HIJACK THE SEAS: TSUNAMI

Karen Chance

Copyright © 2025 Karen Chance

Hijack the Seas: Tsunami, All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Karen Chance

Printed in the United States of America First Printing 2025

First Edition 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Author’s Note

This is the second book in a two-book arc. The first part can be found in Hijack the Seas: Seismic.

Chapter One

I tumbled through the portal with a half-crazed mermaid and what felt like an ocean of water. We shot across a large open space, falling, flailing, and, in my case, half-drowning. And hit what might have been a wall, or a mountain, or basically anything else, because I couldn’t see!

Or breathe, I realized. Or move, with a giant firehose of liquid slamming into me from behind, smashing me into the pale golden stone in front of me like a bug on a pin. And hard enough that I probably would have the pock-marked imprint of the rock permanently embedded into my cheek if I survived this.

I finally took a breath because it was either that or pass out, and it was half water, half air, which did not improve things. But the mermaid was determined and fierce and currently cursing, and I don’t just mean audibly. She was cursing the water out of our way as she hauled me off the stone, and even stranger, it worked.

The waves curled back on themselves as if offended or as if Moses had arrived to part them. Only it wasn’t Moses who stumbled out of the wash a moment later. It was two bedraggled-looking women, both on two feet because this mermaid could transform.

Of course, I’d learned that many, if not all, of the Margygr could. But I’d learned so much lately and had yet to really categorize or absorb any of it that I had just started accepting things. Which was why I didn’t react when a huge vampire grabbed me, spun me around, and planted a fang-filled kiss on my cheek.

I’d spatially shifted him through the portal a minute ago and thus saved his life, and he seemed appreciative. And so was a fey prince who usually hated my guts but was now clapping me on the back almost hard enough to force me to my knees. I’d saved him, too, by absorbing a bunch of power that some other merpeople had cast in a flooded, quickly collapsing room in another world.

The power had been intended for a spell to hold the ceiling up, or what was left of it, but hadn’t worked because it wasn’t just the room collapsing. It had been the whole world breaking apart and imploding or exploding; I wasn’t sure, as things had been pretty confused there at the end. All I knew was that the Margygr had been killed before they could direct their magic anywhere, and the rest of us had been about to follow suit until I grabbed all that power and stuffed it down.

I could do that, as my mother had been the goddess Artemis, and while I hadn’t gotten much from the godly side of the family tree, I could consume magical energy the same way she had. I couldn’t drag it out of someone like her, but had to wait until they coughed it up. Fortunately, the Margygr had, in preparation for a spell they’d never had a chance to cast.

Unfortunately, I’d used their energy up during our escape, and I currently thought that passing out sounded like a good idea. But I didn’t, as it would destroy whatever tiny shreds of dignity I had left. Which, as usual lately, wasn’t much.

My name is Cassie Palmer, and not so long ago, I was Pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world. But then Faerie happened, and I found myself a refugee washed up on Time’s shore somewhere I didn’t recognize. Because who could recognize this?

I stared around and didn’t understand anything. But then I was grabbed by the rest of our party, including a water-logged demigoddess named Bodil and a man named Pritkin, AKA my other half, my partner in crime, and the guy I was gonna drag to an altar if we ever got out of here, wherever here was. Because it was supposed to be Earth, but...

It didn’t look like it.

But before I could point that out, the water, which had been spewing out of the portal with enthusiasm, hitting the wall where it had tossed us and flooding the floor up to our knees, abruptly cut out. Our little knot stopped grabbing and hugging each other to stare at it, with what was probably varying levels of shock. Bodil, the oldest of us, abruptly sat down in the flood and went blank.

I sat beside her because it was either that or fall down, and I couldn’t get any wetter. Enid, the aforementioned mermaid, joined us. The men continued standing, maybe thinking it was more manly or because they were looking a little lost, too.

Fair enough.

It wasn’t every day you experienced the death of an entire world.

Or maybe, like me, they just had no idea where the heck we were. That was even more of a problem when the portal disappeared as abruptly as the water had. I guessed its energy had allowed it to persist for another few seconds after the destruction, but it was gone now, and with it went most of our light.

Most but not all, I thought, staring upward.

It was hard to see past the portal’s swirling red aftereffects, but I could tell we were in some kind of building. And while the little I could see was mostly sand-covered, it was man-made. Or parts of it were.

It looked more like a cavern that somebody had reinforced with a framework of heavy timber beams and reminded me of something I’d seen once, but I couldn’t think well enough to name it. But that was a ceiling high up there that sunlight was illuminating through a hole. There wasn’t much light compared to the portal’s previously blinding variety, but it was enough for Pritkin to decide to take a look.

“Take care of her,” he told Bodil, and could have been referring to either Enid or me. But considering who was weaving about like she would collapse any second, even while sitting down, I was pretty sure he meant me. I tried to stop, as it was embarrassing, but nothing happened.

So I just sat there, swaying gently, as he and Alphonse, the big vamp, and Æsubrand, the silver-haired fey prince, climbed up a sand drift that must have been three stories high to peer out of the hole in the roof.

Alphonse made it first, which seemed to piss off Æsubrand, who was right on his tail. Pritkin, whose wet blond hair was shining like a beacon in the spill of sunlight and who wasn’t part of the other two’s dick-measuring contest, brought up the rear. Leaving us three girls alone, although a demigoddess older than the pyramids probably didn’t qualify for that term.

Neither did I, although I was only twenty-four. My blond hair held no gray, and my blue eyes were unlined, but as Indiana Jones once said, it wasn’t the years; it was the mileage. And mine was... kind of a lot.

Enid, though, was a fresh-faced teenager and wasn’t looking like someone who had just lost her entire world. The sunlight turned her wet red hair to flame and gleamed in her wide hazel eyes. She’d been wearing a servant’s tunic when she transformed and had managed to keep it on despite hauling my exhausted ass through the portal, so she was dressed, if badly.

But damn, she made it look good.

Especially now, with her hand out, palm up, to catch the glistening rays of a foreign sun. Only... it wasn’t entirely foreign, was it? She was part fey but part human, too, and right now, she had a look of intense hunger on those stunning features.

A second later, she was back on her feet and running up the slope after the guys with an almost feral intensity.

“She’s wanted to go to Earth for years but stayed back to help others,” Bodil told me. “Her skills with glamourie are impressive and were useful when we needed to hide someone.”

She was talking about Enid’s ability to conceal half a face full of scars, which had been given to her by a jealous fey who couldn’t handle that a little half-human mutt of a girl was better looking than her. I guessed that had encouraged Enid to work on one skill above all others, and starting so young, she had become amazing at it. Normally, the smooth perfection of her skin was flawless, even close up.

It had allowed her to help Bodil and a handful of others to free the most endangered slaves of the so-called Green Fey, the ones whose court we’d just escaped, and get them to Earth. They were the descendants of humans brought to Faerie centuries ago, whether by choice or not. And many, like Enid, had never seen their home world.

She wasn’t going to be seeing it at its best right now, I thought grimly, as the reason her adoptive world had just vanished from existence was operative here, too. And it looked like Bodil’s thoughts were traveling along the same lines. The beautiful ebony face under its impressive cascade of tiny black braids was no longer blank but almost fearful, if someone so formidable could be described that way.

It seemed unlikely, as I’d just seen her take on an army of elder demons, buying us time to escape a collapsing world, but there it was again. A furtive look, a widened eye, a downturned lip. Bodil was sensing something I wasn’t, and she didn’t like it.

“Get them back!” she said suddenly, gripping my arm.

“What? Who?”

“Everyone! Now!”

I didn’t know how she expected me to do that, but it didn’t matter. Because here they came, pouring back through the crack in the ceiling, looking like they’d seen a ghost. Or a god, I thought, as a great eye appeared in the crevasse a moment later, peering down into the darkness.

It was blue, the size of a car, and surrounded by pale blond lashes. But it wasn’t the size that had me reeling from a relief so palpable that, for a moment, it was more dizzying than my exhaustion. The creature I feared the most had blue eyes, but his made this color pale into insignificance. If it hadn’t, in my current state, he wouldn’t have needed to kill me; I’d have probably had a heart attack all on my own.

As it was, everyone froze, including Bodil and me, and then, without the need for discussion, we slowly sank into the tide still surging around us.

It wasn’t deep, even though we’d brought a massive amount of water with us. The room we were in was cavernous and had dispersed much of the flow. But the sand that had blown in through the ruined roof had piled around the space, leaving a concave depression where we lay and where some of the water had gathered, forming a pond.

But ponds were not frequently found in the desert, where we looked to be, something that seemed to have occurred to our visitor. He obviously couldn’t see very well, as the room was dark, and the sunlight outside probably made it seem more so. But some of that sun was playing off the water around us and had caught his great eye. He’d probably glimpsed motion from the guys and come to investigate, and now...

He was punching the ceiling with blows like a pile driver, causing cracks to spider everywhere and pieces of rock to cave in.

Shit, I thought but didn’t say, as I didn’t know how good a god’s hearing might be. I flipped over instead and started half crawling, half swimming, even as the first pieces of rock began splashing down around us. They hit with crashes in the shallow water, which wasn’t deep enough to cushion the blows, sending liquid flying, waves churning, and screams echoing in my head that I wouldn’t allow myself to utter.

Animals don’t scream, I reminded myself as shrapnel peppered my back. And that’s what I was if any of my movements were somehow heard above. Just some desert creature, having squirmed in here looking for a drink and now flailing around desperately.

Not a person, not a human, and certainly not an out-of-work clairvoyant because my job didn’t exist anymore since the gods had returned and laid waste to two worlds. Like my power, which... hadn’t come back, I realized abruptly. So abruptly that I stopped moving for a second because that wasn’t how this was supposed to work.

I was on Earth now, which my little band had desperately tried to reach because that was where my power was strongest. It should have allowed me to shift myself out of here and flee backward in time before all this destruction happened to try to stop it. That ability had been gifted to the Pythias by the god Apollo millennia ago, but he hadn’t trusted us with the unfettered use of it.

Which, considering that I’d recently helped to kill him, was fair. So, he’d tethered his energy to Earth, meaning it could only reach me in Faerie when a portal was open between the two worlds. But I wasn’t in Faerie anymore; I should have access to it! I should be able—

To pay attention for half a second before I was crushed to death!

Fortunately, I was jerked aside by Bodil right before a semi-truck-sized piece of ceiling hit down where I’d just been daydreaming and would have flattened me. As it was, it came close enough for my arm to be strafed by the edge, which would have probably taken it off, except that I was dressed in dragonscale armor. Because Faerie was a scary place, but not as much as Earth, apparently!

Bodil took a wild-eyed second to internalize just how close that had been and then jerked me into the darkness and out of the patch of sunlight.

However, we soon ran out of room to maneuver at a sand dune taller than us, which we could have scaled but didn’t dare, afraid that the movement would draw the creature’s eye. We settled for flattening ourselves against it instead, while a giant fist kept hammering away overhead. I stared up at the rest of our team, who were hiding in the shadows under the jagged lip of the roofline, having squeezed between its shattered remains and the top of the dunes, staying out of the way of the fist but unable to come down as they’d be spotted sure as hell.

They were staring back at us or at where we’d just been. I really hoped they couldn’t see us because if they could, it could. And right on cue, my shiny silver armor went black.

Love you, Augustine, I thought fervently, remembering the designer who had crafted it for me. I wondered if he’d survived. I wondered if anyone had, with gods the size of skyscrapers prowling the damned landscape!

I wondered if I would ever have the chance to find out, as a massive arm reached into the sizeable hole and started feeling around the floor, searching...

For us.

And that tore it for Bodil, who had not spent her life skulking in the shadows, praying nobody noticed her. She was a warrior and wasn’t going out like this, accidentally smashed to death by a careless swipe from a divine hand. If she was going to die, she’d do it loudly and hurt her enemy as much as possible in the process.

I felt her tense beside me, saw the fire come literally back into her eyes as flames eclipsed their usual sharp black, heard her suddenly indrawn breath—

And threw myself at her, taking her down more from the surprise of my assault than anything else. We hit dirt and water both, with me fighting like a wildcat with the last of my strength and her staring at me as if I’d gone mad. And maybe I had.

The cumulative effect of the last few days—because boys and girls, that was all it had been, a COUPLE OF DAYS—would have done that to almost anyone. Especially since, in that period, I’d nearly been killed a few dozen times, been forced to fight creatures I’d never even known existed outside the pages of some warped mythology book, and then had a whole damned planet crash down around my head. And yet somehow, somehow, I was still alive, and she was not messing that up for me!

I had my heir to find, my power to regain, and two worlds to save, and Bodil was going to help me, all of them were going to help me, or a rogue god was going to be the least of their problems!

Bodil was staring up at me as if she’d heard all that, which... yeah. Mind reading was one of her gifts, wasn’t it? Just as well.

I’m not sorry, I thought at her as hard as I could. And while you might know demigoddess stuff better than me, nobody knows how to skulk around better than I do. I spent my whole childhood at it, I’m good at it, and that’s how we’ll get through this!

No bravado.

No crazy heroics.

No nothing, because this isn’t about us; it’s about our worlds. So we suck it up, we do the job, and since the job requires us to be alive, we swallow our pride and we hide. We crawl. We do whatever we have to because if we don’t, there isn’t anybody else, and there never will be.

Do you get it?

Bodil nodded, looking a little gobsmacked. But I guessed she agreed because she didn’t overpower me, which she damned well could have. Right then, anyone could have, as I felt terrible, with my magic sitting at zero and now my human strength almost gone, too.

That little dust-up had been really stupid.

Or maybe not, I thought, barely aware of it when the giant got bored, the arm was withdrawn, and sunlight flooded back into our gloomy little world.

And I folded like a pack of cards and went out.

Chapter Two

Something smelled good. I felt my nose twitch. Really good.

“She’s awake,” a familiar, sardonic voice said.

“How do you know?” That was Enid, and she sounded worried.

“There’s food cooking.”

“There is?” I croaked and tried to sit up.

I failed, not because of my lack of strength, but because something heavy was draped over me. I pushed at it, and it was sort of cloth-like. And furry, I thought, as my hand hit the top.

I opened my eyes to discover that it was a bearskin—a huge, brown, somewhat moth-eaten bearskin that might have been a rug or some bizarre decoration in another life but was now serving as a blanket for me because I was still damp. Waterlogged armor doesn’t dry fast, with too many cracks and crevasses for small amounts of liquid to pool in, and mine had not morphed back into the tattered silver gown that was its alter ego when danger no longer threatened. Just as well; that thing was starting to take on an odor.

Of course, so was I, and as it was a cross between panicked sweat, spent magic, and hot, musty bear, it was not pleasant. But that was, I thought, finally reaching a sitting position and discovering a small but cheerful fire over which a pot was bubbling. That wasn’t so strange, except it was in the middle of what looked like a decrepit shopping mall.

Which it was because I had seen this place before.

“The coven’s enclave,” I croaked, staring at one of their funny advertising signs, this one with a cauldron that a pert redheaded witch was stirring with a wand. Or maybe that was supposed to be an oversized spoon; I couldn’t tell as she wasn’t moving, and neither were the contents of her brew. That wasn’t normal for the coven’s hideaway, which I’d visited once before when I obtained the prototype for the armor I was currently wearing.

The local covens had created a town with an underground mall in the desert outside of Vegas, complete with a portal system with no rivals I knew of anywhere. It not only connected the covens’ enclaves around the world to each other, allowing them to maintain their way of life outside the control of the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical authority, but it also had connections to Faerie. I remembered traders striding up and down this street, levitating pallets of goods behind them, buying, selling, and chatting with the colorful part-fey, part-humans that had found a home here.

They were gone, along with the formerly brilliant, animated street, which had rivaled the neon lights of old Vegas. The magic that had illuminated it was dark now, with some signs still in place on tumbledown, dust-covered buildings, but none were working. I guessed that wasn’t surprising, as many structures looked like a fire had raged through them, collapsing roofs, eating through walls, and leaving everything looking more like a field of charcoal than the colorful, vibrant place I remembered.

And since the powerful wards that had protected the complex hadn’t been able to extinguish the fire, I was pretty sure I knew what kind it had been. The gods brooked no rivals. It was something that the coven’s patented go-to-ground model for survival had had no chance against.

“Look!” Enid said excitedly.

I turned back from perusing the dead street to see her kneeling excitedly on the floor, where cracks in the cobbles had allowed a single green sprout to shoot up between the stones. It was a hardy-looking little thing, nourished, I guessed, from some water source below and strengthened by the sunlight leaking through gaps in the ceiling. It looked like the witches had hollowed out a hill or magicked one on top of their town, but light was spearing through myriad holes in the shell above us, like in the great portal room where we’d arrived.

“Watch this,” Enid said, looking at me. And then back down to where her little discovery was doing something as she poured a small amount of water on it from a chipped teacup. The sprout shivered briefly as if in a slight breeze and then plopped out another leaf to join the three it already had.

Enid clapped her hands, seeming delighted, and I decided to blow her mind.

“Watch this,” I said, and crawled over. I took the cup from her and dunked a finger in it, then touched the wet finger to the tiny “trunk” of the sapling...

And pulled out yet another leaf.

“How did you do that?” she breathed as if I’d just performed the world’s greatest magic trick.

“I didn’t. There used to be a great oak down that way,” I nodded at the far end of the concourse. “The witches who lived here could make seats for themselves by spilling water on a platform they’d caused to grow inside the hollow trunk. They just pulled them up from the wood, like plucking mushrooms,” I showed her with my hand. “It was some kind of spell—”

Pritkin said a word I didn’t know, but I guessed Enid did as her eyes got big.

“But that’s Blarestri magic!” she said, looking almost shocked.

“In Faerie. Here, there are no such restrictions,” he told her. “The witches learned their craft from the Old Ones who live in the mountains—” he paused. “Who used to live in the mountains,” he added more softly. “They taught them a unified system.”

“Why was it not so in Faerie, then?” Enid asked, her eyes sliding from him to Æsubrand, who was trying to roast some small creature on a stick over the flames. “Before you two, I had never thought to meet anyone with all four elements. It was unheard of!”

“It wasn’t common, even here,” Pritkin said, glancing about at the destruction, expressionless. “But many of the people who built this place had two or even a weak third talent, and they all lived together, so what one couldn’t provide, another did.”

“Yet on our world, where the magic originated, we were so separate,” she said, frowning at the little plant. And then looked up, her color high. “Perhaps we could have fought the gods better if we hadn’t been!”

“You’ve answered your own question,” Bodil commented. She had been tending our pot and seemed satisfied as she pulled it off the fire and divvied its contents into fire-blackened bowls.

“What?”

“The gods separated the different streams of magic, giving only one to each of their groups of ‘children’ and killing anyone who dared find a way to have more.”

She glanced at Pritkin and Æsubrand, the latter of whom looked uncomfortable, although that could have just been the effect of her remarkable eyes. They were back to black now, but it didn’t make much difference. Bodil could cow the gods themselves.

“They wanted us to be separate and warring with each other,” she added. “So that we could never unite to fight against them. And they achieved their goal.”

“But he has all four elements,” Enid said, nodding at Æsubrand.

He looked rough, crouched on the dirty cobbles with only about half of his once sleek suit of dragonscale still in place. He’d lost the helmet and a single greave, along with the chest piece of his cuirass, but had used his belt to strap the back piece in place and stabilize the suit. He had acid burns on his chest from the battle to get here, and his formerly sleek, silver-blond hair was frazzled, having dried without any of the usual toiletries the fey used to keep their pride and joy in place.

He also looked like a man who just wanted to eat his groundhog or whatever in peace.

He had found a replacement for his once beautiful and now destroyed sword, however, in the form of a rusty pike. I didn’t know if he’d picked it up here, because some of the witches liked old-fashioned weapons as much as the fey, or had obtained it from Faerie before we left. But I suspected the latter.

It was old and ugly, but he had it cradled in the crook of one arm like the finest of blades. And like a man who was nervous about being attacked again. Or perhaps there was a different reason.

I realized it might be one of the only things left from his homeworld.

“Yes, his father made sure of it,” Bodil was saying. “He deliberately married a woman with the powers he lacked. But that was after the gods were gone, and the rules relaxed, and was done to help them return. Although they would have likely killed the prince eventually had he not escaped with us.”

The latter was said casually, almost as an aside, but it seemed to put Æsubrand off his meal. Or maybe that was the tiny, dangling feet of his treat hanging off the stick. They would have done it for me.

But not for Alphonse, the big vamp, who, unlike most of his kind, liked to eat just fine. And while he didn’t need the nourishment, I guessed the familiar action was soothing. He picked up the discarded stick and helped himself, tearing into the small body with evident relish.

Æsubrand accepted a bowl of soup from Bodil without comment.

There was a mostly intact teashop down the road, which I guessed they’d raided for supplies. In place of the pot, a dull brass kettle with enough dings and scratches to bear witness to a long life of teamaking was plopped onto the fire while the bowls finished being passed around.

It surprised me despite the good smells that had woken me up. “How did you make this?” I asked as Bodil handed me a bowl and spoon.

“Garden up top,” she said shortly, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling. “Ran rampant all these years, but some plants survived. And those little creatures—”

She looked at Pritkin, who started to supply a name, then glanced at me and stopped. Which meant that this probably wasn’t groundhog. I looked at my bowl but then shrugged and ate it anyway.

I was freaking ravenous.

“At any rate, they are plentiful,” Bodil said. “We will not starve, at least.”

Her words were laced with irony, as none of us thought that would be our fate. There were plenty of ways to die here, and that one took too long. Longer than we probably had.

That thought brought me to the conversation I needed to have with everybody, and postponing it wasn’t likely to make it better. But I didn’t want to ruin any more appetites, so I sat quietly for a moment, sucking down some of the best soup I’d ever had. Or maybe I was just hungry.

“Other than for the garden, there’s not much in the way of provisions,” Pritkin told me. “We’ve checked the buildings that are safe to enter, and almost everything usable was destroyed.”

“Not that there was much,” Alphonse added. “Witches got ways of preserving food, but there wasn’t much to preserve. It looked like they were hunkered down for a while, probably living off the gardens and their stores and maybe getting some supplies through the portals.”

“That could have been what betrayed them,” Bodil said. “Portals leave a trace if you know how to read it.”

I didn’t say anything, but I was impressed. She’d just seen her world explode around her, killing everyone and everything she had ever known, but here she was, cooking soup and calmly having a discussion. I would have been...

Sitting here and calmly eating soup, I guessed, because my world wasn’t much better off. If this was how a secret enclave full of some of the most powerful people I had ever known had fared, what did everything else look like? I shivered slightly, not wanting to know, and concentrated on packing away dinner.

“We don’t need provisions anyway,” Alphonse said, breaking the small silence that had followed her words.

“Maybe you don’t,” Bodil said, eyeing him as if wondering when he might decide to snack on one of them.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Fey blood tastes nasty. Of course, I never tried any god-blood—”

“And your first attempt will be your last,” she assured him, but for some reason, Alphonse just laughed, with his dark eyes smiling along with his lips. It looked weird on a face that nobody could call handsome, with its crushed cauliflower nose, too-strong features, and swarthy stubble that added to the low-level mobster vibe. Which was unfair, as Alphonse had been a high-level mobster.

One who seemed to be in an excellent mood.

“Probably would,” he agreed. “I saw what you did to that army. Damn. And I mean damn, woman. You can throw down.”

“At home,” Bodil said dryly. “I don’t know about here. The desert is not my preferred battlefield.”

No, for someone with water magic, I wouldn’t expect so. But again, Alphonse only chuckled. “Well, good thing our fighting is behind us, then.”

“Behind us?” Æsubrand said suddenly. Whether over the purloining of his dinner or Alphonse’s relentless good humor, I didn’t know, but he looked pissed. “I would say it’s just begun!”

Alphonse cheerfully ate a tiny leg at him. “How so?”

“How so? We are in an alien world—yes, even you! I do not know what fifty years of the gods’ tender care has done to your planet, but I doubt you will like it, vampire!”

“Alphonse,” the big vamp corrected, “or I’m gonna start calling you elf.”

“I do not care what you call me!” Æsubrand snarled. “We are in an alien world stalked by creatures of unimaginable power! And yet, somehow, we are expected to cross a desert, find this Pythian heir, who is guarded by those very gods, and have her explain to us what happened before going back in time to change it! And if we fail at any part of that, both our worlds stay dead! And yet you sit there, laughing like an idiot—”

“I’m gonna overlook that statement since you just lost your world and all,” Alphonse said magnanimously. “But you should probably learn some manners. There are no princes anymore. You’re either one of them, or you’re one of us, and if you’re one of us, you’re on a par with these things,” he waved around the denuded stick with only a few scraps of meat still clinging to the wood, “so we gotta stick together.”

“And do what?” Æsubrand asked bitterly. “Cower in the shadows like vermin as we did before? I have never been so humiliated in my life—”

Ah, so that was what was eating him.

“Didn’t look humiliated,” Alphonse offered. “More like pissing your pants terrified, which—”

Æsubrand jumped him.

“—was perfectly understandable, if you’d let me finish,” Alphonse said while the sleekly dangerous fey prince did his best to pound his skull in.

Æsubrand seemed a little freaked out when he discovered that it was like trying to cave in solid steel, spread over granite, with a titanium underlayer. Alphonse just took it for a second because the prince wasn’t using a weapon, and fists were not very effective against vampire flesh. Then he plucked the enraged fey off his back like a dog scratching a pesky flea.

“You done, hoss?” Alphonse said, only to have Æsubrand do one of those acrobatic flips he’d used a few times on me and get the big man into a headlock.

“You insult me!”

“Not at all. I was there, remember? Cowering right beside you. Or have you forgotten already?”

“But that is to be expected from one such as—” Æsubrand caught himself just in time.

Or maybe not.

“One such as me, huh?” Alphonse asked. “You know, you’re burning through that whole compassion thing real quick. And for the record, some of us low-life scum—”

“I did not say that!”

“But you thought it. And us low-lifes think kind of highly of ourselves, too.”

“It’s not about what you think! Reputation is everything—”

“Where?” Bodil suddenly piped up, causing Æsubrand to look at her.

“What?”

“I said where?” the beautiful fey asked, her dark eyes gleaming. “Where does reputation still matter? In your father’s court? In mine? Before the soldiers who served with you? For they are all gone.”

She never raised her voice, but the hairs on my arms suddenly stood up.

“Reputation is meaningless,” she added flatly. “As are most things now. Only the mission matters. Only that is real. Or else. . .” She looked around. “This will become all that is. Can you stomach that, Prince Æsubrand? Can you live with it?”

“No.” It was a whisper.

“Then let the vampire—” she caught herself. “Let Alphonse go and come and eat. You will need your strength.”

And to my surprise, he did as she asked.

Alphonse turned to me. He was done with his snack and likely didn’t need another, at least not yet. And when he did, it wouldn’t be an animal he’d be going for.

But right now, he wanted information.

“So, when are you gonna do it?” he asked.

I ate soup to give myself a second because I knew damned well what he meant. And why he was in such a good mood. Alphonse thought the battle was over, and our victory was on the horizon. Because that was how this was supposed to work, why we’d fought so hard to get here, and why my head buzzed every time I thought about what lay ahead.

“Do what?” Enid asked.

“You know, that thing she does.” He waved a hand; I guessed to indicate a shift. “And flip out of here to go see Rhea, her heir, and then…”

He trailed off, his sunny smile still in place but his eyes going dark. Because I was still hunched over my bowl, eating soup as noncommittally as possible, and he wasn’t stupid. He knew me.

He had since I was a kid, when I’d served as court seer for his old boss. Alphonse had been the bruiser who made a mockery of the tall, dark, and handsome vamp trope and served as Tony’s chief enforcer. He’d been good at his job, and not only because he could pick up and break most vamps in half. But because those dark eyes didn’t miss much.

At least one thing hadn’t changed, I thought grimly.

“You can do that, right?” he said slowly. “Your power is back, and you’re just resting up to be able to use it. Right?”

I licked my lips and tried to think.

But not fast enough.

“Oh, son of a bitch!”

Chapter Three

I couldn’t sleep despite the bottle of possibly moonshine Alphonse had found under a collapsed counter and shared around, which had had fifty extra years of aging and mellowed not at all. So, I left the bearskin behind and climbed the staircase Bodil had found that let out onto the rooftop garden she’d mentioned. Only it was more of a hilltop garden since that was what this place looked like from the outside.

Bodil wasn’t there, having decided to get some sleep, as she was as exhausted as the rest of us. But somebody else was. Pritkin had talked Alphonse out of the remains of the bottle, and he shook it at me as I walked over to join him on a rickety-looking wooden bench that had somehow survived the apocalypse.

He looked better, having explored more on the way up here and found a shirt. It was clearly a woman’s shirt, being black and showing a pert witch riding on a broom in front of a yellow moon, with the caption “Why, yes, actually. I can drive a stick.”

I grinned because if anything was ever true...

Pritkin saw my expression and smiled ruefully. “There wasn’t a lot of choice.”

“It suits you.”

It did. The t-shirt wasn’t small, but it hadn’t been built for his kind of muscles. It was straining a little trying to contain them all, and along with the black scuba-type trousers he was wearing, leftovers from our recent adventures in the land of the water fey, it left him looking sleek, pared down, and dangerous.

That was good. I needed a dangerous partner right now, as I felt about as strong as a kitten. I took the bottle and gazed around.

The “garden” wasn’t much of one, having run wild ages ago to the point that I was surprised anything had survived up here. Vegas gets water approximately three weeks out of the year, with most of that clustered close together in the summer months. Which, judging by the coolness of the night air, this wasn’t.

Yet there were some scraggly green beans, a few still with yellowed, bug-bit pods clinging to the stems, a sickly-looking tomato plant with no tomatoes, probably because they’d gone into our dinner, and various hardy little pepper bushes, poking up from the hard-packed soil. They weren’t in rows if they’d ever been, but scattered as randomly as if reseeded by the birds, like the desert scrub that also seemed to flourish here.

A leftover spell to make the soil more moist? I reached a hand down to the dry-as-a-bone, cracked earth around the bench and didn’t believe it. Not to mention that I didn’t know a spell that could survive fifty years after the caster’s death.

I felt a shiver run through me and slugged back a shot’s worth of whatever was in the bottle.

And immediately regretted it.

“Take it easy,” Pritkin said as I choked because what the hell? “You didn’t have any earlier?”

“No,” I finally gasped back and returned the bottle. “I smelled it first.”

“So why now?” he hiked a blond eyebrow at me.

“I’m stupid.”

I found myself enveloped in a strong arm, and... okay. That was better. “You’re not stupid.”

“I feel stupid. I was sure my power would come back as soon as we reached Earth.”

“It was a reasonable assumption.”

“Yeah. Story of my life.”

I reached for the bottle again, and he sent me a look but gave it to me. It was no better this time, but I didn’t care much. I was too numb right now to care about anything.

Well, except for one thing. Because I hadn’t gotten into this mess on my own. Pythias could go back in time but not forward, as the future didn’t exist yet, so how could you shift to something that wasn’t there?

You couldn’t, or at least, that was what I’d always been taught. But somebody had done it, jumping our little group fifty years ahead into a dystopian nightmare. Worst of all, that somebody wasn’t even a rogue Pythian acolyte or a crazy mage, both of which I’d fought before.

It was a vampire. To be more precise, it was the vampire, the bastard who had ruined my childhood, killed my parents, and now trashed my future. The one who was owed.

And the only thing keeping me sane was the fact that he was probably here, too.

He had to be. Vamps didn’t know crap about magic, especially the time-travel kind. Yet, in a split second, he had shifted us decades out of place, and he’d been standing right beside me when he did it.

So, he hadn’t had a chance to get out of the spell’s reach. It must have grabbed him, too, and although I hadn’t seen him since arriving in this nightmare a day ago, he had to be here. Everyone else near me had been swept up in the spell’s backwash, so why wouldn’t he?

Or maybe I was just telling myself that. Maybe I needed something to ground me because, time traveler or not, this was out of my league. Way the hell out.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Pritkin said.

“I’d rather hear yours.”

The eyebrow was back and doing double duty tonight. “About?”

“Oh, try it on someone else.” I took another swig, choked again, and got thumped on the back. Which helped not at all because nothing was caught in my throat; it was just on fire. I handed the bottle back and told myself to get wasted later.

“Meaning?” he asked, putting it on the other side of the bench.

“Meaning that you always have a plan,” I wheezed. “You know how to get to Rhea. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

“I have an idea,” he agreed reluctantly; why, I didn’t know, since it was our only play. If the power hadn’t come to me, it was with my heir. She could send us back to our own time.

Of course, if she could send us, she could also send herself, and hadn’t done it, which was more than a little ominous. But I decided to leave that problem for another day. I had enough on my plate as it was, and anyway, she was the only possible chance we had, so getting to her was the plan, whether it was easy or not.

“Why does it sound like I’ll hate it?” I asked.

Pritkin pulled me in closer, and I went happily. It was the only good thing about this, the fact that he was with me. If I’d been here alone...

Well, I have been finishing that bottle and hoping it finished me at the same time. But Pritkin had a way of making even insane odds sound doable, maybe because he’d battled through them enough. We both had.

If I had to be at the end of the world with someone, I was glad it was him.

“The Circle recently cut a portal from its HQ in Stratford to its new, temporary digs on the outskirts of Vegas,” he told me.

“The old shoe warehouse?”

He sighed because he hated when I called it that. But I wasn’t trying to belittle the Circle’s accomplishments. After the demise of MAGIC, the old supernatural version of a United Nations out in the desert, where the local branch of the Silver Circle had once been based, they’d had to find another home and find one fast. They faced an unexpected war that wouldn’t wait, and the warehouse had been innocuous-looking and big enough...

But they’d still acted like it was embarrassing for the world’s premier group of mages, which was weird since their old HQ had been a hole in the ground.

I decided not to mention that.

“And?” I prompted because Pritkin looked like he wished he hadn’t said anything.

“The idea was to link our main bases of power so that, if an attack was made on one, the others could quickly come to its aid,” he told me. “Or help with an evacuation if needed. After the Black Circle attacked your court and we took far too long to respond, leaving you fighting a war with only a handful of newspaper reporters for backup—”

“Hey, the reporters kicked ass.”

“Yes, they did,” his hand tightened slightly on my arm. “But it was a close thing, and nobody wanted a repeat. The Pythian Court was, therefore, put right at the top of the list for areas to be linked into the new system, and plans had already been drawn up to provide a shortcut to it when I left the Corps. Or not directly to it, as that would compromise security, but in the region.”

“So we get to the shoe warehouse, and we get to my court?”

“To Dante’s, or just down the street from it,” he corrected, talking about the vamp-owned casino where my court had somehow ended up.

It was a long story.

“The difficulty is getting to the warehouse, considering where we are now,” he added. “The desert here is far too open, and I have seen no less than three giant shapes in the distance since coming up here.”

“Gods?” I said in alarm, staring out over the sand.

It didn’t help much, as the moon was barely a sliver in the sky, and the aurora borealis, which had brilliantly lit many of the nights in Faerie, was nowhere to be seen. The desert was dark, but there was no light pollution, allowing the Milky Way to arc overhead and provide a starfield all the way to the horizon. It wasn’t bright, but I could see how he could make out vague shapes, especially if they were moving.

But what were a bunch of gods doing in the middle of nowhere?

“I don’t know,” he confessed when I voiced my thoughts. “I also don’t think a god would have been fooled as easily as the creature attracted by our portal, but I cannot say for sure.” He shot me a look. “I haven’t had as much experience with them as you have.”

“Ha ha.” And then I realized what he’d meant. “You think it was the portal that attracted him?”

“What else?”

“I thought he must have seen one of you.”

Pritkin shook his head. “He was already coming our way when we topped the rise of the hill. At a guess, the power of a portal from Faerie was discernible even at a distance, and he came running. But we’ve done no magic since, having practically none available, yet there were other creatures like him in the vicinity.”

“So what attracted them?”

“Desperation?”

“What makes a god desperate?” I asked, frowning. “And why are they out here? You’d think they’d have better places to look for power than this,” I gestured at the small collection of hills, the flat sands beyond, and the sparse scrub. There were beautiful places in the deserts outside Vegas, but this wasn’t one of them. I’d thought before that the covens must have chosen it precisely for that reason.

If you wanted to go unnoticed, you could do worse.

“This is speculation,” he warned me.

“I’ll take it.” Pritkin’s speculation was better than most people’s certainty.

He looked out over the uninspired vista, his forehead wrinkling slightly. It was the expression I’d seen when I first came up here before he’d spotted me. As if he’d been trying to puzzle things out after everyone went to sleep, and I guessed he’d managed it.

“The gods might not have found what they expected when they returned,” he said after a moment. “At first, I’m sure it was a feast,” he added, his jaw tightening. “But what about after the initial conquest? With the survivors here and in Faerie either dead or hiding in small groups, and the powerful demon lords that the gods were really after, the ones who would make them a truly satisfying meal, absent…”

“But were they absent?” I asked because he was right. Earth or even Faerie wasn’t the point of all this. We were just the staging ground for the invasion of the hells the gods wanted because that was where their real prey lay. The ones with millennia of stored-up power that could satisfy even a divine appetite.

“I know them,” Pritkin said flatly. “The demon lords are not cowards, but they’re not stupid, either, and they’ve fought this war before. They rarely have to be taught the same lesson twice.

“They would scatter as soon as the gods returned and were busy taking vengeance on Earth and Faerie. They’d head to the far reaches of their realm, possibly even beyond them, and stay there. Some plotting revenge, others hoping for better days. But what they would not do is to come here or anywhere near here.”

“And the gods were starved when they arrived,” I said, thinking it through. “And there were a lot of them. So they probably got what they barely considered a meal before the buffet closed. Leaving them what? Fighting over scraps?”

“Not the greatest of them,” Pritkin said. “Zeus and the like. If they were willing to venture into the hells after being reinvigorated with the energy they found here, they would find prey. Not everyone could flee, and many of the demon races are not much more powerful than humans when it comes down to it.”

I thought about the quirky, slightly harassed-looking denizens of the demon world known on Earth as the Shadowland. It was one of the few I’d ever been to, as it was a neutral zone where human mages could go to buy whatever esoteric potion supplies were only available there. And where demons from a thousand races met to work out problems, trade, and offer their services to the Demon High Council, which met there, and where many of its members had courts.

But the regular Joes I’d encountered, or regular demons, I guessed, while they’d been scary sometimes, more often were just trying to make a living. I wondered where they were now. I wondered if they were now.

Being close to Earth, metaphysically speaking, was no longer a plus.

“So the strongest gods are off ravaging the hells,” I said, “which haven’t even fully recovered from the last time they were here, and the rest... are prowling around Earth?”

“Possibly,” but Pritkin looked dissatisfied. “But why in the desert? And why so many? The gods need magical energy; it is the only thing they live off of and the one power source they can use. But this…” he looked around at the barren wasteland, his expression echoing my thoughts.

This didn’t look like the Vegas buffet they’d probably been hoping for.

“Maybe most of them are in the hells then,” I said, “and it’s just a few crazy ones out here.”

“No.” He sounded certain. “It would be suicide for the lesser gods. The demon lords have had time to plan, and they would not leave their worlds undefended. Not to mention that the people of those worlds must know they are fighting for their lives. There will be snares everywhere, fiendish traps, and ambushes, as there were last time. The demon lords first tried to fight, arraying their armies against the gods, and were decimated. They learned better. They won’t make that mistake again, but they won’t just lie down and die. They’ll have prepared for a fight; it’s in their nature.”

“You almost sound proud of them,” I said before I thought. Because Pritkin hated his demon half.

Only, he currently didn’t have it, did he?

Shortly before we were whisked away to the future, he’d used a spell to split the demon part of his nature off from the rest of himself. He’d needed to be in two places at once: to win a challenge in a contest we were engaged in and to rescue me. But that had left his counterpart behind to face the gods’ return on his own, as he’d been outside the spell that had grabbed us and sent us to this era. And if he’d still been in Faerie...

But no. He was Pritkin. He was smart.

He’d survive.

“I know them,” Pritkin said, watching me as if he knew the path my thoughts had taken. “The hells will live up to their name where the gods are concerned.”

“So, the greatest gods might chance it as they need more power than the rest. But everyone else... what are they doing?”

“Looking in holes,” Pritkin said, giving me a flashback to the great eye in the crack above us. “Searching for every scrap of power left in this world. And no fewer than four of them are prowling in this vicinity…”

His own eyes widened suddenly.

“What is it?” I asked as he all but leaped off the bench and started moving around the hilltop, hands spread slightly out beside him and parallel to the ground as if magically searching for something. But there was nothing there but beans and the staircase below, hidden by the fake hilltop. But Pritkin was never this excited over nothing, so I got up, too.

“What are we looking for?” I asked because he hadn’t answered me.

“Witches.”

“What?”

“Witches!” he looked up from kneeling by a bean plant. “What if they’re still here?”

I stared at him, feeling the first bit of hope in a while. We could really use some allies right now, especially ones that powerful! Oh, God, we could!

“You think they are?”

“I can’t tell.” He looked frustrated. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not here. To have survived for so long, they’d need a hell of a camouflage.”

I glanced around. I’d say they’d succeeded. “So, how do we contact them?”

“We don’t. If they’re here, they must know we are, too. That portal simply couldn’t have been missed. It even brought a god running from miles away. But they haven’t surfaced.”

“Maybe they don’t know who we are,” I said excitedly. “Faerie was supposed to be barren, too, and now it’s just exploded. They must have felt that; their magic is based on that of the fey—”

“Yes, and the death of a planet is not likely to have reassured them!”

“But there has to be a way to let them know we’re not just refugees, that we’re not a threat, that we can help—”

“Help?” The word slithered suddenly through the cold desert air, like the hiss of a giant snake. “What does the heir of Artemis know of help?”

And suddenly, we were falling.

Chapter Four

The whole hilltop dropped out from under us, and we fell. It would have been to our doom, but the little bench we’d been sitting on caught us. It followed us down, scooped us up, and sent us rocketing through utter darkness, clinging to the weathered old slats without any idea where we were going or what we’d find when we arrived.

The journey didn’t take long. The demented little thing fell almost straight down for a few seconds, to the point that my butt lifted off the seat, then shot ahead at what felt like the speed of sound. Or maybe that was just because my screams were blown away almost as soon as they left my lips.

They echoed somewhere behind us as we abruptly dropped again, into utter darkness, the pale moonlight from above having been cut off by what I guessed was the top of a tunnel. And then we stopped so fast that it would have given me whiplash if Pritkin hadn’t been holding onto the back of my head. Until the bench abruptly tipped over and dumped us both out.

I lay on what felt like hard-packed dirt that bunched under my nails as I pressed them in, trying to ground myself. That didn’t help much, with my head spinning, my gut roiling, and my sense of direction too confused to figure out which way was up. Leaving Pritkin to handle this, whatever this was.

It seemed to involve many people crowding us on all sides and muttering things I hoped weren’t curses because his magic was sitting on empty, and mine was already there. I swallowed my nausea back down while he said stuff I couldn’t concentrate on, being too busy trying to focus my eyes, only that wasn’t working, either. Everything was black as sin, to the point that we might as well have been blindfolded, which we probably were, I realized.

Another spell, I guessed, but I didn’t have a chance to ask before I was snatched off the floor and half marched, half dragged down a hall.

I only knew that’s what we were in because the echoes changed, bouncing back faster inside a more confined space. But I still couldn’t see, and I guessed Pritkin couldn’t either, since he was cursing up a storm from behind me. But we didn’t fall, as whoever was manhandling us never gave us the opportunity.

My feet only touched down one out of every three or four steps, and the people hustling me along weren’t stopping to rest, maybe because they didn’t have far to go. We soon burst out of the tunnel into a much larger room; I could tell that much by sound, but nothing else. Until I was thrown back onto the floor, a rough stone one in this case, and someone began speaking.

“Cassie Fucking Palmer. Why am I not surprised?”

The blindfold I wasn’t wearing dissolved, and I blinked around in the dim light of a torch-lit cave. And realized why the voice had sounded familiar. Jasmine, I almost said, looking up, but caught myself in time because that wasn’t her name.

It was who she’d reminded me of when we first met, the beautiful, sloe-eyed, dark-haired princess of Agraba, or in reality, the Mother of one of the few covens who had been willing to send girls to my court. I stared up at her, trying to remember her real name, which shouldn’t have been difficult. But if I’d ever doubted that fifty years had passed, I didn’t anymore, and the years... had not been kind.

“Look at you,” she said, coming forward through a crowd of what looked like a couple hundred witches and crouching in front of me, her black robes pooling on the dirt. “Look at you!”

I really wished she’d stop looking at me because then I had to look back. And the changes were startling. Something I guess I wasn’t great at concealing because she smirked.

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah.” It came out as a whisper.

I was trying to get myself under control, but it had been a hell of a few days and a hell of a month before that. And, frankly, most of the year hadn’t been so great, either, so I was having trouble. But my problem was mostly because the face in front of me kept tearing my thoughts apart whenever I tried to form any.

The eyes were the same, if sunken in acres of wrinkles she shouldn’t have had. They were still dark, mysterious, and lovely, and were how I’d recognized her along with the voice, as nothing else was familiar. Instead of looking fifty years older, which for a witch would equate to maybe twenty for a human, she looked three times that, enough to make the almost two-hundred-year-old witches who had helped to guard my court seem young by comparison.

“It’s the mileage,” I whispered before I could stop myself, and she laughed.

That was the same, too, full-throated and genuine. “Yes, while you haven’t aged a day,” she informed me. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you above. So sweet, so innocent, so earnest. The golden-haired goddess... who left us all to die. Including those girls I sent you.”

The words were bad, but the expression, the change in voice, and the sudden stillness as everyone stopped talking at once were worse. I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Because the significance of what she’d said hit and hit hard.

Pritkin was talking again, loud, angry words that cut through the silence like a knife, but I didn’t hear them. All I could focus on was my girls. The ones bound to me, the ones who had made up my little coven, the ones who had trusted me.

A terrible, echoing emptiness opened up under my breastbone where their presence should have been. I’d felt weak since I came here, but had put it down to sheer exhaustion. Now I knew better, but the lack of the power boost they gave me wasn’t anything compared to the slew of images that slammed into me like a freight train.

Little hands reaching up, wanting to show me their latest artwork; little eyes, shining with pride when I noticed them or gave them praise; little hands, so chubby and clumsy, yet trying to weave a spell out of the Pythian power that hovered around them like an unseen nanny, golden and benevolent; little bodies running around my court in long, old fashioned nightwear, because my acolytes were from a different era and didn’t approve of Hello Kitty and Disney character stuff.

