I wouldn’t have believed that, either. What made them so certain fragments of the Song were in the Book? Or that the queen could even read it? The concubine might have once known the First Language, but she’d obviously drunk from the cauldron too many times to remember it now.

And Barrons hadn’t said: Then I will sit down and read it, because somehow I know the First Language, and once I get the spell I’m after, you all can do whatever the fuck you want. Fix the world or destroy it, I don’t care.

And Ryodan hadn’t said: Then we’re killing you, Mac, because we don’t trust you and you’ll no longer be necessary.

Unfortunately, I believed the last two.

The tension I felt was unbearable. I hadn’t realized how much I took Barrons for granted until he’d made it plain earlier today that his time with me had an expiration date.

I could lose him.

Maybe I didn’t know what I wanted from him, but at least I knew I wanted him around. That had always seemed to be enough for him.

Unfair as hell and you know it, a small voice inside me said.

At my hip, my radio squawked. “Check, Mac.”

I pressed a button. “Check, Ryodan.”

We tested the radios all around.

“What are you waiting for, girl?” Rowena barked. “Get up there and find it!”

I nudged the Hunter with muscles and mind and watched her dwindle beneath me, as great black wings powerfully churned the night air. I wanted to squash her with my thumb like the infuriating speck she was.

Then I forgot her in the pleasure of the moment.

This was a rush.

This felt … good.

Familiar.

Free.

We rose higher and higher into the sky. Rooftops receded beneath us.

In front of me was the silvery coastline. Behind me, open country.

The air was crisp with a tang of salt. Lights beneath us were few and far between. I laughed out loud. This was amazing. I was flying.

I’d done it before, with Barrons, but this was different. It was just me and my Hunter and the night. I felt wide open with possibilities. The world was my oyster. No, the worlds were my oysters.

Damn, it was good to be me!

I suddenly knew something about Hunters—maybe it fed it to me with its mind. Not only were the massive icy dragons sifters, they made the Silvers obsolete. They weren’t Fae. They never had been. They were amused by us. Aloofly entertained. They hung out with the Unseelie because they found it … interesting to pass time in such a fashion. They’d never been imprisoned.

No one owned them.

No one ever could.

In fact, we didn’t even begin to understand what they really were. (Not alive the way we thought. Was I flying on a huge breathing meteor through the sky? Carved from that of which the universe had begun?)

I reached out for theHunter’s mind. You can sift worlds!

It turned its head and fixed me with a fiery orange eye, as if to say, How stupid are you? You knew that.

No, I didn’t.

It snorted a tendril of smoky fire back at me, scorching my jeans.

“Ow!” I clapped a hand over my knee.

Don’t need blinders. Wipe off his marks. Interfere with my vision. That one should be terminated. He plays with the instruments of gods.

“Barrons? What marks?”

On my wings, the back of my head. Wipe them off.

“No.”

It was disappointed but fell silent, accepting my decision.

I opened my sidhe-seer senses. Or was it that part of me that was the Unseelie King? I gasped.

I knew where the Sinsar Dubh was. It was outside Barrons Books and Baubles. Looking for me.

“East,” I said into my radio. “It’s at the bookstore.”

They crept around it, draping a net of stones chiseled from the cliffs of its home, closing in slowly but surely, with my guidance.

It could sense me near. It wasn’t sure where. But it didn’t seem to be able to sense them.

I listened to chatter on my radio.

Rowena had begun with her demands that the Seelie not be allowed to see the Book once it was sealed away, although Kat tried desperately and diplomatically to curb her imperious attitude.

The Seelie were growing more incensed by the moment. And getting more imperious by the moment.

Drustan was trying to run interference, but the other Keltar began bickering among themselves about the role of the Seelie and the role of the sidhe-seers, insisting their part to play was more important.

Barrons was getting angrier with each passing minute, and Lor had just threatened to drop the stone and leave if everyone didn’t shut the fuck up.

“Two blocks west of you, V’lane,” I said. He was walking, not sifting. Said the Book would sense his presence if he did.

“It’s moving again, fast,” I cried. It had just shot three blocks in a matter of seconds. “It has to be in a car. Whoever it’s got is driving it. I’m going to try to get closer for a better look.”

“Don’t you dare!” Rowena said. “You stay up there, far away from it, girl!”

I scowled. A Hunter-sized bowel movement on her head would go a long way toward making me feel better. For now. I was afraid killing her might be all that would satisfy me long term.

“Get off my back, old woman,” I muttered, and turned the voice function of my radio off so I could hear them but they couldn’t hear me.

I didn’t want anyone to pick up on the whoosh-whoosh of the wings that had abruptly appeared beside me—which were much too massive to belong to the Hunter I was on.