enough that the cage would no longer be necessary. I thought maybe she’d let me out at night when she was home but she said I didn’t have the self-discipline yet to risk it. She thought I’d run away. I probably would have.

She wasn’t being mean to me.

She was doing what she had to do. For us. She worried about me and was keeping me safe.

Years passed.

We developed routines. Life went on. You don’t know things are strange when you don’t know any different. She was good to me.

She pushed in food through the same slot in the cage that I used to push out bedpans.

In the evenings, after we ate dinner together on the floor, she brought me bowls of warm soapy water and helped me give myself a bath and clean my hair, which she brushed and braided by reaching through the bars.

We played jacks and cards and she bought me coloring books and crayons and hung my best pictures on the living room walls. On special nights we had popcorn and she rented a movie for us.

My birthdays came and went and I was always so excited because each year it was the very best thing that could possibly be happening to me—I was getting OLDER. We marked the occasion each year with my favorite meal of thick Irish stew and soda bread and creamed corn and chocolate ice cream for dessert, while telling each other bodacious stories about all the thrilling things we would one day do when I was free.

She hung a calendar on the wall behind the new sofa she bought to replace the couch I’d broken, and I watched with shining eyes as she crossed off the weeks and months, knowing each black slash took me one day closer to the last calendar she would ever hang.

Though she was gone all day, she left me well cared for with the TV on, lots of blankets and pillows, and all my favorite food, which we could afford again, and bedpans nearby.

When she came home at night, she’d spend hours with me, reading me stories, telling me about her day and all the wonderful things we were going to do when I was OLDER and she could let me out.

I really thought we were going to make it.

I thought one day the door would swing wide and we’d get busy doing all those things we’d missed.

She said that a lot: that we were going to make up for LOST TIME. I heard that word in all capitals, too, colored the dreary shade of dirty snow.

But I think whenever you put other people in a cage—any kind of cage—you start to think of them as less real.

JADA

Jada sat in Ryodan’s office, her arms folded behind her head, long legs outstretched, boots kicked up on the desk, body thrumming with restless energy. Killing time, waiting for something to happen, wasn’t one of her strong suits. In truth, it wasn’t a suit in her deck of cards at all, it was incarceration in a high security prison. Yet here she sat and would continue to sit for days, if it meant getting Mac back.