They were disturbing the crime scene. If I were to have any hope at all of proving my innocence, I would need it intact. “I don’t think you should do that. Aren’t you going to call the police?” Maybe I could make it out of the country before they did. Maybe Barrons could fix this. Or V’lane. I had friends in high places. Friends who wanted me alive and free to do their bidding.

One of them shot me a murderous look over her shoulder.

“Have you taken a good look at the Garda lately? Besides, humans don’t police us,” she sneered. “We police our own. Always have. Always will.” There was an unmistakable threat in her words.

I poked my head over the balustrade and watched as they reappeared downstairs. One of them glanced up at me. “Don’t try to leave; we’ll just hunt you,” she hissed.

“Oh, take a ticket and get in line,” I muttered as they banged out the door.

“I need to borrow a car,” I told Barrons when he walked in the front door that night, shortly after nine.

He was wearing an exquisitely tailored suit, an impeccable white shirt, and a blood-red tie. His dark hair was slicked back from his handsome face. Diamond cuff links glinted at his wrists. His body hummed with energy, saturating the air around him. His eyes were startlingly brilliant, restless, darting everywhere.

I’ve felt that body on top of mine, been the focus of that consuming gaze. I try not to think about it. I have a box inside me now that never used to exist. I never needed it before. It’s down in my deepest, darkest corner, and it’s airtight, soundproofed, and padlocked. It’s where I keep thoughts I don’t know what to do with, that could get me into trouble. Eating Unseelie hammers on the inside of that lid incessantly. I try to keep kissing Barrons in that box, too, but it gets out sometimes.

I would not put the death of the sidhe-seer in the box. It was something I had to deal with in order to move forward with my goals.

“Why don’t you ask your fairy little boyfriend to take you wherever you want to go?”

That was a thought, but there were other thoughts attached to that thought that I hadn’t thought through yet. Besides, back home whenever I got really upset about something, like breaking a nail the same day I’d spent good money on a manicure, or finding out that Betsy had gone to Atlanta with her mom and bought the same pink prom dress as me, totally ruining my senior experience, I used to get in my car, crank up the music really loud, and drive for hours until I’d calmed down.