Faefever

He gave me a tight smile.

My orgasms were not petit mal but repeated births, a re-creation of myself every time I came. It was sex that was life that was blood that was God that filled every empty orifice I had, inside and out.
And it was killing me.
And I knew it.
And I had to have more.
We rolled and slid across the cool marble floor of the anteroom, my three dark princes and I, seeking purchase on the carpeted stairs, one beneath me, one behind, one inside my mouth.
They moved deep in me, filling me with sensations as kaleidoscopic as their tattooed bodies. I narrowed to a tiny blossom, exploded outward, and fragmented again and again into bits of shattered woman. They tasted of nectar, smelled of dark, drugging spices; their bodies were hard and sculpted and perfect, and if every now and then the ice of their black torques and pink tongues and white teeth were sharp nips of frostbite at my skin, it was a small price to pay for what they did inside me.
I felt my mind slipping; moments of my life flashed before my eyes, before dropping away to some forsaken place. I cried out, begging to be freed, but my mouth shaped only words of instruction, and demand: more, harder, faster, there.
My last month in Dublin, with all its hopes and worries and fears, flashed through my mind—and was forgotten. There went the day I’d spent in Faery with Alina, followed by all memory of Mallucé and Christian and the O’Bannions and Fiona and Barrons, and meeting Rowena in the bar, that first night in Ireland. My summer was flying backward past my eyes, falling away. Was there a fourth male kissing me now? Tasting me? Why couldn’t I see him? Who was he?
I pricked myself on the day of Alina’s death, then it was gone, too, and that day hadn’t happened, and my life continued to unfurl backward.
I lost my college years to Pestilence’s kisses. I bade farewell to high school with Famine spurting sweetly in my mouth. I lost my childhood in three Fae Princes’ arms. If there was a fourth, I never saw his face. Only felt the strangeness of another, who wasn’t quite the same.
And then I’d never been born.
I was only now.
This moment. This orgasm. This hunger. This endless emptiness. This mindless need.
I was aware that others had entered the anteroom but I could not see beyond my dark princes. Didn’t care. More was good.
When my princes drew away from me, my body grew so cold I thought I would die. I writhed on the floor, begging for more.
Someone reached for me.
I grasped with both hands for the succor of touch, tossed a tangle of hair from my eyes, and looked up, straight into the face of the Lord Master.
“I think she’ll obey me now,” he murmured.
Obey him?
I’d die for him.

I couldn’t look at them. They were too much. I turned away but they were there again, forcing me to gaze upon their frightening, fantastic faces. My eyes widened, widened still.
I wept tears of blood that scaled my cheeks. I scrubbed at them with my fingers, and they came away seared, crimson.
Then the princes’ mouths were on my fingertips, with tongues of soothing coolness, and fangs of licking ice, and a beast far more primitive than Savage Mac, and far beyond my control, yawned and stretched her arms above her head, and awakened with a delicious sense of anticipation.
This was what she’d been born for. What she’d been waiting for all this time. Here. Now. Them.
Sex that was worth dying for.
I kicked off my boots. They peeled away my jeans and underwear, and turned me between them, kissing, tasting, licking, taking, feeding from the passion they fed in me, slamming it back at me, taking it, returning it again, and with each transfer between us it grew into something bigger than me, bigger than them, into a beast of its own.

“Turn it off,” I forced myself to say, but I was smiling when I said it, and my command lacked heat.
I was so relieved to see him!
My sweater was on the floor. I bent to pick it up.
He moved from the shaft of brilliant sunlight and glided up the stairs. “Sidhe-seer,” he said.
As the door closed behind him, and the anteroom returned to its dimly lit state, my pupils dilated, adjusted, and I realized my error. Gasping, I took a step back. “You’re not V’lane!”
The exotic prince’s gaze fixed on my breasts, sculpted by a lacy bra. I pressed my sweater to my chest. He made a sound deep in his throat and my knees buckled with sexual anticipation. Only with immense effort did I remain standing. I wanted to be on my knees. I should be on my knees. He wanted me on my knees. And hands. My head was vacuumed of thought. My lips and legs moved apart.
He stepped closer.
I fought a frantic battle with myself, managed to step back.
“No,” he said. “I am not.” Lids lowered over alien, ancient eyes, lifted. “Whatever that is.”
“Wh-who are you?” I stammered.
He took another step forward.
I took another step back. There went my sweater again. Shit.
“The end,” he said simply.
The doors leading to the inner sanctum opened behind me. I felt the draft of passage, and more of the strange, disturbing scent filled my nostrils.
Lust sledgehammered me, front and rear.
“We are all the end,” a cold voice floated over my shoulder. “And beginning. Soon. Later. After.”
“Time. Irrelevant,” the other replied. “Round is round.”
“We are always. You are not.”
They might as well have been speaking a foreign language. I turned, hardly able to breathe. There was a lacy bra lying on the floor at my feet. It was mine. Shit again. The air was cool on my flushed skin. I would not ask “after what?” There were two of them. Two death-by-sex Fae. Two princes. Could I outrun them? Could I survive them? They could sift.