An exception had been made for Mira, the dark-skinned diva, who clung to her ratty pink bunny suit with all the ferocity of the formidable witch she would someday be. Even Hilde, my chief acolyte and self-proclaimed battleax, had decided that that wasn’t a fight worth having and let her keep it. She’d finally started outgrowing it right before I left.

Before I failed her, as I’d failed all of them. Trying to save Faerie when I should have been looking after my responsibilities, my court, my coven. My girls—

“Left them behind, didn’t you?” Jasmine’s voice said, echoing my thoughts. “You promised me you’d take care of them, defend them with your life, but you left. And barely a month later—”

“How?” Pritkin demanded harshly. “How did this happen?”

But Jasmine acted as if he hadn’t even spoken, and those eyes, those beautiful, beautiful eyes, never left mine. “No, you left us all to deal with an army of gods. You were our only chance, and you weren’t here. The Circle went first, the only satisfaction we had, watching them throw themselves at the oncoming tide as uselessly as—”

“All of them?” I whispered, unable to take it in. The Circle... couldn’t be gone. They just couldn’t.

The Silver Circle had been the bastion of order in the magical community for as long as anyone could remember. Their methods hadn’t always been pretty, but they’d brought peace, stabilized a chaotic system, and maintained order. And now they were gone?

“Oh, not at first.” She sat back on her heels, allowing the others to crowd close, with hateful, vengeful faces everywhere I looked. “They attempted a few frontal assaults, got annihilated, and then the rest regrouped to try more subtle approaches. But they didn’t have time.

“The gods were like a ravenous tide rolling over the landscape, full of hate and hunger. They can sense magic like we smell food, and they were starving. They hunted down the Circle’s men—oh, not the greater; they had bigger prizes. But the lesser gods, the little bastards, skeletal, half-dead zombie-looking things, who hadn’t been allowed to eat at all back in whatever misbegotten world they call home...

“That kind weren’t so picky. They took anyone they could find with a scrap of magical blood. They took our people, so many and so fast, that we barely knew what had hit us before they were gone. Including Evelyn,” she added, calling up memories of a cap of steel gray hair, a wardrobe of no-nonsense business suits, and someone who in no way had resembled the typical image of a witch.

Until you looked into her eyes and saw the power there.

“Evelyn,” I repeated, disbelieving, because she’d had the permanence of a mountain, the indestructibility of a force of nature. Yet she was gone?

“And Beatrice,” she added, bringing up the image of a tiny, four-foot-seven, caftan-covered dynamo with a ‘fro almost as big as she was and enough gold jewelry to buy a house—or two. “They went to your court to try to get the girls. They failed.” It was stark.

“I’m sorry—”

“Save it for someone who gives a damn! If you’d been there—but when were you ever? Popping in and out—”

“She was fighting a war!” Pritkin said and was again ignored, except for rumblings from the surrounding witches, several of whom dragged him back when he tried to move forward.

I shook my head at him. I was a coven leader—technically—and thus able to speak. He was an ex-war mage, and I wasn’t sure that they knew about the ex. He saw the gesture but only scowled at me, so I didn’t know if he would be quiet.

But if not, it wasn’t likely to go well.

Of course, neither was this.

Jasmine, whose real name I had finally remembered—Zara—had gotten up and started striding around, witches scattering out of her way. “I would have been with them that day if I hadn’t been busy putting out another fire,” she said, her robes snapping and her mane of gray hair crackling like a lightning bolt had hit down nearby.

Her power had always been strong, but not that strong, I thought, staring about at the witches who were lending her part of their strength, as my coven had once done for me. And lending her part of their rage, because she’d always been the calmest and most reasonable of the mothers I’d known, the most willing to listen. But she wasn’t listening now.

“And when I heard,” she added, rounding on me. “I didn’t even have time to grieve before witches were flooding in here from all corners of the Earth. Pitiful, glassy-eyed, clutching their few belongings and telling stories of the same thing happening everywhere.

“We took them in, those who made it this far, yet most did not. And those covens who did were broken, their leaders killed fighting a desperate rear-guard action to allow some of their people to survive. Unlike the Circle, whose leadership had to be rooted out from their holes underground after their armies were annihilated, Mothers don’t lead from behind, they don’t cower, they don’t run.”

“The Circle doesn’t run!” Pritkin snarled and received a fist to the groin for his trouble.

“They stayed,” Zara said, going down on one knee again, getting in my face, making me look at what the struggle had cost her. “And they fought, and they died, to a woman. Leaving me, only me, as the last remaining Mother on Earth!”

Yeah, that would explain it, I thought, staring at her dizzily. The covens had lacked cohesion since their long-ago struggle against the Circle had destroyed their leadership, and they’d never been able to get it back. Quarrels, fights, and chaos had been the order of the day, with each coven going its way under its own Mother, with no head witch or council on top anymore.

Looked like that had changed.

“Do you know what that’s like?” she hissed. “Do you have any idea?”

“No.”

“No, of course, you don’t,” her once beautiful lips, now lost in a mass of tiny lines, curved into a sneer. “You weren’t here. But I was, and they came every day, spilling out of our portals as tattered, traumatized refugees with no coven leader, no idea what was happening, and nowhere else to turn.

“We took them in, fed them, clothed them, gave them a chance to survive while the gods were busy hunting the Circle—and every other magic user they could find! And when they finished with them, they turned on us, tracking us down, decimating the raiding parties I sent out, looking for supplies, both here and in Faerie. And circling closer every day, with each use of our portal network helping them to hone in on our location, the last remaining bastion of magical power on Earth!”

I stared around at that, but my watering eyes saw only a blur of faces flowing with firelight. Hundreds of them; I wasn’t sure how many, as darkness ate at the edges, leaving parts of the throng in shadow. But hundreds...

Out of millions.

Was this it? Were these the only covens left in the world? Or the only coven, I corrected myself, because they were all under Zara’s control.

“And now here you come,” she hissed, “to lead them right to us. Cassie fucking Palmer, who abandoned us at our gravest hour, and now returns to what? Save your hide by turning us in?”

“No! I swear—”

“And what do your assurances mean to us? What does anything that comes out of your lying mouth mean? I trusted you once, defended you, stood by you when I should have helped the others kill you before you could betray us! But that oversight can be remedied.”

“Does coven law mean nothing, then?” Pritkin said, his voice ringing out so loudly that he must have enhanced it. I guessed to reach the cheap seats in the back, although why he was bothering, I didn’t know.

I doubted they had a different opinion.

“Silence him,” Zara snarled. “If he breaks the spell, kill him.”

“Yes, you can kill me,” Pritkin said, deflecting the half dozen spells sent at him and causing witches on all sides to hiss and duck. “But you can’t do it to her. Not by your laws. Not without a trial—”

“What do you think this is?” Zara snapped.

“Not that kind of trial. She is a coven leader, and by your laws—”

“Don’t you dare quote our laws to me!”

“And yet, it seems someone must,” he said calmly, even though we were surrounded by a group of very angry, very dangerous women. “For you seem to have forgotten them.”

He glanced at the circle of witches who had somehow eluded the gods’ purge all these years. They were survivors and looked it, many with visible scars that they weren’t bothering to conceal, tattered clothing, and gaunt faces. But magic was snapping around them so thickly that it distorted the air, turning the vengeful faces under the flickering torchlight monstrous. They wanted someone to blame for what had happened to them, for all they’d lost, and they’d found one.

And it didn’t help that I wasn’t sure they were wrong.

What had I done?

“What you had to,” Pritkin said because I guessed I’d spoken that last part out loud. “The best that anyone possibly could have.”

“You call this the best?” Zara spat. “She left us to die—”

“She left you to fight, which is what she has the right to do here. Or do your laws and customs mean nothing? Are you the freedom fighters you always claimed to be, rejecting the Circle’s forced compliance, or are you feral animals crouching underground, looking desperately for a scapegoat—”

That was as far as he got before a dozen witches fell on him, but it was enough. He’d bought me a moment to fight through my shock and given me the information to save at least one of us. Along with our party up top, if he could reach them.

“Get off him,” I said, standing up.

“Or else what?” Zara hissed as the witches fought to take down Pritkin’s shields. But demon magic didn’t seem to be something they understood, and they were struggling with it. They’d manage eventually, but not quickly enough.

Not if I redirected their hate at me.

“Or else prove him right,” I said, projecting my voice the old-fashioned way by yelling my head off. “That your laws mean nothing, your customs mean nothing, that being the Mother of a coven—”

“You have no right to that title!” Someone yelled, to shouts of agreement on all sides. The fight seemed to have brought the witches back to life, with the former eerie stillness being replaced by what looked and sounded a lot like a torch-wielding mob.

And Zara agreed. “Your coven is dead!” she spat.

“But yours isn’t,” I said, meeting those dark, glittering eyes as steadily as Pritkin had. “And I challenge you for it.”

Once again, the room went deathly silent, as abruptly as if someone had thrown a switch. Once again, a pin drop would have echoed loudly, or in this case, my harsh breathing. And the blood rushing in my veins, which was all I could hear as I’d just signed my death warrant.

“What?” Zara said, in a more normal tone of voice, as if shock had jolted her back into her old self for a moment.

“You claim to be Mother of this coven,” I said harshly. “Then prove it. Or prove yourself unworthy to lead the last remaining witches on Earth. They deserve a leader who will fight for them, as I will.

“Will you?”

Chapter Five

There was silence for a moment longer, then Zara laughed, her voice echoing loudly in the stillness. “Do you take us for vampires, witch? We don’t decide our leadership in such ways!”

“No, you decide it by the Gauntlet,” I said, “which I passed if you recall, to claim my coven.” I said that last a little louder than necessary because these bitches didn’t get to take that away from me; none of them did! “Something I assume was true for you?”

“Of course—

“But not for this one. No Gauntlet has been run for this... hodge-podge.” Shouts broke out at the term, but I doubled down. “Yes, hodge-podge! No wonder you haven’t been able to stand against your enemies! You aren’t a coven with a leader who fights for you; you’re a bunch of traumatized women cowering in holes—

“I fought!” Zara hissed. “What do you think the last fifty years have been if not the gauntlet of all gauntlets?”

“You didn’t fight,” I repeated loudly. “You hid. Maybe you felt there was no other choice, but now you have a challenger, and I say you faced no Gauntlet!”

“It’s true!” Someone yelled from the peripheries, only to get shouted down immediately by others. “You know she’s right!”

“It is,” someone else said, closer in. “And she’s right about the other, as well. Cowering is not what we do—”

“And what would you have us do?” Zara demanded, turning on the voice that had come from behind her. “This woman is reckless—always was! She’ll get you killed! I kept you safe—”

“Safe for what?” Someone else called. “To die in the dark?”

A massive argument, which I got the impression was of old standing, broke out, with everybody trying to yell over everyone else. Some things never change, I thought, remembering how much witches liked a verbal smackdown. And wondering what the odds were of Pritkin and me slipping away in the chaos.

Not very good, judging by the women who I assumed were loyalists crowding me thickly, like a hedge.

Guessed they’d had the same idea.

“Be silent!” Zara’s voice rang out, magically enhanced to echo off the walls and come back in waves, almost forcefully enough to knock me down. “She’s an agent of chaos here to destroy us!”

“Looks like you’ve done that well enough on your own!” I said, wishing I had the power to enhance my voice right now, but settling for screaming because the din hadn’t much abated. “This isn’t your coven, Zara; it’s up for grabs! And I’m grabbing it!”

Zara started to speak again, but an old woman I didn’t know with a massive bun of salt and pepper hair precariously perched on top of her head stopped her with a gesture. “You’re saying you’ll run the Gauntlet, then, for the right to lead us?” she asked me.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

I received a flash of yellowed teeth, with one missing on the side, then she all but dragged Zara back into a clutch of women.

I didn’t even try to eavesdrop on them; I didn’t need to. I’d just given them a coven-approved way of killing me that no one needed to struggle to explain away. Murdering me via coven law solved a problem without widening any cracks in their ranks.

It was perfect, except that it probably ended in my gory death.

“What are you doing?” The question crackled in my ear. It came from the translation spell I’d been wearing at the fey court because I speak exactly none of their languages. Pritkin had hacked it to give him a way to talk to me in an emergency.

And we seemed to have a lot of those.

“What you suggested,” I said softly, trying to be inconspicuous. That wasn’t hard with everybody still arguing and half of them yelling.

“I didn’t suggest this!” Pritkin whispered viciously. “You’re supposed to name me as your champion—”

I managed to avoid rolling my eyes—just. “Pritkin. This is a coven—”

“And?”

“And you don’t know as much about them as you think you do.”

That wasn’t surprising since the Silver Circle had fought the covens and nearly annihilated them four hundred years ago. Pritkin wasn’t as close-minded as the usual war mage and knew more about them as a result. But he’d never been one of them—one of us, I corrected myself, because whether I felt like it or not, technically, I was a witch and a coven leader.

Or, I had been.

A pang went through my heart again, like a physical blow. My girls. It was worse than anything, far worse than an infuriated Zara trying to take my head. Dying young was a wartime likelihood, and I’d been forced to come to terms with it a while ago. But that was where I was concerned.

Not them.

This was never supposed to touch them.

“What does that mean?” Pritkin’s voice demanded, breaking me out of my sorrow.

“That there are no champions,” I said, my voice hoarse from screaming. “In the covens, you fight your battles yourself.”

“Then why the devil did you agree? You’re out of magic—”

“Yes, and they know that. Or I’d have shifted away from here by now and taken you with me.”

“Then what the hell—”

“Is Lover’s Knot still in place?” I interrupted, talking about the spell that linked us down to the metaphysical level. It was an old one, first developed in the Renaissance, and which I doubted even any of the witches here knew, as knowledge of it had been suppressed soon thereafter. And it had been suppressed hard.

That made sense when you considered that it allowed two magical creatures to borrow each other’s abilities for as long as the spell was active. Giving a vampire the capacity to throw spells, for instance, which is what it had been used for in some of the old vampire wars. But that ability came with a price, one that the Vampire Senate had decided was too high because the link was so strong that if one part of the duo died, they both did.

Pritkin and I had been risking it at the fey court because we hadn’t had much choice, but he hadn’t liked it, and he sounded wary when he replied.

“Yes, but that only allows you to borrow my power and not my skill, and I have little enough of the former to help you—”

“Then help yourself,” I said because I didn’t have time to beat around the bush. “Send me what you can, then cut the connection. I’ll use what power you have to hold them off for as long as possible. In the meantime, get to the others and get out—”

“What?”

“—have Enid help to hide you. Her abilities should be enough to get you across the desert, then get to Rhea somehow and—”

He said a bad word I didn’t know because it was in an arcane language that might not have even originated on Earth. But the tone was telling. “I’m not leaving you! Not again, never again!”

“Really? I remember a time when you blessed me out for saying something similar to you—”

“That was different!”

“How?” I demanded loudly enough that a couple of nearby witches paused their conversation to stare at me. I smiled weakly back and turned away, trying to spot Pritkin in the crowd. But they’d pulled him off somewhere, or too many witches had crowded between us because I couldn’t see him anymore. “We either both die here—tonight,” I hissed. “Or one of us lives, gets to Rhea, and ends this—”

“And what about you?” it was strident. “You die here, and changing the past will alter nothing! You’ll still be dead—”

“Pritkin. There are two worlds at stake.”

“There are always bloody worlds at stake!” he exploded. “Or gods to fight! Or some fucking other thing that—”

“And we just had this discussion,” I added, because he was right. We were always fighting something these days, which meant that one of us was nearly always in danger. It was what he’d struggled with more than anything else, not with the danger to himself as war mages all had the assumption that they’d die in battle someday, and, with how reckless they were, almost acted like they were looking forward to it. But with the danger to me.

But we’d had this discussion because one life didn’t matter anymore. Bodil had been right: only the mission mattered. But now, the first time he had a chance to prove that he understood what partners meant, we were right back to square one.

And I couldn’t do this.

“You agreed,” I said, my voice breaking slightly with some emotion between desperation and anger. “You said—”

“Don’t do this to me.” It was flat.

“—we were partners, but if that isn’t enough, try this. You are bound to me by oath and—”

Pritkin cursed some more, inventively, and cut me off. “Tell me you have a plan!”

“I have a plan.”

“Cassie—”

That was his ‘you’re lying to me, and I know it’ voice, but I didn’t give him a chance to get started. “So you will leave me, and you will fight to save them or live knowing that you failed us all when it mattered the most!”

I cut the connection because I was starting to hyperventilate, and that wouldn’t work, not here, not now. The only thing the covens valued in their leaders was strength, and I had to project it, at least long enough for him to get away if he was going. I couldn’t tell, but I did get hit with a rush of magical energy the next second, which helped to steady me.

But it wasn’t much because he didn’t have much left. We’d been almost non-stop fighting gods, fey, and every other conceivable creature for days. This fight wasn’t going to take long.

But there would be one because it looked like Zara’s people had had time to talk sense into her. Refusing a challenge would make her look weak and embolden those unhappy with her leadership. Killing me would get rid of a problem, slake the witches’ lust for vengeance, and make her look strong, all at the same time.

Her magically enhanced voice rang out around the great cave once more, bringing the room’s cacophony to a pause.

“Very well. If the vampire’s bitch wants a duel, she shall have one. It will substitute for the Gauntlet and decide once and for all who leads this coven!”

There was some muttering to this, but nobody defied her, perhaps hoping I’d kill her and then they’d gang up and take me out. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. Because I didn’t think I was going to kill her.

No, I didn’t think that at all.

The witches drained away from the central area of the floor where we stood, leaving just Zara and me in the center. Then somebody levitated the crudely made torches out of dozens of witches’ hands and sent them spiraling above us, casting flickering tongues of light below like a wildly rotating chandelier. It reminded me of the crazed lights at the fey court, although those had been balls of spell-light that actually illuminated something, while these—

Were throwing shadows that masked the first hammer blow of a spell that almost took my head off.

Only it didn’t, and not because Zara was playing games. But because I dodged it. Or, no, that wasn’t exactly right. I dodged it with a fluid grace and speed that I was incapable of on my best day, which this was not.

I’d slept in my smelly suit of armor, giving me bruises on top of my bruises, and had eaten God-knew-what in wholly insufficient quantities. I was frazzled, exhausted, freaked out, and spent, completely used up after the week I’d had, and in no shape to be doing... whatever the hell I was doing. But the rapid-fire curses hitting the ground all around me, that tore up the stone in explosions, the flying detritus of which alone slapped me in the face and punched my body almost as hard as fists, never actually touched me.

They caused the witches to scream, shield, and back the hell up even farther than they already were. They took out some of the torches, raining sparks and steaming pitch down on me and Zara, and causing others to spin wildly as they were knocked out of rotation. The fiery whirls crisscrossed the darkness in front of my dazzled eyes, strobing my vision and making an already difficult-to-follow fight virtually impossible. The blows looked like they were coming from all directions at once, and maybe they were; maybe her friends were cheating.

And yet, somehow, I was staying ahead of all of them. Jumping over one that came from the side in a leap that would have made an Olympian proud, and causing it to smack into another that had either ricocheted off the walls or been thrown by someone else. And sending the original curse flying back the way it had come, almost frying Zara had she not ducked at the last second.

As it was, it seared some of the wild salt and pepper hair off and caused both of us to stare for a moment.

Damn, I didn’t understand anything!

Until I did, when everything suddenly slowed way, way down.

I glanced around for a second as fiery motes turned in the air, drifting leisurely toward the floor, as spells streaked the night, still fast but suddenly possible to track with my vision, and as a blow, camouflaged to hide it this time, rippled across the air between my opponent and me, like a heat wave on the desert.

I stepped to the side, watched it go by, and wondered what the hell. “Pritkin?” I whispered, but there was no reply.

Or maybe I couldn’t discern it through the distortion in my hearing, which was no less altered than my vision. I could hear the roar of the surrounding crowd, but distantly, like the surf hitting a beach. It was also slowed down and warped to the point that I couldn’t make out any individual words. Like the sizzle of flying spells, like the beating of my heart, like—

Like a new whisper, not in my ear this time, but in my head.

“Dulceată…”

And just like that, I knew. Not only that I wasn’t fighting alone, after all, but that someone else had survived the fifty years between when I’d disappeared and this misbegotten hellscape.

I also knew something else. Pritkin hadn’t dissolved the spell linking us, even though every second that he waited could mean his death. And someone else’s because this spell of ours had a third member, forming a triumvirate of power that I had thought lost to time. Our third was supposed to be either dead in another universe or fighting his own battles there, but fifty years is a long time, and if ever anyone was resilient, capable, and fucking hard to kill, it was—

“Mircea,” I whispered, and heard him laugh.

“You are fighting for us all, little one. Show them what that means,” and with the comment came a flash of vampire fangs so clear in my vision that I thought for a second that he was really there.

He wasn’t, but his power was, and the next second, I felt it slam into me so hard that I nearly staggered.

And I guessed the crowd of surrounding witches noticed. Or, at least, they noticed something, probably my eyes starting to glow, which tended to happen when I was hopped up on our triumvirate’s strength. Because they suddenly threw up shields all around the circle where I was, trapping me on one side and everyone else, including Zara, on the other. Because yeah.

They didn’t like gods around here, did they? Not even the low-rent, demi-god variety. And apparently, they didn’t like us enough to change sides abruptly, even those who had been wavering.

Because suddenly, everybody was firing at me.

Crap!

The only thing that saved me was that I was still in the slow-time vamps used when shit had hit the fan, giving me more time to react and allowing me to dodge the maybe three dozen spells crisscrossing the makeshift arena, all zeroing in on me. But I couldn’t avoid this kind of barrage forever, not when more and more witches were getting on the screw-Cassie train by the moment. So I threw up a shield, vaulted over the ring of semi-transparent, light blue barriers in front of me, and tried to grab Zara.

I had no idea how long Mircea’s power might last when it depended a lot on how many of his Children had survived the Apocalypse, which I had no way of knowing. So I needed this fight over with yesterday! But before I could grab the witch who had started this and who was looking at me like she’d just seen a slavering, two-headed ghost, I was met with a combined spell that must have involved half the room.

It hit my shields hard enough to throw me back into the air and over top of the blue wall, and before I could jump to my feet, those damned shields were pressing in everywhere.

I found myself suffocating under a cerulean mountain, with goddamned witches crawling on top of the buzzing energy shields to weigh them down even more and press me closer and closer into a pancake. I couldn’t see anything but hateful, distorted faces, couldn’t expand my chest enough to breathe, and couldn’t shift away even though I might now have the energy because I was about to suffocate! And no matter how much I twisted and fought in my panic, it made no difference.

I was going to die in here, and even Mircea, who was shouting something in my head that I couldn’t focus enough to concentrate on, wasn’t able to save me.

But somebody else was.

I felt the stones move underneath me, felt a sucking sensation I had come to know so well grab me, like a great hand from beneath, and felt myself start to move into the ground. And then the portal that had just been ignited under my ass kicked into high gear, and I was sucked down what felt like a raging highway and into a maelstrom of heat and light so intense that I wondered if this was a rescue or another attack. I honestly wasn’t sure, but I grabbed a passing person, one of the witches tumbling through non-space along with me, tight, tight, so very tight, hoping for something to ground me—

And then we were gone.

Chapter Six

I came back to myself face down on a wet, muddy road. I was lucky to come around at all, as the road appeared to be pretty potholed, and the pits had filled up with the rain that was still bucketing down. My face had come to rest on the edge of one of the larger ruts, leaving me inches away from drowning in the middle of dry land.

And then I was almost run over.

Someone who smelled like Pritkin grabbed me when I tried to sit up and slammed us both flat onto the asphalt again. A large truck passed over top of us, dripping hot water from a leaky radiator onto my head. It would have had me yelping in pain, except that a strong hand was clasped firmly over my mouth.

The truck lumbered on, its patched tires thumping rhythmically down the pitted thoroughfare, and I came up gasping. I clung to Pritkin for a moment, dragging in breath after breath and wondering if my ribs were broken because everything hurt. And still did when he half led, half dragged me off the street before we ended up like road kill.

Instead, we landed in a ditch that was a third full of water, but I didn’t care, because it was also full of air. I just crouched there, getting wetter by the second, and breathed and breathed and breathed. It was glorious!

“Are you all right?” Enid asked, sloshing over to join us.

She was wetter than me but looked better, as the water loved her. Instead of my drowned rat status, her brilliant red hair was a beacon under the boiling gray skies, which looked like it was still day wherever we’d ended up, but was so dark it almost didn’t matter. Her skin was pearlescent, and her hazel eyes were lit up from the lightning flashing overhead.

“Think so,” I gasped because I still couldn’t get my lungs full after the witches’ almost-suffocation. But it was getting better. And the pain in my side felt more like a bad bruise than a broken rib. I decided to count myself lucky and started paying attention. “What’s going on?”

“You brought some friends with you,” she said dryly, nodding down the ditch to where a handful of witches were in Bodil’s face. That made me crack a grin despite everything. And then to chuckle, even though it hurt my bruised ribs.

“—on the contrary,” Bodil was saying placidly, but her eyes were suspiciously bright, which always preceded a good time.

“Just give her to us, and we’ll go,” Zara said, shooting me a look past Bodil’s shoulder. The tall, elegant fey had positioned herself between me and the witches, whether intentionally or not. “She challenged, so she’s ours!”

“Yet the challenge is finished, is it not?” Bodil asked, cutting off an explosion from Pritkin, who had come up behind her, with an elegant gesture. “She won.”

“What?”

“She did not!”

“If you hadn’t pulled her out of there, she’d be dead!”

The witches were all talking at once, but that last was from the old hag with the topknot who’d advised Zara to fight me and was now sending me the evil eye. It was less problematic than it had been back in the cave since her grizzled hair was straggling into her face, and she kept glancing worriedly at Enid; why, I didn’t know. Had I missed something?

“Did I miss something?” I asked.

“She tried to curse you as soon as you landed. I blocked her,” Enid said, loudly enough to be sure she was heard over the thunder.

“What did you expect?” One of the witches clustered around Zara demanded. “The Gauntlet hasn’t ended yet—”

“It damned well has!” Enid snapped. “You cheated! It was at least fifty of you on one! Bodil saw—”

“She cheated!” One of the younger witches beside Zara said explosively, pointing a shaking finger at me. “You were supposed to be drained!”

“Sorry I didn’t die on cue,” I said sourly and pushed dripping bangs out of my face.

“And as such, you forfeit—the challenge and your life!”

“Or you do yours,” Bodil said, unperturbed. She threw a glance at me. “Do you wish me to kill them?”

It was so casual, so matter-of-fact, that it was all the more chilling. As if, to Bodil, that would be a minor chore or a courtesy she was extending to a member of our group. And maybe it was.

Faerie was a scary place.

“No,” I said, after a pause to let them sweat. “No, they’re not worth it. Can you just send them back?”

“Now that I cannot do,” she said regretfully.

“Why?” I looked around. “Where the hell are we?”

“Stratford,” Pritkin said hoarsely, looking around. “That’s Evesham Road.”

“What?”

“I read his mind when the two of you were talking in the garden,” Bodil said, as if mental eavesdropping was no big deal. “And had started looking for a suitable portal to get us here when you fought—”

“She could have been killed!” Enid said, her narrowed eyes never wavering from the witches. “You should have told us so we could help!”

“Nonsense. Prince Emrys had made contact with their third, and he was assisting her,” she said, using the name Pritkin went by in Faerie. “Not that the daughter of Artemis needed it. If I hadn’t found the right portal and pulled her in, she would have killed them all.”

I blinked slightly at that and hoped the rain made it look like I was simply trying to get water out of my eyes. Because that... was a goddamned lie. Bodil must have mentally heard me because she threw me an amused glance over her shoulder.

“I suppose you owe me a debt of gratitude,” she said to the witches.

Which is how I learned a lot of old English curse words, or would have, had I been paying attention. Instead, I was focused on the rest of what had been said. “We’re in Stratford? Like Upon Avon? Like where the Circle’s HQ is located?”

“That’s the one,” Pritkin answered. “And this place is crawling with Dark Circle operatives. I can feel the oil slick they call magic in the air. What the fuck happened?”

That last was directed at Zara, who, unlike her companions, had been standing there, dripping and scowling but also listening. “We are in Stratford?” she said as if she didn’t believe it. “How?”

“Lady Bodil is good with portals,” Pritkin said dryly.

“She said that this will get us to the new Pythia,” Æsubrand said, coming up so silently behind the small gaggle of witches that he made several jump and one try to hex him. He deflected the spell with a shrug and shot her a quelling glance before refocusing on Pritkin. “Is this true?”

Pritkin looked conflicted.

“It is true, is it not?” Bodil said, looking narrowly at Pritkin. “You said as much to Cassie. That there is a portal from here to this shoe warehouse, and from thence to the city called Vegas.”

“Yes, technically...” he began and then paused for a second, probably to think how to phrase something, but that was not the right answer. Because Bodil suddenly had him by the neck and had lifted him off the ground before any of us could blink.

“Think carefully about your next words,” she hissed. “I have expended much power that I could ill afford to open that gateway. If you now tell me I must somehow get us back—”

Pritkin broke her hold; how, I wasn’t sure, as it happened too fast. Maybe he was channeling some of Mircea’s energy, too, or maybe he was just that good. Æsubrand seemed somewhat impressed, pausing to watch the subsequent scuffle but not interfering even when Pritkin somehow got the lady in a headlock, very much like the one the Ice Prince liked using on me.

Which lasted for about a second before she threw him over her shoulder and across the road, where he disappeared into what I guessed was another ditch because I heard splashing. And cursing, which made my knotted spine release somewhat. That was not the right move, as several witches took the opportunity to attack me again, only to find out that Enid had been playing before. Their spells hit a shield like rebar-reinforced steel that was wielded like a weapon, which flung them back the way they’d come and narrowly missed decapitating one, who barely ducked in time.

That was the youngest, with lavender colored hair that didn’t look like it came out of a bottle, while the others had all shielded, probably expecting retaliation if they didn’t manage to finish me off. The reflected spells ping-ponged back and forth for a moment between the shield walls, lighting us all up and sounding like symbols before flying off into the air. And were replaced by shouts from somewhere nearby and running footsteps.

That included Pritkin’s, who reached us first and hissed at Enid. “Camouflage! Now!”

I didn’t know if she managed because eight men appeared on the road the next moment, holding my attention as they were wearing the dark robes favored by the Black Circle, who liked to lean into their evil wizard reputation. Only this bunch looked low-rent, streaked with half-dried mud and old dirt and with their robes tattered enough to look like they were cosplaying dementors on Halloween. I didn’t think they were likely to see past a Margygr spell, but then, they didn’t have to.

Because something else was with them.

Pritkin gripped my arm, having peered above the ditch alongside me, and I didn’t have to ask why.

Snuffling the road where he and I had just been lying was a hyena almost as large as one of the mages, even though the beast was on all fours. It was brown and spotted and as tattered-looking as the men, with matted fur and a ring of raw flesh around the heavy leather collar it wore. It also had half of one ear missing and long-healed scars in its coat above its muddy flanks.

After a minute, it raised its head and looked straight at me, its eyes shining yellow in the flashes from the lightning storm above.

I froze, and we just stared at each other for a moment. It should have been surreal, seeing something that belonged on the veldt in Africa in freaking Stratford, accompanied by a mob of creatures out of a nightmare, but it wasn’t. Because, for once, I didn’t need Pritkin to clue me in on what was happening.

That was especially true when I noticed the forearm of the mage holding the beast’s collar. He had a sleeve of geometric, golden tats that shone brightly against his ebony skin and constantly changed patterns, like a kaleidoscope. African mages with the ability to transform had been brought over once to help the Circle track down some dangerous escapees from the main lock-up, and I’d seen them in a café in HQ’s main square. Only then, they’d been in golden collars and bright silks instead of scarred leather and a coating of mud.

I didn’t know if this was one of those, but that gaze seemed to have human intelligence. I braced myself, waiting for the howl to go up and our position to be revealed because it “saw” me just as clearly as if I hadn’t been camouflaged. Its nose must be as good as those of the master vamps known as Hounds, whose extraordinary sense of smell allowed them to read a scene with their eyes closed, even going back weeks or months.

We were screwed.

Only maybe not, I thought, as the creature suddenly sent up a howl, all right, but then bounded down the street, dragging the mage holding its collar in that direction. The other mages followed, weapons in hand, and I stared after them, unsure what had just happened. And then Alphonse grabbed me.

I hadn’t noticed him before, even though I’d assumed he’d come along for the ride. Vampires had the ability not to be seen when they didn’t want to, and maybe he’d preferred to sit this particular fiasco out. But it looked like that was over for now.

And I suddenly had a pissed-off master vamp in my face.

“You wanna start talking?” he demanded while I tried and failed to push him out of the way so I could do exactly that—with Pritkin.

“About what?”

“About what?” The glare increased in intensity. “I decide to get a little shut-eye, and the next thing I know, I’m being sucked through a portal, dumped out in hell—”

“This is Stratford—”

“In hell, with a bunch of murderous witches for company, along with every Black Circle guy for miles. This place reeks of dark magic, not to mention those things—and what the hell were those things?”

“What things?”

“What things, she says,” he threw up his hands. “Those things. The big, ugly, hyena-looking—”

“Hyenas,” I said, and gave up trying to get around him. Moving Gibraltar would be easier than budging a pissed-off vamp. “And why are you acting like this is my fault?”

“Because it’s always your fault! You know, I was at the fey court for months before you showed up with nary an incident, then you arrive, and in two days—hell, less than two days—the entire place gets blown up—”

“That had nothing to do with me!”

“—then we show up here, on a devastated Earth, and get attacked by a bunch of ravenous gods right before you decide to pick a fight with a bunch of lunatic witches!”

“Hey,” somebody said, but Alphonse was on a roll.

“So, yeah, I’m thinking it’s your fault! If I understand right, we’re now in Europe when we’re supposed to be in Vegas, and how do you suggest we get back? ‘Cause big and scary back there,” he hiked a thumb in the direction of Bodil, “is saying she can’t make another portal for who knows how long—”

“I didn’t make this one,” Bodil said sourly. “I opened one that was already there.”

Which brought up a point. “You guys had a portal to Stratford?” I said, peering around Alphonse to where Zara et al. were still huddled in a bunch, looking pissed, frightened, and confused in turn. Except for the lady herself, who was staring me down.

That continued for a long moment as if she was trying to decide something. Which I guessed she did because I finally got an answer. “We used it to spy on the Circle.”

“Hush!”

“Shh!”

“What are you doing?”

Her chorus wasn’t happy about anything that didn’t involve my head on a pike, but seemed even less so about the idea of us talking. To her credit, Zara didn’t look like she gave a damn. “That creature saw you,” she said, scowling at me. “Yet it drew the others away. Did you cause that?”

“No.”

“Then what just happened? We would have been in a hell of a fight with nine dark mages loaded for bear!”

“Nine?” Æsubrand said sharply. “I saw only eight.”

“The hyena was also a mage,” I explained, which caused his eyes to widen and his hand to move in the air as if warding off evil.

“So why did it obey you?” Zara demanded.

“It didn’t obey. I didn’t give a suggestion—”

“Then you did?” she demanded, turning on Bodil and receiving only a sneer of disdain in return.

“I do not talk to the minds of beasts, especially Earth ones.”

“Then why did it lead them away?”

“Ask the mage,” Bodil said, her narrowed eyes on Pritkin, who she clearly wasn’t done with yet.

“I don’t know,” he began.

“Then guess!”

“I was about to!” he snapped and then got himself under control. “As a guess, he recognized Cassie. Perhaps he saw through our camouflage—”

“A Margygr spell?” Bodil raised an elegant eyebrow. “I think not.”

“—or, more likely, he knew her by scent. Anything they encounter is stored in their scent memory, even from years ago. If he had scented her before—”

“I saw some once in HQ,” I confirmed. “They were there to help Jonas on a hunt. I didn’t know they’d seen me.”

“They don’t miss much,” Pritkin said dryly. “It was why they were brought over in the first place and were still here when the gods returned. It looks like they were enslaved thereafter—”

“Not all of them,” Zara said more quietly. “Some chose the dark path once it was in the ascendancy. Others refused and were trapped in their beast form permanently to serve, whether they chose to or not.”

“They were used to track some of us down,” Grizzled Topknot said. “When we came here for information. The Circle were the only ones who knew anything after the world fell apart, and they weren’t sharing.”

“Fortunately, we’d been spying on them for years,” the young witch said. In addition to a fall of pale purple hair, she had opalescent skin that changed highlight shades as she moved, evidencing fey blood. “Even after the Circle’s HQ fell—”

“What?” Pritkin asked hoarsely, but she ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken.

“—and the Corps was butchered,” she added, so maybe she had heard and was turning the knife, “they didn’t discover our way in. We used to come here to spy on the dark mages for updates on the war and to see how close they were to tracking down our sisters—”

“Until they caught wise, and the bastards started deploying those things,” Grizzled Topknot said, gesturing after the hyena, “to find us and rip us to shreds! More than one sister lost her life under those great yellowed teeth.”

“You see, witch,” another said, with a ginger butch cut over ebony skin. “We did fight until it made no more sense. Until our numbers shrank to nothing, and we had no help or hope. And even then, we tried for our sisters, for our world!”

“And where the hell were you?” Grizzled Topknot demanded, her ancient gray eyes boring a hole into my soul.

“Fighting somewhere else,” I said because it was the truth, and I had no better answer.

The old woman looked like she had a reply to that, but Zara waved it away. “Even if the beast recognized Cassie,” she said to Pritkin. “That doesn’t explain why it drew them away. It will be punished for that when they find nothing.”

“It explains it perfectly, as you well know,” he said, scowling at her. “You may have lost your way, huddled in the dark for so long, but others have not. It knew her scent, understood she was back, and realized what that meant.”

“And what does it mean?” Zara demanded, looking at me this time. “What exactly are you here to do?”

I sighed and faced up to it because everybody was looking at me, and there was no way to make it sound any better. “Save the world.”

Chapter Seven

You did what?” Pritkin said sometime later, looking at the small circle of witches as if they might be mad.

To be fair, several of them looked it. They’d loosened up since Zara called for a truce, and the wine cellar we’d found via Alphonse’s nose and used to get off the street hadn’t hurt any. So now we had a bunch of boozed-up witches huddled around a scarred wooden table with a dozen open wine bottles, more empties on the floor, and cackles echoing off the walls and ceiling.

Bodil was starting to look like she and Pritkin were on the same page for once, and that page read, “Avoid trusting witches.” Or at least avoid following their insane plan to get inside what had been the Circle’s HQ and now belonged firmly in the enemy camp. I was leaning hard that way myself since the location of some of the gruesome but necessary items for the raid were too close for comfort to the facility’s outer wards.

“We buried ‘em where the wards would hide the magic,” Grizzled Topknot said.

“It’s all of the black variety,” the witch with the ginger butch cut added. “Ours and what they’re using, so it blends together. Their wards can’t tell the difference.”

Now that I’d had more time to look at her, I’d realized that she was pretty young, too, maybe not as much as the delicate purple-haired one, but certainly far more so than Zara, Topknot, and a short, shriveled-up, Native-American-looking witch with a cap of frazzled gray curls. Purple Hair looked about twenty, with Butch Cut maybe five or six years older, which meant they’d probably been born shortly before or even after the fall of the world. This was all they’d ever known, I thought dizzily.

“It’s here we need to get.” Grizzled Topknot pointed to a place near the river Avon, part of which ran across the underground complex that the Silver Circle had once called home. “We left everything behind after the last mission when we lost three of us out of five.”

“I thought you said these things you buried make you undetectable?” Alphonse said, looking worried.

“To the eyes,” Butch Cut said. “And to any wards that detect light magic. But the problem is those damned hyenas. If you meet one in a hallway, you’re dead. They can smell that we’re women and not the men we’re pretending to be.”

“We had to fight our way free last time,” Grizzled Topknot added. “It wasn’t pretty.”

“Why not just impersonate female dark magic users?” Alphonse asked.

“We thought about that, but they’re not allowed deep into the facility, where the planning rooms are,” Purple Hair said.

“Misogyny outlived even the fall,” Gray Curls added sourly.

“Black magic?” Bodil asked, somehow parsing the main point of all that.

“It’s a word for anything that breaks magical norms,” I explained, staring at the crude map and wondering how I got here.

“The Circle’s norms,” Zara said. “Magic is magic—”

“Not when it takes a life!” Pritkin snarled. He’d been looking increasingly unhappy as the witches’ plan unfolded and had apparently reached tilt.

“Oh, please,” Grizzled Topknot said scornfully. “Those we used were dark mages. You’d have killed ‘em yourself if you were there.”

“Killed, yes; butchered and…” his lip curled. “If we become what we fight, what is the point?”

“Not dying?” she said dryly. “Not allowing them to overrun our world like a pack of diseased rats?”

“Yes, and you did so well with that,” Pritkin snapped before I could stop him with a kick under the table.

We needed help, and theirs was the only kind available. Enid was excellent at glamourie, but she couldn’t cover all of us for long, and her power was of the light variety that would set off the wards. We needed the witches’ stash of nasty disguises to have any chance at this.

“So what’s your plan, Your Highness?” Topknot asked Pritkin. “Waltz in the front door? There are hundreds of mages down there, maybe thousands by now, for all I know.”

“That’s just it!” Pritkin’s hand hit the tabletop. “You don’t know anything! You fully admit that none of you has been inside that complex for more than ten years!”

“Which is better than you can boast,” Gray Curls snapped. She had shrewd eyes, the same color as her hair, strikingly set into a nut-brown face. “We didn’t take this step lightly, but there was no other way—”

“Then we need to bloody well find one!”

“How many of these suits are there?” Alphonse asked, frowning. “And how big? I’m a little broad in the shoulder.”

“We are not doing this!” Pritkin snarled.

“’Course we are. Have your little explosion, then suck it up, man. It’s not like we gotta choice.”

“I do not understand,” Æsubrand piped up. His pin-straight silver hair had dried as perfectly as if he’d had access to a salon, making him look like he was slumming with a bunch of street people. But for once, the sneer was absent from his face.

Not that that was likely to last.

“You don’t want to,” Bodil muttered, but she hadn’t joined Pritkin. She hadn’t said no.

“It’s simple,” the young, part-fey witch said, tossing her long lavender hair over her shoulder. “We caught a dark mage—”

“Seven,” Topknot put in. “Had to take ‘em at different times.”

“—killed him, skinned him, and tanned the leather with potions and herbs—”

“The... leather?” Æsubrand repeated blankly.

“—and cured it into a cloak. Which, if done correctly, allows the person wearing the cloak to take on the appearance of another—”

“Skinwalker,” Pritkin said, his lip curling back enough to show teeth.

Æsubrand stared at Purple Hair for a second, then I guessed what she’d said registered. Because he jumped back from the table with a sudden, violent movement and snarled something in a language my translator wouldn’t touch, as the prissy little thing didn’t do profanity. “You’re all cursed!”

“No, we cursed them,” Topknot said with satisfaction. “Seven of ‘em, like I said, only one of the cloaks didn’t cure quite right, so it has patches where the illusion doesn’t work. We normally didn’t use that one.”

Æsubrand wasn’t listening any longer. He was too busy staring at Bodil. “This doesn’t surprise you. You knew what they meant!”

“Yes.” The beautiful ebony face was carefully expressionless. “We had one such creature invade Nimue’s lands centuries ago. He was discovered by a hunting party who took him for the deer he was pretending to be until they shot him, and the beast began cursing. They brought him back to court, where Nimue stripped him of his magic. He was dispatched shortly thereafter, but she kept the skin as a curiosity.”

“A curiosity!”

“We had never seen such a thing. We do not possess this skill.”

“This abomination!” he spat. “Yet you stand there and say nothing?”

He was looking between the two of us now, why I didn’t know. The guy didn’t even like me. “It’s... not pretty,” I agreed, since he seemed to expect an answer. “But it will work.”

“And you know this how?”

“I also saw one once. At Convocation, a kind of get-together for the leaders of the vampire world. They used to hold it every few years—”

“You got in there?” Alphonse looked impressed.

“As Mircea’s guest, briefly.” I grimaced. It hadn’t been fun. “Anyway, I saw a vamp wearing a cloak made out of a Were he’d skinned when it was halfway through the change so that the skin was half Were and half human—”

“God,” someone said.

“The vamps like to show off their power at Convocation, to stave off anybody who might seek to challenge them,” I explained. “I asked Mircea later what it meant, and he said it was the man’s way of showing that he was strong enough to take down a battle-hardened Were and that he had a magic worker who knew how to make skin suits. So, challenge him, and who knew what he might look like when he infiltrated your house to take you down.”

“Nice one,” Alphonse approved.

“It is not nice!” Æsubrand said, now glaring at Bodil. As if to say, ‘And these are our allies?’

“Do you have a better idea?” was her only reply.

“Yes! We fight!”

She sighed and shared a glance with Pritkin, whose jaw tightened. “Prince Emrys tells us that the portal is deep inside the complex under a maze of tunnels that can change configuration on a whim. And it is guarded by the hordes of dark mages who currently populate the place and dozens of wards.”

“Even so,” Æsubrand straightened his shoulders. “Better to die in the attempt than to degrade one’s honor—”

“Degrade?” Enid said, her hazel eyes flashing. The witches had magicked up some spell light, basically moonlight from outside trapped in warded balls, and tucked them around here and there to allow us to see in the windowless cellar. And the light loved Enid, glimmering off her red curls, turning individual hairs prismatic, and gilding her pale skin.

Like Æsubrand, hardship made her beauty shine all the stronger, and her expression had helped with that. She’d been standing aside, soaking up everything with a rapt look since I guessed this was the first time she’d had a chance to observe her people outside of Faerie. She seemed to find the motley crew of magic users fascinating.

Until Æsubrand started talking, that was, and her face fell into a look of disdain that would have done the prince himself proud. “What honor do you think you have, Svarestri?”

Æsubrand flushed slightly. “More than a scullery maid!”

I winced but didn’t have time to do more before she was over the table and in his face. “Better a scullery made than a traitor’s son!”

“Do not dare speak to me in such a—”

He broke off when a wand tip dented his throat. “Tell me, princeling,” the beautiful redhead hissed, “do you know what your father has in the hallway leading to his throne room? Do you know what he keeps there so that he might gloat every time he passes it? Do you?”

“What does he have?” Alphonse asked, looking curious.

“An entire Margygr village,” Enid rasped. “Suspended forever in the hardened stone that he caused to roll over them in battle, and then had chiseled out and taken back to his palace to make into a decorative frieze commemorating his victory! They were some who stood by their vows to Nimue, who defended her kingdom’s eastern flank even though it was beyond the reach of her great shield, and that was the reward they received. She let them down, but your father—there were children among them, do you understand?” The wand tip pressed in a little more. “Have you seen it?”

