The psychic screamed bloody murder; Cathbad produced a ball of light that hovered just above his palm and emitted enough whitish-bluish glow to see by. Tess's face was a mask of fear; she, too, remembered being in that gymnasium when Dark arrived. But Emery was not afraid, nor was Cullen, who drew his sword. It'd been the Sword of Light that had banished Dark the last time, and Cullen surely intended to use the same tactic again.

"No," Emery ordered him. "Put it away. I know what to do."

"Emery--"

"Listen to me, all right? I just know!"

The psychic audibly gulped. "Ex-excuse me--b-but can you p-please remove this?" she pointed a finger at the dagger propped under her chin.

Emery turned to her. "No. Not until you tell me what I need to know."

"I told you--"

"Don't try it! I see it in you . . . I feel it! It knows its kind, right? Well, I've got it, too, you fraud."

Tess called her friend's name. "We should get out of here, get away from this place if we can!"

"Lady, Tess is right. This space is too small for my Lord to properly wield his sword! Should the Brothers arrive—"

"Oh shut up! Everyone just shut up!" Emery's frustration was rising. Why were Cathbad and Tess even there? They were a nuisance. "You all go on. I'll do this myself."

Cullen did not put his sword away, but Cathbad was right: he'd have a lot of trouble swinging it in the small rooms of the shop. Instead, the warrior looked at Emery with much concern but, saying nothing of his worry, said firmly, "Do what you think you must."

The psychic wasn't fond of his response, as her rolling eyes revealed, but Emery was gratified and was about to demand something when the woman beat her to it, conceding, "All right! It's true! I know where you can find them . . . because I am them."

The silence that followed was deafening. Cathbad's light held everything in a cold still-life, edging features and objects with frost. It was so quiet the only sound was the crackle of his sphere.

Emery slowly withdrew her dagger and stared at the woman in front of her, who looked for all the world like a grinning clown just popped out of a jack-in-the-box. "What do you mean?"

Practically a different person, the psychic had eyes for Emery alone, and it was as if the two of them were wrapped in their own bubble. "As you said, we know our own. We are everywhere. You can't hide from us! Did you think you could come here in secret? But it matters not whether you go to them or they come for you . . . the result is the same."

White hot rage trembled within Emery's breast; she was unsure she could contain it. "If the result is the same," she hissed, "then why can't you tell me where they are?"

The woman showed her teeth. "Where's the fun in that?"

Emery couldn't take that mocking face anymore. Little Fury still in her fist, she brought the dagger up and jammed it through the woman's chin, behind her eyes, up into her brain, just as she'd promised. There were cries behind her, gasps, but Emery knew what they didn't, what they realized only when the woman, pinned on the dagger, began to laugh maniacally.

"Move aside, Emery," Cullen growled, and the girl obliged, sliding her dagger form the woman's head just in time for him to take it off with Claíomh Solais. The psychic's body slumped to the ground; her head rolled under the table. Cullen and Emery exchanged a laden glance, then turned to the other two, who stood aghast yet immediately tried to hide their shock by looking everywhere at the walls and floor.

Emery gave a short laugh. "I guess she was a decent psychic after all; she knew she was going to die."

If she could've seen the look Tess and Cathbad gave her, she would've been incredibly annoyed. Instead, Emery felt their eyes on her back and realized something she'd begun to feel since before they'd even arrived in New York City--Tess and Cat needed to go. Were they going to give her a hard time for every difficult decision she made along the way? Were they going to sit there and judge her for using force when she needed to? She knew the answer to those questions. All they'd do is hinder her, and maybe that was what they wanted. Maybe the two of them were there just to guilt her, to hold her back. Cullen--at least he understood the power, the necessity of aggression. Charlie had shown her that terror and pain worked. Hadn't he used them against her? And here she was, now, where they wanted her to be, apparently. So maybe she needed to meet them with their own tactics.

But how could she get rid of Cat and Tess? And with Cullen right there? He'd want them to stay, surely (that knowledge alone irritated her, that Cullen would side with them, but that was something to address later). The black velvet of darkness seemed to close in on Emery as she rummaged quickly through her thoughts, the others conversing about something beyond her, but then, suddenly, the darkness itself gave her inspiration.