FIFTEEN

I spent most of the day before Halloween cleaning up after the prior night’s festivities. Unlike the aftermath of fun back home in Georgia, the remnants of a rollicking good time in Dublin weren’t sticky plastic cups, crusts of half-eaten pizza, and cigarette butts dropped in beer bottles, but dead monsters and body parts.
Problem: when you kill a Fae, they cease projecting glamour, and contrary to pop culture’s inane belief, the corpses do not disintegrate. They remain here, in our world, perfectly visible to all. In the pleasure of the kill, I forgot the corpses. So did Dani. It’s not like they suddenly become visible to me when they die. They’re always visible to me.
I learned from the morning news about the discovery of “movie props displayed in gruesome fashion around Dublin,” rubbery monsters from the set of some “in-production horror movie, arranged as a prank, and people mustn’t be alarmed, but call the Garda; they’ve designated manpower to clean . . . er, pick them up.”
My phone was ringing before the spot was over. It was Rowena. “Clean them up, you bloody imbecile!”
I was eating breakfast. “They just said the Garda are taking care of it,” I muttered around a mouthful, mostly to irritate her. I’d been thinking the same thing. I needed to tidy up, and quickly. I was ashamed of myself for not realizing what I was doing.
“Did you leave a trail of bodies that can be traced to you?”
I winced. Probably. “I didn’t know you cared, Ro,” I said coolly.
“Was Dani with you last night?” she demanded.
“No.”
“You did all that by yourself?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How many?”
“I lost count. Over a hundred.”
“Why?”
“I’m sick of doing nothing.”
She was quiet for several moments, then, “I want you at the abbey for the ritual tomorrow.”
I almost choked on a bite of crusty muffin top. That was the last thing I’d expected her to say. I’d been bracing for a lengthy accounting of my many failings, and had been contemplating hanging up before she had the chance to begin. Now I was glad I hadn’t. “Why?”
There was another long silence. “There is strength in numbers,” she said finally. “You are a powerful sidhe-seer.” Whether I like it or not remained unsaid, but floated in the air.
Like the MacKeltars, she wanted all the power that she could get at her disposal.
I’d been thinking of crashing it anyway. I felt drawn to fight with them. If they were making a stand, I wanted to be there. I didn’t feel drawn to join the MacKeltars the same way. I guess blood tells. Now I had an invitation. “What time?”
“The ceremony begins precisely one hour after sunset.”
I didn’t need to consult the calendar hanging in my bedroom upstairs to know the sun would rise tomorrow at 7:23 A.M. and set at 4:54 P.M. Nature rules me in ways she never used to. I can’t wait for the long, bright days of summer again, and not just because of my love of the sun. These short, dreary days of fall and winter frighten me. December 22, the Winter Solstice, will be the shortest day of the year, at seven hours, twenty-eight minutes, and forty-nine seconds of daylight. The sun will rise at 8:39 and set at 4:08. That gives the Shades fifteen hours, thirty-two minutes, and eleven seconds to come out and play. More than twice as much as humans get. “When will we know for sure it worked?”
“Shortly after we open the orb,” she said, but she didn’t sound certain of that. It was unsettling to hear doubt in Rowena’s voice.
“I’ll think about it.” That was a lie. I’d most definitely be there. “What’s in it for me?”
“That you ask such a thing only reinforces my opinion of you.” She hung up.
I finished my muffin and coffee, then headed out to sweep up breadcrumbs, and keep the monsters from my door.
I stuffed Unseelie corpses in trash Dumpsters, hid them in abandoned buildings, and even managed to shove two into a concrete pour on a construction site when the workers took a coffee break.
I dragged the ones closest to the bookstore into the nearby Dark Zone. Even in broad daylight, it was hard for me to make myself go in there. I could feel Shades in all directions, the pulsating darkness of their voracious, terrible hunger. Where did they go? Were they wedged in tiny dark crannies of the bricks, watching me? Did they slither off underground? Were they piled up in dark corners inside the decrepit buildings? How small could they get? Might one be hiding in that empty soda can, at just the right angle to avoid the light? I’d never been a kick-the-can girl, and wasn’t about to start now.
The streets were oddly empty. I would find out later that record numbers of people called in sick the last two days before Halloween. Fathers took long overdue personal days. Mothers kept their children home from school, for no good reason. I think you didn’t need to be a sidhe-seer to feel the taut, expectant hush in the air, to hear the distant drumming of dark hooves on a troubled wind, moving closer, closer.
Closer.
I sliced, diced, and bottled a new stash of Unseelie while I was out. I’d expected Jayne days ago, but decided maybe the effects lasted longer in ordinary humans.
