“Northwest of the city. Three miles at the most.”

I was relieved. That was exactly where I felt it, too.

“What part of this place is most securely warded?” Isla asked Barrons.

He gave her a look. “All of it.”

“What’s the plan?” I said.

“You must give your mother the amulet,” Pieter said.

I touched the chain around my neck and looked at Barrons. He took a slow breath and opened his mouth. It stretched wide on a soundless roar.

I blinked and looked again. He was composed and urbane as ever.

“It’s your call,” he said. “You have to decide this one.”

I felt so strange. Mac 1.0, bartender, daydreamer, and professional sun worshipper, would have wanted nothing more than to pass off any and all responsibility to someone else. To be taken care of. Not to be the one taking care. I no longer knew that woman. I liked making the hard decisions and fighting the good fight. Getting to lay down responsibility no longer felt like relinquishing a burden—it felt like being shut out of the most important parts of my life.

“MacKayla, time is of the essence,” Pieter said softly. “You don’t have to fight anymore. We’re here now.”

I looked at Isla. Her blue eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “Listen to your father,” she said. “You’ll never be alone again, darling. Give me the amulet. Release your burden and let me carry it for you. It was never meant to be yours.”

I looked back at Barrons. He was watching me. I knew him. He wouldn’t force my hand.

I did a double take. Who was I kidding? Of course Barrons would try to force my hand on this. He wanted the spell of unmaking to end his son’s life. He’d been hunting it for nearly his entire existence. He would stomp and argue and roar. He’d never get this close only to back off and give me space to make my own decisions.

“Don’t do it,” he snarled. “You promised.”

“The Sinsar Dubh has entered the city,” Isla said simply. “You must decide.”

I could feel it, too, rushing toward us, as if it knew that if it hurried, it could catch us with our pants down, me undecided, all of us exposed by my inability to commit.

I moved toward Isla, playing the chain through my fingers. How could I accept that I didn’t have to fight this battle? I’d been preparing for it. I was ready. Yet here she stood, telling me I didn’t need to worry. I wouldn’t doom the world, and I didn’t need to save it. Others had been preparing for the same moment and were more qualified.

That surreal feeling was back. And what was that buzzing at my ear? I kept thinking I was hearing Barrons roaring, but every time I looked at him, he wasn’t saying a word. “I need a spell from the Book,” I said.

“Once it’s locked up, we can get anything you need. Pieter knows the First Language. It’s how your father and I met, working on ancient scrolls.”

I stared into the face so like my own but older, wiser, more mature. I wanted to say it, needed to do this, at least once. I might never get the chance again. “Mother,” I tried the word on my tongue.

A tremulous, radiant smile curved her lips. “My dear, sweet MacKayla!” she exclaimed.

I wanted to touch her, be in her arms, breathe in the scent of my mother, and know I belonged. I focused on my only memory of her, deeply buried until this moment. I focused on it hard, thinking about how treasured it was. How I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it all these years. How my child’s mind had taken a single snapshot: Isla O’Connor and Pieter staring at me with tears in their eyes. They’d been standing by a blue station wagon, waving good-bye to us. It was pouring rain, and someone had held a bright pink umbrella with green cartoon flowers above my baby carriage, but the wind had whisked a chill mist beneath it. I’d flailed my tiny fists, cold and crying, and Isla suddenly broke away from Pieter to tuck the blanket more securely around me.

“Oh, darling, it was the hardest thing I ever did that day in the rain, letting you go! When I tucked you in, I wanted so desperately to snatch you up and keep you with us forever!”

“I remember the umbrella,” I said. “I think it must be where I got my love of pink.”

She nodded, eyes shining. “It was bright pink with green flowers.”

Tears stung my eyes. I stared at her a long moment, memorizing her face.

Isla opened her arms. “My daughter, my beautiful little girl!”

Bittersweet emotion flooded me as I moved into my mother’s arms. When they closed warm and comforting around me, I began to cry.

She stroked my hair and whispered, “Hush, darling, it’s all right. Your father and I are here now. You don’t need to worry about a thing. It’s all right. We’re together again.”

I cried harder. Because I could see the truth. Sometimes it’s there in the flaws.

And other times it’s there in too much perfection.

My mother’s arms were around my neck. She smelled good, like Alina, of peaches-and-cream candles and Beautiful perfume.

And I didn’t have a single memory of this woman.

There’d been no blue station wagon. No pink umbrella. No day in the rain.

I slid the spear from my holster and drove it up between our bodies.

Straight into Isla O’Connor’s heart.

47

Isla inhaled, sharp with pain, and went stiff in my arms, clutching at my neck.

“Darling?” Blue eyes stared into mine, blank and confused. She was Isla.

“You stupid little bitch!” Blue eyes stared into mine, fiercely intelligent, furious, hard with rage. She was Rowena.

“How could you do this to me?” Isla cried.

“If only I’d killed you that night in the pub!” Blood-tinged spittle sprayed from Rowena’s lips.

“MacKayla, my darling, darling daughter, what have you done?”

“Och, and ’tis because of you all this happened!” Rowena spat. “You bloody damned O’Connors, bringing naught but trouble and misfortune to us all!”

I felt her legs buckle, but she caught herself on my shoulders and didn’t go down. She was one tough old woman.

I shuddered. I’d never been talking to Isla. It was Rowena all along, carrying the Sinsar Dubh, possessed by it. But now she was dying, and the Book’s ability to maintain a convincing illusion was dying with her. She was flashing back and forth between the illusion of Isla and the reality of Rowena.