Her mouth sets with tiny white lines around it, and her eyes take on a look I get a lot. It makes me feel mad and alone.

She’s afraid of me.

Mac isn’t. One more way we’re like sisters.

Without another word, I give my feet the wings they live for and vanish into the building.

* * *

From the rooftop, I stare.

My fists clench. I keep my nails real short; still, they gouge blood from my palms.

Two Fae are dragging Mac down the front steps of a church. She’s naked. They drop her like a piece of trash in the middle of the street. A third Fae exits the church and joins them, and they stand, imperial guards around her, heads swiveling, surveying the street.

The raw sex they’re throwing off blasts me, but it’s not like V’lane, who I’m gonna give my virginity to one day.

I’m as obsessed with sex as anybody, but those … things … down there … those incredibly—fecking A, they hurt to look at; something’s wet on my cheeks; are my eyes boiling in their sockets? — beautiful things scare even me, and I don’t scare easy. They don’t move right. Storms of color rush under their skin. Black torques slither at their necks. There’s nothing in their eyes. Nothing. Eyes of pure oblivion. Power. Sex. Death. They reek of it. They’re Unseelie. My blood knows. I want to fall on my knees at their feet and worship, and Dani Mega O’Malley don’t worship nothing but herself.

I wipe my face. My fingers come away red. My eyes are leaking blood. Freaky. Kinda cool. Vamps got nothing on Fae.

I close my eyes, and when I open them again I don’t look directly at the things guarding Mac. Instead, I take a wide-angle image of the scene. Every Fae, fire hydrant, car, pothole, streetlamp, piece of trash. I map objects and empty spaces on my mental grid, lock it down tight, calculate margin of error based on likely movement, slap it over my snapshot.