Yet he was being forced to open it.

His fingers began to burn, then his hands were ablaze and he was screaming.

The flames licked up his arms, spread down his chest and legs, and engulfed his face, and suddenly Derek O’Bannion flared white-hot and erupted into ash that exploded ten feet in every direction.

I scrubbed frantically at myself, clawed ash from my hair, and spit it from my lips.

An icy gust scattered all trace of what had been O’Bannion.

The Sinsar Dubh whumped to the pavement at my feet.

Open.

Growing up, I knew my parameters. I was pretty enough that one of the class jocks would always ask me to prom, but I’d never score the quarterback.

I was smart enough to squeak into college, but I’d never be a brain surgeon.

I could lift my own aluminum-framed bike off the ceiling rack in the garage, but I couldn’t budge my dad’s bike that he’d had since law school.

There’s comfort in knowing your limits. It’s a safety zone. Most people find theirs, get in it, and stay there for the rest of their lives. That’s the kind of life I thought I was going to live.

There’s a fine line between being stupid and knowing you have to test your limits if you want to do any real living at all.

It was a line I was poised on very delicately at the moment.

The Sinsar Dubh lay open at my feet.

I’d avoided looking at it since the moment it hit the pavement. Don’t look down, don’t look down was my mantra.

Merely opening it had incinerated O’Bannion.

If I gazed into its naked pages, what would it do to me?

I half whispered, half hissed Barrons’ name, then was struck by the absurdity of what I’d just done. Did I think if I didn’t make much noise, the Book wouldn’t notice me?

Hello! It had noticed me. In fact, I was its sole focus. It had been playing with me since the moment I’d appeared on its radar tonight.

Because I was me? Or did it play any person who stumbled near?

“Barrons,” I shouted, “where the hell are you?”

My only reply was an echo bouncing off brick buildings on the eerily silent street.

I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead and tried to find the thing at my feet with that sidhe-seer center of my mind.

Got it!

But it was … inert.

I wasn’t getting any reading off it at all. Because of the stone in my hand? Because it was conning me in the same way it conned everyone? By masquerading as nothing of consequence at all?

It was entirely too possible. There were too many unknowns. I was wrong. I wasn’t poised between stupid and testing my limits. Miles of uncharted stupid stretched on both sides of the line on which I stood.

I had to back away, a straight and narrow path down that line. Taking great pains not to fall off on either side.

I would wait for Barrons. Take no chances.

I took a step back. Then another. Then a third, and my heel caught on something solid, and I stumbled and began to go down.

It was base instinct to try to balance myself by reaching out with both hands and looking at the ground.

“Shit!” I snapped, and yanked my gaze back up.

But it was too late. I’d seen the pages. And I couldn’t not look again.

I dropped to my knees and knelt before the Sinsar Dubh.

* * *

I knelt before it because, on its ever-changing pages, I’d glimpsed the blond, icy-eyed woman who had earlier stood sentinel, forbidding me entrance to one of the Haven’s most important libraries. I’d seen her moving from one scene within the Book to the next.

I needed to know who she was and how to get past her. I needed to know everything the Book knew about her. How did it know her?

You needed to know, Barrons would mock later; isn’t that what your Eve told Adam when she plucked your apple?

It’s not my apple, I would counter. You tried to pluck it, too. Aren’t we all after the same thing, thinking we “need” something the Book has in its pages? I have no idea what tempts you, but something does. Tell me, Barrons, come clean: Exactly how long have you been hunting it, and why?

He wouldn’t answer, of course.

Like I said, miles of stupid on both sides of that line.

But kneeling in front of it right now, I was absolutely certain I was on the verge of an epiphany. That truly useful, liberating knowledge was minutes—no, mere seconds away. Knowledge that would give me control over my life, power over my enemies, that would shed light on the mysteries I was unable to solve, show me how to lead, how to succeed, grant me whatever I wished for most.

As I searched those two constantly changing pages, I was tormented by the drone of an insect at my ear.

I swatted at it incessantly, but it refused to go away. I was busy. There were things here I needed to know, just beyond my comprehension. All I had to do was let go, quit worrying. Learn, absorb, be. And everything would be all right.

After a time, the buzz became a whine. The whine became a shout. The shout a bellow, until I realized it wasn’t an insect at all but a person roaring at me.

Telling me about myself. Who I was. Who I wasn’t. What I wanted.

What I didn’t want.

“Walk away!” the voice thundered. “Get up, Mac. Haul your ass out of there now! Or I’ll come kill you myself!”

My head snapped back. I stared down the street.

I narrowed my eyes, squinted. Barrons came into focus.

There was an expression of horror on his face. But it wasn’t directed at the Book open at my knees, and it wasn’t directed at me.

It was focused on whatever was behind me.

Chills iced my spine. What made Jericho Barrons feel horror?

Whatever it was, it was breathing down my neck. Now that I’d been jarred from the trance I was in, I could feel it, malevolent, mocking, beyond amused, laughing, right behind my ear.

“What are you?” I whispered, without turning.

“Infinite. Eternal.” I heard the sound of chain-saw blades, felt a gust of breath that smelled of oil, metal, and decay hot on my cheek. “Without parameters. Free.”

“Corrupt. An abomination that should never have been. Evil.”

“Sides of a coin, Mac,” it said in Ryodan’s voice.

“I’ll never flip.”

“Maybe something’s wrong with you, Junior,” it said, soft and sweet, in Alina’s voice.

Barrons was trying to move toward me, hammering his fists on an invisible wall.