I glanced sourly over at Barrons.

I’d never had a happy one. They’d been various shades of sucky since kindergarten, when Chip Johnson ate too many iced cookies and threw up all over my new dress. I’d been drinking fruit punch, and when his puke hit me, I had an involuntary sympathetic response and spewed punch everywhere. It had set off a chain reaction of five-year-olds vomiting that I still couldn’t think about without getting queasy.

Even back in second and third grade, Valentine’s Day had been a stressful experience for me. I’d wake up dreading school. Mom always got Alina and me cards for everyone in our class, but a lot of moms weren’t as sensitive. I’d sit at my desk and hold my breath, praying someone besides Tubby Thompson or Blinky Brewer would remember me.

Then, in middle school, we had the Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girls had to ask the guys to go, putting on even more pressure. Adding insult to injury on what was supposed to be the most romantic day of the year, I was forced to risk rejection by asking out the guy of my dreams and praying that, by the time I got my nerve up, there’d be someone left besides Tubby and Blinky. In eighth grade, I waited too long and nobody popular was left, so I’d blow-dried my forehead on the high-heat setting, spritzed my sheets with water, and faked the flu that morning. Mom made me go anyway. The scorch mark on my forehead gave me away. I’d hastily cut bangs to try to cover it and had ended up at the dance dateless, miserable, with a painful burn and a bad haircut.

High school brought along a whole new set of problems. I shook my head, in no mood to relive teenage horrors. Bright side was, this Valentine’s Day could have been a whole lot worse. At least I’d get to sleep tonight with the comforting knowledge that Barrons was alive.

“Where to now?” I asked.

He stared straight ahead. The rattlesnake moved in his chest.

We pulled up at 939 Rêvemal Street, in front of the demolished entrance to Chester’s, the club that had once been Dublin’s number-one hotspot for the jaded rich and beautiful bored, until it was destroyed on Halloween. I stared at him disbelievingly.

He parked and turned off the engine.

“I’m not going in Chester’s. They want me dead in there.”

“And if they smell fear on you, they’ll try to kill you.” He opened the door and got out.

“Your point?”

“If I were you, I’d try to smell like something else.”

“Why do I have to go in?” I groused. “Can’t you visit your buddies by yourself?”

“Do you want to see your parents or not?”

I leapt out, slammed the door, and ran after him, skirting rubble. I had no idea why he was offering—certainly not because he was trying to be nice—but I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity. As unpredictable as my life was, I wasn’t going to miss a single chance to spend time with the people Iloved.

As if he’d read my thoughts, he tossed over his shoulder, “I said see them. Not visit with them.”

I hated the thought of my parents being held in the belly of the seedy Unseelie hangout, but I had to concede that underground, in the middle of Barrons’ men, was probably the safest place for them. They couldn’t go back to Ashford. The Unseelie Princes knew where we lived.

The only other possibilities were the abbey, the bookstore, or with V’lane. Not only were there Shades in the abbey still, the Sinsar Dubh had paid a deadly visit, and I didn’t trust Rowena with a butter knife. I certainly didn’t want them hanging around me, seeing what a mess I’d become. And V’lane—with his dim understanding of humans—might decide to tuck them away on a beach with an illusion of Alina, which my dad could handle, but it would definitely push my mom over the edge. We might never get her out of there.

Chester’s it was.

The club had once been the most popular place in the city, accessible by invitation only, with marble pillars that framed an ornate entrance into the three-story club, but lavish French-style gas lamps had been ripped from the concrete and used as battering rams against the façade. Fallen roof supports had crushed a world-renowned hand-carved bar and shattered elegant stained-glass windows. The club sign dangled in pieces above the entrance, chunks of concrete blocked the door, and the building was heavily covered with graffiti.

The new entrance to the club was around back, secreted beneath an inconspicuous, battered metal door in the ground, close to the crumbling foundation. If you didn’t know about the club, you wouldn’t give a second thought to what appeared to be a forgotten cellar door. The dance floors were so far underground and so well soundproofed that, unless you had Dani’s superhearing, you’d never know there was a party going on.

“I can’t be part of an Unseelie caste,” I told him as he opened the door. “I can touch the Seelie spear.”

“Some say the Unseelie King created the sidhe-seers with his imperfect Song. Others say he had sex with human women to found the bloodlines. Perhaps your blood is diluted enough that it poses no such problem.”

Typical Barrons. He had an answer for all the things I didn’t want to know but none for the things I did.

After descending a ladder, pushing open another door, and going down a second ladder, we arrived at the real entrance to the club, an industrial foyer with tall double doors.

Since I’d last been here, someone had hired a decorator and replaced the tall wood doors with new ones that were black and glossy, the height of urban chic, so highly polished that I could see the couple who’d followed us down reflected in them. She was dressed like me in a long slim skirt, high-heeled boots, and a fur-trimmed coat. He stood near, his body angled in on her, like a walking shield.