“I have seen it.” To his credit, Æsubrand looked sick. But not enough to avoid trying to excuse the old man. “My father’s mind has been overwhelmed. The gods did something to him—”

“Yes! Brought out what was already there!”

“And why would you care?” A little fire came back into those pewter eyes. “A half-breed rejected by those very people? What does it matter to you what happened to them? You should be—”

He cut off because the silver-haired, aristocratic-looking prince, yes even now with half of his armor gone and his cheek streaked with mud, had just been roundly slapped by a kitchen maid.

It was worse than using the wand; it was a gesture of contempt, and her expression backed it up. It said that he wasn’t worthy of combat in her eyes. And Grizzled Topknot approved.

“Girl has spirit,” the old witch grinned. “Perhaps we should adopt her.”

“Have a care,” Pritkin said to Æsubrand, who was just standing there, looking incredulous.

“She hit me.” His tone said that he couldn’t believe it.

“Yes, and leave it there. We cannot afford to fight among ourselves.”

“He isn’t going to strike her back,” Bodil said. “His honor forbids it.”

“But it doesn’t forbid using the bodies of his enemies as décor?” Alphonse asked because diplomacy had never been his strong suit.

“The White King does as he pleases,” was all she said. Æsubrand didn’t say anything, being too busy touching his cheek as delicately as if Enid had kissed him instead.

Since she seemed ready to “kiss” him again, I looked at Pritkin and asked a question to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. And because I needed to know. “You’re refusing to do this, then?”

“And you aren’t?”

I exchanged a glance with Alphonse. The swarthy vamp rolled his eyes at me, clearly tired of us humans and our delicate sensibilities. And right now, he had a point.

“If it means us not being skinned, too? Then, yes, I’ll do what’s required.”

“Thatta girl.” The big vamp slapped me on the back.

“Can I see you for a moment?” Pritkin asked. Since it was through his teeth, I didn’t have high hopes for the conversation, but I went with him nonetheless.

We climbed the stairs to the ground floor of what had been a fine, two-story house and was now a burnt-out ruin. The cellars had survived, but the area up here didn’t offer much concealment, with bare, blackened support beams open to the sky, which was dark enough that a few stars had started to peek out from between the clouds. The rain had mostly stopped, but this part of the world was fast sliding into night, although a little orange still smeared the horizon.

The whole, once picturesque town, with its Tudor buildings and climbing roses, looked similar. As if a fire, possibly godly in origin, had blown through here and taken almost everything with it. The great swath it had carved had left open land that grasses and weeds had reclaimed, but a house here and there had been spared, although they looked deserted.

I didn’t know where all the people had gone, but it wasn’t here.

Pritkin made a savage gesture in the air, and a silence shield clicked shut around us. I was surprised he had the strength, as he’d given most of his to me. But maybe it wasn’t a super effective shield because he pulled me further away from the staircase and toward what was left of the road before he spoke. And even then, it was in a savage whisper.

“Those witches just tried their best to kill you! And,” he continued relentlessly when I tried to comment, “the ones who were sucked down that portal were those closest to Zara. They ran to surround her when it became obvious that you weren’t as weak as you seemed. And yet you’re planning to follow their advice? This is a trap!”

“Maybe—”

“Maybe?” His skin, usually a light tan the Vegas sun had given him, flushed dark enough that I could see it even in the gathering gloom. “They are planning to let the damned Black Circle do their work for them! This is madness! And even if we take them at their word, which I do not, those damned cloaks won’t work. They stopped their missions because they were caught—”

“Trying to spy on the Black Circle,” I reminded him. “To find the location of more of their sisters before they were attacked. We’re not doing that. We’re going straight in, getting to the portal, and—”

“We are not going in!”

“And what’s your plan if we don’t?” I asked, crossing my arms, because that was the real stopping point. I didn’t trust Zara and her group any more than he did, but like Alphonse said, what was the alternative?

But Pritkin was on a roll and didn’t answer. “You were in HQ occasionally to meet me for dinner!” he said, referring to my habit when he was still on the Circle’s payroll, when our infrequent meet-ups to eat were almost the only time we’d had together. “You know the common areas to a degree, but not the lower levels where all the wards are. You don’t know what they can do. I don’t even know anymore—”

“But the witches do,” I broke in. “And they’re coming with us. Pritkin, they want to go home, not die in a hole in the ground on the other side of the planet—”

“They’ll go home, all right,” he said bitterly. “Do you think there is even a chance Zara’s people aren’t figuring out, right now, where their sisters went? They’ll come for them, probably soon, which is why we have to get you out of here before they arrive!”

“You think she’s stalling—”

“Of course, I think she’s stalling!” he exploded. “Those damned witches are drinking wine and feeding you a story, knowing their sisters are right on their heels. We have to go—”

“And do what?” I asked, frowning. “We still have to get to that portal. You said it yourself—it’s the only way to Rhea. And there are six of us, exactly the number of reliable skinwalker cloaks they have—”

“Yes, quite the coincidence!”

“—and while you may be right about everything else, they came up with that idea really fast for people embroidering on the fly. If there’s even a chance those things are real, and let’s face it, they got into HQ somehow—”

“So they say.”

“If they weren’t spying on the Circle, why did they have a portal that went straight here?” I shook my head. “We get the suits, figure out our play, then ditch the witches—”

“If they’re not leading us straight into the Circle’s clutches! That close to the wards, we’ll almost certainly be—” he broke off abruptly and then forced me into a crouch behind one of the few walls still partly standing. —seen,” he whispered as something came rumbling down the road.

Chapter Eight

I squinted, but all I could see was a bunch of glimmering lights, which I finally recognized as torches smearing across my vision. I didn’t think whoever was carrying them could see us with all that brilliance in their eyes and with us crouched in the dark. And we didn’t have to worry about being heard because they were ridiculously loud.

But before I could relax slightly, shots rang out, some singles and others that were more like short bursts of machine gun fire. Men were cheering, sounding more drunk than the witches, and not all of them were on the road. Some were riding on top of what appeared to be a truck as it rumbled closer or, in one case, from on top of a cage the truck was carrying.

A mage was rhythmically beating the top of the cage with the butt of a gun, adding a metallic clamor that was loud enough to wake the dead. Or to get our group’s attention at least, as they had joined us by the time the cavalcade came into clear focus. And when Pritkin’s hand clenched on my arm, something I barely noticed because I’d just seen who was in the cage.

“Caleb,” we whispered together.

It was undeniably him, a war-mage friend of ours, although I wasn’t sure how I knew.

The cage was rusty and poorly welded into place on the back of a flatbed truck. It looked like it had been used a lot, like the truck itself, which rattled badly enough to make it seem like it would fall apart at any moment. But as bad as the vehicle appeared, it was nothing to the man inside.

Goddamn.

Just goddamn.

I had no idea how I’d even recognized him, as the face had almost been obliterated. Something had gotten through his formidable shields and scorched it up one side, peeling back the skin to show the charred, raw meat inside, along with a flash of bone. And the rest looked like it had been put under a pile driver or, more likely, a lot of fists and boots, turning it into a fair approximation of hamburger.

And yet, despite all that, he was somehow still conscious and more alert than his captors because he recognized us. The dark head lifted, causing torchlight to gleam on the bald head as he stared into the darkness straight at us. I didn’t know how he could see out of those eyes, which were so bruised and swollen as to look completely closed, but he knew we were there.

Which meant that others might!

“Steady,” Pritkin murmured, his hand on my arm.

“He saw us!”

“No, he didn’t.”

“He looked right at us! He’s looking now!”

“He’s responding to the message I’m sending.”

“What message? If you try to contact him, the others will notice!” There had to be forty mages on and surrounding that slow-moving truck, and no way could we take that many. I could feel the magic coming off them from here, a constant barrage like getting splattered with old, rancid oil, and they weren’t even targeting us.

But Pritkin didn’t seem worried. “No, they won’t. Not unless they’re wearing a coat that I spelled.”

That was when I noticed his other hand making small gestures in the air by his side, and caught a clue. He and I had accidentally caused the demise of Caleb’s treasured former coat, the long trench type that might as well have been the official war-mage uniform. They almost all wore it as camouflage for their weapons, and because of the spells they’d layered on the leather to resist hexes and serve as a backup to their shields.

Pritkin had promised to enchant one to replace what we’d ruined, but I hadn’t thought he’d gotten around to it. But I guessed so. Because this one had started to waft about in a non-existent breeze, going on the alert like the man himself.

They both knew we were here, but the question was, what could we do?

“This is it!” Grizzled Topknot said, clutching Zara’s arm. “We can get the cloaks while everyone’s distracted!”

“Are we going or not?” Zara asked me.

“You could wait for your people to find you,” I said, wanting to hear what she’d say when she couldn’t risk attacking me. “You don’t need to go in there.”

Her lips twisted. “My people aren’t coming.”

“The faction opposing us is in the ascendancy now,” Butch Cut said. “Assuming they didn’t get found out after another portal was activated hard on the heels of the last!”

“If so, they’d scatter and run to the rendezvous points,” Zara said. “If they’re discovered, there’s no reason not to use the other portals to escape.”

“And if they aren’t, they won’t open another gateway, not ‘til the coast is clear, and that could be days,” Topknot agreed.

“Either way, they’re not coming here,” Purple Hair added. “If we want to get back before the war party gets everyone killed, we go with you.”

“Or without you,” Zara added. “Come if you’re coming!”

I caught her arm as she started to rise. “Why are you helping me?”

“Damned if I know!”

“That’s not good enough! You were just trying to kill me. I need a reason!”

“Leave her!” Topknot said. “She’s as much of a warmonger as the rest. You heard her before; she wants to fight—”

And so did Zara, I realized, looking into those dark eyes. But not at the expense of her people. The ones she had hidden all this time, cared for all this time, and thought were in danger the second she saw me.

We stared at each other, and I thought I finally understood.

“Get me home,” I whispered. “I’ll do the rest. Your people don’t need to be involved.”

“Agreed.” It was immediate.

And then, of course, something had to go wrong.

“Hey,” Alphonse said, having brought up the rear because he was finishing off a bottle. And looking at the suddenly empty spot at my side. “Where’s Pritkin?”

◆◆◆

Son of a bitch! I thought, trying not to trip over my own too-large feet. It wasn’t working because I wasn’t actually wearing the scuffed and dirty size twelve boots, with one toe flapping open like it was laughing at me, that were sticking out from under a tattered war mage coat. But my brain kept insisting that I was, and since my own feet weren’t visible anymore, I kept getting confused.

“Don’t do that,” Alphonse said from beside me.

“Do what?” I whispered because my voice hadn’t changed along with the rest of me, and it didn’t match my current appearance.

“Look over everybody’s head like that. You’re going to get us caught—or in a fight. You look like you’re ready for one.”

That was bad, as I was definitely not ready for one.

“I’m seven feet tall! How else am I supposed to look?” I demanded while I tried staring down, although it didn’t help. The big face bobbing around the air above me continued to glower fixedly, like a department store mannequin with a grudge.

Guess this guy had died defiant, I thought sickly.

Distantly, I could feel one of the hideous cloaks the witches had enchanted flapping around my shins because the mage this one had come from had been enormous, and bits of him kept grabbing at me like clutching fingers. Which they probably were, I thought, feeling a shudder tear through me. I had a sudden, visceral urge to grab the grisly thing, throw it off, and stamp it into the ground, all while screaming my freaking head off because this was wrong, wrong, wrong!

But all I did was shiver and swallow my shrieks back down into my roiling gut and look at Alphonse. It was hard because the fake body I was wearing was in between us, appearing to me like a semi-transparent balloon. I could see the outline of the limbs encasing my own, but not control them properly.

It felt like I was steering a clumsy Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float and trying not to knock into other people while I did so, because whenever that happened, our illusions looked like they were melding together.

Which was less than convincing as a disguise, and damn it, this wasn’t working!

“You need to switch with me,” I told Alphonse after almost face-planting again.

“Now you tell me?” His voice came from over my actual head because he was a bruiser. But the lips on the image he was projecting moved considerably lower than that because his cloak had come from a guy maybe five feet tall and nearly that wide.

That left Alphonse having to puppet his avatar from above, like walking a marionette around, because the cloaks didn’t actually change our skin, as the name would suggest. I guess I’d been braced for a werewolf-like transformation, with the cracking of bones and reordering of body parts that came with it. Instead, they appeared to be more like souped-up glamouries, only ones that no detection spell could see through.

Or at least, I really hoped not as we were taking our new skin suits for a spin through a crowd of boisterous, laughing, putrid-smelling dark mages. None of whom appeared to have bathed in weeks, with greasy, dirty skin, limp, scraggly hair, and teeth—the ones they had left—so yellow that I could see them in the moonlight. And I could see a lot, as they were having the time of their lives.

I guessed our cellar wasn’t the only one that had survived, or else somebody had set up a still. Because they were drunk off their asses and shooting guns into the air with no concern as to where the bullets came down. The ones who were slightly less drunk were running around, setting up what looked to be a scaffold in the distance with room for a dozen nooses, even though they only had one guy to hang.

The one Pritkin was presumably after, although I didn’t know that for sure. All the magic being slung around seemed to be messing with the reception on the jacked-up translation spell I wore, which sent me snippets of a dozen Earth languages as we wove through the crowd, but wasn’t letting Pritkin’s voice through. Assuming he was trying to contact me instead of doing the war-mage equivalent of la-la-la-can’t-hear-you because, sure, I was the problem here!

Not that I blamed him for trying a rescue. Caleb had once gone with me into hell—literal, honest-to-God hell—after Rosier, Pritkin’s estranged demon lord father, jerked his son back to his court. I’d decided to go in after him, and when I’d thought of who might just be crazy enough to help me on a mission like that, there’d only been one name on the list.

So, yeah, I understood. But he could have talked to me first! Or better yet, let me help!

There were only a few thousand dark mages prowling around along with their little pets, and one man, no matter how good, against all that was a sucker’s bet. Maybe he’d find Caleb—I wouldn’t put it past him because Pritkin was almost as good as he thought he was—but getting both of them out? When we had the cloaks that could disguise them and enable us all to just walk through the crowd?

It was freaking maddening, not to mention dangerous as all hell! And he had to know that. So what the hell was he thinking?

Scratch that; I knew what he was thinking. It was what he always thought where I was concerned, and it was starting to give me hives. We were supposed to be partners, but that word seemed to have a different connotation for him than it did for me. Maybe because he’d started out as my bodyguard what felt like a lifetime ago, but still clung to the whole her-life-over-mine mindset no matter how little sense that made anymore.

He could risk his life going after Caleb, but I couldn’t even though I wasn’t Pythia any longer; Rhea was, God help her. I was just an occasionally useful clairvoyant and no more important than anybody else on this little crusade and probably less than some. But he refused to recognize that, and this is what resulted: a compromised mission because now we weren’t in one group anymore, but three, and—

“And now you’re staring at the ground instead of where you’re going,” Alphonse hissed as I bumped into him.

“I thought this thing was supposed to follow my movements,” I whispered, backing up.

“It does if you have the magic to imbue it with,” Topknot said softly beside me. “What happened to yours?”

I didn’t know the answer, except that I couldn’t feel Mircea—or his power—anymore. I hadn’t been able to in a while, but hadn’t noticed as things had been pretty fraught since we arrived. But I’d felt his absence after putting on this monstrosity and having no juice to power it with.

Well, except for my own crappy store of magic, which had in no way recovered from the beating it had taken in Faerie, and the little I had leftover from what Pritkin had sent me during the fight. But I tried anyway, reaching out to the shell of semi-transparent “flesh” and pushing a little power into it. And had the damned illusion burst as if I’d put a pin in a balloon, which I had not!

“Not that much! Not that much!” Topknot whisper-shouted—in vain. Because we’d been seen by three nearby mages leaning against a charred part-wall, who weren’t drunk enough to disbelieve their own eyes.

“What the—” One of them said, dropping his beer.

“Wi—” Another managed, his eyes blowing wide, before a small, portly, fake mage hit them like a whirlwind and dragged them backward over the wall.

Some familiar sucking, slurping, and tearing sounds followed because Alphonse wasn’t bothering to be subtle, causing the witches to wince. And then the tubby mage’s head that the vamp was wearing popped up over the bricks. And it looked like he, at least, had figured out the control mechanism because his avatar’s bloody mouth scowled at me convincingly.

“Get over here!” he hissed, and I scampered to obey.

“Dark magic!” Zara whispered as she hopped over the crumbling wall and landed beside me. “The cloaks were imbued with it. You can’t use a light spell!”

“Well, somebody might have mentioned that!” I hissed back while Alphonse stripped off my cloak and gave me his.

“Do you even know any dark magic?” he demanded, slinging the hideous thing around him with no more concern than if it had been made out of cashmere. And then he stretched, looking far more comfortable in the larger illusion. “Okay, yeah. This is better.”

“Do you?” Zara poked me with a bony finger.

“Of course, she does,” Purple Hair said. Her name was some old witchy thing I couldn’t remember, because it didn’t look like her. Especially now, when she was wearing a goofy-looking man’s face with a bulbous nose, a shock of greasy corn-colored hair, and a bunch of pimples. But she, too, had the mechanism down because her expression turned worried after a moment. “Don’t you?”

“What do you think?” I whispered testily, testing out my new shape. Which was no better than the last, hanging on me like a blanket.

A really, really horrible blanket, and I was going to lose my shit, just any second now!

“I don’t know what to think!” she whispered back. “You’re supposed to be... I don’t know... some kind of monster. You deserted us to save your own skin—”

“I did no such thing!”

“Well, those are the stories told, all right? But you don’t even know dark magic?”

“She’s a witch,” Topknot said. “’Course she does. She may not use it, being around too many of those high and mighty Silver Circle types all the time, but…” She trailed off, her borrowed, middle-aged, and heavily jowled face starting to look concerned. “You do, don’t you?”

Everybody looked at me.

“There must be another way,” I said, feeling inadequate when that was completely unfair. I wasn’t supposed to know black magic!

And to top everything off, half of my face stuck out of the top of Shorty’s head, giving me a bifocal-like take on the world, with part clear and part obscured by the mage’s thinning hair. Goddamnit! I compensated by hiking the whole thing up a bit, even though that caused my feet to stick out the bottom under the mage’s crappy boots.

But the illusion should cover that fact. And at least this way, I could see my own feet, which meant that maybe I could walk straight. I hoped so, although if I fell over, maybe everyone would just assume I was drunk since that seemed to be the case for most of the—

I looked up and saw everyone still staring at me.

“Alphonse doesn’t know any kind of magic, and he’s doing fine!” I said defensively.

“Alphonse is a vampire,” Zara said.

“So?”

“So they are dark magic, personified—”

“Are not!” Alphonse and I said simultaneously.

That won us a raised eyebrow and a glance to where Alphonse’s empties littered the ground around his feet. “You eat people to stay alive,” Zara pointed out. “You literally absorb their life essence to sustain you. And the definition of dark magic—”

“Fine,” Alphonse said, brushing it away. “If you want to get technical about it. But what about Cassie?”

“We should have left her with the fey,” the skinny old bird I’d decided to name Gray Curls said. Her tight cap of old lady hair was currently hidden under a bald pate, pop-eyed face, and scraggly beard, but the voice was the same, and it didn’t approve.

“They can’t use black magic, either,” Butch Cut pointed out. “That’s why they had to stay behind.”

I frowned at her. She was wearing a tall, lanky number with long, dirty dreads that reminded me of one of the tube men outside of car dealerships because she kept leaning too far this way and that, as the top third of her body wasn’t real. But nobody was telling her to go back!

“The fey stayed because those damned hyenas would sniff them out in a heartbeat,” I snapped.

“And you think they won’t sniff us?” Alphonse asked as something howled in the distance. “Damn, this place is creepy,” said the vampire.

“Well, maybe if you’d stop eating people!”

“Can I point out that I had no choice, thanks to you?”

I decided to ignore that, as I didn’t have a good reply. “Bodil can’t be sure of reaching anyone else,” I said instead.

That had been my main argument earlier. The fey couldn’t do dark magic and so couldn’t use the cloaks, and we didn’t have any more anyway. And between that and them glowing like light bulbs in the dark, they’d had to be left behind.

Needless to say, they hadn’t been happy about that, especially Æsubrand, who had acted as if I was abandoning him in one of the lower pits of hell. But even he had finally agreed that having us scout ahead, find a way into HQ, clear it of hostiles, and open a path for them would improve their odds considerably. They were waiting for me to notify Bodil, who had gotten a good link with my mind from all the eavesdropping she’d been doing, and Enid, who would hopefully be able to hide them on the way to join us as soon as I gave the all-clear.

Which might be a while if we kept standing here!

“So the fey witch said,” Topknot muttered.

“How do we know Bodil wouldn’t lie for you?” Purple Hair agreed.

“She doesn’t even like me!” I pointed out testily.

“Imagine that,” somebody commented. I didn’t see who, but let’s face it, it could have been any of them.

“And Pritkin won’t listen to anyone but me,” I added, while not being sure that he would. One minute, he was lecturing me about how we needed to get away, and the next, he was running off to save Caleb. Of course, if this damned spell would stop cackling in my ear like a drunken witch, maybe I could figure it out!

I hit my ear a few times, but it didn’t help.

“What’s she doing now?” Topknot whispered.

“Like I know?” Gray Curls said. “We should send her back!”

“I’m not going back!” I snarled. “I’ll stay behind the rest of you. I’m short now, it’s dark, and everybody is drunk off their balls. It’ll be fine.”

“Famous last words,” Zara said.

But nobody had any better ideas, so we got going again.

Chapter Nine

Alphonse took point since he was the only one with a convincingly masculine voice in case we were questioned. Zara and I brought up the rear because I was the weak link here, and she was in the cloak that hadn’t cured properly and had to stay in the shadows. Not that that was hard, with the entire open area near the river splashed with light and dark.

That was partly because of the torches in half of the hands here, streaming red-gold banners behind the mages as they ran through the magic-distorted haze, and partly from the explosions of spell-fire that those without guns kept setting off. It was starting to look like New Year’s Eve, with pinwheels of white sparks here and shooting stars in every color imaginable over there. Which was why it took me a little while to notice that other things were moving in the air.

At first, it was merely a few scattered shadows almost lost among the rest. Just odd in that they weren’t going in the same direction as those near them and seemed to have no obvious source. I tried to follow them with my eyes, but they slipped away before I could focus properly, skittering outside the edge of my vision.

But as we moved further into the center of the action, the strange shadows became thicker, and while I still couldn’t catch them visually, I could feel them, brushing against me like the tattered edges of my cloak. Some were almost human-warm, like the brief touch of a hand; others were as cold as ice, like the slap of winter rain. But all of them, every single one, was familiar.

And unwanted, especially now.

“What is wrong with you?” Alphonse hissed when I flinched for maybe the fifth time.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Then why are you acting like you have ants in your pants?”

I didn’t answer because we’d just broken through a mass of partying mages and entered what I guessed was the heart of the celebration, since there were a lot more people here. Not to mention a lot more light, not that I needed it. I knew what I’d been feeling and what I was now seeing; I just didn’t believe it.

“Cassie?” Alphonse stopped, his borrowed face looking worried. I didn’t know what was on mine, but I was suddenly grateful for my complete lack of control. Because if my avatar’s face had been linked to my expression, it would have given the game away.

I just stood there, but I wasn’t staring at the fireworks or the mass of torches or what looked like a giant Guy Fawkes celebration. The furniture that remained in the burnt-out houses was being dragged out and piled into what would be a hell of a celebratory bonfire whenever the mages finished it. I didn’t care; I’d seen bonfires before.

I hadn’t seen this.

Ghosts, I thought blankly. So, so many ghosts. Some were pale and low enough on power to be mere suggestions on the wind, impossible to see as distinct shapes and only discerned as ripples across the night; others were huge, powerful, and scary, with glowing eyes and amorphous forms that hadn’t bothered to take on human shapes because why would they?

There was no one to see.

No one except me, and I didn’t understand it, not any of it! Ghosts were usually solitary creatures and fiercely territorial, jealously guarding whatever house they haunted or graveyard they’d ended up in, and the scraps of living energy shed by human visitors there. They didn’t mingle much, even with others of their kind, who might as soon cannibalize them for whatever power they had left as look at them. They definitely didn’t party, and they didn’t do whatever that was, I thought, looking up.

Flock, my numb brain finally kicked up the right word.

They didn’t flock.

Only they did here, with a mass of what had to be several hundred ghosts screaming by on the wind so close that I staggered back abruptly.

Alphonse grabbed my arm even though we weren’t supposed to do that, but he didn’t look much like he cared. “Tell me,” he whispered, “right now, or I swear—”

“Tell you what?” Gray Curls demanded.

“What’s going on?” Topknot added. “Why’d we stop?”

“’Cause she sensed something. Didn’t you?” Alphonse shook my arm a little.

“Sensed what? What happened?” Butch Cut asked.

“A ghost goosed me,” I didn’t say because I couldn’t seem to speak. There was something wrong with these ghosts.

There was something very wrong.

“Cassie?” Zara said, looking from me to what probably seemed like just a raucous party to her.

“Ghosts,” I finally managed to get out.

Alphonse swore.

Purple Hair stared around like she might see one, too, and maybe she did. The direction she was looking in didn’t matter, as they were everywhere. Just everywhere.

“How many?” Alphonse demanded. And when I didn’t immediately answer, he shook me again.

“I... all of them. Just all of them.”

And that’s exactly what it looked like. Only I’d been wrong before; there were other eyes to see, weren’t there? And I finally understood why so many ghosts were congregated in one area and playing nice, more or less.

They didn’t have a choice.

“Cassie—” Alphonse hissed.

“Bokors,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Necromancers! They’re all over the place!”

I saw one off to the far left with three feral-looking, prowling ghosts on a spectral chain, leading them around like guard dogs. I saw another, flying overhead, born aloft by a horde of spirits—something I hadn’t even known we could do—and probably looking for interlopers. But he didn’t see us; the cloaks proved their worth.

But many more of his kind were moving through the throng with groups of enthralled spirits in tow and their eyes glowing yellow, red, or sickly green, depending on what type of necromancy they practiced. And there seemed to be no end to those! The old prohibitions on the art, which had kept people like me from sharing information or even living at times, had apparently been lifted, and there were no rules anymore.

None at all, I thought, as a horde of decaying zombies suddenly shoved past us.

“What is this place?” Alphonse whispered, watching them go, the tattered remains of their bodies in no better shape than their clothes.

“Hell,” Topknot rasped. “It’s why we stopped coming. After they caught us trying to slip in here, along with some of the Silver Circle who were running raids on the place, they got protection.”

“And you didn’t feel like mentioning that?”

She shrugged. “Thought you knew. It’s common practice to guard the living with the dead these days.”

“But not in our day.”

“No, I suppose not.”

She didn’t sound too concerned, and I saw Alphonse’s fist curl. But he didn’t do anything else, maybe because he was busy watching the zombie of a little girl savaging some piece of meat on the ground nearby, like a feral dog. Her decaying body was hunched over it protectively, her half-rotten face showed the chewing going on inside the eaten-away jaw whenever she looked up for a second, and her dead eyes darted around suspiciously. I looked away, feeling sick, but there were more horrors everywhere, and not just in the human range of sight.

Spirits dashed among the trees, clustering in some of the charred branches like strange birds. Others hovered over groups of mages, probably eavesdropping for their masters, while one was bolder, slipping inside a distracted mage’s skin as Billy Joe, my one-time ghost companion, had occasionally done. Only Billy had never made anyone run straight into a fire that someone had lit because I guessed the bonfire was taking too long, and then writhe in the flames as mage and ghost fought it out for dominance.

The mage won, but not before suffering heavy burns that left him half moaning, half cursing, as others ran to his aid. For its part, the ghost flitted back to a necro standing a little way away and chatting with several others of his kind, although the man gave no sign that he noticed. Except for a small quirk of the lips that might have gone unseen, except that someone had been looking for it.

The group the burned man had come from suddenly called up their own proxy army. A bunch of golems, their outer shells composed of various shades of red, brown, and gray-blue clay, broke off from their masters and ran forward. And unlike the more plain-looking type from my era, these were glowing with runes and strange inscriptions to make them more powerful—as if they needed it!

They didn’t since golems weren’t just animated, robot-like creatures. They were housing for something far more dangerous. I thought I saw flashes of the demons their masters had imprisoned inside as they threw themselves at the necros, strange light glinting in their eyes, or maybe that was all the sparks flying around.

Either way, this should be a short contest.

But I was wrong. The necromancers sent a mass of zombies into the demons’ path from those clustered around them, which, predictably, didn’t go well for the zombies. But I guessed the horde was only meant to buy a little time because a powerful necro swept in a moment later with a tattered cloak of spirits streaming out behind him.

It was at least a couple dozen yards long, and if I focused, I could see the ghostly faces and outstretched hands, pale and severely elongated, reaching out in supplication to anyone, everyone. Until their master detached a group of them, who flew into the attacking golems, sending them veering off crazily, their bodies twitching, falling, and rolling as they and the ghosts fought for control. And to my surprise, in some cases, the ghosts won.

A bunch of the clay shells suddenly sprang back up and chased their former masters into the night, while none of the surrounding mages did a thing about it, despite there being plenty of them. Instead, they gave the necromancer with the spirit cloak a wide berth, who ignored them with aristocratic disdain. Maybe because that’s what he was, I realized.

His clothes weren’t the ratty garb that most of the rest were wearing. Instead, he was clean and dressed in a new-looking, if rather showy, outfit in yellow and red that reminded me of a circus ringmaster: ruby trousers tucked into shiny black boots, a bright canary topcoat, and a pristine white shirt with red stitching along the seams. It looked like styles had changed since we’d been gone, or maybe stuff like that didn’t matter anymore, and everyone just wore whatever they pleased.

I noticed other well-heeled types in the crowd, standing out from the scruffy mass because of medieval-style robes in luxurious velvets highlighted by silver or gold embroidery; others looked like country squires in expensive tweeds and suedes and with fat bellies that didn’t look like they were missing many meals; and still more had on modern clothes topped with satin capes thrown over their shoulders as if they’d just finished a set at a local magic show.

But none compared to Mr. Circus over there, with his cloak of howling spirits, or another who was so engulfed by a group of beautiful girls with pale, dead faces that his clothes couldn’t be seen. A hierarchy had clearly developed among the mages, and many of those on top appeared to be necromancers, the former outcasts of the magical world, who had finally come into their own. But not all of them had dressed to impress.

I spotted an Indian sadhu wearing only a loincloth and a lot of ashes, the latter having turned his limbs and long, matted dreadlocks almost as pale as the ghosts flitting about. Or as his entourage, which consisted of a group of skeletons held together with a little sinew and a lot of magic. A whole lot, I thought, as it took a great deal of power to keep bodies that far gone operational.

And he was keeping a lot of them. I watched in awe as more than twenty skeletons passed by the dead tree under which we’d taken refuge, their bones softly clacking as they moved. A few had a little dried meat still discoloring their bodies in places, but more were a bright white that bones rarely reach unless bleached by years in the sun. I stood there, wondering how long it had taken them to turn that hue when what I should have been doing was making sure they didn’t do that, I thought, when one of their hands brushed Gray Curl’s cloak—

And it latched hold.

The tattered garment had been whipping slightly in the wind, or possibly with a mind of its own, becoming more animated with all the dark magic in the air. And it had just grabbed the skeletal zombie arm with its flat, tanned digits and wasn’t letting go. The zombie stopped abruptly, and up ahead, the sadhu stopped with it.

Of course he did, I thought savagely. That thing probably felt like an extension of his body as he animated it with a bit of his soul! How he’d animated so many when, in my time, a necro was lucky to manage three, I didn’t know, but then, the old rules seemed to have gone out the window, hadn’t they?

And now, he was walking back this way.

Alphonse tensed beside me, but I didn’t think his patented eat-‘em-before-they-can-yell routine was going to work this time. “Stay put,” I hissed and stepped out in front of Gray Curls before the sadhu reached us.

I bowed low before him, mainly because it kept my less-than-convincing face toward the ground.

“My apologies,” I said hoarsely. “My servant is new and too feisty for his own good—or mine.”

I reached out and pulsed enough necro magic through the misbehaving cloak to get it to release the zombie’s hand, and to my surprise, it worked. Even more surprisingly, it didn’t pop my own disguise, something I hadn’t even thought about until the magic had already left my body. And then all I could do was hold my breath and wait for whatever was going to happen next, only nothing did.

Except that I seemed to have caught the sadhu’s attention.

“You are new?” he said after a pause. “I do not recognize you.”

“Just came in tonight,” I deepened the bow by going down to one knee. Because it was either that or stand up, and I couldn’t stand up!

“And all these are yours?” I felt him send a little tendril of power around my group, touching lightly, almost politely, but enough to confirm that, yes, they were indeed dead. Or at least, the things they wore that obscured their magic were.

“Yes, your... Grace,” I replied because I had no idea what to say, and groveling seemed to be working.

“I care nothing for titles,” he told me loftily, but his voice sounded pleased. “But your arrival is well-timed. You should join us for dinner after the entertainment.”

“You are too kind,” I rasped.

“Not at all. The demonologists grow too many and seek to challenge our authority. A new, powerful practitioner is welcome. Come, I will introduce you.”

“I—you honor me,” I said, furiously thinking. Because if I stood up, he was going to notice my slack-jawed face, but if I didn’t, he was going to find that suspicious, too! But no way could we fight him without drawing the attention of everybody in the vicinity, and that was likely to get us—

“Boned,” Alphonse muttered from above my head. But he didn’t do anything because something happened at the same moment, only I didn’t know what. Power rippled across my skin, enough to cause a shudder to go through me, and I guessed the sadhu felt it, too, because he spat something in another language that sounded like a curse.

“What is he doing here?” he snarled and turned away before snapping his fingers at me like a dog. “Come along, and hurry. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

He and his skeleton army swept off, and before I knew it, I was back on my feet and being hustled along behind him, but not because some of his boys had caught me. But because one of mine had. “Put your game face on,” Alphonse hissed, dragging me along while our group crowded close around us.

“What?” I stared around in confusion.

“You used necromancy back there,” Topknot said rapidly from my other side, where she began puffing a bit from the pace. “Don’t tell me you didn’t!”

“Of course I did. I had to! And what the hell—”

“Well, that’s dark magic, isn’t it?” she demanded. “It’s control over the dead! So, do it again and fix your face! You look like your skin is sliding off your bones!”

Probably because it was, I thought, sending a tendril of necromancy into the cloak and feeling it almost immediately firm up around me. Which was less than pleasant as it suddenly felt like I was wearing a dead skin facial mask. But I barely noticed, being too busy paying attention to what had just appeared in the sky overhead.

Shit.

“Demon!” the call rippled through the crowd while I stared at a golden chariot worthy of a god but not being driven by one that was tearing through the skies. It was drawn by a group of snarling, snapping, crimson creatures I couldn’t name, but that looked a little like dragons if they were composed of fire instead of breathing it. They were constantly writhing and changing appearance, like dancing flames.

But they weren’t the main show, at least as far as I was concerned. No, not even close. Because the man driving that whole monstrosity, which lit up the skies like a small red sun, was another familiar figure.

Very familiar, I thought, my stomach knotting, although whether in hope or fear, I wasn’t sure.

I had never been with him.

“Who the hell is that?” Alphonse whispered. “And why does he look like Pritkin?”

I swallowed and accepted that things had just gotten a lot more complicated. “Because that’s his father.”

Chapter Ten

Things changed abruptly with the arrival of the party crasher. The necromancers cleared the field so quickly that I lost our new guide, which I wasn’t exactly upset about, and it was just as suddenly flooded by demonologists, which I was. A large group of them ran forward to greet Rosier’s chariot as it came to rest on the riverbank, clustering about him so thickly that only the golden-red glow he was shedding for some reason allowed me to follow his progress through the crowd.

Which was fast because he was pissed, knocking groveling fanboys out of the way left and right and ignoring the screams of the one his creatures had just decided to eat. He had only one thing on his mind, and I damned well knew what. I just didn’t know if it was good for us, and if it wasn’t—

“What do you mean, his father?” Alphonse demanded.

“It’s a long story—”

“Condense it!”

“We don’t have time—”

“Make time!” Suddenly, I found myself lifted off the ground and jerked up to a vampire’s face. One I couldn’t see because his glamourie was hiding it, but which I assumed wasn’t happy. Maybe because he was feeling out of his element in a major way and thus vulnerable, and vampires hate that.

Especially master vamps who are used to being the biggest, baddest person in any given area, but not here.

This crazy world didn’t run by the rules he knew. It ran by these, I thought, as I sent a tendril of necromancy through his cloak, which promptly wrapped him up like a mummy and forced him to drop me back on my feet. Because I meant it; we didn’t have time for this!

“If you want to go back and wait with the fey, go back,” I told him harshly. “And that goes for the rest of you. But if you stay with me, I’m in charge, understand?”

“I don’t understand a damned thing, and don’t try the trick with the cloak,” Topknot said, pulling a wand on me. “Just explain.”

“That’s Pritkin’s father,” I said, pointing at Rosier. “And he’s volatile as all hell. I don’t know what he’s come for or what he’ll do, but it will probably involve dragging Pritkin off somewhere, and I need him! So we get to him before Rosier does, we get to the portal, and we get out of here!”

I was yelling but didn’t care, as nobody outside our group could hear me over the chaos anyway.

And, apparently, Topknot didn’t, either.

“Okay.” She put the wand away.

I stared at her. “Okay?”

“I just wanted to know,” she said amiably enough. And I belatedly remembered that, in the covens, screaming at each other was taken for civil debate.

“Well, come on then!” I turned to go.

And then had to turn back around to release Alphonse. I must have looked as harassed as I felt because Zara shot me what might almost have been a glance of sympathy. As if to say, “Leadership is fun, isn’t it?”

No, I thought grimly.

No, it wasn’t.

And then we were pushing through the crowd, part of which appeared jubilant, part dour—I guessed depending on which side the mages in question were on—and part confused, probably the ones too drunk to know what was going on. But the scaffold was still being worked on, the bonfire was still being built, and people were acting like a demon lord joining the festivities wasn’t any reason to call the whole thing off. Which meant we’d better hurry because whatever Pritkin was planning to do would happen soon.

Very soon, I thought, as more spell fire lit up the night in celebration like fireworks going off overhead. Caleb was getting a royal send-off, which meant he must have been causing them a lot of trouble. And yeah, that sounded about right.

There was just one thing I didn’t understand.

“Aren’t they afraid of alerting the gods?” I asked Zara, who had come up alongside me; I supposed for moral support.

She was wearing the form of a tall, thin mage with a shock of limp gray hair and seams of dirt in his withered cheeks. She’d been using his age in her disguise, staying partly bent over as if from arthritis, to hide the areas where her true form showed through the less-than-perfect illusion. Not that anybody was likely to notice with showers of sparks and fleeing shadows everywhere, making all our bodies run with light and color.

“The gods can’t read dark magic,” she said, flinching as a particularly loud spell burst nearby as we skirted the celebration, staying close to the river. “Either that or they ignore it, as it doesn’t feed them. Too polluted, apparently.”

“But aren’t they curious?” The mages were making a hell of a racket, far more than we had out in the desert.

But Zara shook her head when I pointed that out. “The ones in Vegas weren’t drawn to any ‘racket.’ The portal’s magic got their attention, and they came running, hoping to eat the fey who had cast the spell. Or they would have if they had that much mind left.”

“That much mind?” I repeated. Because the only thing I could think of worse than a god was a mad one.

“Occasionally, you’ll come across one with enough brainpower left to be canny,” she confirmed. “But most of those moved on long ago to better hunting grounds. The rest are like slavering beasts, acting almost completely off instinct. We call them the Mindless.”

“But doesn’t this tell even them that something is happening?” I gestured around. The last thing we needed was some crazy gods showing up!

“Something interesting is always happening,” Zara said bitterly. “In most places, civilization has devolved into kill or be killed, but the gods pay no attention to that. They don’t care if we savage each other. And as far as the Black Circle is concerned, they’re all supposed to be dead.”

“Dead?”

“The gods turned on them as soon as they finished mopping up everyone else.” Her lips curled into what might have been a smile if it hadn’t been so vicious. “The survivors chose this place as their base because the gods had already torn through it when they mounted their final assault on the Silver Circle. They think it’s deserted.”

“Well, that won’t stay true if the idiots keep doing that!” I said as a combined spell hit the sky, showering bright green sparks against the darkened clouds and reflecting in the river to our right. And in the remaining stained glass in the windows of the medieval church to our left, its ancient walls and field of tombstones now blushing verdigris.

“The mages force the remaining locals to provide them with food and necessities,” Zara said. “They keep them quiescent by protecting them from roving bands of bandits and by allowing them to throw celebrations occasionally to alleviate the tedium.”

“So the gods think that’s what’s happening now?” I said because this was some celebration.

“The gods don’t think, Cassie!” she whispered viciously. “They react! And a few human spells aren’t enough to get their attention. Most people have wards these days, and they fritz out all the time! Now, what’s the damned plan?”

It was a good question. We’d managed to get by the main knot of celebrants, who were spread out around the front of the scaffold like a scattering of gold from all those torches. Rosier had reached the structure and climbed on top, staring out over the crowd with a scowl, and I wondered again if I could trust him.

Having a demon lord on our side would come in very handy right now.

But that was the thing: would he be on our side? Rosier had only ever had one side—his own—and maybe Pritkin’s at times, although they were almost the same thing. He’d had a son intending to use him to bolster his power in the hells, and he probably needed him more than ever now.

He and Pritkin had come to a sort of equilibrium when Rosier finally managed to see him as a distinct entity and not just an appendage of his own. But how much of that was likely to hold up now? Not much, I reluctantly decided.

If Rosier managed to find Pritkin before we did, we’d be a man down faster than we could blink.

Fortunately, I knew where Pritkin was about to be, even if Rosier didn’t.

“See that cage in the shadow of the scaffold?” I said, pointing. “That’s where Pritkin’s heading.”

“Yeah, and the damned demon’s almost on top of it!” Alphonse hissed because he’d decided to come along after all.

“But it’s butt up next to the structure, so he can’t see it from where he is—”

“He don’t have to see it. His groupies are all over the place. They’ll tell him if we get anywhere near it or kill us themselves.”

“And we look like their rivals,” Zara said quietly. “I don’t think they’re going to be pleased to see a necromancer and his horde sneaking up there.”

“We could lose the cloaks,” Purple Hair put in.

“And then we’re a bunch of humans sneaking up there.”

“Worse, we’re a bunch of witches,” Gray Curls said. “We wouldn’t make it five yards, and then there’d be a sight more bodies swinging in the wind!”

“It looks like they’re planning something like that anyway,” Butch Cut said. “That thing could hold a dozen, maybe more.”

“We could go for the entrance,” Topknot said. “While everyone’s distracted. I still remember how to call it up.”

“Call it up?” I asked, but suddenly, everybody was talking at once.

“And leave Pritkin?” Alphonse demanded.

“Better than dying alongside him!” Topknot said.

“We need him for the wards on the lower levels,” Purple Hair protested.

“Do we?” Topknot grinned; she clearly enjoyed a good argument. “He’s not been in there for fifty years! We know the place better!”

“I need him for Vegas,” I said harshly.

“Sounds like a you problem,” Gray Curls muttered.

“We could help you in Vegas,” Butch Cut began before being shouted down by her sisters.

“Are you mad?”

“Speak for yourself!”

“That place makes this one look like a walk in the park!”

That last was from Topknot; surprisingly, Zara hadn’t said anything. But she hadn’t volunteered, either, and I didn’t expect her to. Not to mention that I wasn’t leaving Pritkin behind anyway, so they could all bite me!

“If you know how to get in, get in,” I told them tightly. “I’m going for the cage.”

I started off, but Alphonse grabbed me. “Are you crazy?”

“Maybe.” I honestly didn’t know anymore. “But if we can’t get through this, we can’t get through Vegas, so we might as well find out.”

“Find out later when you’re rested up, not now!”

“He’s got a point,” somebody said, but I didn’t look around to see who because, no, he didn’t!

“Pritkin isn’t going to wait! Not even with his father here. He can’t because they won’t!” I gestured at the horde. “They’re going to hang Caleb any minute now, Pritkin’s going to do something, and all hell is going to break loose—”

“Looks like it’s already here,” Alphonse said.

“I have to go!”

“Then I’m going with you.”

I stared at him. “Why? You’d be better off with the witches—”

“Sure, like I’d have been better off staying with the fey and letting you go off and get killed—”

“I’m not going to get killed!”

“Yeah, only say you do because you’re a psycho, almost as much as that weirdo you’re dating, and then what happens to me? I’m not staying here, okay? I got a life, and maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s a life, and I wanna get back to it—”

“Alphonse—”

“—and I need you for that, so you don’t die. But I know you; I try to stop you, and it’ll not only get worse, it’ll get weird, and I can’t deal with any more of that right now—”

“Alphonse—”

“—and maybe I like the idea of saving the world. It has a ring to it: Alphonse, Hero of Mankind.” He rolled the words around in his mouth as if testing them out. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

I just stared at him because everybody was insane except me, and I wasn’t sure about me. But there were necros in the crowd; they hadn’t all left. And nobody seemed to be attacking anybody, maybe because the new arrival was bossing his groupies around, sending them scurrying off in search of his son.

Pritkin, I hope you’re well concealed, I thought, and scowled at everybody. All of whom seemed to be waiting on me to make a decision. Yeah, like I knew what I was doing!

Only I did because we didn’t have to find Pritkin, who was damned clever when he wanted to be. We just had to get to Caleb, knock out a couple of guards, take their places, and then Pritkin would find us. And then we could slip into the mages’ sanctum together while Rosier was busy causing a distraction, and who would have thought the old bugger would prove useful, after all?

I informed the others of my plan and saw them brighten slightly. Probably because if Pritkin didn’t find us, it wasn’t their problem, and we still had a way out of this. And with Caleb, who had presumably been inside those tunnels more recently than they had.

Of course, he’d gotten caught, too, but I decided not to point that out.

“Okay, come on then, if you’re coming,” I said and started off again.

I didn’t stay in front for long as Alphonse passed me, those long legs eating up the ground. He was striding forward with the confidence of a guy who was much harder to kill than the rest of us, and that, plus his imposing size, allowed him to get closer to the main event than he probably should have. We followed in his wake, trying to walk like we knew where we were going, or at least I did.

“Want a wand?” Topknot asked, coming up alongside me. “I got a spare.”

“I don’t know how to use one of those.”

