One, it’s wet, cold, and nasty, and I was already wet and cold enough. Two, the sun doesn’t shine when it’s raining and I’m an unapologetic sun-worshipper. Three, it makes Dublin at night even darker than usual, and that means the monsters get bolder. Four, it makes me need an umbrella and when people carry umbrellas they have a tendency to pull them down really low and hunch behind them, especially if the rain is being blown into their faces. I’m no different. And that means you can’t see what’s coming toward you, which in a busy street usually results in people careening off one another with muttered apologies, or bit-off curses, and in Dublin means I could run smack into a Fae (their glamour doesn’t physically repel me like it does normal people) and betray myself, all of which adds up to: When it rains here, I don’t dare carry an umbrella.

Which wouldn’t be so bad except it rains here all the freaking time.

Which means I get completely soaked and that leads me to the fifth thing I hate about rain: my makeup runs and my hair becomes a mop of cowlicks.

But every cloud really does have some kind of silver lining and, after a good, hard drenching, at least I no longer smelled quite so bad.

I turned down my street. It’s not really my street. My street is four thousand miles away in the rural Deep South. It’s a sunny, lushly overgrown street, framed by waxy-leaved magnolias, brilliant azaleas, and towering oaks. My street doesn’t rain all the time.

But I can’t go home now, for fear of leading monsters back to Ashford with me, and since I need someplace to call my own, this rainy, gloomy, dreary street will have to do.

As I approached the bookstore, I scanned the façade of the old-world, four-story building carefully. Exterior spotlights mounted on the front, rear, and sides bathed the tall brick building in light. The brightly painted shingle proclaiming BARRONS BOOKS AND BAUBLES that hung perpendicular to the building, suspended over the sidewalk on an elaborate brass pole, creaked as it swung in the increasingly chilly night breeze. The sign in the old-fashioned green-tinted windows glowed soft neon: CLOSED. Amber torches in brass sconces illuminated the deep limestone archway of the bookstore’s grand, alcoved entrance. Ornate, diamond-paned cherry doors nestled between limestone columns gleamed in the light.

All was well with my “home.” The lights were on, the building protected from my deadly neighbors. I stopped and stared for a moment down the street, into the abandoned neighborhood, making sure no Shades had made inroads into my territory.