It stopped, turned around, and looked straight at me.

I froze. I had no idea how it knew, but it knew I knew, and I knew it, and there was no point in faking.

"Bloody hell!" I heard Barrons curse softly, followed by the scrape of steel on stone, the rustle of fabric, then silence behind me.

We stared at each other, the Gray Man and I. Then it smiled with that awful mouth that used up half its tall, thin face. "I see you, sidhe-seer," it said. Its laugh was the sound of cockroaches scuttling over dried leaves. "I saw you in the bar. How do you want to die?" It laughed again. "Slow or slower?"

I wished I'd thought to ask Barrons earlier if my suspicion about the strange word the old woman had used today was correct. I was pretty sure from the context she'd used it in that I'd gotten the gist of it, but there was only one way to find out. I wet my lips, batted my eyes, and praying I was right, said breathlessly, "Whatever you wish, Master. I am Pri-ya."

The Gray Man sucked in a long, hissing breath that showed shark teeth in its lipless mouth. Its mocking amusement faded and its black eyes gleamed with sudden interest that married sexual excitement to homicidal sadism in a way that chilled me to the bone.

I bit my tongue to keep from betraying my revulsion. I was right. Pri-ya meant something along the lines of Fae-addict or Fae-whore. I would ask Barrons for an exact definition when this was over. Right now, I had to get closer to it. The Gray Man might have somehow clued into me watching it, but it didn't know I was a Null, or that I had a weapon capable of killing it.

There was no mistaking that it wanted what it thought I was offering, wanted it enough to believe I was the real deal. This was its weakness, I realized, its Achilles' heel. It could steal beauty, it could cast a glamour to make even the most beautiful human woman desire it, but it would never be desired in its true form and it knew it.

Except… maybe… by one who was Pri-ya. A woman that was Fae-struck, Fae-blind, a whore for anything Seelie or Unseelie. Such sick devotion would be the closest thing to true attraction this monster could ever know.

It rubbed its leprous hands together and leered. At least, unlike the Many-Mouthed-Thing, it only had one mouth to leer with. "On your knees, Pri-ya," it said.

I wondered what the deal was with Fae liking women on their knees. Did they all have worship fetishes? I pasted a smile on my lips like the one I'd seen on the blankly compliant face of the Goth-girl at Mallucé's, and sank to the sidewalk, bare knees to cold stone. I could no longer hear Barrons or anyone else on the street behind me. I had no idea where everyone had gone. It looked like the Gray Man's glamour-repellent was on a par with Vlane's.

My purse was unzipped, my hands ready. If it would just stay frozen half as long as the Many-Mouthed-Thing, I'd have more than enough time to kill it. Once it approached, it was dead.

It could have worked that way, it should have worked that way, but I made a critical error. What can I say? It was my first time. My expectations weren't in line with reality. It had walked down the street and I expected it to walk back.

It didn't.

It sifted back.

It had me, one yellow-taloned hand in my hair, before I even knew what was happening. Inhumanly strong, it jerked me up off the ground, its gray fist tight to my scalp.

Fortunately, my sidhe-seer instincts kicked in and I slammed both hands into its chest as it lifted me into the air.

Unfortunately, it froze exactly like that, with its hand in my hair, and me dangling. Fact of some significance: I have arms of normal human length. My spear was in my purse. My purse was on the sidewalk, a foot below my feet.

"Barrons," I hissed desperately. "Where are you?"

"Unbelievable," a dry voice said above me. "Of all the potential scenarios I'd envisioned, this was not one of them."

I tried to look up but aborted the painful effort and clamped both my hands to my head instead. What was he doing on the roof? For that matter, how had he gotten on the roof? I didn't recall passing any convenient ladders. And wasn't that building two stories high? "Hurry, it hurts!" I cried. I knew how lucky I was that he was there. If I'd gotten into this predicament by myself, I would have had to tear the hair out of my skull to escape, and frankly, I wasn't sure that could even be done. I have really strong hair and it was holding a huge handful of it. "Come on, hurry! Get my purse! I don't know how long it'll stay frozen."

Barrons dropped to the sidewalk in front of me with a soft thud of boots hitting stone, his long black coat billowing out around him. "You probably should have thought about that before you froze it, Ms. Lane," he said coolly.

Hanging as I was put me eye-to-eye with him. I transferred my grip from my scalp to the Gray Man's immobilized arm and used all my strength to take some of the weight off my hair. "Can we talk about this after you've gotten me down?" I gritted.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "You wouldn't be having an after if I weren't here to save you. Let's talk about where you went wrong, shall we?"

It wasn't a question, but I tried to answer it anyway. "I'd rather not just now."

"One: It was obvious you didn't expect it to sift in on you and you weren't prepared for it. Your spear was down at your side. Your purse should have been up and you should have been ready to stab the Gray Man through it."

"Okay, I messed up. Can I have my purse now?"

"Two: You let go of your weapon. Never let go of your weapon. I don't care if you have to wear fat-clothes and strap it to your body beneath them. Never let go of your weapon."

I nodded, but not really. I couldn't move my head that much. "Got it. Had it the first time you said it. Now can I have my purse?"

"Three: You didn't think before you acted. Your greatest advantage in any one-on-one battle with a Fae is that it doesn't know you're a Null. Unfortunately, this one does now."

He retrieved my purse—finally—and I reached for it with both hands but he held it beyond my grasp. I clamped my hands back on the Gray Man's arm. I was getting a headache the size of Texas. I tried to kick him but he sidestepped it easily. Jericho Barrens had those kind of flawless reflexes that I've only ever seen before in professional athletes. Or animals.

"Never freeze a Fae, Ms. Lane, unless you are absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure you can kill it before it unfreezes again. Because this one" — he tapped the rigid Unseelie coat hanger upon which I was draped—"is perfectly conscious even though it's frozen, and the very instant it unfreezes it's going to sift out with you. You'll be gone before your brain even manages to process that it has unfrozen. Depending on where it takes you—you might materialize surrounded by dozens of its kind—you will be there, your spear will be here, and I won't have any idea where to begin looking—"

"Oh, for God's sake, Barrens," I exploded, kicking wildly in midair, "enough already! Will you just shut up and give me my purse?"

Barrons glanced down at the spear, which was half-poking out of my purse, and plucked the ball of foil from the lethal tip. Then he leaned forward and got right in my face. Up close I could see how truly furious he was with me. The corners of his mouth and rims of his nostrils were white, and his dark eyes burned with anger. "Never get separated from this thing again. Do you understand me, Ms. Lane? You will eat with it, shower with it, sleep with it, fuck with it."

I opened my mouth to tell him not only didn't I have anyone I was currently doing that last thing with, I never called it that, and didn't appreciate him calling it that, when my perspective changed abruptly. I'm not sure if the Gray Man began moving before Barrons stabbed it in the gut, or after, but something wet suddenly sprayed me, and it let go of my hair. I fell to my knees and got a face full of sidewalk.