“Then undo whatever magic you put on my door to keep me out,” I said.

“It’s not to keep—” Again, she broke off. Then she said, “I want to know what you saw in there. Exactly what you saw.”

“You tell us,” Gabriel said, his voice deceptively soft. “It’s your building.”

Her glamour rippled, her true form shimmering through. “Don’t play games, Gabriel Walsh. Not with me.”

“Nor you with me.” He moved closer, towering above her. “Tell me what we saw in there.”

“Do you honestly think you can intimidate me, Gwynn?”

“Don’t—”

“Oh, yes, don’t call you that. You hate to be called that. You flee from the reminder. Squeeze your eyes shut and pray it all goes away.”

That note of contempt—of outright mockery—had me bristling and moving forward, Lloergan growling at my side.

Gabriel only turned cool eyes on Grace and said, “If you’d let me finish, I was merely going to tell you not to play that game.”

“What game?”

“The one where you try to distract me by calling me Gwynn. I was going to warn that it won’t work. I am learning to accept what I am. It’s hardly productive to deny that part of me is indeed Gwynn ap Nudd. Just don’t use that name in hopes of distracting me. And perhaps, if you do use it, you’d do well to remember what it means. What Gwynn was. What I am.”

“And what do you think you are, Gabriel Walsh? King of the Tylwyth Teg?” she snorted. “You’re a boy. A child. I remember the true Gwynn and—”

“And I remember you.” Gabriel’s voice held a note of Gwynn’s, stopping Grace short. “Is that not what I have of him? His memories? One could argue that is the essence of a person. Not DNA, but memories. I have his, and it only takes a trigger—such as seeing your true form—to bring them back. To remind me of who you are.” He looked her in the eye. “And what you did, bogart.”

She flinched at that, and then recovered and said, “I’ve done many things, Gabriel. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Do I?” he murmured. “No, I don’t think so. When you’re ready to tell us what we saw in there—and why we saw it here—you know where to find us. Olivia?”

Grace stayed where she was as we walked away.

Only once we were on Rose’s front steps did I say, “Okay, I have to ask. What did she do?”

“I have no idea.”

“You were bluffing?”

“Hardly. Everyone has something to hide. One only needs to suggest one knows it, and let guilt fill in the blanks.”

—

“Sluagh,” Rose mused as she scanned her bookshelf. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to spell that?”