Two men walked by and I blushed. I couldn’t help it. They were my father’s age. They had penises. “Come on, V’lane,” I hissed. “Get me out of here!”

He let me stew for a few more minutes before returning me to the bookstore. In a gold lamé bikini, of course.

My life changed then, took on yet another routine.

I no longer had any desire to run the bookstore, or sit in front of a computer, or bury myself in stacks of research books. I felt like a terminal patient. My bid to gain the Sinsar Dubh had not only failed, it had forced me to admit that it was hopelessly beyond my reach at the present time.

There was nothing I could do but wait, and hope that others could do their part, and buy me more time to figure out how to do mine—if it was even possible. What had Alina known that I didn’t know? Where was her journal? How had she planned to get her hands on the Dark Book?

Seven days left. Six. Five. Four.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on out there, staring me straight in the face, that I was missing. I might have gotten pretty good at thinking outside my tiny little provincial box, but I suspected there was a much larger box that I needed to think outside of now, and to do that, I had to see the box.

Toward that end, I spent my days, armed to the hilt, collar turned up against the cold, walking the streets of Dublin, elbowing my way past tourists who continued to visit the city despite the gloom and the cold and the high crime rate.

Slipping between Unseelie horrors, I popped into a pub for a hot toddy, where I eavesdropped shamelessly on conversations, human and Fae alike. I stopped in a corner dive for fish and chips and chatted up the grill cook. I stood on the sidewalk and made small talk with one of the few remaining human newsstand vendors—coincidentally the same elderly gentleman who had given me directions to the Garda when I’d first arrived here—and who now confided in his lovely lilt that the headlines of the scandal rags were right; the Old Ones were returning. I toured the museums. I visited Trinity’s astounding library. I sampled beers at the Guinness brewery and stood up on the platform, staring out at the sea of roofs.

And I had a startling realization: I loved this city.

Even swimming as she was with monsters, deluged by crime, tainted by the violence of the Sinsar Dubh, I loved Dublin. Had Alina felt this way? Terrified of what might come, but more alive than she’d ever been?

And more alone.