I felt myself changing like I’d changed that day in the warehouse in the Dark Zone, when Barrons and I had first battled side by side, against the Lord Master’s minions and Mallucé. I felt myself turning into a force to be reckoned with, a danger in her own right, even without the dark aid of Unseelie flesh. It still didn’t stop me from wishing I had a bite of it handy.

I felt myself becoming sidhe-seer, growing stronger, tougher, moving faster than a human could, striking with the accuracy of a trained sharpshooter, the skill of a professional assassin.

Only problem was—their green Post Haste, Inc. uniforms were a dead giveaway—they were sidhe-seers, too.

Fight scenes bore me in movies and since I’m telling this story, I’m fast-forwarding through the details. I was outnumbered, but for some reason, they seemed a little afraid of me. I decided Rowena must have sent them, and perhaps she’d told them I was rogue, unpredictable.

Make no mistake, I took a beating. Six sidhe-seers is an army and they kicked my petunia six different ways to Sunday, but they couldn’t keep me down.

How abruptly a situation can flip from bad to irrevocable, leaving you standing there thinking, Wait a minute, who’s got the remote? Where’s my rewind? Can I just go back a lousy three seconds, and do things differently?

I didn’t mean to kill her.

It was just that, once it penetrated that they were sidheseers, I kept trying to talk to them, but none of them would listen to me. They were determined to beat me unconscious, and I was equally determined not to be beaten unconscious. I wasn’t about to let them drag me to the abbey against my will. I would go on my own terms, how and when I felt safe—and after this underhanded ambush of Rowena’s, that might be never.

Then they started demanding my spear, poking and prodding me, trying to find out if I was wearing it, and something in me snapped as I realized that Rowena had sent my own people after me—not to bring me in, but to take my weapon away from me, as if she had the right! I was the one who stole it. I was the one who’d paid for it in blood. She thought to leave me defenseless? Over my dead body. No one was taking my hard-won power away from me.

I reached beneath my jacket to pull it out and wave it threateningly, to make them back off and listen to reason, and as I yanked it from my shoulder holster, the brunette in the ball cap lunged for me, and she and the spear . . . collided. Violently.

“Oh,” she said, and her lips froze on the round shape of the word. She blinked, and coughed. Blood blossomed on her tongue, and stained her teeth.