“Yeah. Like you didn’t know black magic,” she said and cackled. “Here, take it.”

“I can’t use it.”

“Take it anyway. You can poke it in someone’s eye.”

“Put it away! Mages don’t use those!”

“Suit yourself.” It disappeared back under the rags her avatar was wearing. “But if it comes to fighting, our cover’s already gonna be blown.”

Thanks for that, I thought blackly, but for a wonder, nobody immediately challenged us, and Caleb was just ahead and still in his cage. His prison was guarded and probably warded, and he still looked more like raw, human-shaped hamburger than the mage I knew, but I’d take it. The only problem was that, in my time, he’d been tall, black, broad, and confident, like a force of nature with the magic to back it up, but this man...

I wasn’t sure he could even stand.

Maybe Alphonse could carry him? And if he did, would his cloak cover two and make them look like just one mage? Because if so, maybe we could walk right out of here and—

Something rippled over my skin when we were maybe twenty yards from Caleb, interrupting my thoughts and causing me to flinch slightly, and Zara hissed. “Detection wards.”

So, not everybody was too drunk to think straight, I thought, staring around our group. But the skinwalker cloaks proved their worth; the illusion didn’t so much as waver. And we passed into the area around the side of the scaffold, which was ironically quieter than the raucous party just in front.

And much more sober with nobody stumbling around in here. These mages seemed pretty alert, with more than just the ones by the cage fingering sidearms or being circled by a bunch of animated weapons like an extra shield. That seemed overkill for one half-dead war mage, but what did I know?

Not much, I thought, pausing along with everyone else when the ground abruptly pushed up into a small hillock not far away. A cave-like opening appeared in the side of the small hill, causing a few scattered daisies to flop over the door and into the mouth of an ominous black oval. For a moment, nothing else happened.

And then a bunch of emaciated-looking war mages stumbled out.

One of whom I knew.

“Jonas,” I breathed, watching the one-time leader of the fearsome Silver Circle stagger into the light.

It must have been the first time he’d seen it in a while as he squinted about, blinded by the torchlight. Or perhaps that was because the Coke bottle glasses he usually wore were missing. And so was just about everything else, except for a heavy gag and heavier chains binding his wrists, as he’d been stripped down to his underwear, and what it revealed...

“Damn,” Zara said, her borrowed face looking stunned at the signs of abuse all over the skeletal frame, but it hit me somewhat differently.

Jonas had to be approaching two hundred and fifty, and even for a mage, that was old. Yet he was here, through everything, still leading his men. I felt my hands clench at my sides, my breathing speed up, and Zara’s hand clamped on my wrist hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t.”

It was a single word, but I knew what she meant. Go for Jonas, and we wouldn’t find Pritkin. We wouldn’t find anybody because Jonas was the one all the well-armed and very sober mages were waiting for. He was the reason they were fingering their weapons and looking like they were wondering how they got stuck with this duty.

What she didn’t understand was that Pritkin was going to go for all of them, Caleb, Jonas, and the string of equally abused mages behind him. No way did he leave them here, not to this fate, not a chance in all the hells that had ever existed. So we did something now, something big, and damn the odds, or he was going to do it for us and—

“’Ere, you lot,” a big, tough guy said, causing me to jump and Zara to make a slight sound, neither of us having noticed him until he was almost on top of us. “Wot you doin’ ‘ere?”

“Dining,” Alphonse said, and a moment later, another empty was thrown into the shadows.

“Call it,” the big vamp said, looking at me. “’Cause I can’t eat ‘em all.”

I stared at the emaciated group now being pushed forward with jeers and curses. And at all the animated hardware surrounding them, including another two dozen well-armed guards who followed them out. And at all the backup in the crowd, backup we didn’t have.

Yet.

“Hit the deck,” I said.

“What?”

“Hit the deck!” I yelled and threw everything I had left—at the bonfire.

Chapter Eleven

Contrary to popular belief, witches don’t have unlimited power; they just use less of it than mages when casting a spell. The reason is that wild magic, the stuff the world creates on its own, loves hanging out with other magic. It loves it so much that a tiny piece of a witch’s power placed at the end of a wand like a lure can attract enough wild magic for said witch to throw a hell of a spell.

And I hadn’t just used a tiny bit.

I’d used everything I had left, and while the chaotic pile of broken furniture, firewood, tree debris, and whatever else the drunk bastards had been stacking up for their bonfire wasn’t a nice, well-made wand, it was wood. And I guessed that was enough, especially with the lightning still flashing overhead, because did I mention? Wild magic loves lightning, too.

So there was plenty hanging about in the skies overhead until suddenly, it wasn’t. It was stabbing down, hitting the massive pile of wood and the pool of magic that I’d just thrown on top of it, and causing the whole thing to go up like, well, like a bonfire. Only not like any I’d ever seen.

This bonfire was suddenly spearing as high as the clouds in a furious column of strange pinky-red light, like the world’s biggest wand. Which in turn attracted more wild magic and then more and more until, suddenly, the formerly greenish-black night was flooded pink, and fire danced in the middle of it. And I do mean danced.

I stared as a mass of fire sprites, tiny man-shaped creatures I’d seen in the hells once, spilled out of the column of flame like a red tide and leaped at the horrified crowd. There were hundreds of them, each looking like a tiny bit of lava had suddenly come alive, with boiling red-gold skins and eyes of searing, yellow-tinted white. And claws that started fires on everything they touched—

And everyone, I thought, as a mage screamed by, his whole body on fire from the five sprites who’d jumped him and were now ripping him to pieces.

Guessed I knew what Pritkin’s plan had been, I thought, as the horde gleefully started torching everything in sight. And it was my partner’s horde, not Rosier’s, based on the fact that Pritkin’s old man was screaming and cursing and zapping the little demons off himself with the same fury as the rest of the crowd. At least, that part of it that wasn’t busy trying to get away as the night descended into madness.

Only no, it wasn’t mad yet, but it was about to be. Because somewhere I couldn’t see, but somewhere close enough for a bellow to go up and spread across the night, was another party crasher. And this one...

Yeah, okay.

This one was my fault.

“What did you do?” Zara was screeching into my face. “What did you do?”

I didn’t answer because I was on fire.

Some sparks, whether from the bonfire or the imps or a stray spell—I couldn’t tell anymore—had ignited on the skin I was wearing. And damn, someone might have mentioned that these things had the ignition point of flash paper! I tore it off and looked up breathlessly, trying to see through the rain of fire falling all around us.

Only to see Pritkin, the familiar blond head pinker than a fey’s with reflected light, running headlong for—

“Why are you bothering with me?” I yelled, gesturing at the sky where the great bellow was still echoing like a clap of thunder. “Get Jonas! We need to leave!”

But he grabbed me anyway, and the usual shaking commenced, which I shrugged off because we didn’t have time for this! “I just summoned a god!” I yelled back at him because he was saying something, but I could no longer hear in the utter pandemonium that had broken out. “Get Jonas!”

Pritkin stared at me wildly for a second and then had a wadded-up human skin thrust into his arms by Alphonse, who had just ripped it off. Probably because he’d seen how fast mine had ignited, and if there’s one thing vamps hate, it’s fire. And it was everywhere now!

“For the old guy,” I saw him mouth, and Pritkin grabbed it and went running back the way he’d come like the madman he looked to be. And so was I because there was only one of him and a lot of Black Circle guys, and Caleb was still in his cage and—

Damn it!

Pritkin couldn’t get both him and Jonas in the time we had left, so I sprinted forward like a lunatic, which I absolutely was because this had to be the stupidest thing I’d ever done. And that was saying a lot! But this was definitely a contender for first place because I was pelting headlong toward the approaching god with Butch Cut by my side while the other witches cursed mages out of our way left and right from behind.

And they cursed a lot because everybody was running across the burning ground now, with the grass under our feet going up thanks to the rain of sparks and the fiery little imps who were leaving burning trails everywhere.

“Pritkin!” Rosier’s panicked, enhanced voice trembled the ground under my feet, and damn, he even used the right name, I thought, right before he attacked a god. It happened just as I looked up and saw him striking it with some kind of energy bolt before being batted the length of a football field away by a massive hand.

And then we skidded to a stop around the suddenly abandoned cage because the guards were smarter than us and had already left.

“That... was amazing!” Butch Cut screamed, sounding out of breath.

“The cage!”

“What?”

“The cage! I don’t have anything left!”

She stared at me and then zapped it, drawing a tendril of pink magic from the towering conflagration threatening to immolate us barely a house length away. It was pulling in the scaffold now, ripping it apart to feed its insatiable appetite, and suddenly looking less like a column than a fiery tornado. But it gave her plenty of magic to work with, and she used it.

Unlike the Circle, which acted as if wild magic was the most dangerous stuff around, witches rode that insanity all the time. They loved it, and it loved them back, and as a result, the ward on the bars ended up fried in seconds, sizzling out with a green flash and a smell like burning sandalwood. And I burned myself jerking the doors open, but there was no time to waste.

“Give me your skin!” I yelled.

She stared at me. “What?”

“Your skin! Your skin!” She finally understood and flung off the cloak. And we put it on Caleb, who looked up with a different face. “Come on!” I told him, but he didn’t move.

“I knew it was you,” he whispered. “I knew. Not even John…”

He passed out, and Butch Cut and I stared at each other for a second before she started looking around frantically. “A platform!” she screamed. “I can levitate him if I have a platform!”

But there were no platforms. There were, however, a couple of passing imps, which I grabbed and had my palms burned for my trouble. “Pritkin wants you to help us!” I yelled. “You know, Prince Emrys?”

They looked at me blankly, and I smacked my ear a few times to get the damned translation spell working, hoping it spoke whatever language they did. And then repeated my request while they stared at me. And then at Caleb. And then at each other.

“Hurry up!” I screamed. “And be careful! Don’t burn him!”

I didn’t know if they understood, and they didn’t say anything back. But the vibrant red of their hands and arms, which had resembled molten lava a second ago, suddenly changed to a crusty black. Something I decided to count as a win.

“Yes! Yes! Now grab him and come with me!”

I got under one of Caleb’s arms and pantomimed lifting him because there was no way I could do it for real, and Alphonse was AWOL, probably cowering under something to get out of the fire that had just set my hair alight. I cursed and beat it out, and the demons finally got with the program and dragged Caleb out of the cage, putting a hand under each butt cheek and an arm around his back, and damn. They were stronger than they looked, I thought, as they hoisted him up.

They took off, fleeing across the now merrily burning churchyard, possibly because we were out of freaking time. I looked up at the night sky, and what had been a dreary ceiling with low, rumbling clouds and flashes of lightning was now a vibrant candy-colored wash of flame, except for the massive, dark shapes heading for us at a lumbering run. And I do mean shapes because there were two more giant-sized, ravenous dark outlines coming at us like furious mountains and—

I just wanted a little help, I thought blankly, staring at them. I wouldn’t have even bothered if Pritkin had told me about the imps. And now—

“Fuck!” Butch Cut screamed in my face, and yeah. Summed it up.

“Run!” I told her, and we tore after the sprites and their awkward load, whose head and arms were flopping all over the place because Caleb was still out cold.

But they were flopping fast because the little demons were picking them up and putting them down alongside everyone else. The entire area had been packed with what must have been thousands of furious mages a minute before because some of them had been bent on fighting rather than fleeing. But now it emptied like someone had taken a stopper out of a drain, almost faster than I could believe.

And many of them were headed to the same place we were.

“No! No! We have to go back!” I yelled at the sprites. “We have to—”

But I didn’t even get a chance to finish the sentence before we were swallowed up by a mob of terrified dark mages, all crowding into the small cave-like opening Jonas had come out of as if their lives depended on it. Which they pretty much did. I threw one short, terrified glance over my shoulder when another great bellow echoed around the skies, close enough almost to deafen me, and saw mages getting snatched up in hands the size of cars and stuffed down gaping black maws.

The “gods” looked like Eldritch horrors, with long, greasy, dark hair, faces that weren’t remotely human, and eyes glowing ever brighter as they consumed and consumed and—

And then the cave opening abruptly sank back into the earth, and we were gone.

◆◆◆

You lead an interesting life, echoed in my head.

“Mircea?” I said hopefully, and then the timber of the voice hit. Mentally, Bodil still sounded like Bodil, and bizarrely, she seemed amused. I would never understand the fey!

But I understood being trampled if I tried to run and hold a conversation at the same time, so I dragged Butch Cut into a room off of the insanely packed main hall. It wasn’t much; it looked like a janitorial closet, and the door wouldn’t fully shut, but it was better than being flattened outside. If not by much, I thought, as the earth quaked around us and everyone screamed, almost in unison.

“Where are we?” Butch Cut demanded as a steady stream of mages pounded down the shuddering hallway.

“HQ,” I told her breathlessly. “Where are you?” I asked Bodil.

“Right here,” Butch Cut said, frowning.

Making our way to you—

“Well, make it fast! The gods are here!”

So we saw, it was dry.

“Make what fast?” Butch Cut said. “What’s wrong with you?”

Too much to list, I thought, and heard Bodil chuckle.

I was glad someone was having fun!

“Fey in my head,” I said to my companion, which didn’t seem to help. “Bodil, the tall, elegant one?”

Butch Cut nodded.

“She and the others are headed this way—”

“They can’t come here now! They’ll be killed!”

You think I’m elegant? Bodil asked wryly.

“Butch Cut has a point,” I told her. “Plus, we’re underground—”

I know. Interesting place... ah, there it is.

“There what is? Where are you?”

Here, in the complex. I just opened the door. The mages had shut it again, and—where are you?

“Down the corridor to the left. Don’t take the one on the right; it’s booby-trapped. They always booby trap—”

I distantly heard Æsubrand swear and didn’t know if he was that close or if his voice was an echo in Bodil’s mind.

Yes, it is booby-trapped, she confirmed. One moment.

“Where are they?” Butch Cut demanded. “What’s going on? You know we can’t stay here, right?”

“Yeah, kinda got that,” I said, as the ceiling partly caved in along with a bunch of dried-up tree roots. I pulled her into the doorway, the lintel of which was reinforced.

Cassie! Pritkin’s voice suddenly sounded so loud in my ear that my whole head rang with it.

“Aughhhh!” I said, and he swore.

I’m trying to boost the power on this thing. That cloak you’re wearing has been interfering—

“I’m not wearing it now! Turn it down! Turn it down!”

“Turn what down?” Butch Cut was starting to look frantic, staring up at the ceiling like she was ready for the rest of it to fall and bury us. “We have to go!”

You have to go! Pritkin yelled. Now! Those bastards are coming in—

“I know! I’m waiting for—”

We’re coming. Don’t you dare leave! Bodil commanded.

“Then come faster!”

What? Pritkin demanded. Who are you talking to?

“Bodil! She and the others are—”

The other half of the ceiling caved in, probably because someone was now stomping on it. I had half a second to glimpse massive toes coming down through the soil, and then I was dragging Butch Cut out of the door, just in time to see Bodil coming down the hall with an armorless Æsubrand in tow, along with Enid, her bright red hair floating around her like she was underwater. Which she soon would be because the internal wards were failing, and the river was flooding in!

Or it was until Bodil sent it upward instead, in a giant column headed like a fist toward the creature tearing through the soil after us. We pounded down the hallway just ahead of it and behind the horde of mages, going I didn’t know where because these corridors changed. It was what they were designed to do when threatened, to confuse an interloping force, but I didn’t know how well that was likely to work with a god or two ripping apart the landscape.

Or how I was supposed to find my way through here with the hallways constantly shifting and our group having to wade through a field of mud because there were leaks everywhere!

But I didn’t have to worry about it, because Pritkin had it handled. If by “handled,” you count the floor suddenly dropping out from under us like a glacier had just calved with us on top. Leaving us sliding down an almost perpendicular drop with just enough of a slope to keep us from going airborne.

I screamed, mud splattered us from all directions, and a couple of mages that had fallen in with us were bisected by giant knives suddenly sticking out from the wall—more of the Circle’s old protection wards waking up and getting lethal. And Pritkin was yelling something loud enough to shatter my head. Goddamnit!

“What?” I yelled as we hit down hard enough to rattle me. And as Bodil and Æsubrand dragged me off the ground after landing as surefooted as two cats, and jerked me down the hall between them.

Because there was a hall there, the same one in fact, just stories lower than it had been a minute ago. Or maybe it was a new one; I couldn’t tell with all the mud in my eyes. I couldn’t tell anything, and they were pulling my arms off!

I said there’s no time! Pritkin’s voice crackled. Jonas has invoked Far Horizon. This whole place is about to go up!

I didn’t ask what that meant. I didn’t want to know. “Caleb—”

We have him! But we don’t have you!

“Then how do we get to you?”

Hold on!

And, damn it, he meant that literally because the corridor suddenly took over, swinging abruptly enough to the right to throw us all against the wall. That included some wide-eyed mages who had somehow survived this far, but even though none of us were in disguise anymore, they didn’t try to attack. I doubted they could have even if they’d wanted to, as we had just commenced the wildest ride ever.

I’d pelted down some corridors in my time, but that wasn’t what was happening here. The corridor was doing the moving, and we were left hoping for the best as it burrowed through the ground like a crazed earthworm. Or like one of those moving walkways at the airports, if it stopped churning under your feet and started slamming through the concourse like a runaway train.

The mages hit the ground, Butch Cut grabbed a rock jutting out of the wall and held on for dear life, and Æsubrand grabbed Enid, shoved his pike into the ground, set his feet, and hung on. Only Bodil didn’t seem affected; she stood there with her arm around me, with the air of someone in an elevator waiting for the ride to end. The gentle white light that all fey give off in our world shimmered around her, serving as the only illumination this far underground.

Until it wasn’t.

“What is that?” Butch Cut screamed.

Since the wildly bucking corridor we were in contained mages getting slammed back and forth like candy in a piñata, falling earth, flailing tree roots, and water that was constantly hitting us from various directions as the hallway squirmed this way and that, I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Until she grabbed my head and turned it toward the golden glow coming from behind us because one of the gods had figured out that it was easier to get down here if he wasn’t the size of a small skyscraper. He had shrunk himself down and also lit up like a floodlight to be able to see. Or maybe that was just the spillover from all those mages he’d been eating.

And he obviously wanted more.

Or maybe he wanted something else because a roar of ravenous intensity rippled through the air around us, and those laser-like eyes focused—on Bodil and me.

Shit! But Pritkin had noticed him, or whoever was driving the crazy train we were on. ‘Cause the god suddenly disappeared as the shaking, moving causeway suddenly tore through the earth—

Straight down.

“Auuggghhh!” we all yelled, even Bodil, because she’d lived a long time and probably done crazier things than I had, but it didn’t look like she’d done this. And then it got weirder.

The floor surged up at us in a bubbling field of mud because it was tunneling under the river now, leaving us sloshing around as the tunnel played hide and seek with a god. We could see him intermittently as the flood of golden light he was giving off strobed the mad little hallway. But every time I thought he’d almost caught up, and we were all screaming our guts out, a dirt wall slammed into his face as we and our mud pit were flung in another direction.

Strobe, scream, slam; strobe, scream, slam; strobe, scream—fall when the floor abruptly gave way again. The mages we’d been traveling with had disappeared, whether eaten or buried, I didn’t know, but our little knot kept slinging back and forth and plummeting down, down, down, like we were off the train and on the world’s weirdest elevator. If elevators also shot ahead at random intervals, or to the side, or up and over some impediment before dropping wildly again.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Butch Cut said thickly, her eyes huge and her fingers white as she clung to her rock.

Until we came to an abrupt halt and were sent tumbling along with an ocean of mud down a short flight of steps and into a large room with a bright blue portal thrumming on the opposite wall. Which promptly ate the god who tore out right on our heels, leaped over our prone bodies in his hurry, and stumbled straight into the portal’s hungry maw. Which caught him even as he tried to fight it, as he turned and struggled back toward us, as a great golden arm stuck out of the sea of churning, vibrant blue reaching, reaching, reaching—

Until the light suddenly increased, probably because Bodil was reaching out, too, lying on the floor covered in mud, and no longer appearing quite so regal. But putting everything she had left into increasing the portal’s power, turning it from royal to brilliant azure, and to my shock, it was enough. The furious god was sucked backward, still bellowing, and sent somewhere frigid, judging by the icy air blowing in at us for a second.

That was all the time I had to take it in, along with a glimpse of Pritkin off to one side of the portal with his hair standing straight up and his eyes gone crazy bright. He was with a bunch of wild-looking men in war mage gear, one of whom flipped a lever on the wall while the rest started for us. And before I could ask what the hell, we were snatched up and flung into the heart of the now bright green portal.

I felt it grab me, swallow me down, and send me spinning toward a destination I couldn’t see with an all-encompassing glare searing my eyeballs, and didn’t even care about.

Because anything was better than here!

Chapter Twelve

The portal ejected me out of the other side into a sea of sand. The violence of what had to be a seriously malfunctioning gateway sent me flying and then rolling, and came close to flipping me end over end before I grabbed hold of the ground and desperately hung on. And looked up into wildly whipping sand, blowing so hard that it felt like it etched my skin.

Visibility was practically zero, and I was half-buried before I understood what was happening. I thrashed around, trying to get to my feet, but the dunes beneath me were unstable, plunging me up to my knees in shifting soil and all but immobilizing me as soon as I tried to go anywhere. It didn’t help that I could see nothing past scouring yellow veils, hear over the roar of the winds, or feel beyond the lash of the grit-filled gale.

Until a fist of air punched me in the back, sending me sliding down a massive dune along with half of the hillside. But someone else was there at the bottom, someone who was still standing. And who grabbed me as I careened by, scooped me up, and started to run.

I knew without asking that it was Alphonse, as no human could have managed that feat in those conditions. I’d lost track of him in everything, but trust a vampire to have somehow found his way. And to be able to battle a path across a blinding hellscape while holding my head against his chest with one big hand to shield me.

It wasn’t enough—nothing could have been—but the familiar touch was calming. Something that was especially important when I had no idea who else had gotten out of HQ—or if anyone had. There’d been two more of those creatures behind the first, and if one could figure out how to get to us—

The light suddenly dimmed, and the lashing winds cut off as abruptly as if someone had slammed a door. And maybe they had; I couldn’t tell as the damned sand had welded my eyes shut, caked my nose, and left me struggling to breathe out of lungs that felt like they’d been scoured, too. I fought with the crusty mess, finally getting enough out of the way to let me draw in some oxygen and blink around at a small cave.

“You okay?” Alphonse rasped.

I tried to answer, but a coughing fit took me, leaving me hacking up a bunch of sand onto the darker earth of the floor. It joined a thick sifting that had already scattered over everything in sight, but at least that terrible wind wasn’t tearing at us anymore. I couldn’t even see it, as we’d gone around a bend from wherever the door was, but I could hear a loud roar like all the banshees in hell were after us.

It became progressively softer when Alphonse decided that I wasn’t dead yet and started carting me down a tunnel. I didn’t ask where we were going. I was too busy coughing and spitting, trying to get the rest of the dirt out of my lungs and from between my teeth.

It wasn’t easy, as the stuff was everywhere, and the fact that I’d been covered in mud before landing didn’t help. The sand had stuck to the mud, and the mud had stuck to me, and nothing seemed likely to change that. There was also very little light in here, or maybe that was merely the contrast from the blinding glare outside.

Or maybe not. Alphonse must have been finding his way by scent or hearing because my eyes could only pick up dim flickers on the sides of rough stone walls, which got dimmer as we got further away from the chaos. But here and there, I glimpsed watchful shadows, war mages crouched in alcoves or the mouths of tunnels above us, almost lost in the darkness of a higher-than-normal ceiling, although none of them impeded our passage.

It was like something out of time, I thought, staring. The mages, what little I could see of them, were bundled up like Bedouins with long robes, turbans, and heavy scarves hanging in front of their faces, where I guessed they could be drawn up at a moment’s notice to shield them from the sand. In the darkness, they could have been assassins straight out of the Middle Ages, waiting to fall on their enemies with murderous intent.

But I knew what they were; I could feel their magic peppering my skin as we passed by underneath, even when I couldn’t see them. I swallowed a few times in a completely dry throat and felt Alphonse’s hands clench on me slightly. He didn’t like being under their eyes, either.

At least this tunnel wasn’t moving, and it eventually let out into a large, roundish cave with actual spell light ringing the walls and war mages striding about as if they had somewhere to be. Unlike the ones at HQ or the creepy watchers in the tunnel, these wore regular clothes and appeared relatively well-fed. They were also calm, with the usual stoicism on full display, whereas I was about to lose my shit because I hadn’t seen—

“Pritkin?” I gasped at Alphonse as he swung me down. “Where’s—”

Another coughing fit cut me off when I changed position, and we spent a while with the big vamp pounding me on the back. I hacked up sand, mud, and God knew what while he held my hair back from my face like a concerned boyfriend outside a bar. I didn’t care, not about what I looked like, the watching mages, or any of it.

I just wanted to breathe.

I stayed there for a minute afterward, hunched over and gasping, waiting for more. But nothing else came out, including whatever had remained of my breakfast. I was unsure whether that was because I’d been expelling stuff from my lungs instead of my stomach or whether my body had learned the hard way to hold onto food, but either way, I was grateful.

And when I finally looked up, I glimpsed some of the guys intended for the gallows staggering in with a couple of the Bedouins and collapsing by one wall.

They didn’t look any better than I felt, with even the ones still on their feet leaning against the rock as if they’d fall down without it and trembling. All of them were in loincloths or nude, although it almost didn’t matter as they were as caked in mud and sand as I was and so bony that all I saw when I looked at them was a row of dirt-covered skeletons. One of which was cursing.

“Get that damned thing off me!” Jonas threw aside the blanket that a concerned war mage was trying to put around his shoulders.

He sounded older than when I’d last seen him, with the once forceful voice a thin thread on the air. The magnificent mane of hair was different, too, shorn almost off like that of the rest of the men, I supposed by their captors. And the emaciated face was so hollow that it had completely changed shape.

But the fire in the eyes was the same when he spotted me.

“Ah! There she is!” He staggered over and took my filthy face in his hands. “Yes, yes, there she is!”

It seemed to be all he could say.

“Jonas,” I croaked and was crushed in a hug stronger than I’d have believed the old arms could manage.

Or maybe that was just me, as I had almost no strength left. My legs felt like water after bracing themselves on that crazy ride in a runaway hallway, and my arms were noodle-y from gripping onto Bodil. I wouldn’t have made it if Alphonse hadn’t carted me in.

As it was, I staggered when Jonas released me to grab onto Pritkin, who had just arrived, shedding sand and looking around agitatedly, only to be intercepted on his way over to me. He seemed a little surprised to be embraced by his old boss, as he and Jonas had had a complicated relationship. But all appeared to have been forgiven.

“Cassie?” Pritkin said, looking at me past the old man’s head.

“Okay,” I croaked. It was the best I could do.

He nodded, looking relieved, and then hugged Jonas back. “Are you all right, sir?”

“John! My boy, my boy!”

That sort of thing was all there was for a while, as small groups trickled in, so coated in sand that they looked more like statues come to life than people. I recognized Bodil because of her height; Æsubrand for that and the fall of pale hair that he was scratching at like an annoyed cat; Enid for her voice, which was yelling at the knot of witches that had also come along, and who were trying to curse every war mage they saw. They were wild-eyed and seemed confused about what had just happened, or maybe they didn’t care whether the mages here were the good guys or not.

As far as they were concerned, any mage had always been an enemy.

But this group was organized, at least, and we were soon whisked down another maze of corridors to one with a line of spartan bedrooms that reminded me of the ones in the old HQ. They had been little more than burrows carved out of the earth with few amenities except for a bed, a chest for clothes, and a few hooks on the walls that the guys had put up themselves.

This one had no hooks, but it did have an actual, working shower. I’d never been so glad to see anything as my eyes and nose were running, I was still wheezing with every breath, and sand had gotten into places I didn’t even want to think about. Pritkin had been supporting me down the hall and started talking as soon as the door shut behind us, but my ears were too clogged to hear it.

“Give me... a minute,” I gasped, trying to strip off the caked-on armor and mostly failing.

Until he helped me and then helped me some more to get into the shower, which was in an alcove off the main room.

The bathroom, if you could call it that, was tiny, and the shower even smaller. It was also cramped, as it had not been built for two. But I didn’t feel like complaining, especially when my new bath buddy turned me around and started soaping up my nasty hair.

“Oh, God,” I gasped, turning my face to the water and letting it beat against all that dirt. It felt like I was wearing a clay mask, even though Alphonse and I hadn’t been outside for more than a few minutes. But I was lucky I’d been wearing armor and had mud covering most of the bare parts, because the few areas that hadn’t been protected...

Damn! Everything hurt, with biting stings whenever the water hit places where bits of my flesh had been blasted off. And there were a lot of those, as my armor had taken a beating lately and no longer fit perfectly. Wherever one of the gaps had been, a line of rough, red flesh marked the spot.

The marks crisscrossed my body like the lashes of a tiny whip. But Pritkin’s fingers were gentle and soothing on my scalp, which I guessed my hair had protected as it was almost the only thing that didn’t hurt. God, that felt good!

After a while, my body decided to calm down, my pulse returned to something like normal, and my mind stopped racing. The water beat the welts into submission while those talented fingers proved that he had missed his calling; he should have been a masseuse. It was honestly the best I’d felt in a while, and I could have happily stayed that way for hours, if not days.

But I didn’t know how long the water would last in a desert or how much longer I would last without knowing what was going on.

“Rosier,” I finally rasped.

“I saw.” It was grim.

“But did he see you?” I turned to face Pritkin, who still looked like a mud monster, his face and hair running with it as the spray had loosened some dirt. Yet said hair was somehow still reaching for the stars, usually a sign that his magic was surging, whatever he had left of it. The war mages in the cave had looked that way, too, as if they’d just stuck their fingers in a light socket.

But he didn’t look startled so much as pissed. It was a weird contrast to how gentle his touch had been, but it was undeniable, with tension in every line of his body and a storm brewing on his face. That plus the fact that the danger was over, yet his wild mop hadn’t calmed back down...

Yeah, this was going to be fun.

And he didn’t waste any time getting into it. I guessed he’d wanted to be sure I was alive and well before he reamed me out. And that was rich, considering who had started all this!

“No,” he said tersely. “He was too busy running from the gods you summoned up!”

“Pritkin—”

“Demigods are a fine meal these days, and those bastards went straight for you! What were you thinking, deliberately luring up those things—”

“We had to get to Caleb and couldn’t find you—”

“I’d have found you had you stayed put!”

I blinked at that audacity of that, and because soap was trickling into my eyes. “You’re the one who ran off.”

“And I said for you to wait for me. I would have freed Caleb and returned to you—”

I stared at him. “You didn’t say anything! And do you actually expect me to believe that you’d have left Jonas and the rest to—”

“I didn’t know about them then!”

“—die? Because we both know you’d have gone after them, too, with practically no magic and no backup—”

“Did it look like I lacked backup?” The green eyes were wild. “And you summoned gods!”

I stared at him, hands on hips, which caused me to bark my elbow on the shower’s narrow confines, but I didn’t care. “I might have acted differently if I’d known what you were planning,” I pointed out. “But you ran off without a word—”

“I told you where I was going—”

“You told me nothing! And don’t try to say that my cloak was interfering—”

“Your cloak was interfering,” the bastard insisted stubbornly. “Black and white magic don’t mix, and when you put it on—”

“Twenty minutes, Pritkin. That’s how long it took me and the witches to find those awful things, dig them up, and get them on. Twenty minutes, and I was trying to contact you the whole time, but you didn’t bother to reply—”

“I deliberately didn’t reply—”

“So you admit it!”

“I state it,” he snapped, the green eyes hard and angry. “You were with people who could have used that signal to trace me, and I didn’t want that! I wanted you safe for once while I dealt with this, but once I realized you were following me anyway—where are you going?”

“To find another damned shower!”

He hauled me back. “There aren’t any more. They had to turf a Corpsman out of this room to accommodate us.”

“Then I’ll stay dirty!” I was being ridiculous, but right then, I didn’t care. “When are you going to accept reality?”

“And what is reality?” The crossed arms weren’t a good sign, but I was too angry right then to care.

“That your job isn’t to protect me anymore. It’s to protect everybody, the whole freaking world, and you can’t do that when you only concentrate on one person!”

“Pot, kettle.”

“What?”

“You know perfectly well what,” he said, the scowl turning thunderous. “You do the same thing. You ended up in that damned fey camp trying to save me!”

And goddamnit, we were back to that again!

The camp that haunted my dreams and Pritkin’s, too, I guessed, because he wouldn’t freaking drop it, had belonged to Aeslynn. He was the fey king who’d been trying to bring back the gods, and I guessed he’d succeeded. Part of his plan had involved kidnapping Pritkin and holding him in one of his military encampments, and Mircea had gotten carried along for the ride, and neither had been likely to survive the experience.

So, I’d gone in after them. I’d gotten them out, but at a price, one that had involved me ending up the prisoner of a bunch of sadistic monsters for a while. In turn, Pritkin and Mircea had helped to rescue me, but the whole thing had left scars.

Enough that I didn’t want to think about it now; I didn’t want to think about it ever.

And Pritkin knew it. Whatever registered on my face caused him to change tactics and veer off in a different direction. But not a better one.

“You proved it again by coming after me tonight and almost getting yourself killed,” he said more quietly.

“Which I wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t run off!” I wasn’t quiet because any recall of that horrible night felt like fingernails raking down my nerves, which weren’t in great shape to begin with.

“Which I wouldn’t have needed to do if I could trust you—”

“To do what?”

“To listen to me! You used to know how to do that!”

I stared at him, and the fact that water was dripping off his substantial nose in a steady stream did not make the expression any less formidable. He meant every word, and that was not okay. None of this was.

“I used to read tarot in a bar and didn’t know one end of a gun from another,” I reminded him. “You made sure that isn’t the case anymore. You trained me yourself—”

“Yes, for your protection. Not so you could do whatever the hell that was!” He flung out a hand, hit the shower wall, and cursed inventively. “Not to mention that you didn’t have a gun—you didn’t have anything but a bunch of crazed women who never met a fight they didn’t like! The covens are mad, and I was mad to leave you with them and—”

He kept on talking because, despite being pretty taciturn most of the time, when he got going, he could go for a while. But I couldn’t hear him anymore over the roar in my head. I fought Zeus, I thought dizzily.

I took on the father of the gods, one on one, and while I didn’t win, I didn’t lose, either. But Pritkin hadn’t been there; he hadn’t seen it. And despite everything, he insisted on treating me like spun glass.

I didn’t know how to make him stop if everything we’d gone through hadn’t already done that, but I had to figure it out.

We couldn’t go on like this.

“You don’t trust me to handle myself,” I interrupted. “Even though you trained me.”

“I trust you.” It was grim. “In a normal fight, I’d rather have you at my back than anyone else. But this isn’t a normal fight, and you—”

He stopped abruptly, enough that I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever he had to say.

“And I what?”

He stared at me for a moment, but apparently, he thought whatever it was needed to be said. Enough to risk upsetting me when he knew I was already teetering on the edge. But he didn’t look like he was happy about it.

“I’m not the only one who can’t get over that camp, Cassie.”

Chapter Thirteen

I was silent for a beat, not sure if I wanted to go there. In fact, I was pretty damned sure that I didn’t. And I didn’t have to.

Something told me that I could step out of the shower, wrap myself in a towel, and walk back into the other room, and this time, he’d let me go. He wouldn’t say a word because we’d both vastly prefer to avoid this conversation. But if that happened, we also wouldn’t come to the understanding I wanted and that we needed because, without it, he was going to get himself killed.

So, I braced for a bad time. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning that we were both scarred that night. I have been dealing with the fact that I didn’t protect you—no, worse than that. That my incompetence resulted in you ending up in that mess in the first place—”

“You weren’t incompetent,” I said, because he hadn’t been. He’d been unlucky, something that could have happened to any of us. But apparently, it wasn’t my turn to talk.

“—and which resulted in you getting hurt and almost killed. I swore an oath to protect you, and I didn’t protect you, and it eats at me every day. Every day!” The green eyes were very bright, with what almost looked like flames behind them. “I hate that, more than I can tell you, but as badly as I have struggled with that failure—”

“You didn’t fail. You got me out—”

“Not in time! Not before—”

He broke off again with a curse and then cursed again and hit the wall, this time on purpose. And hard enough that, if a ward hadn’t protected the dirt in here to make it waterproof, he might have broken it. I wasn’t sure that he still wouldn’t.

His famous temper looked like it was teetering on the edge, too.

“Pritkin,” I said, low and forcefully, not that it mattered.

“I failed you,” he said. “But I thought that, after we got you out of there, it was over, that you could begin to heal, and in some ways, you have. You’ve been far more resilient than even I expected, and I know your strength. But that’s become the problem, hasn’t it?”

“What has?” I said, confused. This conversation wasn’t going where I’d expected.

“Your strength. Most people in your position would have curled up into a ball and become non-functional for God knows how long. And that would have been a valid response! But not you.

“You did the opposite. A few days later, you were going toe to toe with Zeus—”

“I didn’t have a choice!”

“Maybe not,” those disturbing eyes were steady on mine. “I don’t know, as I wasn’t there. But you had one tonight, and what did you do?”

I tried to speak again, but he was on a roll. And while he didn’t look like he was enjoying this conversation any more than I was, he was determined to have it. Sometimes, Pritkin’s stubbornness could be a real pain in my ass.

“You ran straight at the danger, somehow making your way through a throng of the darkest of dark mages, and then, when you saw the odds against reaching Caleb, what did you choose? To stay back, out of the way, and trust me to handle it? To attempt a rescue by using your allies to cause a diversion? To make any attempt with a reasonable risk?

“No.” The very word vibrated with anger. “Instead, you sent up a bonfire a hundred feet high, deliberately drawing the attention of any god in the fucking Midlands! Just like you dueled Zara and looked like you were enjoying it instead of attempting to escape—”

“And how the hell was I supposed to do that?” I demanded. “We were cornered—”

“Which is what I told myself because that’s what I wanted to believe. But you weren’t tonight. You could have stayed where you were—”

“I was worried about you—”

“So you summon gods?”

He seemed fixated on that point.

“You said it yourself. We needed a distraction. I provided one.”

Pritkin stared at me. “Yes, the most dangerous, over-the-top one possible!”

“As opposed to?” I noticed that my arms had crossed, and my stance was mirroring the one he’d had a moment ago, while he was currently far more animated.

“Anything?” his hands waved about as far as the walls would allow. “You could have used the witches; God knows they love an excuse to start a fight! The place was full of necromancers; you could have stolen some of their creatures and sent them on a rampage. My father was there, bellowing orders from the top of that damned scaffold; you could have called on him for help—”

“You know how dangerous that could be—”

“So you summon gods?”

“Stop saying that!”

“Someone needs to say it! Like someone needs to point out that you’re suddenly taking terrible risks all the damned time—”

“I am not—”

“Like hell! You used to hide from danger, and rightfully so—”

“I still hide. I hide all the time. I hid from that thing that almost caught us when we came out of the portal at Zara’s—”

“Yes, when you were exhausted and half-drowned. I wonder what you would do now?”

I wondered what he thought had changed, as I was still sitting on empty, not to mention still filthy, as someone was too busy yelling at me to let me bathe.

“The same thing,” I began, only to be cut off yet again.

“Bollocks!”

And okay, I was getting pissed. “I hide when I need to and fight when I need to,” I told him shortly. “But my first instinct isn’t always to run anymore. It didn’t always help, and I’m getting tired of it—”

“That’s what I’m afraid of!” the green eyes flashed. “Like I’m afraid that you’re dealing with your trauma by trying to prove to yourself that you’re strong, you’re invincible, no one can hurt you—”

“Bullshit.”

“—when plenty of people can and will, given half a chance. You’re a demigod, Cassie, but that doesn’t make you invulnerable!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I stared at him. I rarely felt anything but vulnerable!

“What I think is that you’re trying to prove something to yourself, and in the process—”

“So you don’t trust me?”

“It’s everyone else I don’t trust!” He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. And then scowled at it when it returned dripping in mud. He flung the mass at the wall and took me by the shoulders. “Listen to me. I know I can’t understand what you went through that night and never will, and that you haven’t had time to recover, that the world never gives you time—”

“I don’t need any more time.”

“I think you do,” it was flat. “But we don’t have it. The gods may not know you’re back yet, but they’ll figure it out; Zeus will figure it out. And when he does, he’ll come for you. We have to do what we’re going to do quickly, and that means quietly, subtly, sliding under everyone’s gaze without attracting attention, not throwing a rave for the brain-dead bastards the gods left behind! Do you understand?”

“Of course I do! I told Bodil the same thing shortly after we got here!”

“Then what the devil happened tonight?”

I took a second because something told me I needed to get this answer right. But the truth, which was that Hail Mary had been all I could think of at the time, probably wouldn’t go down well. And neither would the rest of the truth, which was that I hadn’t expected three of them.

Or the rest of the rest, which was that I’d wanted a fight.

That last thought surprised me, as I hadn’t expected it. But the more I thought about it, the more it resonated. I’d been exhausted, terrified, and half-dead when I arrived back in this world, washing up on Earth’s shores like a beached fish, only to find that my home was almost unrecognizable. And ever since, my fury had been growing, tamped down by circumstance and unacknowledged, but there anyway.

Fury at that idiot Aeslynn, whose pride and cruelty had led to the demise of his world and the wreckage of mine. Outrage that I had to hide from the gods’ castoffs, the mindless creatures they’d left to ravage an already dying world. And disgust and seething resentment at the Black Circle, who had helped to ruin everything that other people had created, the vultures who built nothing themselves, worked for nothing, helped no one in their whole useless lives, but had come out like maggots to feed on the corpse of a world they’d helped to kill!

And then I’d seen Caleb.

He wasn’t just Pritkin’s friend; he was mine. And as loyal as the day was long and as selfless as all war mages were supposed to be, but rarely were. He had no wife, no kids that I knew of, no anything but a lifetime of service, and what had it gotten him?

What had he thought when his world fell apart? When he and the rest of his brothers went into battle, knowing before they left that they were doomed to lose? What had kept him going over five long decades when everyone he knew died around him, and the maggots grew fat and bold and inherited what was left of the Earth?

And what had they done to him, that one good man?

Yes, I’d been horrified, but I’d been furious, too, to the point that it had burned in my veins like acid. The whole time we were traversing that nightmare of a town, when I’d been forced to grovel in front of that posing “holy man,” when I’d spotted Caleb, pummeled into near unrecognizability and locked in a cage like an animal, when I’d had to witness the real animals drinking and partying around him, laughing at what they’d done, it had been building.

The fury of a goddess, of my mother, who wanted to watch them all burn.

“Cassie?”

“According to Zara, the gods don’t regularly hunt in that area,” I heard myself say. “The Black Circle settled there because it’s supposed to be deserted, and they stay mostly underground. Plus, the locals use some minor level magic for wards and things, and it covers for them.”

“Then why signal to creatures you didn’t think would be there?”

Because I’d hoped they would, I didn’t say. “Everyone’s terrified of them, so if they thought there was a chance one might see that signal and happen by—”

“You thought they would scatter?”

“Something like that,” I said evenly. “There were a lot of mages around, and we couldn’t take them all, and as you said, we needed a distraction…”

“A distraction!” Pritkin said, shaking his head in disbelief, and then his eyes narrowed.

Because he’s not stupid and he knows me.

“When I ran up to you,” he said slowly. “You said to hurry because you’d just summoned a god. Not that you’d caused a distraction.”

Yeah, that was... inconvenient. “Well, it was a possible outcome—”

“Cassie!”

“I was angry, all right?” I said, looking into those clear green eyes and breaking because I didn’t like lying, especially to him. He was another good man in a sea of terrible ones, and I owed him more than that. I owed him everything. “And I didn’t expect three of them. But it worked—”

“This time! What about the next? What about—”

“I don’t know, any more than you do!” I said, because if he wanted honesty, what about some goddamned honesty? “Not here, not anymore! The world’s upside down, and the bastards who put it that way are running things. Did you see them? Did you see how they were laughing about what they did to Caleb and Jonas and—did you see?”

“I saw.” His jaw was tight. “You wanted to hurt them. I know; I felt the same.”

“You felt—” I was surprised; I don’t know why. Maybe because, despite his well-known temper, his face had been expressionless watching Caleb being trundled down that road. If he’d felt anything, it hadn’t shown.

Well, except for taking off after him without a word, I thought dryly.

I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” summoned gods to rip through my enemies and stuff them down their gory maws “—done that. But we were running out of time and everyone was looking at me, and—it was all I could think of.”

Pritkin also just looked at me because he wasn’t buying it.

“I’m not a strategist!” I said angrily. “I’ve gotten this far by instinct and luck and having people at my side to help me. But you were gone, and Caleb—I couldn’t leave him there. He’s my friend, too!”

“We both should have left him,” Pritkin said flatly. “He isn’t the priority here, and if we succeed, none of this will have happened to him or any of the rest. And if we fail…”

Nothing will matter because who wants to live like this?

He didn’t finish the sentence, but it hung in the air between us, nonetheless.

“But I forgot that,” he said after a pause. “And left you alone, and I’m sorry.” He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing the mud around. “I’m sorry for a lot of things.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” I put a hand on his arm. “You got us out of there.”

“Yes, I seem to be good at that after landing you in it to begin with!” It was savage.

“You didn’t do anything wrong either time,” I said more forcefully. “I’m not a child, Pritkin. I make my own decisions—and my own mistakes.”

“But you can’t make them here. Neither of us can. And the fact that we somehow got away with it this time doesn’t change that.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” He tilted my chin up, searching my eyes. He didn’t seem to like what he saw. “You can’t shove it all down, the pain, the stress, the fatigue, and terror, pretending that none of it matters until it starts coming out in different ways.”

“I don’t do that—”

“You always do that. And sometimes, you make it work. But you’re not handling this. And the way it’s manifesting is putting you in danger. What if, next time, you get into a situation you can’t get out of?”

I pulled away, feeling guilty and annoyed and proud—because it had worked, however badly—and pissed off because he still didn’t get it.

“What exactly do you think would change?” I demanded. “I’m not Pythia anymore. I don’t have the power. Making me no more important in this than you or Alphonse or Bodil—maybe less than Bodil as we wouldn’t be here if not for her—”

“Or for you.” Suddenly, the anger drained away, leaving him looking strangely hollowed out and almost... vulnerable. “Or for you,” he repeated and pulled me close, heedless of the fact that we were both still filthy.

It was a surprise because I was hyped up for a fight he was no longer giving me, but for some reason, I felt myself relaxing for the first time in days. My hands tightened on him reflexively and then refused to let go even when I told them to. I didn’t want to fight, but I needed to, or else this same thing would keep happening.

