I glanced at my watch, poured water over Earl Grey to steep the tea, and carried cups to the table near the rear conversation area, where a fire crackled brightly, chasing the chill from the gloomy October day. Though I was loath to lose business or break routine, I’d closed the shop early because I had to conduct this meeting at a time when I knew my employer was unlikely to show up.

I’d gotten a major wake-up call last night when I’d watched Jericho Barrons step out of the mirror.

I’d fled up the stairs faster than a Fae sifting space, locked my door, and barricaded it, heart pounding so hard I’d thought the top of my skull might blow off.

It was bad enough that he was keeping an Unseelie Hallow in the store, hidden from me, and using it, probably regularly, considering it was in his study, but . . . the woman . . . God, the woman!

Why had Barrons been carrying a blood-covered body in his blood-covered arms? Logic screamed: Duh, because he’d killed her.

But why? Who was the woman? Where had she come from? Why was he bringing her out of the Silver? What was inside that mirror? I’d examined it this morning, but it had been flat, impenetrable glass again, and whatever the way inside, only Barrons knew it.

And the look on his face! It had been the look of a man who’d done something that he’d found in, if not pleasure, some kind of comfort. In his face there’d been a certain . . . grim satisfaction.

Jericho Barrons was a man it wouldn’t be hard to romanticize (overlooking the toting around of savaged bodies, of course). Fiona, the woman who’d run the bookstore before I’d come along, had been so blindly in love with him that she’d tried to kill me to get me out of her way. Barrons was powerful, broodingly good-looking, insanely wealthy, frighteningly intelligent, and had exquisite taste, not to mention a hard body that emitted some kind of constant low-level charge. Bottom line: He was the stuff of heroes.

And psychotic killers.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Dublin, it’s that there’s a very fine line between the two.

I wasn’t about to romanticize him. I knew he was ruthless. I’ve known that since the day I met him, and saw him staring at me across the length of the bookstore with cold, old eyes. Barrons does exactly and only whatever serves Barrons best. Period. Keeping me alive serves him best. Period. But one day it might not. Exclamation mark!

Why did he have an Unseelie Silver in his study? Where did he go in it? What did he do? Besides carry dead women around.