On my way back to the bookstore, I stopped at the grocery to grab a few items, then popped into a bakery and picked up the order I’d placed yesterday.
Then I stood under the spray of a steaming hot shower, naked but for the thigh sheath I’d taken to wearing so I could give myself better than a one-handed hair washing, and scrubbed away the taint of dead Unseelie.
By midnight, Barrons hadn’t shown up and I was feeling pissy. He’d said he’d be here. I’d planned for it.
By one, I was worried. By two, I was certain he wasn’t going to show. At three-fifteen, I called him. He answered on the first ring.
“Where the hell are you?” I snapped, at the same time he snapped, “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been waiting for hours,” I said.
“For what?”
“You said you’d be here.”
“I was delayed.”
“Maybe you could have called?” I said sarcastically. “You know, picked up the phone and said ‘Hey, Mac, I’m running late.’ ”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then Barrons said softly, “You’ve mistaken me for someone else. Do not wait on me, Ms. Lane. Do not construct your world around mine. I’m not that man.”
His words stung. Probably because I’d done exactly that: structured my night around him, even played out in my head how it was going to go. “Screw you, Barrons.”
“I’m not that man, either.”
“Oh! In your dreams! Allow me to put this into words you taught me yourself: I resent it when you waste my time. Keys, Barrons. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. The Viper’s in the shop.” And I missed it like I missed my long blond hair. We’d bonded, the Viper and I. I doubted I’d ever get it back. It had been heavily damaged from its high-speed trip down the sidewalk and, if I knew Barrons as well as I thought I did, he’d sell it before he’d drive it again, no matter how flawlessly it was repaired. I kind of felt the same way. When you spend that much money, you want perfection. “I need a car to drive.”
“Why?”
“I’ve decided to go to the abbey for the ritual,” I said.
“I’m not certain that’s wise.”
“It’s not your decision.”
“Maybe it should be,” he said.
“I can’t do anything to help the MacKeltars, Barrons.”
“I didn’t say you should. Perhaps you should remain in the store tomorrow night. It’s the safest place for you.”
“You want me to hide?” My voice rose with disbelief on the last word. Months ago, I might have happily hid. Watched late night TV while painting my fingernails and toenails to match, a divine shade of pink. Now? Not a chance.
“Sometimes caution is the wisest course,” he said.
“Tell you what, Barrons: you come be cautious with me, I’ll stay in, too. Not because I want your company,” I said before he could make a pithy comment, “but because of that whole good-for-the-goose-and-gander thing. I’m not going to gander helplessly.”
“You’re the goose, Ms. Lane. I’m the gander.”
As if I could mistake his gender. “That was a double entendre,” I informed him stiffly. “I was being clever. Gander has multiple meanings. What good is being clever when the person you’re being clever to is too dense to get it?”
“I’m not dense,” he said just as stiffly, and I sensed one of our childish fights looming on the horizon. “As a double entendre it didn’t work. Look up double entendre.”
“I know what double entendre means. And you can just shove your stupid birthday cake. I don’t even know why I bothered!”
The silence was so protracted that I decided he’d hung up.
I hung up, too, wishing I’d done it first.
Twenty minutes later, Barrons stepped through the door from the back of the bookstore. Ice was crystallized in his hair, and he was pale from extreme cold.
I was sitting on the sofa in the rear conversation area, too aggravated to sleep. “Good. You’ve finally stopped pretending you don’t use the mirror. It’s about time.”
“I only use the mirror when I must, Ms. Lane. Even for me, it is . . . unpleasant.”
Curiosity overrode irritation. “What constitutes ‘must’? Where do you go?”
He glanced around. “Where is the cake?”
“I threw it away.”
He gave me a look.
I sighed, got up, and got it out of the fridge. It was a seven-layer chocolate cake, with alternating raspberry and chocolate cream fillings, frosted pink, with a Happy Birthday JZB in the center, delicately scripted and adorned with flowers. It was beautiful. It was the only thing that had made my mouth water in weeks, besides Unseelie. I set it on the coffee table, then got plates and forks from the cabinet behind the counter.
“I’m confused, Ms. Lane. Is this cake for me, or for you?”
Yeah, well, there was that. I’d been planning on eating a lot of it myself. I’d spared no expense. I could have downloaded forty-seven songs from iTunes instead. “They were out of black icing,” I said dryly. He wasn’t reacting the way I’d planned. He didn’t look the least bit touched or amused. In fact, he was regarding the cake with a mixture of horror and . . . grim fascination; the same way I regard monsters I’m about to kill.
I fidgeted. At the time I’d ordered it, it’d seemed like a good idea. I’d thought it was a humorous way of poking fun at our . . . relationship, while also saying, I know you’re really old and probably not human at all, but whatever you are, you still have a birthday, just like the rest of the world.
