It was no trick now. Or rather, it was the greatest Halloween trick of all. There would be no treats handed out in Dublin tonight. This was what Derek O’Bannion had been talking about.

At 8:29 P.M., darkness reigned absolute.

Even the fires had been extinguished.

The sounds floating up were different now, the voices fewer, and frightened, not angry. Militant footfalls passed beneath me regularly. The Unseelie were still at it, collecting us, killing us. It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to not go down there to hunt in the darkness and try to save those humans that remained.

Out there, past a certain bookstore, a Dark Zone was spreading unchecked, taking over the city.

Dublin was without hope until 7:25 A.M.: Dawn.

I wondered what was happening with the MacKeltars. Was Barrons sabotaging that ritual, too? It made no sense to me. Why would Barrons want the walls down? Did Barrons want the walls down? Might the Orb have come to him already sabotaged, a prepackaged grenade, just waiting for the pin to be pulled? Where had he gotten it? Was I a hopeless fool, still trying to make excuses for him?

Were the walls already down? Was this the flood of Unseelie that had been freed from their prison, the ones wrecking the city? Or were they merely harbingers, and the worst was yet to come?

I dropped to the cold stone floor of the aperture, drew up my knees, folded my arms, and rested my chin on them, looking out at the city. My body bristled with the dark energy of Unseelie flesh, with the protective urges of a sidhe-seer, magnified by Fae steroids, demanding that I do something, anything.

I shuddered in the grip of my internal battle. I felt like I was crying, although no tears fell. I didn’t know yet that tears are not possible for a Fae, or for anyone under the influence of it.

Seeing BB&B surrounded by Shades, swallowed up by a Dark Zone, had been bad enough. Seeing all of Dublin dark was overload. How many people would be left by dawn to try to reclaim it? Any? Did Unseelie now guard wherever it was the utilities were controlled? Would we have to form armies to fight our way in and seize control from them? My world had changed tonight. I had no idea in how many ways, but I knew it was bad.

I sat in the cold stone opening, watching, waiting.

Three and a half hours later, the first of my questions was answered.

At eleven fifty-nine, the skin all over my body began to crawl. Literally. I scratched myself feverishly. Even deadened as my sidhe-seer senses were from my dark meal, I still felt it coming. No, the walls had not yet fallen. They were falling now.

The world was changing, becoming.