“You can’t prioritize me,” I said softly. “If Zara had killed me in that duel, you would have died, too. You didn’t sever the link like I asked you to.”

“Mircea was in the back of my mind, saying he could help. He needed the connection.”

“And if he hadn’t?” I pulled back so I could see his eyes.

“I would have done as you asked.”

The voice was steady, but the green gaze flickered away from mine for an instant before returning, and his already high color crept further up his face. Honestly, I could have done better, and I was a shit liar. And I guessed my thoughts showed on my face because he suddenly exploded.

“Damn it, Cassie, what do you expect? For me to let you die in this godforsaken hellhole? Or worse, to die for it, and then I have to return to—”

He broke off and hugged me close again. “I won’t let that happen. I can’t!”

“You have to, or else we’re going to get each other killed, trying not to get each other killed. I didn’t know what you were doing tonight; you didn’t know what I was. We can’t keep that up. The witches say that Vegas is ten times worse than anything we’ve seen so far. Do you honestly think we’re going to get through that if we’re both more worried about saving each other than we are the planet?”

Pritkin said something rude about the planet and looked like he’d like to hit the wall again. But he knew I was right, just as I was starting to suspect that he was. That damned camp had left him overly cautious and turned me into Revengebot 2000, and neither was okay.

“I have to let go of my anger,” I said. “Like you have to let go of your fear. Or we’re not getting through this.”

“So, I’m to let you die, then?” It was hoarse.

“If we work together, maybe we don’t have to. But if it comes down to it... yeah. You do.”

“And the reverse? Will you let me go if the worst happens?”

I looked up at him. And unlike he had done, I held his eyes. “I will.”

And once again, the strange, mercurial man I loved surprised me. “Then you were wrong before,” he said, kissing my dirty forehead. “You are Pythia. And stronger than I am.”

Chapter Fourteen

That wasn’t an answer, but I knew Pritkin well enough to know that pushing him anymore tonight—or today or whenever it was—wouldn’t help. If anything, it would only make him more stubborn and me more tense because I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to hold him and forget that this whole day had ever happened!

So I let things lie for the moment, grabbed the soapy rag he was still holding, and got to work cleaning myself up before the hot water gave out.

It took some doing. But I managed to scrub off most of the remaining grime, except for some that had welded itself to my skin around the joints of my suit. Then I turned to find him still standing there like a clay statue—a melting one, as the water had softened up the disaster but had not yet made much of a dent in it.

He was looking like he couldn’t decide whether to take the reprieve I’d offered or continue the conversation, so I decided to help him out.

“On your knees,” I said, and got a filthy, raised eyebrow in return.

But that powerful body slowly sank to the floor, something that would have had my heart pounding a bit under other circumstances, but in these... God! The problem was even worse than I’d thought. It was like he was made out of mud!

And when I finally got through some of that dirt, I found the same lacerations I had, only far worse. His bottom half was mostly okay, as the fey trousers he’d been wearing were tougher than they looked and had blocked most of the whipping sand. But his torso...

“Shit,” I said softly. Tiny red lines crossed and crisscrossed his body so thickly that it looked like he was wearing a plaid shirt. Most of the marks had stopped bleeding but were raw and angry looking and probably hurt like a bitch. And they were about to hurt a lot worse.

“The soap is going to sting,” I warned.

“It has healing properties,” he said, his eyes closed, and his face turned up to the spray as if he was enjoying this. And maybe he was.

How long had it been since anybody took care of him? I wondered. He was usually taking care of me instead of the other way around, but a partnership didn’t go just one way. It was time I reciprocated, although I wasn’t sure how.

I started tentatively, but some of the sand had been ground into the wounds. Removing it was likely to hurt, but he couldn’t heal with it in there. Damn it, the Circle’s welcome mat was harsh!

I guessed most war mages were expected to have shields, but Pritkin’s had failed when they never did, showing me just how out of power he’d been on that crazy rescue. It made me mad all over again, but I just kept working, being as gentle as possible and using a lot of soap to help coax the dirt out of the lines. And wondered how he’d managed to summon all those demons when out of juice.

“That’s why I’m drained,” he said when I asked.

“I thought that was helping me at Zara’s.”

“That, too. But my body replenishes magic quickly, and summoning demons is not difficult.”

“Even now?” I asked, leaning over to start on his back. “With your other half missing?”

“I’m still Rosier’s son, and he is still a council member—presumably. At any rate, I didn’t get any arguments when I called for aid.”

“Maybe those things, the sprites, called him to verify? And he told them to help you, and then came running to find you himself?”

“Possibly,” Pritkin murmured, looking distracted. Maybe because my chest was in his face, I realized and rolled my eyes. Some things never change, demon or not.

“But you didn’t communicate with him?” I asked, just to be sure. Because if Rosier had been there to help, maybe he could have...

Well, I actually didn’t know what he could have done. He might have risked himself to save his son, and maybe even me, because Pritkin wouldn’t have gone without me. But everybody else would have been left out to dry, not to mention what he might have wanted from us in exchange for that rescue.

In hell, nothing was free.

“Neither did you,” Pritkin said dryly, which... fair.

“So you don’t think we should ask for his help?” I said. Because Pritkin’s dear old dad was a wild card if ever there was one, but he loved his son. I was sure of that if nothing else. And right now, we could use all the allies we could get.

“No,” it was flat.

“I get that he can be... problematic,” I said, standing him up so I could scrub his legs. And how had they gotten so dirty when they’d been encased in what were essentially scuba pants? “But if the Circle were strong enough to be in Vegas, they’d be in Vegas, not here. And not about to get hanged in Stratford! We might need to reconsider.”

“We also need to consider that the demon council has likely lost many members and much of their armies,” Pritkin reminded me. “They would want to put us to work in whatever nefarious schemes they’re cooking up, which would likely get one or both of us killed. I don’t trust them at the best of times, but especially not when their back is to the wall.”

“But we have common cause. They have more reason than anybody to want us to return to the past and change all this!”

But Pritkin was already shaking his head. “Some do. Others may have profited from the chaos and feel rather differently, possibly even enough to oppose us.”

“Oppose us?”

I must have sounded as outraged as I felt because he smiled slightly. “Chances for advancement are few in the hells, where those in charge do not frequently die and make way for the next generation. A shake-up like this gives opportunities as the gods hunt the most powerful. And those elevated as a result, while they may hate their enemies, aren’t likely to want to return to their chains.”

“Better chains than getting eaten!”

“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be here now,” he said dryly, “and the demon lords agree. They will fight to the last, but that doesn’t mean they won’t also fight each other whilst they do it.”

Great.

“But Adra—he’s the head of the council—”

Pritkin pulled me to my feet, even though I wasn’t finished yet. “And he knows exactly what you can do, which is why he was so friendly with you. Yes, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t your winning personality.”

“Funny.”

“Demons are drawn to power, and you have more of it than most—had,” he corrected before I could remind him. “And Rhea presumably inherited it after you. Do you think there is the slightest chance he hasn’t already reached out to her or sent an emissary offering alliance?”

And, okay, I started to get excited because no, I hadn’t thought of that. But it made sense, meaning that they might already be working together. Maybe we had more allies than we knew! Maybe—

“And do you think, if that had worked, the world would still look like this?” he added softly, deflating my balloon before it could get off the ground.

“She’d have helped him if she had access to the power,” I said. “Or, knowing her, she’d have used it herself.”

“But she hasn’t.”

I waited, but he didn’t say anything else.

“You think the gods did something, don’t you?” I asked. “Locked it down somehow, kept her from accessing it. And kept it from seeking me out because it must know I’m here by now.”

“I think there’s some kind of problem, yes.”

“So, we’re on a wild goose chase? One we can’t win, even if we reach her?” The thought was so horrible that my brain skittered away from it immediately. Because, in that case, what the hell were we even doing?

“I think…” he paused for a moment. “I think Rhea knows you’re coming. She is not only Pythia but a powerful clairvoyant in her own right. And your return is the biggest thing that has happened on Earth since the gods arrived. She has to know you’re here.

“Perhaps she’s waiting for you.”

I felt a surge of hope, followed immediately by a wave of pure frustration. I wanted to hear her voice, to pick up the phone and call her, to ask what the hell had happened and where we had gone so incredibly wrong. But given the state of the world, I somehow doubted the phones were still working!

Or much of anything else.

“We have to get to her,” I said. “No matter how hard it is.” It was what Faerie, the goddess who had held on for fifty years in the crumbling remains of her world, had told us. And while she hadn’t been able to see much lately, being locked in her realm and slowly having the life sapped out of her, it was still our best plan.

Hang on, Rhea, I thought fervently; I’m coming.

I just had no idea how.

“We’ll find a way,” Pritkin said, causing me to tear up because he never wavered. Even when everything was as screwed up as it possibly could be, and the whole world was against us, he was a rock.

Or he did a damned good job of faking it.

I felt my eyes overflow and ducked my head into the spray to hide it. But he saw and traced the line of a single tear with his thumb while cradling my cheek in his palm. Which wasn’t good because Pythias didn’t cry, at least not where anyone could see.

“We’re not done yet,” I said hoarsely and pushed him back to his knees, determined to finish what I’d started.

“My skin is going pruney,” he objected.

“You’ll live. And where are we?” I asked, changing the subject as I lathered up that awful, awful hair.

“The Sahara. The Circle established a new HQ here decades ago after losing the old one. Faheem, one of the local mages, told me on the way in.”

“If they’re settled here, then why were they in Stratford? Why was Jonas?”

“That’s what I intend to ask him after he’s had time to recover. We didn’t get much chance to talk.”

No, I didn’t guess so. And he didn’t look like he wanted to do any more of that now. I could relate.

Sometimes, a good conversation helped to clear the air, but sometimes, a lot of times lately, it just made things feel even more overwhelming. Like if I had another piece of information or another world-ending decision to make, I was going to end, too. Just break apart into pieces and crumble away like the dried mud down the drain.

I couldn’t handle whatever the Circle had going on or the fact that we were on the other side of the world from where we needed to be. I didn’t want to think about our next step or whether we even had one. I didn’t want to think at all.

I was just profoundly, ridiculously grateful to be here, to have Pritkin alive and well and here, too, and to have our little band together. This world felt like a never-ending nightmare, and this little cubbyhole of a shower was a tiny slice of heaven that had somehow intruded. And he seemed to feel the same.

The hands that had been gripping my hips suddenly slid further back and clenched as if he’d never let me go. And the face, now cleared of mud along with his hair, had released some of the stress that had been carving new grooves into its already craggy surface. Instead, something else had taken over his expression, which was why I was only half surprised to be pushed back against the tiles.

“Pritkin, we need to—” I began and then promptly forgot what I’d been about to say. Something along the lines of “lock the door,” if it even had a lock, but the words never made it as far as my lips.

Because he hadn’t gotten off his knees.

And it didn’t take him long to prove that even without his other half, he was still prince of the goddamned incubi. I found myself clutching the sides of the little shower, trying to think straight enough to point out that... that... that... something. Only I could no longer remember what.

“Um,” I said right before my eyes rolled back into my head, my tongue tangled up, and I forgot how to English. Or to speak any other language except this one, the universal one, the ohs and ahs and little moans that directed my partner better than anything I could have said anyway.

And he spoke to me, too, with an urgency unlike his usual thorough exploration, with hands clenched and jaw tight even as he pleasured me. It told me more than words that he hadn’t been sure we’d make it this far, and he didn’t know what tomorrow held. Or if there would be a tomorrow, which at the rate... things were going... was a real... “Ahhhh!”

Pleasure broke over my head harder than the pounding spray and filled me up with a languorous warmth that drove every thought from my mind. Except this one, I decided, kneeling down to kiss him. And then to push him upright so I could climb him, could find a seat on the perch his body had thoughtfully made for me, could take him deep inside and groan into his mouth at how good that felt, how needed, how right.

I wanted to rake my nails down his back, but didn’t dare because of the state of him, of both of us. We were covered in bruises and bloody welts that were starting to bleed again now that the crust of dirt had been removed, leaving us a runny, red mess that the water was fighting with. And it probably wouldn’t be the last time if the past was anything to go on. And there were people waiting for us and explanations to get and problems to face, and right then, I didn’t care about any of them!

I cared about the tongue in my mouth, the hard lips on mine, the hands clenching underneath me, forming a seat so I could writhe and move and gyrate and wring every last ounce of pleasure out of him.

Which seemed to be working because he was cursing in between kisses and the bites I was placing on his lower lip and then moving to his ear, savaging it between my teeth until I tasted the bright copper tang of blood, and his body leaped inside mine.

“God!” I heard him say, the first halfway coherent comment either of us had made in a while. And then he said it again, pushing me into the back wall of the shower and getting enough leverage to do—

That, I thought, grinning as he began pounding me into submission.

It didn’t work—I don’t do submission—but it was fun having him try. It was a lot of fun, and before long, I’d forgotten where we were, the impossible mess we were in, or whether the door was sturdy enough to keep half the base from hearing us because we were getting loud. And then giggly when he finally finished working out the day’s aggression in the most satisfying way possible, and I forgot how to speak again, and so every time I opened my mouth, laughter poured out.

I clung to him afterward, still giggling, and he kissed my neck. “We’re insane,” he whispered, and I laughed some more. Because probably.

It helped these days.

It really did.

I noticed that he was finally clean, mainly because of the time he’d been in the water, but I clung to him anyway, not wanting to move. The spray was somehow still warm and steamy, making the foggy bath something out of another place and time. It could have been my bathroom back in Dante’s, especially if I closed my eyes, which I did for a moment.

“I don’t want to leave.”

I could feel him sigh against my chest, whether in agreement or irritation; I couldn’t tell. But I kind of thought it was the first one. Either way, it caused him to shift position inside me, making me clamp down hard as if I could hold onto him that way, too.

Silly thought to have, but I really didn’t want to go back out there.

“You don’t have to,” he murmured against my hair. “You need to eat, get some rest—”

“And when that’s done?” I whispered. “People are going to want answers, a plan, a way forward. I don’t have that.”

“None of us do.”

“But they’ll expect it from me. I got them into this.”

“You got us into nothing. I did that by even mentioning HQ and those damned portals. And Zara did by attacking us. And Bodil did by dropping us into the middle of that mess in Stratford.

“The only thing you did was not to listen when I said to stay put while I went after Caleb.”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to go into all that again. Just gripped him harder as if I could somehow hold him here. Or will us back home, only home didn’t exist anymore.

Nothing did, and it was all my fault!

“You’re Pythia,” Pritkin said, lifting my chin and searching my face like he’d heard that, even though I hadn’t uttered it. “Not a miracle worker. And all of this was put into play long before either of us were born.”

I held onto him and put my cheek on his shoulder. “And yet we’re having to deal with it. How the hell do we deal with it?”

I thought about what we’d just done, grabbing Caleb and Jonas from under a mountain of dark mages and then outrunning three gods while almost drowning, almost getting speared by some of the Circle’s own defenses, and almost getting crushed to death by thousands of tons of earth. Almost, almost, almost. It had been the mantra of my life since taking this job.

What happened when almost wasn’t good enough?

It has been good enough until now, a familiar voice filtered through my head. And if you’re finished, we need to talk.

“Get out of my head!” I yelled, suddenly furious. And caused Pritkin to flinch.

“Bodil?” he guessed.

“Bodil.”

Goddamn it!

Chapter Fifteen

Her high and mightiness had to wait a few moments while Pritkin and I sorted out something to wear. My armor was a mess of caked earth, mud, and what looked like blood that had solidified and been trapped between the scales in places. I swallowed because it wasn’t mine, and stopped trying to wipe it off until I’d gotten some food and rest, but then, what to wear?

Pritkin left for a good ten minutes, leaving me clad only in the inadequate sandpaper-like towels the Circle had used even before the apocalypse because suffering was a war-mage virtue. And returned with various odds and ends, none of which fit me. We finally settled on matching gray tunics, which, for him, replaced the now tragically stained and shredded T-shirt with the pert witch, and on me was as long as a dress.

Then we went to find Bodil. It wasn’t hard, as she was right down the hall with our original group sans the witches. I was about to ask where they’d gone before I noticed: there seemed to be a party going on.

We walked into a copy of our room, except this one had a feast spread across the bed and half the floor. No, the Circle wasn’t starving, I thought, checking out a platter with only a bunch of fish bones on it because somebody had already stripped off all the flesh. But there were plenty of other options, including a big bowl of dates stuffed with nuts and glistening with honey, a stew with chickpeas, some kind of meat, and tomatoes that Alphonse was currently working on, some chicken wings with grill marks and preserved lemon that Bodil was sucking off the bone, and some little triangle pastries.

I was too busy wondering what was in the latter to look where I was going and almost stepped in another bowl, but Alphonse rescued it just in time.

“Don’t put your foot in the—what is this stuff again?” he demanded, waving around the bowl.

“Kimchi?” I guessed from the smell, but he shook his head, which was back to sleek and black since he’d had a bath, too. I guessed they hadn’t had a tunic to fit him because he was bare-chested, but he had on some gray sweatpants with a long knife he’d come up with somewhere stuck through a sash around his waist.

“You look like a pirate,” I told him and got a cocked eyebrow in return.

“Wanna know what you look like?”

Since I had avoided the mirror specifically because I didn’t want to know, I just shook my head and sat cross-legged beside him on the floor.

“Anyway, I know Kimchi, and that ain’t it.” He sniffed it again. “Something pickled, though. You want some?”

He pushed food at me. Only I wasn’t sure what kind as our group was busy hoovering up the meal, and what was left didn’t look very familiar until Pritkin handed me some hummus. It was swimming in olive oil and spices, practically begging to be sopped up, but whatever bread had been delivered with our feast had gone a long time ago.

I rescued a plate of raw veggies that was about to fall off the edge of the bedspread and used them as hummus delivery devices instead.

“I’m good,” I told Alphonse.

“Not with that shit, you aren’t,” he said. And before I could protest, a glop of something faintly gelatinous landed in the middle of my hummus. “Mutton,” he told me before I could ask. “It’s gone cold, but it’s still good. Eat it. You need the protein.”

“Hummus has protein. It’s made out of chickpeas.”

“Eat. It.”

I was about to argue when I caught a whiff, and despite the unappealing temperature, it smelled—damn. I decided I could express my dislike of being ordered around by my fanged nanny later and ate up. It was so good I practically inhaled it.

“Torshi Liteh,” Pritkin said, pushing the not-Kimchi at me. He’d settled on my other side and already helped himself to some of the stuff in the bowl. “Cooked and smashed aubergine with pickled vegetables. Some people also smoke the aubergine.”

“Aubergine?” I asked, looking at it more hopefully.

“Eggplant.”

“Oh, gimme!”

He did, and it was so wonderful that I had my face buried in my plate for a while in a food fog while the conversation ebbed and flowed around me. The whole place felt weirdly cozy, with the warm light, good smells, and a circle of friends and allies crowded around. My stomach rumbled happily as I stuffed it full, not knowing when I’d get the chance again, and I felt my body relax and almost start to purr.

Of course, that didn’t last.

“Well, I think they have a point!” That was Æsubrand, who was the only one who looked like he hadn’t bathed. Despite that, he was far less muddy/sandy than he should have been, as if dirt didn’t like sticking to him, and his long fall of silver hair appeared almost pristine. His face, however, was thunderous. “It’s better than the alternative!”

“That’s a matter for debate,” Bodil said serenely. Besides a few stains on her brown leather armor, she looked much the same, with no marks on that beautiful face. The only sign that anything unusual had happened was that her many braids, which had been grouped into one Rapunzel-like plait, had been separated, probably to get the sand out. She also seemed to like the hummus and was eating through a bowl of it with the pita bread I’d been looking for earlier.

“Then let’s debate it!” Æsubrand eyed my largely denuded plate. “Are you finished?”

“No.” Alphonse dumped some more meat on me, and I tore into it.

“I can listen and eat at the same time,” I said, around mouthfuls.

“As you’ve been doing for the past fifteen minutes?” the silver prince demanded with a sneer. “You haven’t heard a damned thing anyone has said!”

“I was hungry—”

“And she’ll be worse than that if we go ahead with your plan!” Enid broke in angrily.

She was wearing a plain gray tunic like me, which wasn’t much different than the slave outfit she’d had on earlier. But as with the other, she made it look like something a couturier would have envied. Her bright red hair had also been washed and was glowing under an orb of spell light set into a wall, with each strand varying slightly in color for a cascade that might have been made out of pure fire.

She looked like a Renaissance painting come to life, and I felt my face soften just from looking at her. When we first met, I’d thought she could have graced the cover of Vogue, but I realized now that I’d been wrong. Vogue wouldn’t have any idea what to do with her.

Their models looked good because of makeup, lighting, and airbrushing the final result to glossy perfection.

Enid didn’t need any of that.

Enid looked better than any airbrushed image, and she wasn’t trying. Even with the facial scarring a jealous fey woman had given her as a child, which she wasn’t wasting magic to hide as we’d all seen it anyway, and with some new abrasions on her chin, probably from fighting her way through the storm, she was stunning. And completely unfazed despite three gods chasing her, pieces of dark mage raining down all around her, and the earth swallowing her whole!

I laughed suddenly; I couldn’t help it.

“What?” Enid asked, turning from glaring at Æsubrand to stare at me.

“I know how to pick allies,” was all I said, and for a wonder, I heard Bodil echo my amusement.

“Prince Æsubrand is your ally, too,” she admonished mildly. “But we should discuss it.”

“Discuss what?”

“You really haven’t been listening?” Enid asked.

“I ...tend to get focused around food.” I saw it so seldom anymore.

“She’s listening now,” Alphonse said, eyeing me. And then he looked at Pritkin. “You wanna do the honors?”

“No,” Pritkin said, eating mutton stew.

“Yeah, ‘cause you know how much fun this is gonna be,” Alphonse said heavily. “I thought war mages were supposed to be brave.”

“Not a war mage anymore, and this doesn’t take bravery.” Pritkin tilted up his bowl, which appeared to be part stew, part pickled eggplant dish, part couscous, and drained it dry.

“Well, what does it take?” Alphonse demanded.

“Tell her and find out,” Pritkin said, leaning back on one elbow like a man settling in for the after-dinner entertainment.

“Tell me what?” I asked, glancing around. Only to find that everybody suddenly became really interested in their meal, even though most of the spread was now missing.

After a moment, Bodil took the hit and started filling me in. “Jonas Marsden and the others were caught during a raid at their HQ, attempting to steal power from their dark mage counterparts. The one called Caleb was taken while trying to rescue them.”

“The Circle sent one guy?” I asked, surprised. Jonas was their leader. I didn’t know why he’d been on that raid in the first place, but I thought he merited a little more consideration!

“The Circle doesn’t have many left,” was the grim reply.

“It was thought that one man might be able to go unnoticed while a larger group would only get themselves killed,” Pritkin added.

“And they picked Caleb?” Most of the mages I’d seen earlier had looked young, some of them enough so that they might have been born after the Apocalypse. Yet they sent in one of the oldest guys they had left?

“He sent himself,” Pritkin said dryly when I asked. “And he was the best choice. Almost everyone else who knew those tunnels was already inside them.”

“But he was caught—”

“He was set up,” Æsubrand put in, with an odd amount of emphasis. “Something you should—”

He broke off when Bodil shushed him.

I wondered how much longer she was going to be able to control the hot head, but she didn’t appear worried. “That is why they were having such a public execution,” she added. “To lure other Corpsmen there, in an attempt to wipe them out or decrease their numbers enough to render them toothless moving forward.”

“But we crashed the party instead,” Alphonse added. “And gave them a little more than they’d bargained for.”

“What kind of power was worth that much risk?” I asked angrily. If we hadn’t stumbled in there almost by accident, the Corps’ entire leadership might have been wiped out!

“It was the Silver Circle’s power originally,” Bodil said. “Secreted away in recesses the Dark did not know about, and which remained from early in the war.”

“They were trying to develop God-killing weapons and had stockpiled energy for the tests,” Pritkin explained.

I nodded, remembering hearing something about that.

“Did they work?” I asked because it looked like we had a lot of gods to kill.

“The initial tests were promising, but the devices took too much power. They were good for a few blasts, but after that…”

He trailed off, and I winced. I think I knew what happened after that. “So the energy was left over when HQ fell?”

“Apparently.” He looked back at Bodil because he wasn’t taking the fall for whatever was coming.

“So what does the Circle want with it now?” I asked, looking between the two of them. And somehow doubting it was for better wards.

Bodil, in turn, looked at Alphonse, who scowled, and I started getting worried.

“What is it?” I asked, staring at the round-robin involving three of the most forceful personalities I knew.

“The weapons were based on life magic, the same kind the gods use, and that us vamps need to sustain ourselves,” Alphonse finally said. “The other stuff doesn’t really impact ‘em so much; it’s like they shrug it off.”

“They manipulate the physical world,” Pritkin reminded me. “Zeus with his thunderbolts, Poseidon with the sea. Our magic appears to be much the same, just another aspect of the world that they can manipulate.”

“So it doesn’t affect them?” I said.

“It does, but not as much as life magic. That is what they live on, what they use for fuel, what makes up their very bodies. They seem vulnerable to it.”

“So, the Circle was storing up life magic.”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate.

“They wish to change the past as we are trying to do,” Enid said, looking impatiently at the rest of them. “They meant to use the energy to fuel the spells that dark mages have employed for centuries to slip back through time.”

“What?” I said blankly.

“Well, it’s better than trying to fight our way into a fortress guarded by half the damned gods on Earth!” Æsubrand exploded.

He’d been all but vibrating in his corner, propped up on a chair between the bed and the wall, and scowling. He hadn’t said much, likely thinking I wouldn’t appreciate his perspective, but it seemed he’d had enough. And now he was leaning forward with those pewter eyes almost glowing with intensity.

“We’ll never get to your heir. I talked to five war mages, and they all say the same. Las Vegas is impossible! It is populated by the creatures we barely escaped from back in Stratford, hundreds of them—”

“Wait. Slow down,” I said.

He didn’t slow down.

“—which makes perfect sense! Marsden always believed you would return; he was waiting for it, pinning all his hopes on it. Do you think the gods—the ones with enough mind left to reason—are any different? They put your heir in the middle of that city as bait, knowing you would go to her if you ever came back. And here you are, ready to fall straight into their trap, just like Mage Caleb! But the Silver Circle learned from their mistake, and they have a better idea—”

“If it involves those damned spells, it isn’t a better idea!” I snapped. “Those things are deadly—”

“There! You see?” Æsubrand pointed at me while looking around at the others. “I told you she is reckless—”

“I’m reckless? Those spells blow people up!”

“—we all saw it back in Stratford. She almost got us killed! And now she would do it again, only in a fruitless quest to reach an heir who cannot even shift, or else she would have already done as we are attempting! This is folly!”

“She also rescued the leader of the light mages and a host of others while you cowered in the dark,” Enid said, because those two really did not get on.

“I was told to stay behind,” Æsubrand hissed. “To wait like a woman—”

“Careful,” Bodil murmured.

“—as there were not enough cloaks for everyone, and the witches would not stay back! They did not trust her, and I am beginning to see why!”

“You see nothing,” Enid said, and would have said more, but he cut her off.

“And you—who are you to have a say in any of this? You’re no warrior! You should be in the kitchens—”

“I’m no warrior?” An incandescent half-mermaid was across the bed and in his face faster than any of us could blink. “I was there, following them through the crowd!”

“What?” I asked again because, apparently, I’d missed more than I realized.

“She wouldn’t stay put,” Bodil said. “And it was easier to see through her eyes than yours. That cloak interfered with my link to you.”

“So you sent her in there alone?”

“I sent her nowhere. She didn’t ask,” Bodil said dryly. “I merely used the opportunity—”

“The necessity, you mean,” Æsubrand said, gesturing at me. “Or she would have left us all behind!”

But Enid wasn’t done, and she bristled whenever he opened his mouth. “I was there,” she repeated. “When the blood rained down, and the bones cracked like thunder, and the odds were impossible, just impossible, against us!” She turned shining eyes on me that I didn’t deserve, but Enid was lost in outraged admiration and didn’t notice. “I was there when she braved it all and got them out, leading us to victory—”

“Victory?” Æsubrand gestured savagely around. “Does this look like victory to you?”

“It’s a step—”

“Yes, farther away from her goal, and thank the gods for it—”

“What gods?” she snarled. “The ones trying to kill us? The ones who destroyed your world and are doing the same thing here? Who would end our lives without a thought because we don’t matter to them, never did, never will?”

She turned on me again, and her face told me everything about who Enid had chosen to worship instead, which was making me feel sick and squirmy and wrong. “I’ll put my trust in Cassie. She’s gotten us this far!”

“Yes, into another hole in the ground, only at least in this one, they have some sense!” Æsubrand said and savagely ate lamb at us.

I looked from him to Bodil, partly to evade Enid’s going-to-be-disappointed-any-minute-now face and partly because Bodil had been eavesdropping on the Circle since we got here; I knew she had. Which meant that her info was likely better than whatever the haughty prince had been able to get out of the local boys.

“What exactly are they planning?” I asked. “They have to know those spells end in tragedy almost every single time. They’re the ones who made the laws against using them!”

“And for good reason, it seems,” she agreed. “They have been trying this strategy for decades whenever they amassed enough power. None of the mages who volunteered to make the attempt were heard from again. It is assumed that they did not survive the process.”

“Most don’t!”

“But Marsden thinks you will be different. You are Pythia, or you were. You have made many such jumps before—”

“With the Pythian power, which I don’t currently have!”

—and while he heard from Mage Pritkin that your power no longer works, you still know the Pythian spells. You don’t have to use the dangerous ones as they have been. He thinks if they provide you with enough energy, you can make it—”

“Do they have any idea how much power the Pythian spells take?” I demanded. “It’s a lot more than anything they’re familiar with! And provide me how? Did they get their stores out of HQ?”

“No, there was no time, as you saw.”

Bodil’s serene, Nefertiti-on-tranks vibe didn’t change, yet something did. I could see it on the faces of those around me, feel it in my gut, almost taste it in the air suddenly, like an electric tingle. Whatever Jonas was planning, I wasn’t going to like it.

“Pritkin?” I looked at him.

“It’s been fifty years, Cassie,” he said quietly, pale lashes sweeping down to hide vivid green eyes. “Fifty long years and the old man has been holding on for one thing and one thing only—the chance that you would return. That’s all he can see after his days with Lady Phemonoe,” he added, talking about my predecessor, “or from his interactions with you. How easily the Pythias travel through time, as casually as anyone else might hail a cab—”

“You’re stalling,” I said, equally quietly, because Pritkin never stalled. He was one of the most forthright people I knew, so yeah. This was bad.

“No, I’m trying to make you understand how it came to this—”

“Came to what?” I was out of patience, and yeah. My gut was definitely cramping now. “What is he planning to do, because I know he doesn’t have the power for a Pythian shift. None of them do!”

“Individually, no, but together?” He finally looked up at me, and, to his credit, he didn’t flinch. “He thinks they might. Which is why he is willing to sacrifice the remaining Corpsmen, and allow you to drain every war mage he has left to give you the power you need.

“To go home.”

Chapter Sixteen

Pritkin was still talking, but I couldn’t hear him with what sounded like Niagara Falls suddenly rushing through my head. Shock, I thought blankly. I’m in shock.

Only no, it was worse than that.

Seeing Jonas somehow still alive when he’d been ancient, even by magical standards, fifty years ago had made my heart leap—first with fear that we might not be able to save him and then with a flood of relief when we somehow did. We’d had our problems, he and I, ever since he’d realized that I wouldn’t be a puppet for the Circle anymore than I was for the Senate. But I’d still been so happy to see him!

With the wily old mage on our side, our chances had just shot through the roof, I’d thought. Maybe I didn’t have to do this with just a ragtag group of refugees, I’d thought. The Silver Circle had survived, and its leader with it, and we could do this, I’d thought.

And now all I could think was: he’s mad.

My God, Jonas Marsden was mad, and we were so freaking screwed.

“Bodil scanned him after we arrived when he was too exhausted to have any walls up,” Pritkin was saying, although I could barely hear him over the roar in my head. “She heard it all, and it isn’t pretty.”

“I got that much,” I said numbly.

But he didn’t seem to believe me. He seemed to think I was about to lose it because he was suddenly talking fast and low, not trying to excuse the old man, because what could excuse that? But doing something I didn’t understand because I couldn’t understand anything right then.

“We’ve been through it,” he said, “all of us, but especially you, for a while now. But for us, this has lasted less than a year. Imagine an ordeal fifty times as long and with no wins or reprieves to lessen the impact. Nothing but blow after blow, year after year, seeing everything you worked so hard to build, your legacy, your entire world, being eradicated with no way to stop it.

“Jonas hoped we would return, but he didn’t know. Everyone else believed we had died, early casualties to the wrath of the gods, which seemed a fair assumption. And even if we did somehow come back, it might be too late.

“So he sacrificed the remaining Corpsmen, one after another, on futile attempts to return to the past. He didn’t have to force them; from what Bodil saw, they volunteered. They’d lost everything, and it seemed the only chance they had left.

“But those spells are treacherous, and the old Guild records that might have helped improve them were not available—”

“Guild?” Someone else said, I couldn’t focus enough to understand who. My body was still riding shockwaves, and my head was chanting, screwed, screwed, we’re so very screwed.

“It’s what they called themselves,” Pritkin said, eyes on me. As if trying to determine just how bad this was going to be. Apparently, he decided pretty bad because he went into lecture mode to give me a minute.

It wasn’t going to be nearly long enough.

His voice faded into the distance as my latest bunch of nightmare fodder hit me like a fist. I’d just seen monsters ripping through people, destroying bodies to get to the soul energy inside, cracking them like eggs—and reminding me viscerally that I wasn’t much different. My mother had been one like them, only far worse. Instead of ripping through a bunch of dark mages, she’d destroyed entire worlds, sucking armies of demons dry to feed her never-ending hunger and then using the energy she obtained to attack her own kind, banishing the gods from this universe and allowing her to rule alone.

Her plans hadn’t worked out quite the way she’d hoped, but that didn’t change what she’d done or what I was. And now Jonas wanted to give me a crap ton of unrestricted power? When my temper was out of control half the time, when the creatures who destroyed my world were everywhere, just begging to be fought, when the Pythian power that usually leashed me was dormant and wouldn’t have any control over this new mass of energy, even if it wasn’t?

Chills went up my arms suddenly.

He was mad.

“You’re not your mother,” Bodil said abruptly as if she’d been following my thoughts. And I guessed she had because she was suddenly in them.

The whole room went dim as if a veil had been thrown over it, and everything beyond that veil slowed way the hell down. I glanced around in confusion and found only one person looking the same as always: just as vibrant, just as awe-inspiring, and just as serene. Bodil had decided that we needed a chat when what I needed—

My fists clenched.

“I thought that’s what you feared,” I said, wondering if she’d been right about me all along. “That I was too much like her.”

“I’d heard things. But the experience of you is... somewhat different.”

I laughed suddenly. I bet! No one expected a demigoddess to be wracked by fear all the time, to flounder around out of her depth all the time, and lately, to want to kill every god she saw all the time! Okay, maybe that last part, but that wasn’t likely to end any better!

“No, it wouldn’t,” she agreed.

“Stay out of my head!”

“I would like to,” it was flat. “I don’t enjoy this any more than you do. My gift is a curse as much as a blessing, and lately, that has been truer than ever. But it has allowed me to understand you better—”

“That makes one of us!” I said bitterly.

“—and what I understand is that I was wrong, and you are right. At least in this instance,” she added as my startled eyes found hers.

“About what?”

“About all of it—so far. You cannot take what Marsden is offering. Even were it to work, which I very much doubt—”

I nodded. As a demigod herself, Bodil understood what the rest did not. That human power next to a god’s was just... no power at all.

“—the temptation would be too great. It was even for the gods themselves. It was for your mother. It likely would have been for my father had he not been too weak to channel enough of it to count. But if he had, or if I had…” Her eyes went distant. “I remember the rage I felt when he died, when your mother killed him to absorb his gift, as carelessly as I might swat a fly. She didn’t care about him or the daughter he left behind, watching from the shadows and terrified, and then all alone when her only protector was gone.”

I stared at her. I hadn’t known that Bodil had seen her father’s death or my mother’s part in it. No wonder she’d hated me when we first met!

I didn’t blame her.

But she only looked at me now and smiled slightly. “Not hate. Fear. I know what it’s like, Cassie. To be able to touch their gift but not possess it. It torments us, but it gives us... a sort of clarity. One they do not have. It buys us time.”

“Time for what?” I said bitterly. Because it looked like we’d run out of time!

She thought for a moment. And then that distant look came back as if she was seeing it all again. “I remember that night perfectly, the fear that consumed me and paralyzed my limbs, the rage that followed the fear. Your mother was gone by then, off wreaking havoc in the hells, but others were there. I had never been liked—too distant, too strange, too other—to be trusted. But no one had dared... what they dared when he was gone.

“I hated them, yes, yes, I did, with every fiber of my being. And had I had his power, just that much, just my father’s limited scope... Ah, the vengeance I would have taken! It would have been epic had I left anyone alive to remember it!

“But I wouldn’t have. In my childish fear and hate, I would have burned them all to the ground, and I would have enjoyed it. I would have reveled in it as the gods do who wreak such destruction everywhere they go. And I would have been justified—for some.

“But it is easier to start that type of thing than to finish it when the fire burns in your veins, and the laughter bubbles up in your throat. And the other way, the slower, less satisfying, more frustrating way of winning out, the one I had to employ because I didn’t have that power... it’s harder. So very much harder.”

I thought about the kinds of battles I’d been waging ever since getting this job. And found myself nodding again. The clashes with Jonas, when I’d had to outwit him or move heaven and earth to bring him around to my side; the battles with the senate, with ages-old vamps who had started out smarter than me and whose intellect had been sharpened by hundreds of years of experience; the constant challenges from the gods and their allies, which had started on day one and never let up!

Yes, so much easier to wave a hand and make them all go away. To not have to struggle to learn diplomacy, to master my craft, to take my beatings and humiliations and failures. Because yeah, I’d failed plenty. But just to be able to think a thing and have it happen, to flick out my hand or glance at a problem and have it melt away. Oh, yes, so much easier!

“And so much more insidious,” Bodil said softly. “But we can’t do that, you and I. Stronger I might have been than any of them save Nimue, but stronger than all of them? Or than her when she never trusted me, not for a minute, because she knew the temptation I felt, the blood that boiled inside my veins, the longing for the power to make the pain go away. She felt it herself, lived with it every day, and so no, she never trusted me.

“The other half-breeds—yes, there were more of us once,” she added when she saw my startled look. “Although they faded away with time. Dying of old age, for not all demigods are favored with long life; or accidents, for they were reckless, those all-too-mortal children of the gods; or murdered, oftentimes by each other, because they bred a little too true.

“But not me. I survived. Do you know why?”

I shook my head, my throat too full to speak.

“I learned a lesson in my frustration. In all that time when power burned at my fingertips, only not enough. I learned that I was glad for my fey blood, for the weakness that bound me to a lesser existence, to a more mundane world. I saw the gods when they were here and recognized them for what they were: squabbling children who never had to learn any wisdom, any restraint, any compassion, any maturity. For what good are those things to those who can snap their fingers and have whatever they want?

“A person learns wisdom by being stupid and suffering the consequences of bad decisions. But they never had to learn anything, and they never suffered. Those who fell out of favor with their so-called betters merely died, and the others moved on without, it seemed, learning much at all. They were too busy chasing more—power, lust, greed, whatever their treasure of the moment was, whatever fleeting passion they had.

“Restraint, likewise, is learned from having to practice it, even when you desperately don’t want to. Compassion by feeling the scourge of the lash yourself, understanding the pain of others, and starting to see them as real people who suffer as you do, cry as you do, break as you do. But the gods never learned any of that, for they never experienced it.

“And so, they never matured. Their power shielded them and, in the process, stole any opportunity to be better.”

I thought about my mother then and wondered if she’d learned anything in all those lonely years on Earth after her plan worked and the gods were driven out or killed. Leaving her to rule this universe as her personal fiefdom. Only to swiftly realize that the final battle had drained her more than she knew and that she was now the hunted one, with all her old enemies among the demons and the children the gods had left behind now stalking her.

“I don’t know,” Bodil said quietly, picking up on my thoughts. “And neither do you.”

“No,” I said, my mental voice cracking. “I don’t know much about her. Even after going back to the past to find her. I know it was wrong,” I added, noticing her surprise. “But I just wanted to see her…”

“And what did you see?”

I didn’t know why she bothered to ask, as I seemed an open book. But she was looking at me with those eyes glowing reddish again as if her power was up and surging. As if this mattered.

“Someone who was very good with the Pythian energy, almost effortless,” I finally answered. Just seeing her use it had taught me, oh, so much! It had been like breathing for her, like shifting was for me. So simple and natural...

“And what else?” Bodil pressed.

And I tried; I honestly did. But while I could have talked all day about my father, that mess of contradictions, talent, boldness, insecurity, and sheer goofballness that he’d been, with his bag-lady ghost and constant scrapes, my mother...

“Is a blank,” Boldil whispered.

I nodded slowly. I still didn’t understand her. I knew what she’d done, but who she was, what she’d wanted beyond power, if anything, even how she’d felt about me...

No. I didn’t know that. She was a blank, and she always had been.

“I don’t know if they can learn,” Bodil said after a moment. “The power stunts them, and even after they shed it, I’m not sure they shed its effects. But you and I were raised differently. We can choose.”

And so we came to the crux of it. I looked at her and saw none of the serenity I was used to. She was still afraid, I realized.

She was afraid of me.

“Should I not be?” she asked. “The daughter of Artemis?”

“The very human daughter,” I reminded her. “And far weaker than you ever were.”

“Are you?” It was suddenly sharp. “You can feed as she did, and there are plenty of free-floating spirits here. You saw some of them before, and I saw glimpses of them in your mind. The remains of the billions the gods killed and did not consume, for they were not powerful enough to be worth the effort. But there are so many, and for you, they could form a veritable feast—”

“I can’t do that!” I said, staring at her in horror. “They’d fight me off!”

“For a while,” she agreed serenely. “Until you absorbed enough energy for it not to matter. Until you became too powerful—”

I had a sudden, absurd image of a giant-sized Cassie striding over the land, gobbling up masses of ghosts the way the mad gods had done to the mages until I became strong enough to cannibalize something more powerful. Until I started going after the gods themselves, first the weaker, crazed variety too stupid to run, and then the rare stronger ones who still resided here on Earth. And finally, after using another ability I’d inherited from my mother, to open the pathways into the hells, feasting and growing fat on everything I found there, demons and gods alike, until—

Until what? I wondered. Until I fulfilled her dream and became just like her? Or until a coalition of the leading gods killed me, and I became just another idiot demigod punching above her station? And left the world, all the worlds, of this universe to the ravages of a horde that never became satiated, never got enough?

I stared sickly at Bodil, and she stared back, saying nothing because she didn’t have to. We both knew it was possible; hell, after my recent experiences, maybe even likely. I wouldn’t have made it fifty years like Jonas, I thought with sudden clarity.

I’d have tried it.

Sooner or later, I knew I would have.

Maybe with the best of intentions, but how long until the hunger took me, and that was all I knew anymore? How long before I gave into it, as every single one of the others had, including my mother? How long—

Bodil grasped my wrist suddenly enough to make me gasp and break the spiral I’d been falling into. And whatever this was—a vision, a mind-invasion, a trick—it felt real. She felt real, gripping my skin hard enough to leave little indents from her nails in my skin.

“But you have an advantage they didn’t have, not even her,” she told me. “You get to choose. And can choose differently—”

“Can I?” I looked at her and didn’t bother to hide the despair I knew was in my eyes. It was echoing all through me, shuddering right down to the bone. Because I feared and lusted for that future so much it scared me.

I wanted to make them hurt; to see them bleed. I was tired of skulking in the shadows, of scurrying around, and trying and trying and trying and failing more often than not! Of being their victim when I’d never asked for any of this!

I wanted to stand up for once and take them on, all of them, and wipe them out with a wave of my hand or with more than that. With cracking bones and sundering skin if need be, with draining power and growing darkness, with the certainty that death reached out its clutching fingers for us all. And feel myself falling into its embrace just as long as they fell with me—

“Stop it.” Bodil’s voice was flat, but her hand tightened enough that it felt like I’d experience some of those cracking bones sooner than expected. “Stop it and choose.”

“And if I choose wrong?” I challenged, looking up at her with burning eyes. “If I choose mother’s path instead of father’s—”

“Then you’re a fool, Cassie Palmer. Your mother failed, all her strength not excepted. Your father won.”

And just that fast, I was out of it and panting in a suddenly brilliantly lit room filled with color and light and a shaken-looking Bodil gulping something out of a hide skin bag. Because I guessed that hadn’t been easy. No, for us demigods, that sort of thing never was, was it? I thought, catching her eye as she wiped a hand across her lips and stared back, her rich skin tone as ashen as it ever got.

Choose, the word floated in the air between us, and I suddenly realized I had a bigger challenge than I’d thought. Battling gods I could do; I’d done it before. But this time, I had a bigger enemy. This time, I had to overcome myself.

And that was likely to be a much harder fight.

Chapter Seventeen

As shaken as both Bodil and I were, no one else seemed to notice anything strange. Maybe because we’d been away for only a few seconds, our discussion taking place in the mind, with lightning-fast connections. I took a drink from a flask that was being passed around, and barely noticed as something burned its way down my throat.

“—emerged from a guild of magic workers in Cologne in the twelfth century, or at least, that’s as far back as the Corps could trace them,” Pritkin was saying. “The Guild was a mixed bag, with many in it for wealth and power, as traveling back even a few decades would give them opportunities to cash in from foreknowledge of coming events.”

“Like Tony did with Cassie’s gift,” Alphonse said, eyeing me as if he knew something had happened, but wasn’t sure what.

“Yes, but others appear to have been true believers, under the impression that the world was too corrupt and wrong-minded to save. They wished to start over, reaching far enough back in time to reset the entire culture, although they had different ideas about what their utopia should look like.”

“One man’s heaven is another man’s hell,” Alphonse agreed.

“Infighting eventually caused them to fall apart, after which the spells they had amassed after centuries of trial and error were split between the various factions. Some were lost to time, possibly literally, while others have continued to be passed around from one treasure-seeker to another. A few fanatics also persisted, calling themselves after the old guild and trying to force their version of utopia on everyone else. Fortunately, the Pythias managed to stop any whose spells actually worked.”