“I believe candles are customary,” he said finally.
I reached in my pocket, pulled out candles in the shape of numbers, and one I’d whittled to a stub of a period, and stuck them on top of the cake. He looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head.
“Pi, Ms. Lane? I’d pegged you for failing high school math.”
“I got a D. The little stuff always trips me up. But the big stuff stuck with me.”
“Why pi?”
“It’s irrational and uncountable.” Funny girl, wasn’t I?
“It’s also a constant,” he said dryly.
“They were out of sixes. Seems this time of year six-six-six is big,” I said, lighting the candles. “Obviously, they haven’t seen the real Beast, or they wouldn’t be playing at worshipping it.”
“Have there been more sightings?” He was still frowning at the cake, looking at it as if he expected it to sprout dozens of legs and begin scuttling toward him, thin-lipped, teeth bared.
“It’s been transferring hands every day.” There was a stack of papers by the couch. The crimes the newspapers were reporting made eating breakfast while reading it risky.
He lifted his gaze from the cake to my face.
“It’s just a cake. I promise. No surprises. No chopped-up Unseelie in there,” I joked. “I’ll even eat the first slice.”
“It’s far from ‘just’ a cake, Ms. Lane. That you procured it implies—”
“—that I was having a sweet craving and used you for an excuse to indulge. Blow out the candles, will you? And lighten up, Barrons.” How had I not realized the delicacy of the ice I was on? What in the world had made me think I could give him a birthday cake and he’d be anything but weird about it?
“I’m doing this for you,” he said tightly.
“I get that,” I said. I was really glad I’d vetoed getting balloons. “I just thought it would be fun.” I stood, holding the cake out to him in both hands, so he could blow out candles before they dripped wax on the pretty confection. “I could use a little fun.”
I sensed violence in the room a split second before it erupted. In retrospect, I think he thought he had it caged, and was nearly as surprised as I.
Cake and candles exploded from my hands, shot straight up in the air, hit the ceiling, and stuck there, dripping gobs of icing. I stared up at it. My lovely cake.
Then I was trapped between the wall and his body, with no awareness of having gotten there. He’s frighteningly quick when he wants to be. I think he could give Dani a run for the money. He had my hands pinned above my head, braceleted at the wrists by one of his. The other was around my throat. His head was down and he was breathing hard. For a moment, he rested his face in my neck.
Then he pulled back and stared at me and when he spoke his voice was low with fury. “Never do that again, Ms. Lane. Do not insult me with your silly rituals, and idiotic platitudes. Never try to humanize me. Don’t think we’re the same, you and I. We’re not.”
“Did you have to ruin it?” I cried. “I’d been looking forward to it all day.”
He shook me, hard. “You have no business looking forward to pink cakes. That’s not your world anymore. Your world is hunting the Book and staying alive. They’re mutually exclusive, you bloody fool.”
“No, they’re not! It’s only if I eat pink cakes that I can hunt the Book! You’re right—we’re not the same. I can’t walk through the Dark Zone at night. I don’t scare all the other monsters away. I need rainbows. You don’t. I get that now. No birthdays for Barrons. I’ll pen that in right next to Don’t wait on him and Don’t expect him to save you unless there’s something in it for him. You’re a jackass. There’s a constant for you. I won’t forget it.”
His grip on my throat relaxed. “Good.”
“Fine,” I said, though I don’t really know why. I think I just wanted the last word.
We stared at each other.
He was so close, his body electric, his expression savage.
I moistened my lips. His gaze fixed on them. I think I stopped breathing.
He jerked so sharply away that his long dark coat sliced air, and turned his back to me. “Was that an invitation, Ms. Lane?”
“If it was?” I asked, astonishing myself. What did I think I was doing?
“I don’t do hypotheticals. Little girl.”
I looked at his back. He didn’t move. I thought of things to say. I said none of them.
He vanished through the connecting door.
“Hey,” I shouted after him, “I need a car to drive!” There was no answer.
A large chunk of cake dropped from the ceiling and splatted on the floor.
It was mostly intact, just a little goopy.
Sighing, I got a fork and scraped it onto a plate.
It was noon the next day when I got out of bed, cleared my monster alarm from in front of my door, and opened it.
Waiting outside for me was a thermos of coffee, a bag of doughnuts, a set of car keys, and a note. I unscrewed the thermos top, sipped the coffee, and unfolded the note.
Ms. Lane,
I would prefer you join me in Scotland this evening, but if you insist on helping the old witch, here are keys, as you requested. I moved it for you. It’s the red one, parked in front of the door. Call if you change your mind. I can send a plane as late as 4:00.
CJ
It took me a moment to figure out the initials. Constant Jackass. I smiled. “Apology accepted, Barrons, if it’s the Ferrari.”
It was.

