The entire time I’d been running and hiding, its heavy weight had been a burning terror against my body. What if I fell? What if I got caught in a crowd again and someone jostled me? What if the tip pierced my skin? Hello, Mallucé. Goodbye, sanity. I might be tougher than I used to be, but I had no doubts about my ability to cope with rotting to death.

I stripped off my sweater and T-shirt, then put my sweater, jacket, and MacHalo back on and belted the spear harness on the outside of my coat, without touching anything but the leather straps.

I tied the T-shirt I’d removed around the bottom part of the harness, forming an additional layer of protection between the tip and me.

Ironic, the thing I love most, that makes me feel so powerful under normal circumstances, becomes my greatest liability, and the thing I fear most when I pilfer dark power. I can have one, or the other—but never both.

Carrying the dichotomy one step further, I could no longer sense the spear, which meant I could inadvertently hurt myself on it. However, I could also no longer sense the Sinsar Dubh, which meant it could no longer hurt me, and send me crashing to my knees, helpless, in a dangerous situation.

Duh. I stood in the doorway marveling, and not in a good way, at my own stupidity. If eating Unseelie made me unable to sense the Sinsar Dubh, then all I needed to do next time it popped up on my radar was get as close to it as I could, eat Unseelie, and get closer. Close enough to pick it up.

An image of the Beast as I’d last seen it materialized in my mind.

Yeah, right. Pick it up. Sure. What then? Put it in my pocket? I didn’t have one large enough.

So, I knew how to get close to it without being incapacitated by pain. I still had no idea what to do then. If I touched it would I, too, turn psycho? Or was I a sidhe-seer/Null/OOP-detector mutant that was somehow exempt? A moot point right now, with my odds of surviving the night looking so grim.