“Turned out I was wrong.
It wasn’t the dark I should have been afraid of, at all.”

—Mac’s journal

Chapter Nineteen

NINETEEN

It was the second longest night of my life. The longest is yet to come.

I passed the time culling my memory for good ones, reliving them in vivid detail: those two years when Alina and I were in high school together; the trip we’d made as a family to Tybee Island, the guy I’d met there, who gave me my first real kiss, out in the waves where my parents couldn’t see us; my graduation party; Alina’s farewell bash before she’d left for Ireland.

Silence came long before dawn.

It was absolute; the hours from five to seven were so unearthly quiet I was afraid some cosmic calamity had befallen my closet; that a Fae realm had been victorious in the battle for the right to exist at my precise latitude and longitude, and me and the mops had been relegated Elsewhere. Precisely where Elsewhere might be I had no idea, but at 7:25 A.M., the moment of sunrise, it was still so utterly silent that when I placed my hand on the doorknob, it occurred to me to wonder if I might open it onto the vacuum of Space.

It would certainly simplify things.

I would be dead, and no longer have to worry about what the day might bring.

If I opened the door, I had to go out there. I didn’t want to. My closet was cozy, safe, perhaps forgotten. What would I find out there? How would I get out of the city? What existed beyond Dublin’s boundaries? Had we lost parts of the world last night, in a metaphysical battle between realms? Was Ashford, Georgia, still where it was supposed to be? Was I? Where would I go? Who would I trust? In the grand scheme of things, finding the Sinsar Dubh suddenly seemed a minor issue.

I cracked open the door, glimpsed the lower platform beyond, and exhaled with relief. Distastefully, with meticulous care, I strapped my spear harness back on. Unseelie marched through my blood, posturing aggressively. It would continue to do so for days, and I would fear my spear the entire time. I eased from the closet. After a thorough look around to make sure no Shades had assumed squatting rights during the night, I clicked myself off and ascended to the belfry.

When I stepped into the stone archway, I exhaled another sigh of relief.

The city looked mostly the same. The buildings stood. They hadn’t been burned or demolished, and they hadn’t vanished. Dublin might be worse for the wear, her party dress torn, hose run, stiletto heels broken, but she was in dishabille, not dead, and could one day be craic-filled and vibrant again.