By midnight, Barrons hadn’t shown up and I was feeling pissy. He’d said he’d be here. I’d planned for it.
By one, I was worried. By two, I was certain he wasn’t going to show. At three-fifteen, I called him. He answered on the first ring.
“Where the hell are you?” I snapped, at the same time he snapped, “Are you all right?”
“I’ve been waiting for hours,” I said.
“For what?”
“You said you’d be here.”
“I was delayed.”
“Maybe you could have called?” I said sarcastically. “You know, picked up the phone and said ‘Hey, Mac, I’m running late.’ ”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then Barrons said softly, “You’ve mistaken me for someone else. Do not wait on me, Ms. Lane. Do not construct your world around mine. I’m not that man.”
His words stung. Probably because I’d done exactly that: structured my night around him, even played out in my head how it was going to go. “Screw you, Barrons.”
“I’m not that man, either.”
“Oh! In your dreams! Allow me to put this into words you taught me yourself: I resent it when you waste my time. Keys, Barrons. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. The Viper’s in the shop.”

“She’s with O’Bannion, you know,” I told him through lips that burned with cold. Even Barrons looked chilled, pale.
“I know,” he said.
“She’s eating Unseelie.”
“Yes.”
“Do you care?”
“Fio is her own woman, Ms. Lane.”
“What if I have to kill her?” If she came after me now, I’d have no choice but to stab her.
“She tried to kill you. If her plan had worked, you would have been dead. I underestimated her. I didn’t think her capable of murder. I was wrong. She wanted you out of the way and was willing to sacrifice anything I might want, or need, to accomplish it.”
“Were you her lover?”
He looked at me. “Yes.”
“Oh.” I swirled the cocoa with my spoon. “She was a little old, don’t you think?” I rolled my eyes at myself as soon as I said it. I was going by appearances, not reality. Reality was Barrons was at least twice her age; who knew how much more?
His lips curved faintly.
I began to cry.
Barrons looked horrified. “Stop that immediately, Ms. Lane.”
“I can’t.” I sniffled into my cup of cocoa so he couldn’t see my face.
“Try harder!”
I gave a great sniff and shudder, and turned it off.
“I have not been her lover for . . . some time,” he offered, watching me carefully.
“Oh, get over yourself! That’s not why I cried.”
“Why, then?”
“I can’t do it, Barrons,” I said hollowly. “You saw it. I can’t get . . . that . . . that . . . thing. Who are we kidding?”
We stared into the flames for a time, until long after my cocoa was gone.

