“Observations,” he says. “Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes.” They’d been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery. He gives me a sidewise look. “Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word.”

“I look at Ryodan and he looks at me and for a second I think we might both kill the kid. Ryodan's more stone-faced than usual, if that's possible without turning to concrete, and his fangs are out. I look down. Ryodan's sick is as big as mine. "Why the bloody hell don't you wear underwear?" To an Unseelie Prince an exposed male dick is a call to battle."They chafe. Too small and confining.""Fuck you," I say."Dudes. Get over yourselves," the kid says.”

“Barrons stood inside the front door, dripping cool old-world elegance.I hadn’t heard him come in over the music. He was leaning, shoulder against the wall, arms folded, watching me.“ ‘One eye is taken for an eye . . .’ ” I trailed off, deflating. I didn’t need a mirror to know how stupid I looked. I regarded him sourly for a moment, then moved for the sound dock to turn it off. When I heard a choked sound behind me I spun, and shot him a hostile glare.He wore his usual expression of arrogance and boredom. I resumed my path for the sound dock, and heard it again. This time when I turned back, the corners of his mouth were twitching. I stared at him until they stopped.I’d reached the sound dock, and just turned it off, when he exploded.I whirled. “I didn’t look that funny,” I snapped.His shoulders shook.“Oh, come on! Stop it!”He cleared his throat and stopped laughing. Then his gaze took a quick dart upward, fixed on my blazing MacHalo, and he lost it again. I don’t know, maybe it was the brackets sticking out from the sides. Or maybe I should have gotten a black bike helmet,not a hot pink one.I unfastened it and yanked it off my head. I stomped over to the door, flipped the interior lights back on, slammed him in the chest with my brilliant invention, and stomped upstairs.“You’d better have stopped laughing by the time I come back down,” I shouted over my shoulder.I wasn’t sure he even heard me, he was laughing so hard.”

“He gives me a look. I'm not even looking at him and I can feel it.”

“Barrons Books and Baubles had been ransacked! Tables were overturned, books torn from shelves and strewn everywhere, baubles broken. Even my little TV behind the counter had been destroyed. "Barrons?" I called warily. It was night and the lights were on. My illusory Alina had told me more than an hour had passed. Was it the same night, nearly dawn? Or was it the night following our theft attempt? Had Barrons come back from Wales yet? Or was he still there, searching for me? When I‘d been so rudely ripped from reality, who or what had come through those basement doors? I heard footsteps, boots on hardwood, and turned expectantly toward the connecting doors. Barrons was framed in the doorway. His eyes were black ice. He stared at me a moment, raking me from head to toe. "Nice tan, Ms. Lane. So, where the fuck have you been for the past month?”

“So how did he look at me?""Like it was his birthday and you were the cake.”

“Barrons cut her a hard look. “Some of us are more useful and important than others.” “My ass, you are,” Christian growled. Barrons folded his arms. “Who let the Unseelie in here?”