She'd have to use her magic. The Darkness. There was no other way. Closing her eyes, ignoring any comments from the others, Emery breathed deeply, willing the tendrils of the sprouted seed within to climb up through her, into her veins, to give her what she needed. And then she thought, firmly, I want to speak to Dark.

Instantaneously, Emery was engulfed in black. Whether Cathbad's light had gone out or she'd been transported somewhere else, she didn't know, but she may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean for all she could see. She didn't have to speak, though, to understand that Cullen and Cat and Tess were no longer anywhere nearby. A quick swing of her arms revealed she wasn't in that psychic's room at all; there was nothing anywhere nearby except for the solid ground on which she stood. But she wasn't alone--that she sensed, as well, the blood within her warming at the proximity of the creature she'd desired to speak with.

He was there--Dark. He'd folded her within another layer of his midnight. She'd wondered, all that time ago when she and Tess had been enveloped in darkness, how the rest of the world hadn't been. But now it made some sense to her; Dark's cloak had many wrinkles, and he could gather and release them at will, forming limitless lush pockets of lightlessness.

As brave as she'd felt moments earlier, Emery's voice shook as she spoke into the nothing. "Hide them," she said, adding quickly, almost automatically, "for now."

There was no response, but she knew he was there, hovering right in front of her. She couldn't see him, but she felt him, his giant, amorphous form, his hollow, beaked, leather head eyeing her eyelessly, his emptiness, the very absence of warmth and illumination.

"Did they send you to check on me?" she went on, her fear mellowing, "I'm not ready, yet. Tell them—tell them I'm coming."

There was an odd swelling sensation, as if the space around them was ballooning, but then it quickly contracted, and Emery found herself standing in the back room of the entirely illuminated psychic's parlor, next to the table under which lay the woman's head. Cullen took hold of her the minute he saw her. "Where did you go?" He was so intense, so demanding.

"I--I don't know," she lied. "But look! At least it's light again! Dark must've gotten what he wanted."

"Emery--"

"Where did Cat and Tess go?"

Cullen looked toward the door, then released her shoulders and went through the beaded curtain to look for them. The minute he'd stepped out, Emery crouched down near the psychic's headless body and rolled her head out from under the table. The eyes were open and staring, but they'd become entirely white. With an inadvertent shiver, Emery placed her hands over them and willed an answer from the head, muttering "Tell me where they are," and as suddenly as she'd demanded it, the answer formed in her mind, transferred from the depths of the dead woman's brain.

This is quite nice, Emery thought to herself, standing and grinning. She'd have to see Bres again, probably, but it was worth the power she felt, the ability. For so long, she'd had other people protecting her, rescuing her, doing things for her. She'd felt powerless and stupid ever since they'd interuppted the life she'd thought was hers. To have some strength, now, some capability to defend herself, to get what she wanted without someone else taking care of everything . . . it was phenomenal.

Emery stood back up a little too quickly, and the room spun; she reached out a hand to steady herself against the table. Heat coursed through her, and she momentarily considered removing her cloak, but then she realized she'd have to take her sword off, and . . . no. It was too complicated. And in fact Cullen came back in before she could do much.

"They are gone," he said, quite seriously, and Emery felt a twinge of guilt at his concern.

"I know where we need to go," she said.

Cullen shook his head slightly, blinked. "Did you not hear me?"

Emery forced her legs to steady themselves and stepped toward him. "Yes, I heard you, but we can't worry about them right now."

"How can you say such a thing?"

"Well--I'm just--I'm trying to be realistic, all right? Dark probably took them somewhere, and we won't find them unless we get to that building and put an end to all this. Think about it: how could we possibly figure out where Dark would've taken them? And it's just Dark, right? Not Death or Evil. So they're probably all right, wherever they are. In fact, they're probably with the Fomorians, where we need to go. And I know where it is!"

She couldn't bear the obvious disquiet in Cullen. The way he looked at her almost made her want to call Dark back to take him, as well, if only to save her from his concern. But he didn't oppose her. Instead, clearly against his better judgment, he said to her, "I will trust you."

Emery smiled her appreciation. "Good. Then follow me."

