Was she kidding me? “It’s Dani.” I hate that sissy name. I shove her back against the wall.

I can’t fecking believe it, but she shoves me again. Still got that scared look but defiant, too.

“You might be faster and stronger, kid, but enough of us together could kick your ass, and we’re beginning to want to. You take care of a traitor, you start looking like one.”

I look at Barb, who shrugs as if to say, “Sorry, but I agree.”

Buncha idiots. I whiz off without a backward glance. Not wasting time or breath on them. Mac needs me.

My first clue something’s wrong is I open the door to the downstairs and it’s dark. I stand there, stupid for a second. No way all the torches burned out at once. I’m not sensing Fae, and even the weakest sidhe-seer among us has range enough to cover the whole abbey.

No Fae around means one of us put out the torches. Means we got somebody in our ranks wants Mac dead bad enough to try to outright kill her. And expects to get away with it. I punch on my Click-Its, go into superspeed mode, and bingo—I’m at her cell.

It’s worse than I thought.

When we brought buckets of paint downstairs, we never got around to carrying the unused gallons back up, and now somebody’s gone and dumped black paint all over the floor and splashed it on the walls outside her cell, obliterating the wards.

I toe it with a sandal. It’s wet, fresh.

I frown. Something’s not making sense. With the torches out—sure, the Shades could get down here. With the wards obliterated, they could even enter the cell—if there weren’t fifty lights blazing in there with her, but there are. So what’s the point? Why make a half-assed murder attempt that has no chance of working?

“Aw, crap,” I say, as it dawns on me. Because it’s not Shades someone’s expecting. It’s something bigger and badder, something not afraid of the light.