“So, some of them did?” Enid asked, her forehead wrinkling.

Pritkin shrugged. “Perhaps one out of a thousand, if that. Those with access to the old grimoires probably stood a better chance, as they contained centuries of knowledge about what didn’t work. Although the odds were still astronomically against them—”

“As they would be with me,” I said, finally coming back to life.

“Are you sure?” He looked at me seriously. “Jonas is right about one thing: you have more experience with this than anyone alive, and you told me more than once that shifting is your greatest talent.”

“The power made it easy, which I don’t currently have.”

“But if Jonas could give it to you?”

“He can’t—”

“But if he could?” Pritkin was pushing; I didn’t know why, but it was pissing me off. Maybe because we’d just discussed this!

“He can’t. No one can!”

“You don’t know that!” That last was Æsubrand, coming around the side of the bed. Bodil must have kept him in check until now, but he’d slipped her leash while she was distracted. And he was furious.

Like I cared, I thought, standing up and walking out.

“Where the hell is she going?” he demanded from behind me.

I didn’t answer, didn’t even slow down. Just kept opening doors until I found them, four rooms down, a huddled knot of sour-faced women with straggling wet hair and borrowed gray shifts, crouched on the floor gnawing mutton. And looking up at me in shock when I burst in without so much as a knock.

But they weren’t shocked enough that they didn’t have wands out so fast that I hadn’t seen them move, wands that the Circle had failed to find and relieve them of and which they’d already used, judging by the two glassy-eyed war mages slumped in a corner.

“Dead?” I asked, staring at the men.

“Unconscious,” Butch Cut said. “Damned Circle put guards on our door.”

“They think we’re dangerous,” Topknot cackled.

“I hope they’re right,” I said seriously.

“Problem?” Zara’s voice was as sharp as her dark eyes.

“Not if we leave now,” I said. “Finish up. We’re out of here in five.”

“Out of here?” Æsubrand said. He’d come in behind me and looked confused as I strode past him again. “In case you didn’t notice on the way in,” he said acidly, catching up. “The Corps has magicked up a storm outside capable of stripping the very flesh off our bones—”

“We’re not going outside.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Vegas. You’re good with portals, right?” I asked as I passed Bodil on the way back to my room.

“I am proficient with our own,” she said, following me. “And those of the covens which are based on our system. I am not so sure about the ones made by this Silver Circle. More to the point, how do you even know they have one going where we wish to?”

“Can’t you read Jonas’s mind and find out?”

“Not easily. He is resistant to mental intrusions, and I cannot push for fear of having him notice. And you cannot read him at all—”

“Don’t need to. He’s been waiting on my return for fifty years and must have assumed I’d go straight to Rhea, who is his daughter, by the way. He’ll have been keeping an eye on her, so he has a portal there.”

I re-entered my and Pritkin’s room, grabbed up my gross suit of armor, and turned at the unwelcome sound of Æsubrand’s voice. And got a hand on his chest when he tried to come in after me. Only it was like trying to shove a statue bolted into place.

“I need to get dressed,” I told him shortly. “Wait in the hall.”

“You need to have your head examined!” the pewter eyes flashed. “We aren’t going back there—”

“Then stay here if you want.” I tried another shove, but again, nothing happened. “Alphonse?”

The big vamp looked unhappy but dropped a heavy hand onto the fey’s shoulder. “Hey. Let’s give her some privacy—”

Æsubrand said something I assumed was profane from the gasp that Enid let out and shrugged off the hold. And the next second, he was both in my room and my face. “Did you hear nothing of what we were saying?”

And I lost it. Alphonse and Pritkin were there, but I didn’t need them. Not after guts raining down on me like rain, corridors that took off on their own, ravenous gods eating people—and Jonas doing his best to turn me into the same thing!

Not to mention the death of one world and the near destruction of another.

My world.

Mine.

So I broke, only not in the way the silver prince had probably expected.

“I heard you,” I said coldly. “Now, you can listen to me. I drained one of your people, a nobleman of your court, almost to the point of death. And used his power to make a small spatial shift—by far the easiest kind of Pythian spell. Do you know how far it got me? Would you like to guess?”

He managed to look pissed off and confused at the same time. “Drained? Drained who?”

“Lord Arsen,” Pritkin said, and Æsubrand turned to stare at him.

“Twenty yards, maybe less,” I said. “And then I was out. All that magic, all that power, had moved me less than the length of this hallway. And a spatial shift is nothing compared to traveling even a moment in time. That takes the power of a god, a strong one, which Jonas can’t give me. There’s only one person who can, and she’s in Vegas.”

“You don’t know that she can give you anything!” Æsubrand said. “Yet you’re pulling us away from the only people who can! What are you so afraid of?”

Myself, I didn’t say, because I’d had enough of baring my soul for one day.

“He has a point, Cassie,” Pritkin said quietly.

“What?” I looked at him, feeling betrayed. And confused because he knew damned well that Jonas’s plan wouldn’t work. Not if he sacrificed every mage on the planet! “It’s fifty years—”

“Yes, which means that the Pythian spells are out of the question,” he agreed. “But Jonas hasn’t been using Pythian magic—”

“No, and how many times has that worked for him?”

“You’re not him.”

“What are you saying?”

“That your father was part of the Guild or claimed to be. And his spell worked. We know that, or you wouldn’t be here today. I don’t know whether he found some of the old grimoires or not, but he successfully traveled back in time to meet your mother—”

“What?” Æsubrand said.

“—and he did change time. You’re living proof of that.”

“That was him, not me!” I snapped. “I don’t have those books, and even if I did—”

“You are literally a child of time,” Æsubrand said, sounding awed more than angry for a change. “You are perfect for this!”

“—I wouldn’t be any more proficient with that kind of magic than anyone else. He got lucky—”

“And perhaps you will as well,” Pritkin said grimly. “It is worth at least considering.”

“You agree with Jonas!”

“Yes!” Æsubrand said. “Yes, finally, someone sees sense!”

“Hoss, I’d back off if I were you,” Alphonse told him.

“I don’t agree or disagree,” Pritkin said, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “I merely think it is worth considering. I don’t like this any better than you do, but if Jonas’s plan has a better chance of success—”

“I’ve considered it. The answer’s no.”

“You don’t get to make that decision!” That, of course, was Æsubrand.

“Then you have another idea?” Pritkin asked me.

I glanced around. We had everybody’s full attention, with the whole group poking their heads in the door or already in the room. “I don’t want to discuss this now.”

“I think you damned well better discuss it!” Æsubrand snarled. “This concerns all of us!”

“Seriously, my dude,” Alphonse told him. “Back away.”

“You back away!”

“Your funeral,” the big man shrugged.

I glared at Pritkin because I did not want to do this in a roomful of people. “Mircea,” I said and said no more.

“Ah.”

“And what does that mean?” Æsubrand demanded.

I answered him only because everyone else was going to be asking next. “There’s more than one way to generate power.”

“There was,” Pritkin said. “I... am not fully myself at the moment. The bond between the three of us was weakened when I performed Chimera, and my other half broke away. That may be why we can no longer borrow his power or hear him from here. We’re too far away—”

“Then he must still be in the vicinity of Vegas,” I said. “Because it worked there—”

“It worked there once, in extremis; whether it will do so again is unknown. Without my other half, part of the spell is missing. And you know what happens when a piece of a spell is removed.”

“But part of you, most of you, is still here!”

“That doesn’t mean the spell will work, Cassie, and if it does, it will be glitchy and unreliable, possibly even dangerous—”

“And what Jonas is planning isn’t?” I stared at him.

“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Æsubrand demanded in a very unprincely-like screech. His reputation as a stone-cold badass was taking a beating tonight.

“I would like an answer to that as well,” Bodil said. Because I guess she couldn’t read through the storm of emotions I was currently dealing with.

“I already gave you one,” I said. “There may be another way of generating the power we need, but he’s back in Vegas, too, along with the only person who might know what happened to cause all this. Or did you forget that we need Rhea for more than just power? Unless Jonas knows how the gods got in, and where, and exactly when?”

“No,” she said simply. “It was the first information I looked for.”

“Then no one else knows, either—except possibly for a talented clairvoyant with the Pythian power who lived through it. We can’t stop an invasion if we don’t know what happened, and Rhea can give us that.”

“If we can reach her,” Æsubrand said. “And if you can generate this power you haven’t bothered to explain with a malfunctioning spell. And if and if and if! When right here, right now, you could—”

“Do nothing but blow myself up!”

“You don’t know that!”

“I know a damned sight more about it than you!”

One aristocratic lip carved itself into a sneer. “What I know is that you’re a coward.”

“Well, shit,” Alphonse said.

“It’s all well and good, being the hero when you have the power of a god backing you up,” Æsubrand continued relentlessly. “When you can manifest whips of golden energy that slice through any defenses, when you risk nothing—”

“You can say that after tonight?” Enid said. “She saved us—”

“She saved him,” he said, looking at Pritkin. “Her lover and protector, or she tried to. She had no idea what she was getting into—Bodil saw!”

“None of us did!” Enid said. “But when she realized, she didn’t run—”

“Run where?” he demanded. “There was nowhere to go! And the mages got us out of there, not her. And now that she could be useful and save us all—”

“Save you?” I cut in, my voice low and savage. “Save you?”

“Yes, save us! Get us back home and out of this hellish nightmare! Give us a chance to fight—”

“If you want a fight, you’ll get one in Vegas.”

“I’ll get nothing of the kind!” he said and started for the door, only to find the path blocked by a bunch of pissed-off witches who had just arrived. “Get out of my way!”

“And since you like talking about ifs,” I said, coming up behind him and causing him to flinch and whirl around while reaching for a sword he no longer had. “If you are thinking about running to Jonas and telling him any tales, consider this. Even if he could give me enough power for a shift, which I assure you he can’t, it would be enough for me. Myself. I.

“The Pythian spells require exponentially more power to take another along for the ride, so I wouldn’t be taking any passengers. And that is also true for those dark mage spells you seem to like the idea of so much.”

I tilted my head. “Do you understand what that means, Prince Æsubrand? It means whatever spell I use, you stay here. If we follow your plan, you, Lady Bodil, Enid, Alphonse, and Pritkin will all be left behind. Waiting in this hellscape for the timeline to reform around you. If I die or fail to stop the invasion, you will wait forever. Or until a god comes by and wants a snack. But if I succeed...

“Well, I’m afraid it doesn’t get any better for you,” I said as he stared at me. I didn’t know where my anger had gone or if it had. All I felt was ice. “You don’t go back home. You simply cease, along with this entire branch of time’s family tree—”

“Cease?” He looked confused, although whether because he didn’t understand much about time travel or because he was unfamiliar with the concept of his own demise, I didn’t know.

And didn’t care.

“Yes, cease. End. Die. And not a glorious death, a hero’s death. One that your people believe will allow you to be reincarnated eventually and live again. But finally, completely, with no one to remember or care. You’ll fade into nothingness because you were plucked out of time, which has rerouted around you and this whole era. Everybody else will go on, all of those back there, but not you. You won’t exist anymore. All anyone will know of you is that you disappeared in the middle of a trial, one you failed, and were never heard from again. Unless I tell them a story—and trust me, if I do, it won’t be flattering. It will be about how you sandbagged us—”

“Sand—”

“—and ratted us out to Jonas—”

“He did what?” Gray Curls snarled, peering in the already crowded doorway.

“—and kept us from having any hope of getting back and preventing all this. But you don’t have to worry,” I added, as he stared at me, almost as if he’d never seen me before, “you’ll be dead long before all that. Jonas will sacrifice everyone in this room, including you, because fey princes have a lot of magic, don’t they? Only not enough.

“He’ll probably even sacrifice himself to get power that won’t take me back one. Single. Day. And do you know what I’ll do then, should I survive? The same thing I’m doing now,” I said, moving toward him; ice cold, yet with my blood pressure through the roof. And weirdly, Æsubrand yielded, walking backward into the corridor while I stalked him. “I’ll fucking die trying, but I will try because, unlike you, I don’t care about thrones or people remembering my name or chiseling out goddamned statues—”

“I don’t—”

“I’ve had the statues, and do you know where they got me?” I gestured around again savagely. “Fuck the statues, and fuck you, and fuck anybody who isn’t on the let’s-get-Cassie-to-Rhea train because that’s the only chance any of us have or ever will have! I am the time traveler here, and believe me, I’ve earned that title. So we do this my way, not yours, and we leave now before another well-meaning idiot comes along who thinks he knows better than me and screws everything up! Do you get me?”

“I get you,” someone said quietly, but it wasn’t Æsubrand.

It was Zara, somehow still managing to channel Jasmine despite wearing one of those damned ugly Circle tunics and looking at me for the first time without a scowl on her face. “What do you need?”

Chapter Eighteen

Well, fuck,” someone whispered, and it could have been any of us. It could have been me.

“Why is nothing ever easy?” I whispered to Zara, who was lying on my left as we stared down through a railing into a big old lot of Nope.

“Hate for things to get dull,” she murmured.

“I like dull. I’m all about dull!”

“Oh, fuck that,” Alphonse said, but not in reply. He’d just come from guarding our rear and seen what was happening below. “You have got to be kidding me.”

I wished I was.

The only good thing was that a portal was thrumming away on the opposite wall of the cavernous room we were overlooking. It looked like there was space for three of them, as two burnt circles farther along the wall attested, but only one was lit. It was big, it was green, and it was probably not tuned into Vegas because I wasn’t that lucky.

But Bodil might be able to change that.

“No,” she said, crawling out of the tunnel behind us and onto the narrow ledge bordered by the railing.

She’d answered my question before I asked it, so I tried another. “Just how close do you need to be?”

“Closer than this.”

Great.

The problem was that the vast space below was being used. And what it was being used for had all the skin on my body standing at attention as if it was trying to see, too. Only it didn’t want to.

I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have a choice.

This looked like it might have been a naturally occurring cavern, with a few sheared-off stalactites overhead, where they’d been removed so the Corps could turn this place into a cafeteria/meeting spot. Somebody with a little earth magic had caused slabs of limestone to erupt from the floor all over the area, giving the mages tables to sit at and eat their dinners. There were only a few scattered chairs anymore, probably because this place had become a reminder of all they’d lost as their numbers shrank and had been left to gather dust.

It wasn’t gathering any now.

The Circle had been busy while we were resting, showering, and eating—and now I knew why the feast had been so generous. Nobody was worried about running out of anything because this was the day. The last day, before victory or annihilation, so provisions didn’t matter anymore.

And neither did anything else, apparently, like the code they’d once believed in. Because they were busy dragging obviously beat-up people back through the portal and beating them up some more if they tried to run away. The latest arrival made it five whole feet before being taken down by a triple spell.

He hit the floor, still in wall-eyed panic, while the portal behind him churned out a handful of others. It was no longer landing them in the safe zone outside, where they could be checked out before entering the new HQ. It looked like Jonas didn’t think there was time for that and had rerouted them straight here.

And there were a lot of them, presumably from Stratford, judging by their appearance, where the chaos had allowed his boys to kidnap some enemies. The portal spewed forth more mud-covered prisoners as we watched, who got a hose turned on them, I guessed to uncover any weapons they’d been carrying under all that dirt. They were subsequently relieved of the hardware, had gags shoved into their mouths, and their hands bound behind their backs before being pushed into pens.

Plenty of people were already in the two makeshift holding cells, one on each side of the room, staring around as if wondering what the hell. Which was a damned good question! But other prisoners were taking up prominent positions in the middle of the cavern.

They looked like the better-dressed mages I’d seen in the crowd at the old HQ. Their finery gleamed in the dim spell light studding the walls, which also highlighted the magical bonds that had been used to strap them down to the tabletops. And which shone through the mass of ghosts circling in the air overhead.

The spirits weren’t doing much other than forming incongruous halos above their former masters’ heads. My one-time ghost companion, Billy Joe, would have been moving heaven and earth to get me out had I been stuck down there. But these ghosts seemed a little more... ambivalent.

They were literally just hanging around, doing bupkis, despite the necros on the slabs mentally yelling at them. I could tell that was what they were doing because the men’s eyes were glowing, and they were thrashing around furiously, trying to break their bonds. And the ghosts weren’t helping, possibly sensing an opportunity.

After all, spells, including those binding spirits, don’t long outlast the death of the caster, do they?

“What is this?” Æsubrand asked, crawling up on Pritkin’s side to my right. “What the devil is the Circle doing?”

“Preparing dinner,” I said, looking for a distraction.

“What? Whose dinner?”

“Mine.”

And that was undoubtedly what was happening. Jonas was hedging his bets about how much energy I would need and getting me every scrap he could while the opportunity was there. And thoughtfully tying them down so that, when the moment came to split them open and allow me to feast on the tasty soul energy inside, there wouldn’t be any embarrassments like my appetizers trying to run away.

I don’t know what was on my face, but Pritkin’s hand came down gently on my back. He didn’t say anything, but a muscle jumped in his jawline, and he looked as if he’d like to leap off the little catwalk and spring down there, ready to take on his former allies. ‘Cause, yeah.

The witches’ cloaks weren’t looking so bad suddenly, were they?

“Times have changed since you were away,” Zara told him, watching a raft of fleeting expressions pass over his face.

“Apparently.” It was clipped the way his voice only was when he was either frightened or so furious that he was having to leash himself to stay in place. I was pretty sure I knew which this was.

Æsubrand’s eyes suddenly got big as he finally caught on. “That is what he... but that is—” he said a fey word that I guessed meant monstrous or infamous or fucked based on his expression. It looked like he was reconsidering his enthusiasm for the Corps.

I was reconsidering my own brilliant plan, which had been to cause a distraction and then run like hell for the portal. Bodil could telescope it out to meet us partway, as she’d done back at Zara’s, assuming she could figure out this new magic and had enough juice left. And if we came anywhere near it, we’d be gone in a heartbeat.

But the operative word was if. And in usual Silver Circle fashion, it wasn’t utter chaos down there as might have been expected. It was organized.

The pens holding the regular Joes were warded; I could tell that much by the fact that they weren’t going anywhere, despite being squashed up together, and from the reaction of the guys inside every time one got too close and was zapped for his trouble. Those tied down in the center of the space, who I guessed were the stronger variety, were staying there despite every effort they could make to the contrary. And the zombies that some of them had brought along were being slaughtered as soon as they stepped through the portal.

Like that, I thought, spotting the sadhu from earlier, who burst out of the swirling vortex, trailed by a couple of his crew. Only for them to be speared through the heads by some floating knives waiting on either side of the entrance before they’d fully cleared the field. They fell into piles of others, the sadhu was hauled off to a waiting slab, and I was left wondering what the hell we were supposed to do now.

“There are at least a hundred mages down there,” Alphonse said, from where he’d somehow inserted his huge body between Zara and Bodil. “We ain’t carving our way through all that.”

“If we don’t, we’re going to end up on one of those slabs!” Æsubrand said because he appeared to be firmly on the mages-be-crazy train suddenly.

I could relate.

“We need a distraction,” I pointed out and then waited for more words to follow, inspired ones that would shine a light on the problem and make our path clear.

And waited and waited because, apparently, that was as far as my brain got. It would have made me feel worse, except nobody else was volunteering anything, either. Not even Pritkin, who looked like that agile mind of his was considering a couple dozen ideas in quick succession and rejecting them just as fast.

“I liked it better with the dark mages,” Enid said, sounding shocked. She was clustered behind us with the rest of the witches, but apparently, she could see enough.

“They’re all the same,” Topknot told her. “Always have been, always will be. Never trust a mage!”

“You sound like a vamp,” Alphonse commented.

“Am I wrong?”

“Hell, no.”

“I could go down and... talk to Jonas,” Pritkin said, as if he was substituting ‘talk’ for something far more painful.

“You could end up on a slab!” Æsubrand said in a shrill whisper. He seemed to be focused on that.

“I could cause more of a distraction than you think,” Pritkin insisted. “It wouldn’t last long, but it would give the rest of you a chance—”

“To do what?” I demanded. “There’s a hundred war mages down there!”

“That’s what I said,” Alphonse agreed, causing Pritkin to shoot him a look, which did as much good as that ever did with him. “Don’t get pissy with me because your boys went nuts,” Alphonse added. “You ain’t distracting shit down there, not with them all set to martyr themselves.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pritkin said tersely.

“I know you’re gonna get caught. I know Cas won’t leave without you. I know that’ll screw all of us, so—”

“She’ll leave without me. We discussed this.”

“Sure.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you don’t know your woman as well as I thought.”

“The coven could try something,” I said, because they were both looking at me suddenly, only to get whisper-shouted down before I finished the thought.

“Try what?” Topknot demanded.

“Speak for yourself!” Gray Curls hissed.

“We’d end up like the bokors before we got halfway down the stairs,” Butch Cut agreed, her forehead frowning. “And I’m not feeling a lot of wild magic in here, so we’re on our own, and I’m not exactly flush—”

“None of us are!” Zara said. “But we’ve got to get Cassie through that portal!”

“Oh, so you’re a true believer now?” Purple Hair challenged. “Earlier today, you were trying to kill her!”

“Feels like longer,” Zara muttered.

And then the witches did what witches do and descended into squabbling while I held onto the bottom of the rusty iron railing and tried to think. But my brain had been through enough that all I was getting back was a distant hum. It was as if my CPU was set on idle and wouldn’t be budged.

Which was a problem with Jonas about to murder everyone in the room!

But still, nothing.

I needed sleep. I needed a vacation. I needed to quit gripping the rail so tightly because the orange flakes were embedding themselves into my flesh!

“Stop that,” Pritkin told me gently, prying my hands off and leaving me wondering if I could get tetanus from this crap. And if I’d live long enough to have to worry about it. And where they’d gotten enough water in the Sahara to rust anything.

And then I stopped worrying about it, because what the fu—

“What is going on?” Alphonse yelled, not that it mattered. Suddenly, the war mages were scattering, the portal was bulging, the prisoners were screaming, and someone new was coming through the brilliant swirl of green.

Make that something, I thought, right before a glowing golden torso the size of a god, because it was one, tore out of nothing, spearing light so bright around the cavern that it forced me to shield my eyes, even while expecting to be torn apart any second.

He must have followed the mages, I thought, my heart thudding as Pritkin dragged me to my feet. He must have traced Jonas’s guys back here. I remembered Zara saying that some of them had a little mind left.

But not us, apparently, as we were pelting straight for the thing!

That was even true of Æsubrand, who was being dragged toward the stairs at the far end of the ledge by Alphonse; I didn’t know why. But he was fighting, and Alphonse was punching him in the head. And I didn’t know who to root for because I was kinda with the silver-haired bastard on this one.

We needed to get out of here!

But then the portal cut out in a blinding flare of light, bisecting the creature, who let out a howl of mingled fury and anguish that almost ruptured my eardrums. It echoed in the enclosed space like all the kettledrums in the world, like a thousand banshees, like the beat of my heart, which was threatening to crack through my ribs and drive its way out of my chest. The sound was quite literally stunning, sending me to my knees and stopping the fight between Alphonse and the silver cat, both of whom stopped to stare.

But it didn’t stop the war mages.

Dozens had poured through the portal alongside the creature and were now slamming spells into the massive body in an almost constant barrage. And the ones who had initially fled were already regrouping, were coming back, and were joining the fight with magical shields held out in front of them, not that those were helping much. Because the god was furious, and the great wound where his other half had been was spewing brilliant golden light that ate through shields like acid.

A second later, the creature had recovered, at least enough that mages were being flung in all directions, flying through space to hit the sides of the cavern with sickening smacks. Others were disappearing under volleys of what looked like molten gold, which reduced anything it touched to cinders in less time than it took to blink. People were screaming; spells were ricocheting, and we... were halfway down the steps already.

And then all the way down because we were moving, and the fight was trending away from us and toward the other side of the cavern. Where a thick cluster of mages under heavy shields surrounded Jonas Marsden, who had what looked like a bazooka over his shoulder. One that the old man was swiveling around, was taking aim, was—

“No!” Pritkin screamed, but no one heard him, and anyway, it was too late.

A blast of something that I assumed must be life energy hit the mad god, and okay, yeah. He felt that, I thought, as my whole body was shaken by the howl the creature let out. And by the screams of the trapped necromancers as gold spewed everywhere, a huge burst of it that had half of them melting while a dozen Corpsmen shielded before they went up in flames.

Or maybe not, because the smell of burning pork flooded the air, and my eyes went swimmy because what the hell?

Jonas was yelling orders, magical lassos were being thrown over the writhing remains, and the Gulliver-sized torso with a jagged hole torn through it was being dragged into the middle of the burning circle of necros and—

Strapped down.

“Hope you’re hungry,” Alphonse said as I stared in disbelief. And swiftly decided that passing out seemed like a viable option, but that wasn’t happening.

Pritkin had paused with the rest of us because who wouldn’t pause at that? But he’d just come back to life and started dragging me toward the portal. And then carrying me when I failed to keep up, my feet as stunned as my brain.

“Here, gimme,” Alphonse said, taking me from him. “You guys get that thing working. Cas and I will be right behind you.”

And I guessed that was acceptable because Pritkin, Bodil, a wild-eyed Æsubrand, and Enid ran for the portal, and they ran fast.

But not fast enough.

“There!” Jonas’s magically enhanced voice echoed around the space, even louder than the cries of the dying god. “Detain them!”

And, okay, not happening, I thought, groggily trying to run even though I already knew it wouldn’t work. But the coven, which had stayed back with Alphonse and me, wasn’t even trying, and never had I seen five women look more pleased to be facing certain death. Choosing not to fight the Silver Circle all these years had been the smart play, but it had definitely rankled, and now that they had no other choice, they were going all out.

I swear, I heard one of them laugh as the barrage of spells heading for our advanced group was grabbed out of the air by a burst of Coven magic, vivid purple, neon green, and lavender-tinted blue. Some of the witches’ bolts caused the war mage spells to explode mid-air into colorful confetti; others sent them flying back at the mages who had sent them or twisting upward to the ceiling, where they hit hard enough to crack it. And still more were knocked to the floor, plowing up great furrows in the earth and rock and sending shards flying.

But one put the rest to shame, deflecting a combined war mage spell into one of the pens of rank-and-file dark mages, shattering the ward and spilling a mass of motivated fighters into the room.

Most of them were still bound, but a few had managed to get their cuffs off and their gags down, and they set about freeing the others. But Jonas’s mages acted as if they barely noticed, and the old man wasn’t leading his troops so much as scanning the room. And those rheumy eyes must have been sharper than before, sharper than they had any right to be, because he spotted us.

“There! In the shadows by the stairs!”

The cry echoed around the space, followed quickly by another.

“Don’t hit Cassie!” the old man yelled, but too late.

Hedged by a wounded god on one side and a mass of crazed dark practitioners on the other, his mages reflexively sent a barrage at us, and they sent everything they had. All I saw was a wash of color that filled my vision, caught my breath in my throat, and prickled over my skin from half a room away because this...

Was not survivable.

Chapter Nineteen

The blast hit before anybody had time to so much as flinch. For a moment, there was nothing but a boiling multicolored cloud, crashing and beating and battering at us like a wild thing, like a whole squad of furious demons straight out of hell. It was huge, it was ferocious, it was terrifying—

And... not touching us?

I realized that we’d been saved, but I didn’t know by who. Or how, because that spell had the strength of several dozen war mages behind it, and not just any war mages. The elite who had somehow survived this long despite all the odds.

And watching their power claw at us, I knew why. They’re so strong, I thought dizzily, staring at the intensity barely a few feet away. And so angry. I could feel their emotions through their magic, and all on their own, they were almost enough to knock me down.

The Corps hated this, the detestable actions this world had forced them into; they hated me, the Pythia who was supposed to lead them but had instead turned up missing when they needed her the most. And who was now trying to get away instead of helping them. They’d had decades of seeing their comrades die attempting to do my job for me, and they were bitter and furious and grieving—for their friends, their world, their lives—and they were taking it out on me no matter what Jonas said.

Only it wasn’t working, and I didn’t know why.

Pritkin? I thought dizzily, but he wasn’t in the little warded bubble that someone had created. And I didn’t think he had the juice left for something like this anyway. I didn’t see how anyone could, and the witches weren’t helping.

They were just standing there, wands out but drooping, as they stared around in shock. And then, slowly, their eyes all focused on the same spot. Me.

I stared back in confusion for a heartbeat, not understanding anything. Then my eyes went to my outstretched left hand, which was in the universal STOP position, inches away from where all that fury was trying to consume us, while my right...

I recoiled in shock and almost dropped the thin golden thread snaking its way under the side of our little bubble and into the hand I still had at my side—and I do mean into. It was gushing into my body like a garden hose, but that was a bad analogy, as no hose that slender could have carried much at all. But you don’t need much when you’re sucking on the lifeblood of a god—

Stumbling back, I almost fell and got the impression that most of the witches were willing to let me. But Zara caught me, her face grim and terrible but determined, too. And I suddenly knew who had sussed out the spells for making those skinwalker cloaks.

“We do what’s needful,” she hissed and caught my wrist, the one connected to the hand that was about to drop the lifeline I’d formed to the dying god.

Instead, I felt the connection firm up, with enough power flowing into me to counter the fury lashing at us from the other side of the shield. If anything, it increased in intensity, like the chaos outside. It looked like the war mages had realized that we were getting away, with Zara pulling on me and our little knot shuffling across the floor toward a new blur of color I could just make out through the haze of spellfire.

I couldn’t see it very well, as the ward I was somehow keeping up looked to be six feet thick, to the point that it blurred the room. But fortunately, I didn’t have to. The portal had started up again, or maybe another one had, as this one seemed farther down the wall, although who could tell?

But I could feel it through the stones under my feet, vibrating so hard that my teeth chattered; I could sense it in the air, as if a couple extra atmospheres had suddenly descended on us; I could track it through the war mages’ increasingly desperate attempts to stop us.

They were good attempts.

The floor suddenly reached up with clay-like hands, clawing their way out of cracks in the stone, and tried to grab our feet. Alphonse yelped and stomped on them, and the witches zapped the hell out of them, but it didn’t matter. They reformed almost at once, looking oddly beautiful, like shards of a Michelangelo statue with veins and nails and determined, grasping hands.

“Hit ‘em again!” Alphonse screeched as several began climbing up his legs. Forearms, featureless heads, and torsos followed, pushing the heavy stones of the floor aside and scrabbling upward at us. And no matter how much he fought them, how many times he smashed them to dust, they just kept coming.

“Manlikans!” I yelled, recognizing an old fey trick, and the witches paused their struggle because coven magic is based on that of the fey, and they knew this one.

A second later, a trio of spells hit them, and the arms, torsos, and, in a few cases, entire bodies were gone, bursting apart and cascading off the people they’d been attacking. The sand hit the rocky slabs in a loud scattering, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Or... I tried.

But the air in here had become thin while we struggled. Hot and stifling, it was like being locked in a coffin underground for hours while the atmosphere slowly ran out. But it hadn’t been hours!

It had been maybe a minute, which, even if the ward was air-tight, shouldn’t have been enough to do this. And then I knew it wasn’t when the remaining oxygen was abruptly sucked out, leaving us staring at each other in what was essentially a vacuum. My throat started to burn, my mouth to gape like a fish, and my eyes to dart around desperately searching for something that no longer existed.

And the witches didn’t seem to know this trick or understand how the Corps was doing it any more than I did.

“What’s going on?” I could see Alphonse mouthing the words, but couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in my ears, as everything else had gone eerily silent, with no air to carry the sound anymore.

The Circle was forcing me to drop the shield or die, but I didn’t think that doing what they wanted would have a better outcome. I could still feel the hate raging at me as they were going to do as soon as our protection failed. Or maybe before then, since I’d no sooner had the thought than a sickly green smoke started boiling up around the outside of the ward.

I stared at it in fear and despair—what was it this time? I didn’t know, but it swirled beyond the confines of our small circle of protection, cutting off my limited view of the room and showing me a dim reflection of my face. I looked scared, confused, and utterly, utterly out of ideas.

The Circle had forgotten more magic than I’d ever known, and there were hundreds of them, including Jonas, who wasn’t hitting us with his little bazooka only because he couldn’t afford to let me die. Not until he got a chance to blow me up with his stupid plan that wouldn’t work, that was never going to work, like standing here and suffocating to death! And I was the only one who could stop it.

Faces appeared in the smoke, pressing against the surface of the ward and turned monstrous by its distorting effect. Like their hands, glowing with power as they tried to force a path through our protection, fingers tearing at the cracks that were forming all over the place, maybe because of the gas, maybe something else, because who the hell knew? But they were suddenly everywhere.

I belatedly realized: the storm of magic they’d unleashed had saved us for a few moments, as they couldn’t get near us as long as it lasted. It hadn’t been enough to overcome us on its own, and so had bought us some time as they didn’t like the idea of expending power fighting their own spells. But it had dissipated now, along with the added protection it had brought, and they were coming through.

“Do something!” Zara screamed at me, audible because of the air rushing through the cracks now spidering everywhere.

“Don’t breathe, you idiots,” Topknot was yelling. “It’s poisoned!”

Purple Hair hit the ground anyway, lost in a fog of green. I could see her through my own blurring vision before Butch Cut sent a spell exploding around the inner surface of the ward and shooting outward, forcing back the smoke. Then she and Gray Curls grabbed up our fallen as Alphonse tried to drag us all forward through sheer force of will, and half a hundred guys did their best to oppose us.

“Increase the flow!” Zara said, shaking me.

“I can’t!”

“Why not? He’s still alive!” She gestured outward, I guessed at the dying god, and had her wrist captured by a gloved, war-mage hand that had just broken through a fissure, because our shield was down to maybe an inch thick.

She screamed, Topknot swore, and Butch Cut stabbed the glowing end of her wand into the man’s hand, causing him to curse and withdraw. But the ward was crumbling now, and the Circle’s men were everywhere, and we were out of time if I didn’t—

Shit!

I increased the flow because, as dangerous as that was, the Corps reaching us would be worse. But the shield was all but gone now, with little left to shore up, and it was slowing us down to a crawl. So, instead of repairing it, I used it, sending all those crumbling pieces outward and blasting the surrounding war mages back off their feet.

They landed in the battle that had begun with their former captives while we’d been sidetracked, sending dozens of bodies stumbling, falling, and rolling—

And clearing a path.

“Go!” I wheezed at the witches, trying to be heard over the battle, but I was too out of breath. Before Alphonse grabbed me, cradled me to his chest, and sprinted for the portal.

Pritkin and the rest were somehow defending it, maybe because we’d been taking most of the heat. Well, we and the dark mages, whose bodies were everywhere, almost tripping Alphonse up before he started just jumping over them. While also having to dodge the spell fire that was starting to focus on us as the rest of the room realized what was happening.

But it couldn’t seem to outrun a master vamp who was taking a crazed, zigzag course across the chaos, merely a blur against the eerie shadows being thrown by the portal.

Until it did.

“Stop her!” I heard Jonas bellow, and his men listened that time, abandoning their fights to focus everything on us.

A dozen spells hit Alphonse at once from different directions, but they didn’t hit me as he had hunched over to shield me. We slammed into the ground with my palms, already puffy and swollen from catching the sprites, abraded further by the rough stone floor. It was enough to stun me all on its own, and then the big body of my defender landed heavy and breathless on top of me.

When I finally shook off the effects of that and crawled out from under, not knowing if he was still alive or not, I was confronted with a scene of utter devastation. Half of the room was on fire, with strange, magical flames burning in a dozen colors. The smoke was drifting everywhere and rising to the heights as if a bunch of nosy clouds had come in to see what the ruckus was about.

And they were getting a show.

Magical weapons were circulating everywhere, many of them masterless now and firing at anyone who came near their fallen owners. Fights were still going on, including up on the catwalk, where somebody’s burning body plunged over as I watched, still screaming. It joined the corpses from both sides that were scattered everywhere, unmoving, and some no longer in one piece.

The witches were about to add to them, being overrun by a furious group of mages, and Pritkin and the others were getting slammed hard. Another large group, including some of those I had sent shards of the shield into, was slowly approaching me, fanned out in a semi-circle, with faces no less terrible than they had been when distorted by that same shield. I wondered if they remembered Jonas’s command not to hurt me.

I wondered if I cared.

I didn’t seem to, suddenly, but not because of despair or even terror, which anyone facing forty or more bleeding, enraged, homicidal war mages would have every reason to feel. But I didn’t. Because I’d forgotten something.

It was the same thing that had slipped their minds as they approached with caution, only not nearly enough. Not with my skin starting to boil with light to the point that a golden halo began staining the floor around me as if I were a human torch. But it wasn’t fire in my case; it was power, and I was being fed even more through the umbilical cord attaching me to my energy doner, which was still in place.

And in my shock and panic, I’d forgotten to constrain the flow.

“No!” someone screamed, but it barely registered. Instinct had taken over, which was why I watched the big golden body strapped down in the middle of the carnage flicker once, twice, three times... and go out.

Its light was extinguished, but its power wasn’t. I felt all that energy hit me, flooding my starving cells right down to my fingertips, which felt like they hadn’t had a meal in months. And they hadn’t.

Not since that day on the Thames when I’d tapped into the power of my opponent, the All-Father’s boundless energy, and fed and fed and fed. It felt like that again, so wonderful, so perfect, so sweet, that I couldn’t help but laugh, and why shouldn’t I? Why should I deny myself anything?

I looked around the floor, and they were so small suddenly, so petty, with their stupid wars and their little plans. What did I care for that, for any of it, when there was this? I sucked the last of it down, that wonderful, life-giving, life-affirming power, and laughed some more.

And saw Jonas’s face up on the ledge, where I guessed he’d gone to help direct the battle. Saw him suddenly understand and yell something I couldn’t hear because I couldn’t hear anything but screams as the war mages attacking me found out why that was a bad idea. Very bad, I thought, as I sent a dozen of them flying with a gesture, smashing them into their leader and burying him under a pile of his own men.

I didn’t see if he got shields up in time; didn’t care. It hadn’t been like this last time, I thought as I sent another group up in flames and watched them burn almost curiously. Maybe because, on the Thames, I’d been sending the energy I stole outward almost as soon as I sucked it down, channeling it into the battle, not holding most of it inside me.

I hadn’t thought that I could hold it, as the few times Pritkin and I had jury-rigged the power of a god by using his incubus abilities, it had almost burned us alive. I wondered what was different this time, holding up a hand and watching something move under the skin like sunlight rippling on a pond. I felt nothing at that moment but awe, wonder, and pure, unadulterated joy.

Until something hit me, and this wasn’t one of the pathetic little spells that some of the mages had been throwing. They hadn’t been holding back, having finally taken the gloves off, assuming they’d been using any. And there had been no stun spells in their barrage.

I’d registered them distantly—immolation spells, skin-piercing spells, spells meant to cause the flesh to slide off my bones. But they’d been no more than tickles or the stings of a particularly weak insect, some half-dead mosquito trying to suck a little blood and getting crushed by an absent-minded palm for its trouble. But this—this I felt.

And roared in rage, my voice magnified and booming around the room even though I hadn’t told it to.

For how dare they, these inconsequential creatures? How dare they approach me, touch me, do anything but fall on their faces and worship me? How dare they?

I knew how the golden god had felt, more outraged than anything, when they hit him with their stupid bazooka. He’d been shocked, like a human seeing a bunch of ants working together to pull a trigger. And they were about to do so again, I realized.

Jonas, damn him, wasn’t dead yet, and was getting ready to fire once more. But I wasn’t a god driven half mad with hunger; I was a demigod energized with it and used to fighting against the odds. My chest was on fire, but I healed it with a thought; easy, as the blow hadn’t gone all the way through, maybe because I hadn’t been bisected like—

Bisected.

The word stuttered across my brain, rewound, and did it again, like a record scratching over and over in the hands of an expert DJ. I stared at the dead god, looking small and dark now, just a shriveled pile of nothing recognizable in the middle of the other bodies. And then my gaze went to the portal, churning around and around on the wall.

I wondered if the rest of his power was still on the other side, lying there where it had been cut off, separated from his mind, and helpless. Could the gods resurrect that way? I had no idea.

But even if he could, he’d be at half-strength and vulnerable, with little way to fight back, and if he couldn’t...

If he couldn’t, then all that power was just lying there, sizzling in the mud and waiting... for me.

Suddenly, this stupid fight seemed like a minor inconvenience. I dodged the second blow Jonas sent at me as easily as thought and sent one back at him, not bothering to wait to see if it landed. I didn’t care about him and his little weapon, or his war, or his men who I knocked out of the way with flicks of my hand or set ablaze with a glance from my eyes.

I only cared about one thing; only no, that wasn’t entirely true. Because if I found that other half, if the damned creatures who craved power as much as I did hadn’t already cannibalized it, then... there were others, weren’t there? I’d seen at least two more, and while one was probably hiking around the Arctic right now, that still left one in Stratford.

Only not for long. And once I had him, well, the rest were mindless, weren’t they? They barely knew who they were or where they were, and many probably didn’t understand that much. They were vulnerable, little more than animals anymore, and I... I was not. I could lay traps, could hunt them down, could—

Feast.

The word rang in my head and hastened my steps as I ran through the portal, only to stop on the other side, confused and discombobulated. But not because of the stinging spells still snapping over my skin that the Circle had thrown or the pathway’s mighty suction, which I’d hardly noticed. But because this…

Where was this?

I stared around in disappointment and fury. I wanted my prize, the one that was supposed to be lying here waiting for me. Half a god with no mind and no defenses, just glorious, golden energy for the taking!

Where was he?

I didn’t know, and all I saw was an empty, ugly, warehouse-looking structure, nothing like the burnt-out remains of the pretty medieval town where my feast waited. It was still whole except for a few holes in the roof, allowing birds to make nests in the rafters. And filled with dust motes that turned in shafts of moonlight spearing through said holes.

Otherwise, there were only dunes of reddish sand that littered the floor, piling up in drifts in the corners. It reminded me of the coven’s enclave, with the Earth slowly reclaiming its own. Even the sand was the same color—

Vegas, I thought, suddenly understanding. The others had gotten another portal working, or had reset the first one to the place they wanted to be. But not me!

I roared again before turning to stride back through that gateway, to force it to bend to my will and to take me where I wanted to go, whether it liked it or not. And I could have; I knew it instinctively. I could rip it straight off its foundations and—

There was a man standing in front of it.

I started to knock him aside like I had all the others, but stopped halfway through the gesture. He had dark hair, glowing golden eyes, and a huge scar bisecting his otherwise perfect face. A face that was strangely familiar.

“Hello, Dulceață,” he said with a small smile. “I have been waiting for you.”

And then the world fell away.

Chapter Twenty

Darkness swamped me, blocking out the view of the warehouse. Laughter rang out around me, perhaps my own; I didn’t know, but it sounded mad. And maybe I was.

I felt mad.

“Let me go, Mircea,” I said, naming him, although I couldn’t have said how.

“No.”

It was stark, and I was suddenly furious that anyone would dare say that to me or try to keep me from my prize, which could be stolen at any moment.

“Let me go!” I said again and tore a swath across the darkness, seeing a brief gleam of moonlight before the blanket descended again, healing itself.

“Not until we’ve had a chance to talk. The other will wait—”

“He won’t!”

“He is underground in the Circle’s HQ, is he not?” the voice sounded reasonable, which only made me more furious. “That is where the portal was, not out in the street. He will keep—”

“Don’t tell me what he will do!” I roared and knew he felt the power behind it. Power that I was going to run through quickly because the so-called “god” that Jonas’s boys had dragged back was pathetic, and I’d only absorbed half his strength.

“Cassie—”

“They’ll find him!” I said, lashing out again and seeing daylight just ahead. But when I ran toward it, it healed up again, and when I swiped a hand through the space where it had been, it was gone.

“Perhaps it is better if they do,” the dark-haired man’s voice returned, and this time it was flat, judgmental. “You are not riding this much power; it is riding you. Let it go.”

And just like that, I felt some of it leave me. Not a huge amount, but noticeable. He was drawing it off!

“You’re feeding off me.” I couldn’t quite believe it. What was this creature? Not a god—

Vampire.

Master.

Powerful.

The words floated through my brain, but I couldn’t concentrate on them. Powerful! He was nothing to me! He was as weak as they all were! And yet he dared—

“Yes, I dare,” the voice came again. “For you, for all of us, I would dare a great deal more than this. Come back to us, Cassie. Fight! I know you’re in there; I can feel your conflict, your pain—”

“Get out of my head!”

And then I felt it again, a power draw: stuttering, imperfect, nothing like what I could do.

But effective. For a moment, it made my head swim, made me stagger, made me confused.

What was happening?

“I am drawing off some of the excess to give you a fighting chance,” the voice came again, echoing around the darkness. “But I can only do so much. Our connection is flawed, and I do not have the resources I once did to help me. No, not by half.”

Family, I thought. He’s talking about his family. I almost asked where they were and what had happened to them, then wondered what was wrong with me.

I didn’t care where they were!

“Don’t you?” The voice challenged from another direction, causing me to whirl around. “You don’t want to hear about Marco, then? How he died fighting for your court with a sword in each hand, facing down a god? He looked like the gladiator he once was, if only for a moment. I saw a flash of him right before I felt the agony—”

“Stop it!” I said because I suddenly felt it, too, a sharp, hard pain right under my breastbone, as if someone had shoved a sword through me.

“Or Fred,” the voice continued relentlessly. “Who I also saw, although he wasn’t mine. Marco was looking at him, ordering him to flee ahead of the danger when he wouldn’t himself. I saw him grab up several of the children, as many as he could carry, and turn toward the door. I saw his face right before fire took them both.”

“Stop it!” I was sobbing, although that didn’t make sense. What was this sorcery? What was he doing?

“He tried Cassie, even knowing it wouldn’t be enough. He tried—”

“Shut up!” I screamed, grabbing my head. The room was spinning like a mad carousel, faster and faster, but he didn’t shut up. And his voice was coming from everywhere now.

“I felt the rest of them, emancipated as they might have been, but still my children, my creations, my blood. I loved them as if they were my own flesh, and I felt it when each of the bright stars in my firmament went out. I felt it here,” I heard him beat his chest with a fist, but couldn’t see it, couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything but blurred darkness as I spun ever faster.

“Stop this,” I whispered this time, disoriented and in pain, although I didn’t know why.

“I know why,” the voice was relentless but gentler now. “You see them in your mind every time you close your eyes. You feel them in your veins, their blood burning through your system as yours once did in them. You hear their voices, their cries for justice, for help you couldn’t give—”

“I’m not a vampire! I hear nothing—”

“You are vampire!” the voice was terrible, all-encompassing, and suddenly cruel. How did it change so quickly? Why wouldn’t it stop? “Just as I am mage, and Pritkin and I are Pythia. We are one, the three of us joined in this triumvirate of power—”

Power.

