When I unlocked the front door Thursday morning to open for business—a measure of how desperately I wanted to be a normal girl in a normal world—Inspector Jayne was waiting for me.

I stepped back to let him in, closed the door, then, with a gusty sigh, ceded the absurdity of my actions, and flipped the sign back to CLOSED. I wasn’t normal and it wasn’t a normal world, and pretending wasn’t going to accomplish a thing. It was time to call yet another of my own bluffs. The bookstore lulled me with temporary comfort that I had no right to. I should be anxious, I should be afraid. Fear is a powerful motivator.

I took the inspector’s damp coat and motioned him to a seat near the fire. “Tea? Er, I mean, normal tea?”

He nodded and sat.

I brought him a cup of Earl Grey, took a seat across from him, and sipped at my own.

“Aren’t we the pair?” he said, blowing his cup to cool.

I smiled. We certainly were. It seemed a year ago that he’d dragged me down to the station. Months since he’d accosted me in the alcove with his maps. “It has downsides,” I told him, meaning eating Unseelie. He knew what I meant. It was what he’d come here for.

“Doesn’t everything?”

“It makes you superstrong, but the Fae can’t be killed, Jayne. You can’t engage them. You must be satisfied merely seeing them. If you start trying to kill them, they’ll know you know, and they’ll kill you.”

“How strong does eating it make you? As strong as one of them?”

I considered it. I didn’t know, and told him that.

“So, it might?”

I shrugged. “Regardless, you still can’t kill them. They don’t die. They’re immortal.”

“Why do you think we have prisons, Ms. Lane? We’re not allowed to kill the serial murderers, either.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “I never thought of imprisoning them. I’m not certain anything would hold them.” Except an Unseelie prison woven from the fabric of the Song of Making. “They sift, remember?”

“All of them?”

He’d made another good point. I’d never seen a Rhino-boy sift. I supposed it was possible only the more powerful Fae could do it; the princes and the one-of-a-kinds like the Gray Man.

“Isn’t it worth a try? Maybe we lowly humans can come up with a few surprises. While you do your thing, others can be doing theirs. The word in the street is that something bad is coming, soon. What’s going on?”

I told him about Halloween, and the walls, and what would happen if they came down.

He placed his cup and saucer on the table. “And you would have me go out there defenseless?”