“That ain’t Barrons!” Dani snaps indignantly.

The name goes through me like a knife. No, it ain’t Barrons and, unless I’m convincing, it never will be again.

“It ain’t V’lane, neither!” Anger mixes with bafflement in her voice. “Mac, what’cha doing? Where the feck you been? I been looking all over for you. Been a month. Maaac!” she wails the last part plaintively. “I got scoop! Pay attention to me!”

“Shall I get rid of her?” Darroc murmurs.

“She’s a little tough to shake,” I murmur back. “Give me a minute.”

I step back, smiling up at him. No one can accuse the Fae of lacking in the lust department. It blazes in his not-quite-human eyes. Banked in that heat, I see surprise he tries but fails to mask. I suspect my sister was a little more … refined than I am.

“I’ll be right back,” I promise, and turn slowly, buying time to brace myself for dealing with Dani. I’m going to have to hurt her to get rid of her.

Her face is bright, eager. Her unruly mass of auburn curls is tamed beneath a black bike helmet, lights ablaze. She has on a long black leather coat and high-top black sneakers. Somewhere under that coat is the Sword of Light, unless Darroc sensed it and took it, too. If it’s still there, I wonder if I could draw it swiftly enough to impale myself before she managed to stop me.

I have goals. I focus on them. No time to indulge my guilty conscience and even less point. When I’m done with what I plan to do, everything that happens in this alley tonight will never have taken place, so it doesn’t matter that I hurt this Dani, because she won’t have to live through it in the future I create.

The enormity of freedom that grants me makes me suddenly breathless. Nothing I do from this moment forth will ever come back to bite me in the ass. I’m in a penalty-free zone. I have been since the moment I decided to remake it all.

I study Dani with strange detachment, wondering how much I should change for her. I could keep her mother from being killed. Give her a life that would never harden her, that would let her be open, soft. Let her have fun like Alina and me, play on a beach, not be out in the streets hunting and killing monsters by the tender age of … however old she was when Rowena turned her into a weapon. Eight? Ten?

Now that she has my attention, she beams, and when Dani beams her whole face lights up. She bounces from foot to foot, burning off excited energy. “Where you been, Mac? I missed you! Dude—I mean, man,” she corrects hastily, with a gamine grin, before I can make good on a threat I made in what feels like another lifetime that I would call her by her full name if she ever “duded” me again. “You ain’t never gonna believe what’s been going on! I invented Shade-Busters, and the whole abbey’s been using ’em—even though they ain’t saying nothing about how brilliant I am, like I musta accidentally stumbled onto it or something, when those stupidsidhe-sheep never woulda in a gazillion years,” she mutters sourly. But then she brightens again. “And you’re never gonna believe it—even I can’t hardly—but I kicked a Hunter’s ass and killed the fecker!” She frowns and looks a little irritated. “Well, maybe Jayne helped some, but I’m the one that killed it. And, feckin’ A, you ain’t never gonna guess this one—dude!” She begins bouncing from foot to foot so quickly and agitatedly that she becomes a black leather smudge in the night. “The feckin’ Sinsar Dubh came to the abbey and it—”

Abruptly, she’s no longer bouncing but standing still, looking at me, mouth hanging open, but nothing’s coming out.

She stares past me, at me, then past me again. Her lips tighten and her eyes narrow. Her hand flashes inside her coat.

I can tell by the look on her face that it encounters emptiness where her sword should be. But she doesn’t back up, not Dani. She stands her ground. If I had anything left inside me, I’d smile. Thirteen and she’s got the heart of a lion.

“Something going on here I ain’t getting, Mac?” she says tightly. “I’m standing here, see, trying to think of a reason, any ol’ reason at all, you might be kissing that fecker, but I ain’t finding none.” She glares at me. “Thinking this is a little worse than me watching porn. Dude.”

Oh, yes, she’s upset. She just unapologetically “duded” me. I steel myself. “Lot going on here you ain’t getting,” I say coolly.

She searches my face, wondering if I’m playing double agent or something, undercover with the enemy. I need to convince her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’m not. I need her to go away and stay away. I can’t afford a superspeedy supersleuth interfering with my plans.

I also don’t want her around long enough for Darroc to realize she could cause serious problems for us if she felt like it. Penalty-free zone or not, there’s no reality in which I could kill Dani or watch her be killed by anyone else. Family isn’t always born; sometimes it’s found.

She said the Book was at the abbey. I need to know when. Until I discover how Darroc plans to merge with the Sinsar Dubh and am certain I can do it myself, I’m not getting him anywhere near it. I’m going to play the same game with Darroc that I played with V’lane and Barrons—only now for a very different reason—called “Dodge the Dark Book.”

“Like what, Mac?” She props her fists at her waist. She’s so upset she’s vibrating, shivering so fast that her edges are getting blurry. “Prick tore down the walls, killed billions, wiped out Dublin, had you gang-raped—I’m the one that saved you, ’member? And now you’re sucking on”—she grimaces and shudders—“the feckin’ tongue of an Unseelie-eater! What the feck?”