“Oh, yes, we can,” the sluagh hissed. “You wanted to know more. You reached out. We accept the invitation, Matilda.”

“Find nawr,” Gabriel snarled.

A wheezing laugh from the sluagh. “Oh, that won’t work anymore, Gwynn. We’re coming for what is ours. Not now, but we will come. For our Matilda.”

“I’m not yours,” I said.

A tendril of the smoke caressed my face. I batted it away as Gabriel yanked me back.

“But you are,” the sluagh said. “Bought and paid for.”

The sluagh swooped, enveloping us, and I lashed out, but it truly was fighting smoke, and then…

And then the sluagh was gone, and we were sitting on Patrick’s sofa.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“It spoke to us,” Gabriel said, getting to his feet and stepping toward Patrick. “The sluagh addressed us directly. Inside your book.”

“That’s not possible,” Patrick said. “I would never have sent you in there otherwise.”

“It called us Matilda and Gwynn,” I said.

I told him what we’d seen.

When I finished, Patrick said, “I think it was a dream. A self-produced vision. Liv, you were thinking how unfair it was that the sluagh target innocents. You then projected your outrage and made it personal—what if they came for you? Or it could have been Gabriel projecting fear from the part of him that is Gwynn. He lost Matilda. What remains of him has been searching for her ever since, and now he has her—through you.”

“And Gwynn fears history is doomed to repeat itself,” I said. “Fine, either is a possibility, but—for the sake of not dismissing a potential threat—let’s say we really did see the sluagh. That it does believe it has some claim to me.”

“How? You’re not a killer, Liv.”

“It never said that. It said I’d been bought and paid for. As if someone made a deal. Bargained away my soul.”

“Pamela,” Gabriel said.

Patrick shook his head. “Pamela dealt with the Cŵn Annwn. Ioan has confirmed that.”

“But the Cŵn Annwn made a deal of their own,” I said. “They negotiated with some mysterious power to heal me in exchange for the souls of human killers. Like those the sluagh target. According to your own book, the Cŵn Annwn sometimes give those souls to the sluagh.”

“There is no possible way Ioan would have promised Matilda to the sluagh.”

“You know where I had that first vision of it, right?”

“In Grace’s apartment.”

“When I saw the sluagh in your book, it said it accepted my invitation. That it was welcome to make contact because of that. Which I suspect means it can’t just swoop into Cainsville uninvited.”

“Of course not.” Patrick got to his feet, taking the book from me and putting it back. “But if you’re suggesting—”