The streets an eighth of a mile east of BB&B were so packed with people and Unseelie that motor traffic didn’t have a hope of getting through. Most of the Fae were in full human glamour, trying to incite riot, and succeeding.

Garda pushed among them, demanding order with raised batons. There’re enough troubled youth in Dublin—in any city, for that matter—that even a small angry mob can combust and spread like wildfire. Especially on Halloween when all the freaks come out, hiding behind better masks.

While I watched, a few of the Garda—who were actually Unseelie in glamour—began viciously beating a group of youths with their batons, incensing the crowd. Other Unseelie began smashing out store windows, looting and encouraging others to take what they wanted. I called out to a few kids hurrying by to join the fracas. No one seemed to know what the rioting was about, nor did they care. I was afraid to get closer, for fear of damaging the car. Or me.

Bile boiled in my stomach from the compressed multitude of Fae. At least the Sinsar Dubh wasn’t around to incapacitate me. The mob was expanding, pushing outward, and it occurred to me that getting stuck in the middle of it, sitting in a Ferrari, was a really bad idea. I backed up, hastily turned around, and drove away, glad I’d left a few minutes early.

I dug out a map of the city from my backpack and flipped on the interior light. Although the storm still only threatened, the cloud cover had turned day to night a full hour earlier than I’d expected.

Ten blocks north of the bookstore, I encountered another mob. I backed up, swung the car around, and headed west. It was no go. That way out of town was just as bad.

I pulled over in a parking lot to study the map, then headed southwest, intending to skirt the edge of the Dark Zone on my way out and, if I had to, put on my MacHalo and drive through part of it to get out of town. But as I approached the perimeter of the abandoned neighborhood, I slammed the brakes and stared.

The entire edge of the zone was a dense black wall of Shades, pressing at the pools of the light cast by the street-lamps on Dorsey Street. It stretched left and right as far as I could see, a massive barricade of death.

I put the car in reverse and backed away. I would go through it only if I had to. I wasn’t yet ready to admit defeat.

I spent the next fifteen minutes driving the ever-decreasing circumference of my world, hemmed in by danger on all sides. The edges of the Dark Zones had met and merged with the mobs, and I watched in horror as Unseelie in human glamour drove people into those waiting, killing shadows.