I felt the electricity of his body behind me as he reached around me and took the card from my hand. He didn’t move away, and I battled the urge to lean back into him, seeking the comfort of his strength. Would he wrap his arms around me? Make me feel safe, if only for a moment, and if only a delusion?

“Ah, the old ‘what you prize most’ threat,” he murmured.

I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek.

“Such naked pain,” he whispered.

I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch. His hand tightened at the base of my skull and squeezed, and he raised me slowly to my tiptoes. I opened my eyes and it was my turn to inhale sharply. Not human. Oh, no, not this man.

“Never show it to me again.” His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.

“Why? What will you do?”

“What it is my nature to do. Get inside. It’s time for your lesson.”

After I’d received yet another failing grade, Barrons and I cruised the streets.

I’d gotten no tips from Jayne since his last call, four nights ago. I read the paper each morning. If I recognized the Sinsar Dubh’s calling card, and I was pretty sure I did, it was jumping to a new victim every night. I knew what the good inspector was doing: he was waiting for his “tea.”

I was waiting for divine inspiration to strike at any moment, and show me the way, who to trust, what to do. I had no doubt Jayne would get what he wanted before I did.

I was wrong.

We’d been at it for almost six hours, driving up and down, muscling through the city in the Viper. After so many nights, I knew every street, every alley, every parking lot. I knew the location of every convenience store and petrol station that was open between dusk and dawn. There weren’t many. Crime might not be keeping the partyers at home—the drunk and lonely are hard to corral; I know that from bartending—but it was certainly sending the small-business owners and their employees packing well before nightfall.

It made me sad to see Dublin battening her hatches. Just last night, we’d discovered a two-block Dark Zone that wasn’t on my map, by driving through it. I mourned each newly darkened block as a personal loss, a few inches off my hair, a drabber outfit. We were both changing, this boisterous, craicfilled city and I.