It was the wrong word, and he knew it as soon as he’d said it, but it was too late. Because what was I doing, standing here, allowing him to... do whatever he was doing? I had to fight my way out, had to get back there, had to feed—

“You’re losing her,” someone else’s voice came as I screamed in frustration and fury and clawed at the darkness like a wild thing. It cost more power than I could afford, but this time, it worked. I tore free of the blackness and stood there, panting in the dim moonlight that suddenly seemed so bright.

Instantly, I saw them—a dozen people, maybe more, scattered around the big room. The dark-haired man, over to the left, shining like a star with stolen power; the man called Jonas, bleeding and disheveled and wild-eyed, near the portal to the right, holding back with outflung arms a bunch of murderous warriors who looked like they wanted to die tonight; the witches, gathered in a small knot straight ahead, staring at me with expressions varying from horrified to wondrous; and the cadre of fey behind them, the silver-haired one gripping his pike as if it would matter.

I could take them all, even the other demigod, who had expended the last of her power opening the portal and couldn’t oppose me. I could drain them, get back what the dark-haired man had stolen, and recoup my lost energy. And then bend the portal to my will and step through to another feast, a better one, before heading off to—

My head jerked up as a sound rang in the thin night air, a distant, bellowing challenge, but one fast coming closer. I screamed in frustration and fury, answering it even with the human voices echoing in my head and all around, yelling for me to stop. Fools, didn’t they know?

The portal’s power was like a blaring siren across the desert. That much energy was far too great for my kind to ignore, and they were coming. And I wanted them to.

I was weakened, but they were stupid and full of the energy I needed, far more so than the half-creature I’d been trying to reach. There were three of these, and they were fat, somehow. How had they gotten fat?

Where had they found so much energy here, of all places?

And then the first one burst through the wall, sending the humans and the rest scattering, and I leaped into the fray, taking on the so-called god who had stopped to stare at the portal. Its glowing color drew his attention, if only for an instant, but it was enough. It would have to be!

I tore into him, golden ribbons of power bursting out of my body and falling onto his flesh, starting the feed. He roared back, confused and furious, and I laughed because, yes, he was fat! And slow and stupid—too stupid to run, which was his only hope.

For I was ravenous, and he—

Was followed by two more.

They were the others I had sensed but not heard, for they had kept silent. These were different; they still had some semblance of a mind and appeared to be working together. And I was glad, the joy of battle singing in my veins, the dumb one’s power surging into me as he fell to his knees, almost drained already as the other two faced off against me, one on my left, the other moving to my right.

They would flank me, or they would try. But while there were two of them, and they were replete with power, they weren’t me. I was Artemis’s daughter, and it was time to prove it. Time to feast!

I roared a challenge in their faces even as their power flew out at me, trying to connect, to drain me as I had done to the other. But he fell away from me now, a dried husk, and I somersaulted over the one on the left, evading his attack, and took him from behind. Plunging my own power, which was more like golden spears now, into his glowing flesh and didn’t feed.

Instead, I used them to rip him apart, wanting to see if his friend would be stupid enough—

And yes, he was stupid enough! Chunks of boiling golden energy spilled everywhere from the writhing god, scattering all over the floor while he screamed in pain and loss. And his friend, who should have been helping him and feeding off me while he had the chance, was instead chasing those chunks! The feelers of power he had been sending at me suddenly glommed onto them instead, and yes, it strengthened him, but it cost, oh, so much more!

He gobbled up some of his only ally’s power and then turned on me, only to find that his friend was half dead, and I was shining like my mother.

God, she had loved it, hadn’t she? I thought, jumping at him. The thrill of this, the pureness of it. No hiding, no running, no constant second-guessing. No feelings of inadequacy burning in my gut every second of every day, just kill or be killed: glorious victory or ignominious defeat.

And the other understood it, too, fashioning a spear of golden light and lunging for me. I met it with a whip, turning one of my feeders into a weapon with a thought and lashing it around that spear before jerking back. It came flying to me, and I gobbled it up, then used my whip to lash him mercilessly, flaying off pieces of his power, more and more and more, until there was a storm of it, a hurricane of glittering confetti, spinning and flying and demolishing the remaining warehouse as if a bomb had gone off!

But it wasn’t a bomb; it was fuel, so much and so fast that I thought I would go mad with it! I staggered under the weight of all that power, drunkenly reeling around the space yet still slashing at my opponent, who was trying to reabsorb it and rebuild his strength. But not fast enough.

Instead, he completely flew apart, unable to hold form anymore. And then I turned on the wounded one, who screamed in fear and clawed at the floor, trying to get away. And was still doing so when his light went out and the final bit of his energy was absorbed, when I stood alone and roared my challenge into the night—

And was heard.

I paused, moonlight bathing the scene in silver while golden glitter spun around me like a whirlwind, the night coming alive with the energy I was struggling to absorb now because I was so replete. And listened. Far away on the distant horizon, I heard them, so many of my kind that I couldn’t count them all, who had stopped what they were doing and perked up their ears.

And then they did more than that. I could feel their energy all around me suddenly, tiny bits of it buzzing like gnats. Not biting me, not attacking if they even could from this distance, but questioning, wondering, asking: who is this?

I batted at them like flies, like the annoying storm they were, but they didn’t go away. More joined them all the time, with questions crowding me thick and fast. Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? What do you want?

And then an answer came, only not from me. It whispered through the swarm, first in tiny echoes from a few throats, almost indiscernible above all the buzz. But it was quickly taken up by more and more, until it screamed through the crowd and was everywhere, and they all shouted with the same voice.

“Cassie Palmer, Artemis’ daughter, Cassie Palmer has returned! Cassie Palmer is among us; she is here among us; come and see. Come and fight!”

The flies scattered in a twinkling of light, zooming home to their masters in faraway Las Vegas, but not far enough. I stood there, flat-footed and dazed, not knowing what to do with the joy of battle still pulsing through my veins at the same time that fear clawed at my belly. Because I couldn’t fight them all!

I didn’t even know how many there were, but it was a multitude. I suddenly realized that the majority of the greater gods in this part of the world, perhaps in any part, were all there in Vegas. I saw it for an instant, some of my own power having hitched a ride with theirs’, saw streets packed with my kind, saw intelligence gleaming in most of their eyes, saw—

My own death because I couldn’t fight them all!

Not yet. And I would never be able to if they caught me now. I pulled my power around me, all those little bits of my recent opponents still drifting through the air, and prepared to flee.

But not by way of the portal, for the gods could follow that road, could find me again, and I couldn’t risk that. There was only one way to move that even a god couldn’t trace, at least not these, and perhaps not any now. For my mother was dead, and so were all the rest who had once used that path save one, and she was useless, locked down, and a prisoner of the gods. But I could—

“Cassie.”

The word was quiet, less a shout than a whisper, but it cut through the madness. It sliced through the distant clamor of the gods, now streaming this way over the desert. It overrode the cries of the little people scattered around, who were yelling at each other things that didn’t matter and that I didn’t care about. It ripped through the cry of my mind, the hurry, hurry, hurry, screaming in my veins because this one—

I did care about.

I looked down to see him standing there, alone and unarmed. The blond head was shining in the glow of all the power spilling around me, but he didn’t flinch. He didn’t even seem to notice as he held out a hand, palm up, and waited.

As if he expected me to take it.

I was the size of a tree, having grown in the battle to fit my power. I was a giant now, barely fitting under what was left of the high, arched roof. I was a goddess, and he was a mouse, and yet he wanted...

Absurd! I did not have time for this! I had to get away while I still could before the others arrived and—

The dark-haired man was there now, too, also unflinching, even though I could literally crush either of them under my heel! He was also holding out a hand, and the sheer audacity held me there for an instant, staring down at them in bafflement. The rest were still screaming, still running about, still acting as if their world was ending when that had already happened, but these two...

Stayed in place, holding out their hands and saying nothing to try to sway me one way or the other.

For what was there to say? I thought as a sudden cascade of memories hit me.

Mircea laughing as he spun me around a ballroom in old Venice, a place we were definitely not supposed to be. “One dance before we go, Dulceață. It is a shame to waste the night!”

Pritkin, using the demonic powers he hated to sprout wings to catch me as I fell through the darkness, his strong arms grabbing me seconds before a grisly death. And the two of us spiraling up into the heavens instead, into beauty and moonlight and safety once more.

Mircea, fangs out and eyes glowing bright, leading his men on a harrowing assault on Aeslinn’s court, never hesitating because he knew I would have his back, just as he’d had mine when the three of us argued about whether we could take the city. He’d never doubted me, no, not for a second—

Pritkin telling Jonas he quit because he chose me over the Corps he loved—

I tried to stop it, but there were too many of them, and they just kept coming.

Mircea, naming me his Second when I wasn’t even vampire, trusting me with his life and, more importantly, with his family—

Pritkin, touching my foot on a balcony, telling me I was the strongest person he knew—

I staggered, confused and frightened, and yet that emotion was already receding as fast as it had come. Something else was rising to take its place, something clawing its way up from the heart of me, something that should have been weak and cowardly and human, but that was facing me down anyway. That was making me remember.

Mircea’s footprints, glowing brightly against the soil of an alien world, leading me on a path out of Aeslinn’s hideous camp while Pritkin’s power vaporized the fey hunting me left and right.

The three of us, coming together in a dance as old as time, hands sliding, lips merging, bodies sighing, to harness the power of a god to fight back against the All-Father himself—

I gasped, suddenly coming back to myself, and realized that I had shrank down to normal size only when their hands finally grasped mine. No one said anything even then, but I didn’t need it. We’d had our problems, yes, and might again before this was through, but we’d been each other’s refuge, our rock in a churning sea, the bedrock of our sanity when our world literally crumbled around us.

And while I still couldn’t think straight, I clung to that. I knew their touch, their names, their minds like I knew my own. We were one, and they were coming with me—

“Cassie.” It was the brunette this time, his mental gifts causing a raft of other faces to flash in front of my eyes, so many that I couldn’t focus on them all. Too many.

“I can’t!” I told him, and it was the truth. I could leave immediately. I had the power to shift anywhere in the world I wanted and save myself. I could even take some of the people that he was showing me and who were crowding the warehouse now, as more and more poured through the portal.

But not all.

Not most.

“We will help you,” Mircea said, grasping my hand tightly. And forming a connection that—

God! It felt electric, but not like a battery. More like a lightning bolt slamming through me and making a connection to the blond on my other side, lighting up the room.

The color flooding the space changed from a golden glow to a blue-white intensity that I thought would tear me apart. Pritkin, I thought, desperately clinging to the name. His name was...

My brain whited out.

I distantly understood that Mircea had been draining me, siphoning off what he could, hoping it would clear my mind. And now he was giving it back. But I had already replenished it from the other gods I’d drained, and now it was all thrumming through me, theirs, mine, ours, so much, too much!

Then use it, Mircea’s voice came again. Or maybe it was Pritkin’s. I didn’t know; couldn’t think.

Except that it wasn’t enough, not for all of them, even now, and the enemy was coming. I could feel the gods like a hot wind over the desert, taste the spice of their anger in the air, and feel their power begin to pepper my skin. We had moments only; we had to go.

Not alone. That was Pritkin, his voice booming in my head through the bond we’d somehow rekindled.

We do it together, Mircea agreed, even as I sent them all the reasons it wouldn’t work, how it would gut us and leave us vulnerable, how the others were coming, and we couldn’t be here when they arrived—

And the rest? Pritkin said. They’ll torture them for what they know. They’ll kill them all—

They don’t matter! I screamed mentally, even knowing that they did. They mattered to me in a way they hadn’t just seconds ago. Maybe because they mattered to my partners and I was in their minds and they were in mine, Mircea using his mental gifts to stabilize my psyche at their expense, risking himself to bring me even this far back. Like they would both have us risk ourselves to save the rest.

But it wouldn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t. Only one thing might.

Leave me, I said desperately. Take the power and go with as many of them as you can. You can use it; you’ve done it before, and the gods want me, not you—

No.

It was the most final no I’d ever heard.

You said you’d leave me! I screamed at Pritkin. You said only the mission matters! You said—

I lied.

And then the horde broke through what remained of the wall, the ceiling came down in a resounding crash, and I gathered us all, every single one, and—

Chapter Twenty-One

Oh.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, God.”

I didn’t know who said it, but it was accurate. Goddamn, it was. I swam slowly back to consciousness and then immediately wished I hadn’t.

My head felt shattered, my body broken, my consciousness flayed into pieces I wasn’t even sure were all there.

And I was going to throw up.

“Here,” someone said, putting what felt like a wet cloth on my forehead.

I tried to thank them but couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do anything but cling to the wet rag with lacerated, throbbing palms and wait while the world spun wildly around and took my stomach along with it. I wasn’t sick; I’d been sick, and this wasn’t it.

This was...

“Oh, God,” I whimpered, and then I threw up everything.

It lasted a long time. It lasted forever. Dry heaves took over when I had nothing left, even as people touched my back, as someone wiped my lips, as someone else tried to give me water only nothing was going down because everything was still coming up.

It only stopped when I was too wiped out to function well enough even for that.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, and felt someone hug me. To my surprise, it was...“Enid?”

She didn’t answer, just cried and cried. I could feel her tears hitting my face, splattering my skin like the start of a summer shower. What the...

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

“I’m not?”

I was confused. And then even more so when everything came rushing back, and I remembered. I should be dead; we all should because there was no way I had made that shift.

No way in hell.

“Not in hell, maybe,” came a familiar, crabby voice because I guessed I’d spoken aloud.

I paused, slowly removed the towel, and blinked at a face to match the voice. There was a campfire nearby, as we seemed to be somewhere in the desert, and the flames were flickering on the side of the new arrival’s face. Appropriate, I thought, and saw him smirk.

“But definitely with hell’s help,” he added, coming over and squatting beside me, where he took his time checking me out. “You don’t look much like a goddess at present.”

“Good.” I shuddered and wondered why I was wearing a tattered and dirty saffron-colored robe instead of my tunic. My much-abused armor was also gone, probably flayed off in the fight I could barely remember, or maybe I’d burst out of it when I suddenly expanded to the size of a house.

I thought about passing out again.

“You have something here, did you know?” my tormentor said and flicked a finger at my cheek.

I took the towel and rubbed off what was probably a bit of vomit, but I didn’t look to see. There were so many other options. Including some that made me want to puke all over again.

“What are you doing here, Rosier?” I rasped, struggling to sit up until Enid helped me. Which left me sprawled against her like a broken rag doll, staring at Pritkin’s father, who had somehow found us after all.

And wasn’t that just what I needed?

“What are you doing here, Rosier?” he mimicked in a high falsetto. “Saving your asses, it would seem! Something I could have done with much more efficiency if you had, I don’t know, talked to me in Stratford. Instead of siccing those things on me—”

“I didn’t sic them on you,” I said thickly because my tongue was still remembering how to talk. And my stomach was debating being sick some more. “I sicced them on the dark mages. You weren’t supposed to be there—”

“But I was there, and you knew I was there, and you didn’t trust me!”

“Trust you?” It came out pretty calmly, mainly because I didn’t have the strength for anything else. “Is that a thing people do?”

He scowled ferociously. “It’s something you should do, considering our history! I thought you knew me well enough—”

“To think you’d help out a bunch of people you don’t even know, at great risk to yourself, instead of snatching up Pritkin and running for the hills?” I asked, gratefully accepting what looked like a goatskin of water that Enid had found somewhere. Possibly our previous abode, as it had a pretty strap decorated with geometric designs.

She was rock solid at my back, as if afraid I’d die if she moved from my side, but she was the only one. Pritkin and Mircea were nowhere to be seen; neither were Jonas and his crew, although I’d taken them, too, I knew I had. And the fey and witches, who were staying well away from the demon currently shedding scarlet light to rival the fire as his temper rose.

But Enid stayed put, and after a moment, Æsubrand wandered over, I guessed refusing to be outdone by a kitchen maid. But he looked spooked as hell, probably because Rosier’s face kept going amorphous every so often. It changed from a guy who looked like a younger, considerably less weather-beaten Pritkin into a blob with pure white, barely-there features unless you counted little humps under the skin.

It was the appearance he took on when healing, and he did it again as I watched, the regular features disappearing into a white mask, like someone submerging themselves in a sea of pale paint. I frowned at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

He had been haranguing me about something—I wasn’t listening—but at that, he stopped, and a normal-looking mouth poked out of the blob for a moment.

“Excuse me?” It sounded outraged.

“That.” I waved a ridiculously weak hand at the horror. “You look like hell.”

“Yes, I wonder why!” he seethed and reached for me, probably to shake me, but a rusted pike slammed into the ground between us before he could. And Æsubrand’s voice came cold and clear on the night air.

“Touch her and die.”

“Touch her?” Rosier’s voice reached into the falsetto again, but for a different reason this time. “Touch her? I saved her! I saved all of you! You wouldn’t be here, you wretched boy, without me all but draining myself to give a boost to that... to that... to that.” He flapped a hand at me, speechless.

“You saved us?” I asked because I didn’t remember that.

“Of course I did! How else do you think you got here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember much.”

“Then let me help you with that,” it was acid. But then he proceeded to give me a retrospective of his whole day instead. “I was almost pulverized in Stratford by a brute who knocked me half a mile away! By the time I got back, you had vanished—with my son—and a massacre was going on, which rather hampered my efforts to search the battlefield for the two of you!

“I finally acknowledged that you must have fled through the portal I could feel thrumming away underground, but I couldn’t get to it with great hulking gods in the way—”

“Rosier,” I said, trying to get a word in, but no.

“—and as if that wasn’t enough, and it damned well was, before I could finish sorting through the mess you’d made, what happened? The earth opened up, spewing forth a bunch of madmen who began systematically slaughtering everyone in sight! Those they didn’t drag back into the ground with them, that is!”

Jonas’s boys, I thought, wincing slightly.

“And then the bastards started targeting me!” The outrage was palpable, with even the blob face going red. “I cloaked, managed to evade them, and watched as they attacked one of the gods that had been attracted by the chaos, and did I mention that there were more of them?

“Within minutes, six or more were messing about, half attacking the other half, and the rest of us just trying to survive while they fought it out above our heads! I followed some war mages underground, got lost in that labyrinth of theirs, was almost skewered a dozen times by some of their infernal traps, was buried twice, and finally fought my way through to a dark portal where I found a bisected god—”

I felt the monster that lived inside me perk up and ruthlessly stomped it back down.

“—still sizzling on the floor! So I opened the gateway again, hoping to find you two on the other side, and what did I find instead?”

“Um—”

“A nightmare! Bodies everywhere, some living, some not, the other half of the bloody god, now looking like a charcoal briquet, and I knew—I knew—it was you! No one—and I have lived a long time, I have lived a damned long time—but NO ONE leaves a scene like that except for Cassie Bloody Palmer!”

“Do you have that water?” I asked Enid because I’d handed it back to her, but she didn’t respond, being too busy staring at Rosier in what looked like shock. I guessed demon lords were supposed to be a little more dignified. But he was screeching like a madman, reaching highs that a coloratura soprano would have envied.

Æsubrand passed over the skin and I gave it to Rosier, who drank violently, wiped his mouth violently, and looked at me more than violently, but I was too tired to find the right word for it now. “You,” he said, pointing a shaking finger at me.

“Yes, me. And I’m sorry about—”

“Don’t.” It was savage. “I looked around, but no one was there. Just a cavernous room full of bodies that might as well have had your signature on it. So, I thought, I wonder where that other portal goes? And when I stepped through, what do you think I found?”

I winced again but didn’t say anything because... yeah.

Silence was probably the way to go here.

“You trying to shift a small town’s worth of people and about to rupture yourself in the process; my son bound up in the spell with you and about to fly apart at the seams; fey, mages, zombies, and a whole army’s worth of gods tearing the fucking building apart trying to be the first to reach you!”

I took the goatskin back and had a drink myself because I could have done without the reminder.

“And to make it even lovelier, your damned spell was too far advanced for me to have any hope of stopping it. Leaving me with two choices: either step back through the portal before anybody noticed and let you destroy yourselves, or throw everything I had at you, allowing you to drain me dry to boost your power enough to have a chance at completing it! And if you failed, to be left with no way to defend myself with half a city’s worth of godly assholes about to rip into mine!”

Well, when you put it like that, I thought and had another drink, wishing it was whiskey. Or tequila. Or anything that might blot some of that out.

I handed the skin back to Æsubrand, who looked at it with distaste, although whether because my lips had been on it or Rosier’s had, I wasn’t sure.

“Thank you,” I said to Rosier because he deserved it. Which, strangely enough, stopped the tirade when nothing else had.

“Thank you? Thank you? That’s all I get?”

“What do you want?” I asked, feeling worried.

The blob face finally found an expression, and it was terrifying. “Come and see.”

◆◆◆

“What’s he doing here?” I asked when my little cavalcade located the others.

The witches and fey were trailing well behind Enid, Æsubrand, and me, with Rosier out front leading the way. The scarlet smoke surrounding him like a fog was partly blocking the view ahead, so I hadn’t noticed the unexpected addition to the knot of people on a hill for a second. Until we came closer, and an ash-covered holy man glanced up and saw me.

He hurried forward, trailed by a reduced number of clanking skeletons, some of which were wearing the same tattered saffron robes that I currently was. I guessed I knew who had supplied them, although I still didn’t know why. Maybe because I outgrew everything else when I decided to grow to the size of a building and mug some gods.

“Ah, Goddess of Death!” He bowed low, his forehead touching the ground. “We are honored to be in your presence! Honored!”

“Do I want to know?” I asked Rosier.

“You’re a necromancer and half-god whose mother went by that title, among others,” he said testily. “What else should he call you?”

“Cassie?”

But the man did not call me anything because he was too busy gesturing at his horde to kneel, which was difficult as that didn’t appear to be something they usually did. I heard a couple of tendons snap in brittle knees and felt like I was about to do the same. I was shaking with exhaustion to the point that when Alphonse came up and subtly caught my arm, it was the only thing keeping me from face-planting.

I skirted the bowing tribe because I couldn’t deal right now, and finally cleared the scarlet cloud. Only to be rewarded with the sight of Pritkin, Mircea, and Jonas standing at the top of a small hill, with a bunch of war mages below them, an equally large number of dark mages hanging out below that, and some demons at the bottom of the incline, glimmering redly. The whole unlikely mass was backlit by Vegas shimmering in the distance and the Milky Way arching overhead.

I stared at them for a beat, maybe two, then turned on my heel and started back the other way because nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Nope.

“Where are you going?” Rosier demanded.

“Somewhere else.”

The demon lord tried to follow, but Alphonse strong-armed him, Æsubrand threatened him with his pike again, and the witches hurried up, with Gray Curls and Topknot making signs in the air and hissing.

“Charming,” Rosier said sourly, eying them without favor. “But your little cadre of weirdos notwithstanding, you have a job to do—”

“Yeah. Fuck that,” I said, striding off.

Alphonse nodded in agreement. “Bet.”

“Cassie!” Someone called from behind me, but Nope.

I walked back the way I’d come, with everyone trailing after me again, including the clacking skeletons and their master. But he wasn’t saying anything, just looking worshipful and glad to be there, so I didn’t either. Which was just as well as anything I did say would be profane.

Seriously, seriously, profane.

“Cloak. Now,” Zara hissed as footsteps pounded the ground behind us. I guessed we’d been spotted.

But the witches’ spell worked because the next time I glanced around, some war mages were looking confused and staring about before one spotted our footprints in the loose topsoil. Only to have a gust of wind courtesy of our silver prince come up and blow them back in our pursuers’ faces, causing a few to curse, pawing at their eyes, while more kept on our trail. Until Enid hit them with some Margygr spell that had them disoriented, stumbling, and cursing as the rest of us made our escape, only not back where we’d been.

I found another hillock to set up camp on and plopped my exhausted butt down while the witches set subtle wards around the perimeter, probably to keep up the cloak. It wasn’t perfect; there were no perfect cloaking spells, but they seemed to think it would do if we weren’t moving about much, which... yeah. Hadn’t planned on it.

Then we just settled down and drank because Gray Curls, bless her, had a flask. It was the same hideous stuff from the enclave, but I didn’t care. I belted some back, regretted it, and then did it again. Empty stomach or not, I needed the hit.

And I guessed everyone else did, too, because we passed it around for a while, with no one having anything to say, and not only because the war mages would have likely noticed a silence spell being cast so close. But because processing the past day’s events wasn’t happening right then. So we just watched the mages doing a methodical search that did them no good because witches didn’t specialize in the Circle’s in-your-face, beat-them-over-the-head kind of magic.

Their spells were subtler, a whisper instead of a yell, but no less effective. As evidenced by some of the best and most resilient mages on the planet turning away right before reaching us, time and again, their attention redirected by the scurrying of a desert creature over the sand, a few pebbles sliding down a hill, or a bird suddenly taking off from the nearby scrub in a furious flapping of wings. They didn’t find us.

“We spent fifty years perfecting our hiding techniques,” Zara said, her voice low. “You have time.”

But for what? I thought and took another drink.

“Here,” my resident nursemaid said, handing over some beef jerky he brought out of a pocket in his pirate pants. “Took it off a mage,” he said with a shrug when I tried to raise an eyebrow at him and, as usual, raised both.

I took a piece, thankful for Alphone’s snacking habit, and he passed around the rest. We sat there munching quietly, with everybody seemingly content to let me lead. Yeah, because I’d been doing that so well.

“We’re still alive,” Bodil said quietly, reading my thoughts.

I decided I didn’t care for once. She could have them, what little there was. Which wasn’t much because I had no idea what was going on.

And desperately did not want to.

But what I didn’t know could kill us, so after a while, I poked the sadhu, who was sitting a little further down the hill, with my toe. “What?” I asked him and got a dark-eyed glance over his bony shoulder.

“You won’t like it,” he warned me.

“Yeah. I already figured that.”

And then he told me.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Twenty minutes later, we were watching a new war mage sniffing about. But unlike the others, who hadn’t gotten any better at ignoring distractions, this one was coming steadily closer. Zara narrowed her eyes as he slipped past two and then three different redirects, barely pausing at the last, and then just stayed in place, his head thrown back to silver his face with moonlight, listening.

We all stayed quiet; I don’t know why, as it was Pritkin, and I was going to have to talk to him sooner or later. But if this little reprieve was designed to give me a chance to recover and gather my thoughts, it had failed utterly. After what the sadhu had said, my brain had mostly shut down and was doing the equivalent of sitting on a sofa, mindlessly watching a sitcom while eating mint chocolate chip, and my God, I could go for some mint chocolate chip!

So I didn’t have a plan and wasn’t up to making one. Or to telling him what I obviously needed to tell him, which he wasn’t going to like. Or to discussing what the hell had happened back there.

I wasn’t up to anything, so I dully watched Pritkin wait, I guessed for me to call him over. And when I didn’t, he surprised me by starting to sing. His nice, low tenor, kept quiet so as not to attract the attention of the other mages prowling the area, had the feys’ heads jerking up and the witches stiffening.

I knew why when the desert wind started to jive with the tune he was playing on the surrounding landscape. It sounded like he’d made it into his own little orchestra, with the shush-shushings of sand setting a rhythm like brushes on cymbals, the local frogs chiming in like a chorus singing backup, and a few distant howls, maybe wolves or coyotes, giving some variation on the theme. And then the wind itself decided to wail a haunting solo because Pritkin’s voice had suddenly stopped.

He was coming, following the stirrings of sand that formed in front of his feet, making a path straight to us. The desert was pimping us out, and it seemed to like Pritkin better than the witches, as it was ignoring their attempts to shore up the spell. And the fey didn’t help them, why I had no idea, but instead, they were just sitting there until Bodil abruptly stood up.

“Let us give them some space,” she said, walking off.

The fey followed her, even Enid, after a pause, who had stuck to me like glue until now, although she looked back once, biting her lip. The witches were a harder sell, staying put like resentful rocks with no intention of budging. And the sadhu stuck out his chin mutinously.

“No one commands me but the goddess,” he said, and his followers quickly arrayed themselves like a wall in front of us.

That left me looking at Pritkin, who stepped past the witches’ wards a moment later, through a lattice of old bones. He stopped, and we stared at each other for a heartbeat, then two, while the zombies rattled menacingly. Then he cocked an eyebrow in that way I hate because I can’t do it, and I sighed and womaned up.

“It’s fine,” I told the sadhu, although my voice didn’t sound like it agreed. “We need to talk.”

“You can talk with us here,” Topknot snapped, although I hadn’t asked her. “He’s been plotting with the rest of ‘em. You know what he wants!”

“Yeah. I know. Give us a minute, will you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Gray Curls told me as they got up. “Dying for no reason won’t help us!”

Yeah, I thought.

But neither would sitting here.

“We’ll be nearby if you need us,” Zara said and led the others away.

That left the sadhu, who still hadn’t budged. If anything, his line of skeletal followers had gotten more aggressive, crowding Pritkin as if determined to bear him away into the sands. I sighed again and touched the holy man’s withered shoulder, and he turned and bowed low, his forehead hitting the dirt again.

“He’s a friend,” I said.

“He’s a war mage!” he said, looking up. “You can’t trust them!”

“They say the same thing about you.”

He grinned a little at that. “And they’re right. Except where you’re concerned.”

“Why am I any different?”

He shook his head hard enough that the bones in his necklace, which looked disturbingly human, rattled. “I saw what you did. And felt it when you picked me up and brought me here, yes, and my family!” I guessed he meant the bony minions because they rattled in agreement. “And actions speak louder than any honeyed words, goddess.”

“I’m not a goddess.”

He grinned again, a stretching of withered flesh. “Close enough,” he said and kissed my hand. “And we will be close by,” he added, shooting a poisoned look at Pritkin.

He and the bone squad clattered off into the night, leaving me temporarily alone. But still, Pritkin didn’t come any closer. We just looked at each other for what felt like a long time before I got tired of it.

“Well?” I said. “I’m fine, by the way.”

“I stayed with you until that was certain,” he said, but didn’t approach.

“Is there some kind of problem?” I finally asked, too tired for whatever this was.

“I’m not sure.” He finally came over and sat down on the sandy hill beside me. “Are you all right?”

“You said you already ascertained that,” I answered acerbically, because no, I was not all right!

“I didn’t mean physically,” he said, and took my hand when I didn’t want him to take my hand! But I didn’t pull away because it felt good. It felt more than good, familiar calluses, potion-stained skin, and all.

He needed a manicure, I thought, staring down at our clenched hands. We both did. My poor nails looked like a beaver had chewed on them, and my hands were dirty.

In more ways than one.

I flinched in memory and thought about crying.

His arm went around me, and my head went onto his shoulder automatically. It didn’t mean that I wasn’t still hurting and horrified and resentful. I knew damned well what I’d done, why he was here, what everyone wanted.

And I couldn’t give it to them, even though I didn’t have an alternative to offer.

I didn’t have anything.

“You’re not all right,” he said after a moment, and I burst out laughing. Somehow, it changed to tears when I wasn’t looking and then to hysterical little sobs with slight screechy notes that only became worse when he pulled me close.

I tried to stop; I really did. But every time I made the effort, the screechy noises got worse because stopping meant talking, and I couldn’t talk! I couldn’t do any of this!

“Any of what?” Pritkin asked because I guessed I’d said that last out loud. “You don’t have to do anything, Cassie. Do you understand? No one is going to make you—”

“Aren’t they?” I looked at him wildly. “Isn’t that exactly what they’ve been talking about? Why you’re here?”

“I’m here for you,” Pritkin said fiercely. “And Madesh had no reason to give you incomplete information. Nothing has been decided—or will be without you.”

“Madesh?”

“The necromancer. I assume he talked.”

“Yes, he talked! He told me what they’re planning, Jonas and Rosier and those dark mages who have suddenly seen the light—”

“That’s debatable,” he said dryly.

“—I know what they want!”

“But that isn’t what you have to do,” he said with emphasis; I guessed to break through my panic, only it wasn’t working.

“Isn’t it? Then what are we supposed to do? Because I can’t go in there! You saw what happened. If I go anywhere near Vegas, there will be more of those things... hundreds more, maybe thousands! And no, I can’t take them all, but I could take some, hanging around the edges, waiting until one or two were alone, and then—”

“Cassie.”

“—when I’m more powerful, take more at a time. Because I can shift, Pritkin! With my power restored, I can use the Pythian spells, which aren’t just Pythian spells! I needed the Pythian power to fuel them once, but I can do them alone; my mother’s blood sees to that! I think that’s why she was so powerful; she could shift away from her enemies, too. Taking all she liked, gorging herself on their power until reinforcements came, then shifting away. Not all the gods can do that; maybe most can’t! But I can; I just proved it by getting us all here. And I could do the same thing. I could be just like her!”

Pritkin hadn’t tried to break in again; he’d just let me talk. I finally stopped, panting and terrified and desperate, not knowing where to turn. Until he focused my attention back on him, grasping my face in his hands and pulling our heads together.

“You aren’t like her.”

“Not now, maybe! But you saw—”

“I saw you stop. I saw you use up all that power, give away all that advantage, and instead decide to rescue us. And more than just us. You took them all, even the men who had just been trying to kill you, who had broken their oaths and turned on you, the one person able to stop all of this.”

His voice hadn’t risen, but it had hardened, and I wondered what he’d said to his fellow war mages when I wasn’t there. Nothing good, probably, which wasn’t fair. I’d done worse to them.

“I killed them,” I whispered. “I killed war mages—”

“You protected yourself—”

“I killed them! And I didn’t care!” I tore away, stood, and then whirled on him because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And because he needed to get this. “Do you understand? They were nothing to me! I didn’t even think about them. If they lived, if they died, if they burned to death screaming—it was nothing to me!”

“And yet you stopped.”

“Because you asked me to! You and Mircea—”

“And you listened—”

“Barely!” I stared at him. He had no idea how close it had been. No idea at all.

I sat back down, feeling shaky and unwell. Pritkin wisely did not reach for me again, but he was listening. And waiting because he wanted to understand.

It was something. I just didn’t know if it would be enough, if I could make him get this. Especially when I didn’t want to!

“Pritkin, I’ve... had problems with addiction before. The Tears of Apollo…” I stopped because I’d never told him this. Never let him know just how bad it had been. “It’s supposed to be used for emergencies, to increase our stamina and let us channel more of the power, but I…”

I stopped and licked my lips. He thought I was so strong, but the opposite was true. I’d bent the rules so many times, and not just out of necessity.

Not even close.

“You were under an immense amount of stress,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a stretch to call your entire reign an emergency.”

“Yeah. That’s what I told myself.” I paused and then came out with it because I might be a lot of things, but I wasn’t going to be a coward, too!

“I started mainlining the stuff,” I said flatly. “I was using bottles per week—multiple ones.”

“What?” He blinked because, no, he hadn’t known the full extent of it. That potion was supposed to be consumed in sips on a very, very occasional basis, whereas I had been basically chugging it.

“Gertie caught me,” I said, referencing a former Pythia who had been training me back in the Victorian era, along with her heir Agnes, as there was no one left to do it in mine. “She almost had a fit, and Agnes practically tore me baldheaded because they knew how seductive it is. How overwhelming. How... perfect.”

I felt my hands clench and had to force them apart. I wanted to break down because Pritkin was the last person who believed in me, really believed, just as he’d been the first. I didn’t want to do this!

But he had to understand why this plan of theirs wouldn’t work.

“I told myself I was taking it because I had no choice,” I said hoarsely. “That I needed it because I was just a little half-human who wasn’t up to the fight otherwise. I told myself a lot of things, anything, everything, that would make it okay to keep on going. But the truth was, I was addicted. And the more I had, the more I wanted.

“Not because of the drug itself, but because of what it did, allowing me to consume more of the Pythian power than I ever could alone. That’s what we do when we channel the power; we consume it, like I consumed it from those gods I attacked, like I will again, given half a chance!”

“You won’t—”

“Stop saying that! You don’t understand! I know I have to get to Rhea, but if I get a taste—just one—”

“You were taken by surprise,” he said stubbornly. “You know what to look for now—”

“No! You keep acting like what happened was an accident when it wasn’t! It was just like before, when I told myself I was being careful, that I could handle it.” I laughed, and it was ugly. “You saw how well I handled it!”

“I saw you prove you could. The fact that we’re alive says that much.”

“You saw me get lucky!” I countered savagely. “All those gods flying at me like that jolted me enough that your words could get through. If they hadn’t…” I shook my head. “The addiction didn’t sneak up on me, Pritkin. I wanted it, just as I wanted to drain all of them. Just as I want to right now. Even after all of that, even after killing war mages, men who had survived fifty years of hell until they met me—”

“Until they attacked you,” he said again, steadfastly loyal and blind because of it. He wouldn’t think the worst of me, and I didn’t know how to make him understand. How to tell him that the animal under my skin was already growing antsy. That it had fed and fed well but had used most of it up getting away, and now... it was hungry again.

It wanted to feed.

It was why I’d been out here, sitting on my ass and doing nothing, because I wasn’t doing nothing. My hands were dirty from me burying them in the ground, clenching my fists around it as if it could hold me in place and keep me from racing off to the city that I could just see glimmering between some hills in the distance. I’d been busy not doing that, not tearing into whoever I met on the way, not cannibalizing them to feed my ever-growing hunger, not…

Being her.

But it had taken everything I had and, weirdly, had made me understand her better. I never had before, never had figured out why my mother was so distant, so indifferent, so cold. Never realized that she was still sunk in her addiction and so hungry for power that it had consumed her every thought.

But there’d been no mad little gods running around then, after she’d banished them all, and no way for her to feed without the demon lords coming down on her in her weakened state like a plague. She’d almost died in the last battle with the other gods and couldn’t risk it, couldn’t do anything but get weaker every year, and yet the need had clawed inside her. I knew it had.

It did in me.

“Listen,” Pritkin said, and this time, he did touch me, gripping my forearm and dragging me close. Close enough that I could see the trust in those green eyes when he looked at me, the utter belief that I was going to betray. Not because I wanted to, but because that’s what I was, what all the gods were. Ravenous, selfish, predatory.

Monsters.

“Listen.” He shook me a little. “You are not your mother. You proved that by risking your life for us—”

“Pritkin, you don’t—”

“I do understand.” It was low-voiced, but it was savage. “I understand you better than anyone else I’ve ever known. They say you only really see the truth of someone when they’re tested, when their back is against the wall, and they are scared and hungry and desperate and filthy, when they have nothing but their courage to draw on, and even that seems likely to fail. And I have seen you like that, Cassie, more than once.

“I know you. I knew you then, in that damned warehouse with gods screaming toward you across the desert and a group of people who had just been trying their best to slaughter you waiting in the wings. I knew what you’d do.

“Leaving people behind, being ruthless, and not caring what harm they cause are things our enemies do. You’ve gotten this far by being the opposite, by never abandoning your people, by giving a damn, by sacrifice. It’s something they cannot and will not ever understand. It’s why you draw people to you. It’s why you win.”

“I haven’t won yet,” I said miserably as he hugged me close. Because, no, he didn’t get it. And I didn’t have the words to convince him or the strength to try anymore. He’d realize the truth eventually, but by the time I saw the dawning horror in his eyes and the betrayal on his face, I’d be so drunk on power that I wouldn’t care.

I thought that might be the very worst part of it.

Chapter Twenty-Three

You should listen to her,” someone said, but it wasn’t Pritkin. I looked around and realized that someone else had joined us while I’d been distracted. And while Pritkin had, too, I guessed, because he jumped slightly and whirled.

Only to recognize Mircea emerging from the dark.

“How long have you been there?” he demanded harshly.

“Long enough.” Mircea came forward, shedding shadows like a cloak.

His face was so different, almost bisected by that awful scar, but his eyes were the same: warm, dark, almost mesmerizing. And not just because they were vampire eyes, but because they were his, and I hadn’t been sure I’d ever see them again. He took my hand and smiled the smile he’d always reserved just for me.

“Cassie is absolutely right. Jonas and the rest can scheme all they like. It won’t work. Not as things stand.”

Pritkin said a bad word. “You don’t know how strong she is. You don’t—”

“I know about seduction!” It was sharp, and Mircea’s eyes flashed amber bright in the darkness for an instant. “What do you think blood does to vampires? How do you think it feels, that first draw, that first taste? Not of the blood itself but of what’s in it? Life energy, the same thing that Cassie wields with such power, but can’t control. She just proved as much—”

“She proved she can! She got us out—”

“And before that? You saw her; we all did. She loved the fight every bit as much as her mother, but she’s not her mother. And even if she was, the gods fell to its seduction, too, didn’t they? Not one of them failed to be corrupted—”

“Careful.” Pritkin was on his feet now, his jaw tight. “Cassie isn’t like them—”

“Not now,” Mircea agreed, squeezing my hand before letting it go. “But as I understand it, Jonas and Rosier’s plan is for the magic workers and demons to create distractions all over Las Vegas. Confusing the gods and forcing them to scatter on wild goose chases while we slip through the city to the current Pythia.”

“Yes, to keep Cassie from having to absorb any more corrupted magic—”

“It wasn’t corrupted,” I said quietly and caught Mircea’s eye. And saw a terrible kind of understanding. Yeah, he got it.

Of course, he did.

The gods had made vampires to feed similarly to how they did. It was a pale reflection, as vamps couldn’t absorb the amount of energy a god did, but it was enough for them to live and for him to understand. And to get angry on my behalf.

“Do you know,” he interrupted Pritkin, who had continued talking, “why new vampires are kept locked away by their families? Sometimes for months, sometimes for years?”

“What?” Pritkin said, as that must have seemed like a non-sequitur.

It wasn’t.

“There are any number of reasons. But one of the most serious is the unfortunate fact that some can’t handle that amount of power. Humans became aware of us for that reason. Some of the newly turned went on a mad tear, always ravenous, never satisfied, and littered bodies in their wake as a result.”

“Cassie isn’t a vampire!”

“No, but she feeds like one, and a new one at that, when she needs to feed more like one of you. Or like your father, a demon lord of immense power—”

Pritkin scoffed. “Is that what he told you?”

“Oh, not when you knew him,” Mircea agreed. “Back before the fall of this world, he was nothing so grand. But now... did you not talk to him? Did he not tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Pritkin snapped. “Whatever lies he concocted—”

“Oh, they’re not lies. The gods’ return was unexpected and caught the council off guard. Most fell in the immediate aftermath, and the remaining few scattered to raise their armies. They were pursued, of course, and hunted down one by one. The one called Adramelech was the last, and I hear he put up quite a fight.

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Adra is gone?” I asked, feeling my stomach fall. He was the most powerful being I knew, other than the gods. If he had fallen...

What chance did we have?

“Yes, but he was clever,” Mircea said. “When they found him, the gods discovered him to be less tasty than anticipated. He had transferred much of his power elsewhere and to the last person they would have ever expected. The one who is now leading the council, or what’s left of it.”

“That’s impossible!” Pritkin said. “My father—”

“Leads the Demon High Council, whether you choose to believe it or not. And he leads it well, from all I’ve heard.”

“And did he tell you that?” Pritkin asked with a sneer.

“Many people have, through the years,” Mircea said evenly. “And he’s still alive, isn’t he?”

“Yes, probably from hiding!”

“In part, no doubt. We all have since the Fall. But he isn’t hiding now, even though Earth is a perilous place for him to be. I received the impression that he has been holding on all these years, waiting for your return, as we all were. Those who believed…”

“And what do you believe?” I asked him. “Mircea, what do you expect me to do? Ever since we got here, I’ve been struggling just to survive, and that was before I stupidly announced to the gods that I’ve returned. They all know it now, Zeus included, or if he doesn’t, it won’t be long. And I’m no closer to Rhea than I ever was! And you said you understand why I can’t go to Vegas—”

“Oh, but you must go, only not now. Not with a compulsion riding you that you cannot control.”

“And you think what?” I asked, spreading my hands. “That I’m suddenly going to get better? This isn’t going away. I can’t handle this!”

“No, you can’t,” he agreed. “Not alone. You need our help. Specifically, you need Mage Pritkin’s help to absorb godly energy, use it as food, and not be influenced by it. That is the great power the demon lords have that the gods do not—”

“Bollocks!” That, of course, was Pritkin.

And Mircea didn’t like it. The scar that twisted those perfect features flushed a darker shade, making me wonder how he’d gotten it. Master vamps healed almost instantly, and the fact that he couldn’t, that it looked more like something a human might wear, old and healed over, but not erased...

Told me more about how bad things had been than anything else.

But he kept his temper, which was never as reactive as Pritkin’s, not after centuries of training at vampire courts. “Demons were made to use this power,” he said. “It is how they evolved, whereas the gods did not. They stumbled into this universe, discovered the incredible advantage they had here, and promptly went mad with it. Just as Cassie almost did.”

Pritkin started to speak, but Mircea plowed ahead. “Don’t let your hatred for what you are blind you,” he urged. “Use it! Cassie needs your abilities, and there are none that can substitute. Even could we find a way to bring your father into our triumvirate, which, considering the nature of it, is highly unlikely—”

“Goddamned right!” I said because the spell linking us was based on love, and romantic love at that. And I sure as shit didn’t love Rosier!

“—it wouldn’t matter. Zeus has shut down his ability to multiply power. The All-Father almost caught him several times and, during the last, managed to hit him with a spell that all but crippled him—”

“The red smoke,” I said, and Mircea nodded.

“Yes, it boils around him now, marking him as one of Zeus’s leading enemies for anyone who would like to curry favor by bringing him down. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He can no longer feed as he once did and has been running off Adramelech’s legacy ever since. But that won’t last forever, and he cannot multiply the magic to help himself after Zeus crippled him. Our old adversary wants to consume his life and thereby his abilities, but Rosier denied him that.”

“So, if Zeus can’t have it,” I whispered.

“No one can,” Mircea said heavily. “Rosier cannot leverage his greatest gift, which means there is only one person alive with the abilities of the incubus royal line: Mage Pritkin. He could increase your power enough that you could shift to your heir, gain her knowledge, and then take yourself and your party home—”

“I can’t—” Pritkin began, but I cut him off that time.

“Didn’t you hear me before?” I asked Mircea incredulously. “I can’t have that kind of power again! If I do, I’ll be just as bad as the gods—”

“On your own, yes. But not with his help,” Mircea said firmly, nodding at Pritkin, who exploded.

“If you would listen for half an instant instead of lecturing me about things you don’t understand—”

“But I do understand,” Mircea said and looked at me. “Answer me this. When you and Mage Pritkin made power together before, you had trouble holding onto it. Human flesh wasn’t designed for such things, and it almost burned both of you up. But not this time. Why?”

