Shadowfever

He grabbed me and swung me back around. “You’d better believe I’m here, Ms. Lane, and you’d better believe I’ll kill you. You could not have proved your loyalties—or lack thereof—any more completely. You jumped on me the second Ryodan said I was a threat and took me out without an instant’s hesitation—”

“I hesitated! I hated killing my guardian beast! Ryodan told me I had to! I didn’t know it was you!” Great. Now I was arguing with the Sinsar Dubh’s fake Barrons about killing him. Why would it want to do this to me? What could the Book possibly gain from making me live this fight?

“You should have known!” he exploded.

I knew I should end it, stop the illusion now, but I couldn’t.

Being around Barrons has always made me fire on all pistons, and it didn’t seem to matter a bit that I knew this Barrons was a mirage. Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.

They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.

“How should I have known? Because you’ve always been so honest with me? Because sharing information is what Jericho Barrons does best, where he really shines? No, because you’d bothered to warn me what might happen if I pressed IYD. Wait, I have it: I should have known because you’d confided in me—in the same trusting and open way we’ve shared so many confidences—that sometimes you turn into a nine-foot-tall, horned, insane monster!”

“I am not insane. I was sane enough to piss circles around you. I killed food for you. I picked up your things. Who else do you know that would have done that? V’lane doesn’t have dick enough to piss with. Your little MacKeltar doesn’t have the balls to own his actions. He certainly isn’t capable of doing what it takes to own a woman!”

“Own? You think women can be owned?”

He gave me a look that said, Oh, honey, of course they can. Have you forgotten so quickly?

“I was Pri-ya!”

“And I liked you much better then!” His eyes narrowed as if he’d only finally processed something I’d said earlier. “I’ve been dead for you for only three bloody days? And you already had Darroc up against my wall out back two nights ago? You waited one fucking day to line up my replacement? I spent weeks worrying about whether he would scrape my brand off your skull and I wouldn’t be able to track you in the Silvers. The entire time I was trying to get back to save your ass from him, you were giving him a piece of it!”

“I didn’t give Darroc a piece of anything!” Get back from what, where? Being dead?

“A woman doesn’t rub herself up against a man like that unless she’s fucking him.”

“You don’t know the first thing about what I was and wasn’t doing. Ever heard of going undercover? Sleeping with the enemy?”

“ ‘I think you should be king, Darroc,’ ” he mocked in falsetto, “ ‘and if you want me, I would be honored to be your queen.’ ”

I gaped.

“Isn’t that what you said?”

“What were you doing—spying on me? And if you’re Barrons, you know better than to believe words.”

“Because your actions speak so well of you, do they? Where did you sleep last night, Ms. Lane? It wasn’t here. My bookstore was wide open. Your bedroom was upstairs waiting. So was your fucking honor.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Honor? Barrons was flinging the word “honor” at me? Er … actually, the Sinsar Dubh was. I couldn’t decide which was more anachronistic. I frowned. There was something wrong here. Something was very, very off. Although “Barrons” and “honor” weren’t two words I’d think to use together in a sentence, I couldn’t come up with a single reason for the Sinsar Dubh to pull this kind of stunt. It had never inflicted such a prolonged and detailed illusion on me before. I could see nothing it might gain by doing it.

“Do you know why I was in the street with you and Darroc tonight?” When I didn’t reply, he snarled, “Answer me!”

I shook my head.

“I wasn’t there to spy on you and your little boyfriend. Speaking of which, what’s it like to slurp down your sister’s sloppy seconds?”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said instantly. “That’s low even for you.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet. I came to kill him tonight. I should have done it a long time ago. But I didn’t get that pleasure. The Sinsar Dubh beat me to it,” he said bitterly.

“Enough already. You are the Sinsar Dubh!”

“Hardly. But I’m every bit as deadly. We can both destroy you. Nothing can save you from me if I turn on you.”

It was past time for this illusion to end. The only reason I’d let it go on this long was because it had begun enjoyably and I’d kept hoping it might turn around. But whatever bizarre game the Book was playing, it wasn’t going to play nice, and this icy, sneering Barrons wasn’t the man I wanted to remember.

“Time for you to go now,” I muttered.

“I’m not going anywhere. Ever. If you think for one minute I’ll let you flip sides mid-game, you’re wrong. I’m invested. You’re in too deep. You owe me. I will chain you up, tie you down, leash you with magic, whatever I have to do, but you will help me get that Book. And when I’ve got it, I might let you live.”

“You’re the Sinsar Dubh,” I said again, but my protest was weak. While he’d been talking, I’d sought my sidhe-seer center—that all-seeing eye that can rip away illusion and reveal the truth beneath it—and I’d focused it like a laser on the mirage.

Nothing had happened. No bubble had burst, no mirage had fractured. My hands were shaking. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.

It wasn’t possible.

I’d killed him.

And when I’d realized what I’d done, I’d channeled my grief into a weapon of mass destruction. I’d made a plan, with a set-in-cement past and a concrete future.

This … this … inexplicability didn’t fit anywhere in my understanding of reality. Not with any of my goals, not with what I’d become.

“But then again, I might not,” he said. “Unlike some people, I don’t do sloppy seconds.”