She pushed past Cullen, through the beaded curtain and all the pointless paraphernalia and tchotchkes, and shoved open the glass door, grimacing at the chimes it set off. But the moment Emery exited the 24-Hour Pyschic's shop, she was taken aback by the disturbing multitude of crows perched on top of parked cars and road signs, milling about on the sidewalk, and ruffling their feathers up in the branches of every nearby tree. They seemed to look right at her and Cullen with their beady black eyes, as if they'd been waiting. A few random pedestrians crossed the street superstitiously to avoid them.

"What is with all these birds?" Emery cried unnecessarily.

Behind her, Cullen put a hand at her waist. "They're scavengers. Ignore them."

Emery couldn't. She ran at the birds around them, flung her arms, shooed them away, until their flapping and squawking left with them. "I feel like I've been seeing crows everywhere! Weren't they at the portal? And last night I saw one at your window when I was talking to Charlie--" she realized what she'd said too late and sucked in a quick breath, hoping he hadn't heard.

He spun her toward him. "When?"

"I--" What could she say? Should she lie to him? Some part of her wanted to, told her to . . . but she couldn't. Not yet. Weakly, she answered, "Last night." She hung her head. "When you went to help those boys in the forest."

Cullen was beginning to breathe heavily, trying to hold in whatever it was he was feeling. And something about his reaction brought out defiance in Emery--why should she feel bad for what she'd done? She didn't have to listen to him!

"Emery, this is the poison in you--"

"Poison?" she cried. "It isn't poison at all; it's power! I totally got that dead lady to tell me where we need to go, and Dark--Dark listened to me! I told him what to do, and he listened!"

Rather than argue with her or scold her, Cullen's face fell, his shoulders lowered; a weariness seemed to overcome him. If he had something to say to her, he didn't say it, and maybe it was because he had nothing to say at all.

"This is good, Cullen! Don't you see? We can use it to fight them. They thought they could turn me against everyone, make me like them--they called me one of theirs. But I've flipped it around! I'm going to use this ability they gave me to get them. Don't you understand?"

A woman passing by glanced at Emery and Cullen, eyed their attire, then took note of Cullen's hands on Emery's arms. She paused a few feet to the side of them and asked, "Is this man bothering you, honey? Do you need help?"

Briefly, Emery considered saying "yes," but she couldn't do it just yet. "No," she ended up responding as Cullen removed his hands from her. "I'm fine. Thanks."

The woman narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Cullen, but then she went on her way.

"I've failed to protect you from enemies without, and I'm failing to protect you from enemies within. I know not what to do, Emery."

The girl practically roared in exasperation. "You don't have to do anything. I don't need you to protect me. I have this under control."

He wasn't convinced; one look at his face, his defeated stance, revealed it. And frankly, Emery wasn't sure she had time for his doubt. After a moment, Cullen said, to her mild surprise, "Our time is limited. My only hope is to help you end this, before—"

But Emery didn't let him finish. She held up a hand to stop him, looked over his shoulder at a figure approaching them. This figure was like them, though, and he was staring straight at Emery as he drew near almost as if in slow motion, black cloak catching air behind him. His colorless eyes touched some chord in her, shivering the blood in her veins. Cullen no longer stood before her; he was just gone, and Bres took his place.

Black paint was rubbed around Bres's eyes in strange, feathery splotches; his cruel mouth was crimson. He was dressed head-to-toe in dark attire and wore a helmet with sleek, curving cow horns. His whole get-up was more ceremonial than she'd remembered, as if he were preparing for some important event,

"I am," he whispered, knowing her thoughts. "I'm preparing for your arrival. We all are. You're doing well--keep using it." He leaned in close, so close his long hair brushed Emery's shoulder, and whispered against her ear, "You can't hide from us; you are us, and we always know where we are." Then he tipped her chin up, put his nose against her throat, and inhaled. When he stepped back, he appeared in some partial ecstasy. "Almost ripe. Just a little longer . . ."

A vacuum opened; everyone and everything began to blur, an intense ringing rose between Emery's ear. Bres's empty eyes and horrible grin seemed to inflate to consume her before everything snapped back to what it was, and she found herself in Cullen's arms, wondering why she was seeing red and blue lights glinting off his armor, until she turned to see that two police cars had arrived.