“V’lane?” came Barrons’ voice from behind me.
I shook my head, wondering what “I prized most” was, afraid to contemplate it.
I felt the electricity of his body behind me as he reached around me and took the card from my hand. He didn’t move away, and I battled the urge to lean back into him, seeking the comfort of his strength. Would he wrap his arms around me? Make me feel safe, if only for a moment, and if only a delusion?
“Ah, the old ‘what you prize most’ threat,” he murmured.
I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek.
“Such naked pain,” he whispered.
I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch. His hand tightened at the base of my skull and squeezed, and he raised me slowly to my tiptoes. I opened my eyes and it was my turn to inhale sharply. Not human. Oh, no, not this man.
“Never show it to me again.” His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.
“Why? What will you do?”
“What it is my nature to do. Get inside. It’s time for your lesson.”
After I’d received yet another failing grade, Barrons and I cruised the streets.

“One never has an addiction under control. If you eat it again, I will personally kick your ass. Got it?”
“If I eat it again, you can try to personally kick my ass.” Being able to hold my own with Barrons had been one of the many upsides to eating Unseelie. I often craved it for that reason alone.
“I’ll wait till it wears off,” he growled.
“What fun would that be?” I would never forget the night we’d fought, the unexpected lust.
We looked at each other and for a moment those clouds of distrust lifted and I saw his thoughts in his eyes.
You were something to see, he didn’t say.
You were something to feel, I didn’t reply.

The bell over the door tinkled and Barrons stepped in. He was night in an Armani suit, silver-toed boots, black shirt, and dark eyes.
“Not bothering with the mirror tonight?” I said breezily, “Or have you forgotten I know you walk around in it?”
“Kneel before me, Ms. Lane.”
His words surrounded me, infiltrated me, drove me to my knees, like a human before a Fae.
“Doesn’t that just burn?” He gave me one of his scarier smiles. “Kneeling to me must offend every ounce of your perky little being.”
I’d show him perky. Jaw clenched, I tried to rise. I tried to scratch my nose. I couldn’t even do that. I was as locked in place as a person in a body-encompassing straitjacket. “Why does your command lock down my whole body?” At least my vocal cords were working.
“It doesn’t. My order only holds you on your knees. The rest of you is free to move. You’re overmuscling yourself, struggling so hard you’re locking up. When someone uses Voice on you, they’ve got you only to the letter of their command. Remember that. Close your eyes, Ms. Lane.”
It wasn’t an order, but I did it anyway. I managed to wiggle my fingers then my entire hands. I poked around inside my head. The sidhe-seer place burned hot but everything else was dark. The sidhe-seer place didn’t have a thing to do with resisting Voice.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
What an odd question. Didn’t he know everything about me? I’d like to be able to Voice him on that one. “I’m Mac. MacKayla Lane.” Perhaps O’Connor in my blood, but Lane in my heart.
“Strip away the name. Who are you?”
I shrugged. Ha—now only my knees were rooted. The rest of me was moving freely. I swung my arms, to make sure he knew it. “A girl. Twenty-two. A sidhe-seer. A daught—”
“Labels,” he said impatiently. “Who the fuck are you, Ms. Lane?”
I opened my eyes. “I don’t get it.”
“Close your eyes.” Voice ricocheted from wall to wall. My eyes closed as if they were his. “You exist only inside yourself,” he said. “No one sees you. You see no one. You are without censure, beyond judgment. There is no law. No right or wrong. How did you feel when you saw your sister’s body?”
Rage filled me. Rage at what had been done to her. Rage at him for bringing it up. The thought that no one could see or judge me was liberating. I swelled with grief and anger.
“Now tell me who you are.”
“Vengeance,” I said in a cold voice.
“Better, Ms. Lane. But try again. And when you speak to me, bow your head.”
I was bleeding by the time the night’s lesson was over. In several places. They were self-inflicted wounds.
I understood why he’d done it. This was tough, well, not love, but tough life lessons. I had to learn this. And I would do whatever it took.
When he’d made me pick up the knife and cut myself, I’d seen a glimmer of light in the darkness inside my skull. I’d still cut myself, but something deep inside me had stirred. It was there, somewhere, if I could just dig deep enough to get to it. I wondered who I’d be by the time I got there. Was this why Barrons was the way he was? Who had put Jericho Barrons on his knees? I could hardly even picture it.