She eyed me with new interest and nodded. “You carry the spear and I hear you’re a null. We might work well together.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak so I just nodded back.

Leaning forward, in a voice taut with rage, she told me every detail, interpreting my complete immobility and silence as an appropriate show of abject horror and like-minded rage.

When she finished, she pushed to her feet, bristling with restless energy, told me she was due back at the abbey and would catch up with me later, so we could get to work identifying the monster that had done such horrific things to Jo and go hunt it together.

As the door banged shut, I hung my head and, after a long, wheezing inhale during which so much pain exploded inside my chest that it locked me down from lungs to lips, I doubled over heaving in silent, suffocating convulsions, pounding the floor with my fist. Finally, just when I thought I might die, a sob ripped free from my throat with such force that it burned like fire and I began to cry.

No, I began to keen. No, I began to gnash my teeth and tear at my hair and wail like my Irish ancestors’ legendary banshee.

I knew what monster had killed Jo.

Me.

JADA

I was so irritated, I didn’t even think of accessing the slipstream.

I walked like a Joe, hands shoved deep in my pockets, scowling at the day, muttering beneath my breath, unaware of the passage of either scenery or time until I realized I was standing in the middle of the green at Trinity College.

I stopped walking and took stock of myself. I was feeling dangerously like Dani again. That was unacceptable. I had a world to save. And a personal mission I had to find time for.

The past twenty-four hours felt as surreal as if I’d been battling Silverside again. Although in Dublin thirty-five days had passed, for me it was a mere twenty-four hours, give or take a few, and those twenty-four hours had been jam-packed with crises, each carrying significant emotional currency.

The battle at the abbey. Watching my women die. The fire. Shazam and my meltdown. Ryodan burning himself. The Sweeper capturing us. Mac’s sacrifice. Dealing with the cuff and Cruce. Hacking off Ryodan’s head with my sword. Trying to predict the Sinsar Dubh’s moves. Mac regaining control over the Book, joining us in Ryodan’s office, then losing it again. The Sinsar Dubh grabbing me in that scant split second I’d still been processing Mac’s transformation, swiping the spear and nearly strangling me, the floor dropping out beneath us, falling, getting up and dashing into the White Mansion in a desperate bid to position the stones around her before she reached the queen.

Failing.

The queen passing the True Magic of her race into Mac and shoving her back through the mirror, so we could contain her while she was immobilized. The painful mixture of triumph and grief as I’d watched the blue-black wall flare into life, incarcerating my friend in a prison where I’d had no idea what hell she might suffer. We’d only just reconnected again.

I dropped down onto a bench, turned my face up to faint tendrils of sun that penetrated a dense cloud cover and just breathed.

I smiled faintly, remembering the moment Mac had stepped out of the prison, leaving the Sinsar Dubh behind.

Then I scowled, thinking about “Saint Ryodan.”

Then I got ahold of myself, emptied my mind of everything, centered myself with my breath, stood and performed a kata to reengage my energy. Abandoning myself to the fluid motion, I became nothing but a strong young body capable of fueling a stronger young mind. By the time I permitted myself to remember the past twenty-four hours again, they rolled off me like water from a duck.

I was calm, energized, and ready for the day.

My feet had taken me to the place I needed to be. They usually did. Some might say they hadn’t the night I’d run from Mac and leapt into the Hall of All Days, but I didn’t see things like that, as if there were clearly defined right and wrong turns in life. There was what I’d done. And what I was going to do.

Right now it was time to add my brainpower to the mental energy being harnessed at Trinity College, and amp it up a few hundred thousand kilowatts.

I found Dancer alone in a long, narrow laboratory in the physics building, beneath a bank of windows through which intermittent shafts of sunlight spilled.

He was peering into a microscope, oblivious to my presence, so I paused in the door, watching him.

I used to watch him a lot when we were young, wait until he was engrossed in a videogame or a movie, and stare unabashedly. I’d thought he had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. I’d admired his hair, the way he sprawled like a cat soaking up sun, how he often smiled at an inner thought, sometimes laughed out loud.

His hair was a mass of dark tousled waves that told me he’d been thinking hard, running his hands through it incessantly. He had on tight, straight-legged faded jeans, black hiking boots, and a black tee-shirt with the words: I’M LIKE PI—REALLY LONG AND I GO ON FOREVER. There were two pencils stuck behind his left ear. I couldn’t see his right one but was willing to bet he had a couple stuck behind that one, too.

He stood, peering into the scope, and when he raised his hand to adjust it, the muscles in his shoulder bunched and smoothed out again. I narrowed my eyes, noticing how well-defined his arm was and that his skin was lightly tanned from stretching out in the sun on those rare days it shone. When did he develop that biceps? How did I miss how thick his forearms were, my geeky, hunky friend? When did his shoulders get so cut and how had I missed the swell of his traps? My gaze dropped in an objective inquiry to ascertain whether the rest of him matched. It did, and I was struck again by the notion that I’d simply not seen him when I was young. I’d found him attractive in a boy-genius way. I’d failed to notice he was a man.

“Hey,” I said, nipping that bud of thought before it blossomed further.

His head whipped up and he moved so fast he caught a beaker with his elbow and knocked it over. It tumbled from the counter, hit the floor and shattered before he could catch it.

He stared at me a long moment then said coolly, “So. You’re back. Again.”

I offered him a smile and said lightly, “Back like Jack. In like Flynn. Ready to brainstorm like—” I couldn’t think of a name that rhymed with brainstorm. “—Einstein on his best day?”

He didn’t smile back. He looked tired and there were dark circles under his eyes.