“I... don’t know,” I said slowly because all of that back in Jonas’s cavern and then in the warehouse was vague now. Almost as if it had happened to a different person, and maybe it had.

That Cassie hadn’t felt like me. That Cassie hadn’t felt like anybody I knew or wanted to know. She had been... not evil exactly, not in her mind at least. Or no more so than anybody stepping on a beetle on the sidewalk thinks of themselves as evil.

She just hadn’t cared and that coldness, that indifference, that complete lack of anything like a soul...

I shivered in remembered horror.

I never wanted that kind of power again!

“Then let me tell you,” Mircea said. “He helped you. Or rather,” he added as Pritkin tried to interrupt again. “His other half did.”

“What?” Lost in my thoughts, it took a second.

“Mage Pritkin is half demon, the species meant to use the life energy they take from others for food,” Mircea said again. “They are natural predators of it in the way that even vampires are not. But his demon grew up on Earth with no one instructing it how to use its gift. And being part of a strange hybrid of light fey and human blood, well,” he shrugged. “It didn’t have to.

“There were other ways to feed and no pressing dangers. Like a petted and pampered housecat, it might have learned to hunt eventually, for pleasure or sport, but need... no. It had all it needed. And when it required a top-up, all it had to do was push its other half toward some willing young thing—”

“Enough,” Pritkin said, sounding strangled.

He was probably thinking about his wife and the night his demon half had drained her dry. She’d been in the pay of a man opposing the gods, who had wanted a knife at Pritkin’s throat in case Zeus found him and came close to absorbing his gift. Having the All-Father able to multiply power at a whim was not something the demon world could tolerate, so Pritkin’s very existence was seen as a threat.

I’d never been sure whether his incubus had subconsciously recognized her for the danger she was and used the first opportunity to remove her, or whether it had been an accident, as he claimed. Either way, it had devastated Pritkin and set him on the path he’d only finished recently when he separated himself from his other half using a Pythian spell he wasn’t even supposed to know. And, I strongly suspected, he did not want it back.

“My point,” Mircea continued to Pritkin, “is that your unfortunate stint in the hells after your father returned to Earth to claim you made you loath to use the other half of your abilities. And what happened to your wife—”

“Enough!” Pritkin said, but Mircea didn’t stop.

“—sealed the deal. As a result, your demon was woefully unskilled for one of its kind, to the point that it couldn’t help you with the power that you and Cassie generated. And once you abandoned it, shifting to the future with no warning, it was left like a zoo animal, finally freed from its cage but with no idea how to hunt. It was afraid to use its powers for fear of bringing attention to itself, for it knew that Zeus coveted its abilities. And it also thought of itself as useless without you, for you had always been the dominant partner—”

“How do you know all this?” I asked before a fight broke out. Pritkin had flushed darkly enough that I could see it even in the low light, and his fists were clenched.

“Partly from flashes into its mind that I’ve experienced over the years, likely due to the bond we all share. And the rest from deduction. It’s the only possible answer for what we just witnessed. The incubus must have learned a few things since you’ve been gone and decided to help—”

“Absurd!” Pritkin said. “He is a selfish son of a—”

“But in that case, why was I out of control?” I asked. “I didn’t burn up, but I wasn’t clear-headed. I wasn’t sane, Mircea!”

“My point exactly,” he said, those eyes flashing amber again, which alone would have told me that we’d reached the crux of this. “Our link is faulty. It was damaged when Mage Pritkin separated the two parts of his nature into two separate men. That was not how the spell was laid, and any tinkering with the components of a spell can be enough to break it. This one didn’t completely shatter, as one of the needed elements was simply missing, but it shut down until the two of you returned. And now it is active but damaged and unstable, with four people currently in a link designed for three.”

I just stared at him because I was belatedly catching on to where he was going, and... damn.

“As it is, the spell comes and goes,” Mircea added. “And we cannot risk the faulty connection happening in Vegas. You must have full control, and for that, our triumvirate must be restored to its original form.”

What Pritkin might have said to that, I didn’t know because he abruptly turned around and strode off while I just gazed at Mircea. “You sound sure.”

“I am. Mage Pritkin’s incubus possesses the power to absorb essentially unlimited energy without having it tear him apart—or influence him. To him, it is food, nothing more. He has the control you need, and he is the only one who does.”

“But... we could recast the spell,” I said, trying to think while shock reverberated through me. Because Pritkin and his other half loathed each other, and that was before one of them abandoned the other to die. Not that Pritkin had meant for that to happen, but his incubus, left to fend for itself for fifty years in a place worse than most hells, probably didn’t see it that way.

This wasn’t going to be good.

“We could make it accommodate four,” I said desperately. “Take off the faulty spell and reapply it—”

“I already thought of that,” Mircea said, “and discussed it with Rosier. But the spell was based on a bastardized version of incubus magic designed to be used on humans and vampires. It won’t hold one of the very creatures its power derives from. It would be like one incubus trying to enthrall another.”

“Which doesn’t work,” I said, feeling ill.

Mircea shook his head. “Rosier suspects that it only took in Mage Pritkin’s case because he was part human at the time it was laid, which his incubus no longer is. And if we remove the faulty spell and attempt to recast it now, and it doesn’t work—”

“Then we have nothing.”

He nodded. “The only choice is to repair the spell.”

“Which requires me rejoining that thing!” Pritkin said, suddenly coming back.

I hadn’t heard him, but I guessed Mircea had, as he didn’t so much as flinch even with an irate war mage at his back. “You may hate your father’s people,” he said mildly, not bothering to turn around. “I am not overly fond of them myself. But I will work with them, and so will you—”

“Oh, will I?” Pritkin began heatedly, but Mircea cut him off. And it looked like his diplomacy might have taken a beating in the last half century, after all, because the usual suave courtier was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

“Yes, and for the same reason!” he said, turning to face him. “If we do not, Cassie dies. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But she was right earlier. Zeus knows she has returned, and he feels... oh, he feels. He remembers the sensation of Artemis’ power, draining him dry, knows the fear she once instilled in him that no other could, and experienced that again when he faced her daughter in battle... and ran.

“He will kill her, and he will do it soon, not in honorable combat, but by sending a multitude to tear her apart as we saw today. And they will come, even if they do not want to help him, for they fear her, too.

“Fear is perhaps the greatest motivator, save one, and their kind does not seem capable of love. But you are. So, I suppose the question we must ask is, do you love her enough?”

“Mircea—” I said urgently, but he wasn’t done.

“You expect—we all do—for Cassie to risk everything to save us. Can we risk any less for her?”

“And by we, you mean me,” Pritkin said, but his voice sounded hollow, as if Mircea’s words had landed like a punch to the gut.

And he didn’t let up. “Do you think you’re the only one?” Mircea hissed, his calm demeanor now completely gone. “I have risked, and I have lost. My wife, who I had only just found after five hundred years of searching; my men, taken one by one as I stood helpless to save them; my daughter,” his voice broke slightly on that last word before he abruptly grabbed Pritkin by the throat in a move I didn’t think was planned because Mircea froze immediately thereafter.

And Pritkin didn’t retaliate, despite having the opportunity, perhaps seeing the expression on the other man’s face. For a moment, we all just stood there in a frozen tableau, a witness to grief so great that I didn’t have a name for it. Then Mircea blinked and slowly let him go, and both men stood there, looking shaken.

I did, too, because I honestly didn’t know what Pritkin would say. Not because I doubted our feelings for each other, but because Mircea didn’t know what he was asking. I wasn’t even sure that I did, but I knew one thing.

Pritkin had finally managed to split his hated demon half off from himself because the separation wasn’t supposed to be permanent, just long enough for them to be in two places at once. His incubus had had no reason to fight it and probably little knowledge of how to do so, as it may not have expected that particular spell any more than I had. But this time...

This time, it would know and would be watching for it.

This time, if they reunited, it was for keeps.

And Pritkin knew it.

For a long moment, there was silence, with only the night wind sighing softly around us, and then—

“Where?” It was one word and growled so roughly that I barely understood it.

But Mircea did. “He has a... compound... out in the desert. Come, I’ll take you to him.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I don’t understand one thing,” I said to Rosier.

“One thing?” he snarled, maybe because we were racing the sun to get to this compound Mircea had talked about. The godly monsters could spot a rabbit from ten miles away in sunlight, and while they normally ignored the activities of us lesser creatures, there were times when they didn’t.

But driving at night had drawbacks, too, and I was starting to worry about Rosier’s vision.

“Make that two things,” I said as we hit the side of a bigger-than-average dune and almost capsized. “Who told you that you could drive?”

“You want to try it?” he snapped, wrestling with the steering wheel of what could only be called a jalopy. A cobbled-together one worthy of Mad Max, only no one in that world would have had the piece of junk.

It was part of a convoy streaming across the desert because my cavalcade wouldn’t trust me alone with “some damned vampire.” Or some damned demon. Or even with Pritkin, whom they were regarding with varying degrees of distrust after seeing him canoodling with Jonas.

They didn’t understand why we were taking a detour but suspected it had something to do with the Circle, and that had been enough to tear it for the witches. No one was saying much on the feys’ part, but they didn’t look happy, either. Maybe because there wasn’t much to be happy about or because of Rosier’s driving, but dour wasn’t the right word for their expressions.

And then, predictably, Æsubrand blew up. He and the rest of the fey were squashed into the back of our jalopy, unwilling to let me travel with Rosier otherwise. But they clearly weren’t enjoying the ride, and the Ice Prince had had enough.

“He is trying to kill us!” he yelled as we jounced across the sand after another flight off the top of a dune.

“Wretched boy,” Rosier threw back at him, probably because the “boy” never failed to make the prince flush puce. “In that case, I’d die myself.”

“You are an infernal hell-beast! You can’t die!”

“Would that were true,” Rosier muttered and wrenched the steering wheel to avoid another one of the caravan of mismatched roadsters hedging us on all sides.

The vehicles were some that the dark mage contingent had come up with, as they had local connections. And had joined the cause because they were drawn to power and thought I had it. Enough at least to fight the gods who had betrayed them, along with everyone else.

A call had gone out for anyone who wanted to join up, and they were flocking to the camp in the desert. Meanwhile, Madesh and the bone squad were piled into two more jalopies, one on either side of us, neither of which he was driving. I eyed a skeleton wearing goggles on its leathery half-face while its white, bony jaw gleamed in the moonlight and wondered if I was going mad.

God, I hoped so.

“Why isn’t Pritkin’s incubus with you?” I asked Rosier, getting back to the point. “Instead of out here in the desert?”

“Because he’s still Pritkin!” he snarled as we banged over some more rocks, slid across some scrub, and plowed back into deeper soil again. “He’s stubborn as the day is long and wouldn’t help me! Here I am, trying to hold the Hell regions together practically on my own, and he’s putzing about in the wilderness, refusing to do a damned thing!”

“That doesn’t sound like Pritkin,” I said.

“And I couldn’t force the issue, as half of the remaining demon lords want him killed so that Zeus can’t absorb his power! They wanted me killed for the same reason until that fat bastard of a god hit me with his little curse, and it was no longer an issue. Now, they’re just waiting for me to run out of energy, and then it’ll be a free-for-all for the top spot, which will only aid our enemies, the idiots! Yet, do you think I get any assistance from my misbegotten spawn?”

“Referring to him as ‘misbegotten spawn’ likely doesn’t help,” Enid said from the backseat and received another lesson in the human expletive form for her troubles.

“That was being kind!” Rosier snapped. “Wait until you see—just wait until you get a good look at what he’s been wasting his time with!”

I also found myself curious about that. It was impressive that he’d even survived, which was more than I was certain was going to be the case for us. Because Rosier did not, it seemed, actually know how to drive.

But we somehow made it nonetheless, as a moment later, what had looked like nothing but bare desert suddenly wavered around us, blurred, and then we crashed through some sort of illusion, straight into—

Okay, wow.

“What’s this?” Enid said, looking around in amazement, and she wasn’t the only one. Because this wasn’t a compound, as Mircea had called it. It was a town, or more accurately, a small city, that we found ourselves screeching to a halt on the outskirts of.

The screeching was necessary as we’d immediately been surrounded by a hodge-podge of unhappy-looking, weapons-wielding guards, half of whom looked to be fey in origin. Much of the rest were human, and I guessed the remainder were demons. Maybe?

It was hard to tell as I had never seen anything like them.

The one holding me at spearpoint was ogre-ish, with oversized tusks growing out of a human face, a shock of bright red hair, and muscles Arnold Schwarzenegger would have envied in his prime. He was accompanied by a woman with green hair done up in about a hundred multicolored ribbons, a leather bustier, and a skirt that was more patches than anything else. And when she bared her teeth at me, they were pointed.

I stared dizzily back, dazed from the journey and still trying to figure out what this was, which did not seem like the reaction she wanted. Because she grabbed my already hanging-by-a-thread robes and tried to jerk me out of the jalopy. She was battered back by a crack to the chin from Æsubrand’s spear, which I guessed was sturdier than it looked because it stayed intact as he leaped out of the vehicle and started a fight with half the guards there.

“You, uh, you gonna help him?” I asked Bodil, who was watching the silver prince through narrowed eyes.

“He needs to work off some steam,” was her only reply.

“He’s doing well enough on his own,” Enid murmured without the usual sneer. Maybe because Æsubrand had only a few battered pieces of armor left on his torso, and the rising sunlight was gleaming on muscles that were smaller than the ones the ogre-man boasted, but still an impressive display.

I glanced at Bodil, who rolled her eyes at me before a red-skinned demon snatched Rosier out of the vehicle and smacked him less than gently down onto its hood. “You were told not to return!” the creature growled, its eyes flashing gold before Rosier sent it flying into the distance.

Which didn’t help our case, as he was immediately piled on by a dozen others.

“Get off me!” he roared as the witches exited a nearby jalopy.

But they weren’t attacking or being attacked, as I’d have expected. Instead, they were staring around in confusion. And being greeted by a few of the guards, one of whom hugged Butch Cut and wasn’t zapped for his trouble. At the same time, assorted townsfolk ran up and called out to the rest to stop the beatings.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!” Zara was yelling, staring around at the growing crowd. And then she spied Rosier and marched over, pushing her way through the throng of guards, all of whom gave way before her. “What the hell is this?”

Rosier, who was now being held down by eight different demons, stared up at her in fury. “What the fuck does it look like? They’re attacking me! Get them off!”

“I thought you were supposed to be powerful,” I reminded him, trying to catch up.

“Not after rescuing you!” he snarled, but he was looking at Zara. “Call them off!”

She did not call them off; she was too busy looking from him to me to Pritkin, who had been driving the vehicle at the front of the cavalcade and had just fought his way back to us.

He and Mircea had been leading because Mircea was the only one who knew where this “compound” was, and Pritkin hadn’t wanted me heading into something I wasn’t prepared for. You know, again. So he’d stuck me in the back and was now looking like he regretted it.

But no sooner had he shown up than the fighting stopped, but not because most people were listening to the witches. But because someone else had arrived at the same time, whom I had never seen before in my life. Someone with a powerful build, an attractive face, and a mass of black curls on his head that contrasted with piercing green eyes.

His skin looked Italian or maybe Spanish, or perhaps he had just been out in the Vegas sun a while. His face could have graced a Hollywood romance, and his body was bangin’, especially in a leather vest that left his arms bare. But I ignored all of it because the eyes...

I knew those eyes.

And I guessed he knew me, too. Because he ignored the ruckus, the guards who had just piled onto Æsubrand en masse, finally bringing him down and causing Bodil and Enid to have to do something, the splayed-out, furious demon lord screeching from the hood of the car, and the man pulling me back against him, because he knew those eyes, too. And stopped dead in his tracks to stare at me.

“Cassie,” he said hoarsely, and the voice was the same, as well.

And for some reason, after everything, that was what did it. My brain decided it had had enough for one day, the desert went swimmy, and I sagged back against Pritkin, whose arms tightened abruptly. And then the sun came up and I went out, at almost the same moment.

◆◆◆

“Here, take this,” someone said, pressing a glass to my lips.

I drank convulsively. It was water—tepid, faintly dusty, and with the mineral tang Vegas water always had unless bought in bottles and trucked in from somewhere else. And it tasted like ambrosia, like the best thing ever, and I drained half of the large cup in a few gulps only to have the rest pulled away.

I gasped and reached for it, sitting up in what felt like a bed—maybe because it was one—in a room with the curtains closed to make it fairly dark. But it was bright outside; I could see the sun shining through the loose weave of the fabric and highlighting the man sitting at the foot of the bed. He still had the dark curly hair, but his face was back to the one I knew.

“Pritkin.”

“Well. Part of him, at least.” He gave me the water back. “Drink it slowly. You were dehydrated and will make yourself sick.”

I drank it more slowly, although it was hard. The room was hot and close, although a faint breeze filtered in sometimes through the open doorway. I couldn’t see much beyond it, just a plain wooden floor and some white plastered walls, the same kind that were in here.

“My alter ego has been checking in regularly, so he’ll be back soon,” he told me, and started to get up.

I caught his hand. “Wait.”

“Why?” a dark eyebrow raised. “I’ve already told him everything I know. He’ll fill you in.”

“That’s... not what I meant.” My head felt fuzzy and incapable of taking in much information right now, even if he’d wanted to give it. Or picking the right words to express the emotions flooding through me at seeing him alive, unhurt, and acting perfectly normal.

It hadn’t hit me until now how worried I’d been, how unsure that I’d ever see him again, or that he’d somehow survived all these years. And yet here he was, warm and alive and looking at me with all sorts of things on his face that I couldn’t parse any more than I could my own emotions. My hand tightened as if to reassure myself that he was really there, and for a second, he responded.

Then he tried to leave again, but I held on, and even though he could have forced the issue, he didn’t. He just settled back down with a sigh. And looked at me with an expression I couldn’t name.

“It won’t work, you know,” he said.

“What won’t?”

A dark eyebrow went up. “Isn’t this where you give me the sales pitch? I should warn you that I’ve already heard it from Mircea. More than once.”

“What sales pitch?” I rasped as he reached over to refill the earthenware cup from a matching carafe on a bedside table. The table didn’t match the room, looking like it had been looted from a Vegas hotel and had had some adventures since. It still had some gilt clinging to the scalloped edges, but most had gone wherever the rest of its paint job had.

I felt like that, too, beaten, battered, and now confused because Pritkin’s incubus was looking at me kindly but almost sadly. “You really don’t know, do you?” he asked.

“Know what?” I said after taking another drink. “And why do you look like that? And what is this place? And how—”

“My other half can fill you in on all that,” he said again. “I only have one thing to tell you: No.”

“No?” I blinked at him, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand and wondering what I’d missed. “No, what?”

“No, I’m not reuniting with my other half. No, I’m not helping you go to Vegas and get killed—or worse. No, I’m not going to take part in any other schemes that Mircea or anyone else may hatch. No.

“What I will do is shelter you, help you get away from here, and assist you in starting over—”

He stopped talking because my dirty nails had just dug into his arm without me telling them to. Or maybe I had; I wasn’t sure anymore. “What do you mean, get away?”

The eyebrow was back. “Get out of here,” he explained patiently. “Where in a little more than a day, you have started a massive manhunt—or woman hunt, I suppose—looking for you. There’s been an unusual amount of activity around the city and beyond. The gods are calling in the troops, with more of them arriving every hour from this world and beyond. My scouts—”

I didn’t wait to hear about his scouts. “Get away where?” I repeated. “Where the hell is there to go?”

“That’s one option,” he conceded. “Rosier could help you there.”

“Rosier?” I stared at him, understanding nothing. “Rosier gave up the last of Adra’s power to get us this far! He’s on his last leg and can’t even feed—”

“I know that. It’s why I told him to stay away. There are too many creatures hunting him in the area—”

“Go where?” I interrupted, trying to stay on point. “The only place that makes any sense for us to go is Vegas! To Rhea. My heir—”

“I know all about your heir.”

“Then you must know I have to get to her!” I stared at him some more. He looked back calmly—too calmly. As if he was just humoring me, but we weren’t deciding anything.

“I should have waited on this until later,” he finally said. “You’re upset; I understand—”

“Well, that makes one of us!”

His head tilted. “Did you really think it would be that easy? You show up with my old captor, and I willingly go back into my chains?”

I gestured around wildly with the hand holding the cup, sloshing water on the bedding in the process, and didn’t care. “What is this if not a prison? One populated by monsters who want to eat you and who probably will eventually. Whatever you’re doing here, it won’t hold. Not against them, not forever. Sooner or later, they’ll find you, and you know what happens then!”

“I know what happens if we go to Vegas. I know what happens if I take up my chains. I know what happens if I trust you as I once did when you mugged me and left me powerless, allowing your lover to take control of me and my life yet again because it is my life, Cassie!” The green eyes flashed slightly in the dark. “It always was, just as much as it was his! But I could never live it, not until the world fell apart!”

Suddenly, he was the one gesturing around, and the creepy calm—which had been a show because whatever he pretended, Pritkin wasn’t remotely emotionless, especially not this side of him—was gone.

“Prison? This is paradise compared to what you would have me go back to! And for what? To martyr myself for a plan that has no chance of working—and even if it did, and you reached your precious heir, what do you expect her to do for you? Give you your power back?”

“I won’t know that until I talk to her—”

“You’re not going to talk to her! You’re going to die. That city is impossible under the best of times, and right now, it’s turning into an armed camp! And if Rhea could help, don’t you think she already would have?”

“I need her for more than power,” I told him as levelly as I could manage, considering that I wanted to leap across the bed, grab him, and shake him until his smug head wobbled like a bobble-headed doll.

“Ah, yes, so I hear,” he said smugly enough to make the top of my head feel like it was about to explode. “Rhea, the font of all knowledge, is going to tell you what happened to the world and how to fix it. There’s only one problem—she can’t.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Says the woman who got here yesterday!” he snarled, looking like his father for a split second until he got that famous temper back under control. “No one knows how the world fell,” he said more calmly. “I know because I visited seers after the Fall, everyone I could find. Desperate to know when you’d be back, the great Pythia, who was destined to save us all. And you know what I found?

“Nothing. They can’t See anymore—not any of them. And I hunted down every one I could find, and not some storefront charlatans. I searched out former Pythian acolytes, and they all told me the same thing: as soon as the gods returned, their power left, whether blocked, stolen, or reclaimed, they didn’t know. But possibly the latter, as who knows if the human race even had seers before the gods—”

“We did,” I said harshly. “Delphi existed before they came.”

“Perhaps a shrine did, with people who claimed to be able to see the future if you crossed their palms with enough silver. But has it occurred to you that they lied? That you come from a long line of charlatans who only received real power because Apollo, god of seers, carved some of his off and gave it to you? That he made the graft real, and now that the gods have returned, they’ve taken it back. Or have you been having visions, Pythia?”

I stared at him, shock reverberating through me. I wanted to argue, to tell him he was wrong. That I had had a vision, one he’d been in with me back at Nimue’s court—

But that had been before the Fall, as they called it. Since then... nothing. I hadn’t noticed until now because I wasn’t used to having them anymore, and things had been insane ever since we got here—

“But you should have, shouldn’t you?” he pressed. “You regularly did before you were elevated to this position, and in far less fraught times. From your perspective, wasn’t that one of the chief advantages of the job? That the Pythian power needed your talents to look through time, and as a byproduct of its constant use, you were freed from those terrible visions you used to have?

“But what do I want to bet that you haven’t had a single one since your arrival?” he continued, watching me. “Yes, what do I want to bet?” He thought about it for a moment. “Not my life,” he said viciously, jerked his arm away, and left before I could try to stop him again.

Leaving me sitting alone in a dusty room, speechless.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I hear it went well,” Pritkin said, climbing up some stairs that clung to the outside of the adobe-like building I was calling home. He was balancing a loaded tray and came over to join me under the flapping canvas awning someone had stretched over the roof to create a little shade.

The breeze was up, but the dust didn’t usually get this high, and my perch gave me a good look at the main street of the city, with people bustling about below, browsing an open-air market and eating from street vendors. I could see Æsubrand in the distance, the sun making his silver hair flash like lightning, haggling with one of the latter. Surprisingly, Enid was with him, her brilliant coloring impossible to miss, even at this distance.

They appeared to be getting lunch from a pretty Latina sitting on an overturned plastic bucket selling tamales, while a young boy who looked like her son steamed more over an open fire nearby. I couldn’t smell them from here, but the fey seemed enthusiastic until Æsubrand tried to eat one wrapper and all. The vendor stopped him and actually got off the bucket to demonstrate the right way, probably appalled at the insult to her cooking, but managing to hide it.

Pritkin had brought my food, but I didn’t want it. I didn’t want anything, but I knew I would need my strength. So I dug into some menudo, a soft taco filled with chicken and veggies, and a beer, because no matter what happens, every civilization manages to have beer.

“It went like shit,” I told him, my mouth full. I swallowed and drank some beer, which was lukewarm but otherwise good. “Tell me you and Mircea have a plan.”

He just looked at me.

They did not have a plan.

That was a problem since I didn’t, either. Worse, I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to, since getting to Rhea might be a huge risk for no reward. I didn’t know anything, and time was passing, with every moment closer to Zeus raining fire down on us all.

“He’s coming,” I told Pritkin without bothering to say the name because I doubted it was far from his mind, either.

“I know.”

“We can’t just sit here!”

“I know.”

I looked at him from over the soup bowl I was drinking out of because spoons took too long. “Then what do we do? If seers really are useless these days—”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do. Or at least, we know how thorough you are. Do you really think he didn’t check?”

Pritkin was silent for a moment. “No,” he finally said. He wouldn’t have left that sort of thing hanging, not any part of him.

“Then maybe he’s right. Maybe Rhea knows nothing.”

“Meaning?” he asked, sitting forward with his arms on his knees. The khaki button-down he’d gotten somewhere while I was out had the sleeves rolled up to show strong, sun-bronzed forearms. For someone so pale, he always took on color quickly. It showed on his face, too, where a faint sunburn was already staining his cheeks and making his eyes stand out even more vividly.

They were earnest eyes. Pritkin had come to talk turkey. Too bad I didn’t have anything to offer him.

Except for the obvious, of course.

“I don’t know,” I said stubbornly.

“You do. I know you don’t want to face it—”

“God damn it—”

“—but you have to decide. And Jonas’s plan—”

“Which one?” I said angrily. “The one where I blow myself up, or the one where we all get eaten trying to get to Rhea, who probably doesn’t know any more than we do?”

“The first,” he said, because that city must be bad. “Perhaps, if we time it right, if you cast the spell as you’re feeding, using up the power as fast as you gain it…”

Yeah, which is why he sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as me!

I got up and walked to the side of the roof, which was flat-topped like all the others around here. They looked like the bedside table in my room below, or the wonky bench where I’d set down my lunch. Like survivors cobbled together from the ruins of the old world and made into something new, by a hardy bunch just like them who had refused to lie down and die.

But they would die, some of them, maybe all of them, if I chose wrong.

But going Jonas’s route meant killing everyone I’d brought with me; I hadn’t been lying to Æsubrand about that. Pritkin knew that, but was willing to sacrifice himself and the others to get me home. I wasn’t, and that assumed I could do it at all before the madness overtook me. Because we’d have to get the power from somewhere, and there was only one source around, and without the steadying hand of Pritkin’s incubus...

I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t think I could hold on. That Cassie wouldn’t give up power to some spell she would no longer see a use for. That Cassie wouldn’t go back to a time when she couldn’t feed. That Cassie would immediately be on the hunt, I knew she would, and even if the spell I started grabbed her, what would burst back through time into Nimue’s court but yet another monster? One just as bad as those I’d have to kill to—

My thoughts broke off, shuddering, and I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. And felt hard arms go around me from behind. “This is my fault,” Pritkin whispered against my neck. “I know that. Yet you’re paying the price.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“It is. I should have made peace with him years ago. Should have tried to meet him halfway, at least.”

I lowered my hands to blink at the street, unsure whether I’d just heard that or not. “Seriously?” I looked at him over my shoulder. “You hate him.”

“I hated myself. What I was, what I was afraid I’d become. I took it out on him.”

And there it was, so simple, so stark. And so belated. “What caused this change of heart?” I asked. “Just because we need him?”

“No.” He nodded at the street below. “Look at what he’s built here, what he’s done. When I was hurt, when Ruth—” he paused, as he always did at her name, even now. Even after knowing what she’d been. “After what happened with Ruth,” he said again, stressing the name as if reading my thoughts, “what did I do? When my world fell apart, so did I. Disappeared into a bottle, so sunk in pain and self-loathing that I couldn’t see anything else. If Jonas hadn’t come and forcibly dragged me out, I might still be there.

“But with him…” he gestured at the thriving town. “He could have dropped off the face of the Earth—quite literally—and disappeared into one of the farther-flung Hells. The gods aren’t there yet, and it may be a long time before they arrive if the constant bickering and jealousy they’re prone to continue.

“But he didn’t. He also didn’t crawl into a hole and wish to die. He did this instead.” He looked around, and there was wonder on his face as well as in his voice. “Look at it. Do you know how many he’s saved here? How many he’s helped?”

“I—we didn’t get around to discussing it,” I said, feeling shitty all over again. Because we might have if I hadn’t immediately started demanding things of him. Things I had no right to expect after the way we’d parted.

“He’s been working with the covens. He has thousands of people here, but he’s helped many more to get out of the vicinity entirely, sending them abroad to safer areas using the coven’s portal system. It’s the main reason Zara and the rest stayed here: to help him.”

“But the portals draw the gods—”

“Which is why they don’t fire any up when they’re near, although it was easier in the early days when they were sending through the most people. The gods were feasting so heavily then that they barely noticed a portal firing, here or there…”

Yeah, I thought as he petered off.

I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like, either.

“He never told the covens who he was?” I asked after a minute.

Pritkin shook his head. “He didn’t trust even them that much and knew he was being hunted. There was a bounty on his head, but no one ever collected. No one knew.”

“He really did start over,” I said, wondering again how hard that must have been.

“He had no choice—and no warning. We were gone in an instant, and things became dangerous for him at the fey court immediately thereafter.”

“They thought he was you.”

“He is me,” Pritkin said, in a first for him. “And he’d just won the second of two challenges for the throne. You know it was best out of five.”

I nodded; he’d told me back when we were attempting to do the same thing ourselves. It all seemed so pointless now, the games the fey had played, the politics, the stupid, endless bickering. Not that humans were any better...

“So they tried to kill him,” I said, and didn’t make it a question. They’d done the same to us.

“Immediately. It was a five-alarm fire by then, for if he won one more…”

I laughed suddenly; I didn’t know why. Maybe at the image. An incubus as king of one of the great houses of the Light Fey!

“He could pull it off if anyone could,” I said, getting an image of an insouciant Pritkin, like the young man I’d known once in medieval Wales, sprawled on the throne with a leg draped over the arm. It was strangely believable.

“What is it?” his other half asked, seeing something on my face.

“Just thinking about Wales. You were different then.”

“Life was different then.”

Yeah, I guessed so. He hadn’t had the weight of the world on his shoulders and had laughed a lot. That’s what I remembered about the young man; he’d always been laughing. And the worst thing I’d had to deal with then had been a pissed-off Gertie.

Well, and a returning Ares, but he’d proved to be, oh, so much easier than what we had now! Just so much. And I guessed that showed in my expression, too, because Pritkin nodded at the scene below to distract me.

It worked because Æsubrand and Enid had come this way, eating something on a stick. And then Enid squealed and pointed with her stick, and Æsubrand went forward to haggle with another vendor, this one selling what looked a lot like cotton candy, only that couldn’t be right. But there were cones of the stuff, admittedly in a light golden color, probably from the raw sugar used to make it instead of the neon brights I was used to.

“I thought there wasn’t any electricity here,” I said because I’d yet to see any sign of it.

“There’s not, except in Vegas. Out here, it would attract too much attention. The gods can sense it, although they sometimes confuse it with lightning. But a static lightning cloud in the desert might eventually pique someone’s curiosity, and not all the gods are mad.”

“Then how is he making it?” I asked, leaning forward for a better look.

“Watch.”

I watched the guy grab a pot from over a barbeque grill he had to one side, on which he’d just finished heating some sugar and water to a deep golden color. He then took a couple of forks and, tilting the pot, began flicking sugar strings into a large metal bowl. Within a minute, he had enough to stuff into a new cone because Æsubrand wasn’t buying the old ones that might have dust in them.

But he did buy this, although with what I wasn’t sure. Until I saw the merchant bite a gold coin as if he couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t either, but I wasn’t looking at the coin.

I was looking at Æsubrand, scion of one of the most noble houses of Faerie, handing his prize off... to a kitchen maid.

“We should have known when they hated each other,” Pritkin said, and I burst out laughing.

“Yeah,” I choked. “We should.”

And then I spied someone else down below, shielding his eyes with his hand and looking up at us. His face was back to the swarthy Latin lover type, but the eyes were the same. I stared down into them for a moment before he turned on his heel and walked quickly away, melting into the crowd before I had time to say anything.

Although what that would have been, I had no idea.

And then I saw someone following him.

It caught my attention because it wasn’t a person or even a zombie, a few of which were lurching around the street below, not getting nearly the reaction from the crowd that I’d have expected. One old woman batted at one that had gotten too near her stall with a broom, shooing it away like you might a stray dog, and others moved out of their path to avoid them, mild disgust on their features. But nobody looked freaked out, and nobody so much as flinched at the far more subtle ripple on the wind that followed the incubus.

It was so pale that I almost didn’t notice it either, but then, I didn’t need to. I could feel it: a tingle up my spine, a ripple along my skin, a wash of gooseflesh down my arm. Like a cool breath on a too-hot day, murmuring seductively of darkness and moonlight.

Ghosts.

Now that I started looking for them, they were everywhere. Not easily seen because of the brilliant light of day, and not noticed by the people thronging below. But here, nonetheless, almost as many as had been in Stratford.

But then, of course, they were, I thought. Vegas was nearby. How many people had been in that city when it fell, and how many had fallen along with it?

And how many of those had been unready for that death, unable to reconcile it, unable to move on? A lot, by the feel of things. So many that I wasn’t sweating despite the sun.

If anything, it was getting a little chilly up here.

“Cassie?” Pritkin said, and I shook off the feeling of... I wasn’t sure what.

“Did you tell him?” I asked as we watched his incubus disappear into a building down the street. “About your epiphany?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Too little, too late.”

Yeah, I thought.

Just about summed up everything lately, didn’t it?

“So now what?” I asked. Because we had to face it—I had to—sooner or later. This was my job, however much I wanted it not to be.

“That’s not for me to say.”

“If not you, who?”

“The one who has to do it,” Pritkin said flatly. “I can give you information, present alternatives, advise—”

“Then what would you advise?” I asked harshly, pretty sure I already knew.

But he surprised me.

“—in most cases, but not this one.”

“Why not this one?” It came out as a whisper.

Pritkin was silent for a moment, but then he told me the truth. “I don’t know what to do any more than you do.”

It was a rare admission from someone who prided himself on always knowing everything. Who’d had stacks of magic books in his room almost as high as the ceiling and who had memorized plenty more. Who had lived, fought, and almost died in service of the good for longer than most people, and now...

Had we reached the end?

Because it sure felt like it.

“You’ll die if I have to leave you here,” I whispered, gripping the arms he’d crossed in front of me. “All of you—”

“Cassie, you can’t—”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” I said furiously. “Don’t tell me not to figure that into the equation because it’s in, do you understand? You couldn’t leave me back in that damned warehouse, and I can’t leave you now, not like this.”

I heard my voice break and shut up because I didn’t have anything useful to say anyway. And I guessed Pritkin didn’t, either, because he was silent, too. We just stood there, staring at the bustling, weirdly normal-looking crowd, which had somehow found equilibrium in the madness.

It was better than I was doing.

Especially after spotting the baby that a mother was carrying in a wrapper on her back. It was cute with a head full of nut-brown curls and a fist holding something I couldn’t see too well from here. But it was probably some kind of candy because the kid had a bright red circle around his mouth.

He looked like a miniature clown, but I wasn’t laughing. Because that kid might never be born if I went back, yet if I didn’t... what kind of life was this? And how long would he or his parents have it, because Pritkin’s incubus couldn’t hide them forever, no matter what he thought.

“No one should have this kind of power,” I said, watching the child get whatever it was stuck in his mother’s hair.

“And no one should have to make this kind of decision,” Pritkin said. “But you do. And it must be yours, not mine or anyone else’s, no matter what Jonas may think.”

“It shouldn’t be me. It shouldn’t be anyone!”

“Yet it has to be someone. And you are Pythia.”

And how shitty an excuse that was, to rewrite history to my liking!

I tilted my head back to look at him. “Did he send you up here to talk to me?”

“No. Mircea. Although I was coming anyway.”

“And what does our third think should happen?”

“He still wants to go after Rhea.”

“Why? Doesn’t he know what your other half found out?”

“Yes, he was there when the two of us... talked.”

I winced. I doubted much talking had been done, at least at normal decibel levels. “So why…”

“He says that, throughout all the time he’s known you, your instincts have been spot on. That’s why he trusted you with his family when he was incapacitated. It’s why he trusts you now.” He turned me around. “And so do I. Your first instinct on arrival was to get to your heir. If that’s still what you want, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“I don’t want any of this,” I whispered.

“I know.” Our foreheads met. “And I would help you if I could.”

“You could—the other you,” I said bitterly. “What chance do we have otherwise?”

“From what my alter ego maintains, even if he wanted to help, it wouldn’t work. The gods can detect power, especially the kind you wield. It would bring everyone running if we showed up in force, particularly now, with the warning they’ve had. Did he tell you what’s happening in Vegas?”

“Enough.” I didn’t want to hear any more about the obstacles in our way. I didn’t want to hear any more about anything. “So, we go in powerless. Is that what you’re saying?”

“He says it’s the only way, but he also says…” Pritkin’s jaw tightened. “That it won’t matter. We might get further slipping in unobtrusively, but not far enough.”

“No wonder he doesn’t want to help. He really thinks it’s useless.”

Pritkin didn’t say anything that time, but I could read the thinness of his lips, which hadn’t been plump to begin with. He knew his other half. He didn’t think we had a chance, either.

But he’d go if I said so. And I knew without question that Mircea would, too. And how did I, of all people, get in a position to tell two men like that to risk their lives? How did I have the right to decide any of this?

I looked down again at the people doing what people do, just getting through life. Some had baskets over their arms, shooing a few random chickens out of the way while doing their shopping because someone was farming around here. Produce was piled high on tables and stuffed into great sacks in the case of corn, because I guessed it was harvest time.

A few were buying the fresh ears, still wrapped in their leaves, but more had clustered around a couple of guys working an old-fashioned, hand-cranked machine. One of them was feeding whole dried cobs into it, and the other was using a different part of the contraption to grind the kernels into masa for tortillas. Which several women were cooking up beside them, selling the fresh rounds in stacks, ready for stuffing.

Those people had fought and run and hidden and survived to rebuild their lives against all the odds. Who was I to tell them they couldn’t live them? That their children couldn’t be born, that their lovers, whom they might never have met without the cataclysm that had thrown them together, couldn’t be there, that the life they’d struggled so hard for couldn’t exist? That I was about to try to wipe it all out?

But if I didn’t, how did I face the ghosts, all the multitudes who had died who shouldn’t have, and who wouldn’t have if I’d been better, done more, tried harder—

“Stop it,” Pritkin told me, his voice low and dangerous.

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t right then.

“Don’t do this,” he said as if we were having a normal conversation, instead of me having my fiftieth nervous breakdown and him...

I didn’t know what he was doing, but it wasn’t working. I sank slowly onto my haunches, still staring at the crowd who had no idea, no idea, that the girl in the tattered-looking saffron robe and bare, dirty feet was deciding their fate. Even though she had no right to it, none at all, but still had to choose.

Or else that was a choice, too, wasn’t it?

“You did the best anyone could have,” Pritkin said because he desperately wanted to help; I knew he did. But no one could help me right now.

To be Pythia is to be alone, I heard Gertie say, and my mentor had been absolutely right, as usual.

We didn’t answer to anybody, she’d said, because no one sees the things we do or would understand them if they did. Worlds within worlds, timelines constantly changing, splitting, growing this way and that, like the gnarled roots of a tree. Like the world tree that the old legends had talked about, only which world, I wondered?

Which one was it to be?

Choose.

I didn’t know that time if it was Gertie’s voice or mine. Didn’t know if I was right. Didn’t know anything and had no right to decide any of this.

No right at all.

“Tonight,” I said hoarsely. “Before Zeus gets back. We go for Vegas.

“We go for Rhea.”

Pritkin, who had sunk down behind me without me even knowing it, tightened his arms and let his head drop onto my shoulder. “So be it.”

It rang like a bell in my ears, but whether of victory or warning, I didn’t know.

Chapter Twenty-Six

This is what you do with your time?”

The question caught me off guard. I looked up from the vendor’s stall, which was spilling out of a slouching Winnebago that should have had a meth lab inside it, and saw the silver prince staring at me. It was disconcerting, not just because I hadn’t heard him approach but because that pewter gaze could intimidate more robust people than me.

Especially now.

It was all I’d been able to do to keep my hands from shaking as I searched the market that sprawled along the town’s main street for something more suitable for a raid on god-central than rotting saffron robes. I’d told Pritkin we were leaving tonight because we had to—once Zeus arrived with an army at his back, it was game over. Yet I had no idea how we were supposed to make that work.

None at all.

“This stuff is disintegrating around me,” I began, only to have him slash a hand through the air in a gesture that somehow said ‘cut your bullshit’ better than a hundred words would have done.

“Do not lie to me,” he threatened, coming closer. Probably because Pritkin was down the street, being measured for some boots. I wondered if Æsubrand had waited to get me alone, but then rejected the idea.

Personal safety had never seemed high on his list of priorities.

“You may have some of the others fooled,” he added. “Alphonse thinks we are resting here for a few days while everyone regains their strength, eating and shopping and acting as if we haven’t a care in the world, but I do not believe that. No, not for a second!”

“You’ve been shopping, too,” I said because I didn’t know how to answer that. Not without him demanding the plan I didn’t have yet. And because it was true.

He had an oversized gray hoodie flung over his wrecked suit of armor, which I guessed didn’t do much for chilly nighttime temperatures. He also had a sword swinging from a brand-new leather belt, probably bought from the guy in a plywood and aluminum shack a little way back who had a forge going. He’d been banging out some nice-looking knives on an anvil that I’d briefly admired but hadn’t bought.

If we got caught, I didn’t think a knife was going to help.

“Bodil said to give you time,” he said, ignoring that. “Time for what?”

To come to my senses. To remember my duty. To freaking grow a pair.

But what I said, because none of that was his Highnesses’ damned business, was, “To finish lunch?”

“Bah! You mock me!”

Right in one, I also didn’t say, because he looked a little crazed.

“I’ll take this and the leggings,” I told the elderly vendor, who was smoking a blunt in his ancient wife-beater and lounging in the RV’s doorway. “Do you have any coats?”

I already had boots, having gotten a pair of leather ones from the guy down the road who was currently helping Pritkin, as he’d had some ready-made ones that fit me. They were the moccasin type with a fringed top and leather lacings, and were comfortable and quiet on the hard-packed dirt. At least the gods won’t hear me coming, I thought, right before my wrist was captured in an iron-like grasp.

“Do you mind?” I asked because, of course, it was Æsubrand.

“Do you think to leave us behind?” he hissed as the vendor went back inside to paw through some of the piles that towered to the ceiling of the RV.

“Where’s Enid?” I asked, shaking him off. “I saw you two together earlier—”

“She is with Bodil. They are both eating as if the world is coming to an end—”

“Too late.”

“—possibly a result of not believing you, either! I suspect the Lady Bodil knows what is happening—”

Yeah, from tiptoeing through my head, I thought sourly.

“—but neither will tell me! They fear I will oppose it as I did last time, but I did not understand! So I come to the source and I demand to know: do you plan to abandon us here?”

I opened my mouth to answer but paused when I saw it: a flicker out of the corner of my eye, a presence so faint that I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if not for the shadow cast by a nearby building. And then it was gone when I turned to look head-on, melting away on the breeze like... well, like what it had been. A ghost.

And once I started paying attention, they were studded throughout the crowd but passing unseen in the bright sunlight. Just faint, faint, oh so faint, suggestions of bodies or parts of them. A hand glimpsed here, a flash of pale eyes there, a head floating without a body, rising like a balloon over a nearby stall to...

Look at me.

Are you following me? I thought, bewildered, and might have asked if one had come close enough. Not that ghosts didn’t follow me sometimes, as I was one of the only people they could interact with, but that type wanted to talk. These obviously did not, yet they were keeping me in sight, and it was creeping me out.

Kind of like Æsubrand.

“For that will not work, Pythia or no,” he snarled, backing me into the crusty side of the meth lab. “I do not care what happens to me, but the others—you do not get to simply erase them from existence! You do not get to make that decision! You do not—”

“I thought you were all for Jonas’s plan,” I said.

“That was before I understood the cost! I merely wished to return to our time—to fight! To prevent this!” He looked around, and the characteristic sneer, which he’d worn for so long that his face rested in that position, was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps because the crowd passing us by was at least a quarter fey, plus a lot of part fey and people who might be part fey, but could also be some kind of demon I hadn’t met yet, because Pritkin’s other half didn’t discriminate. But plenty were recognizably from Æsubrand’s world, and I saw the disconcerting gaze following them. In particular, I saw it focus on a Light Fey child of perhaps three who was toddling this way, her shoulder-length silver hair shining brightly in the sunlight.

She was wearing a stained but clean tunic and a pair of sandals that looked like they’d been cut down from old car tires. She was laughing and pointing at the prince, probably because she’d found someone who looked like her. Her mother did not, being human in appearance and frazzled as she ran after her wayward tot.

Æsubrand nodded briefly but said nothing as the woman, a pretty brunette with freckles across her nose, apologized and snatched up the child. But someone else did. Someone else shouted something that my translator either didn’t know or was too prim to translate.

I guessed it was the latter because Æsubrand flinched. And considering that I’d recently seen him face down a massive Kraken without hesitation, I tensed up and looked around, wondering where the threat was. And spotted it a second later.

It was kind of hard to miss.

A furious fey man, tall and powerfully built, with his silver hair cut short, stormed up and got between Æsubrand and the woman. “Don’t let our child near this one!” he told her, glaring at the prince. “Don’t let him see that some of us survived his father’s treachery, or else he may take vengeance upon us all!”

“I have no quarrel with you—” Æsubrand began haughtily, only to be cut off by the same gesture he’d used on me.

“Quarrel?” The fey was huge, with muscles bulging out from under a short-sleeved homespun shirt in a way that few of his kind could boast. Yet that word reached a note a girl would have struggled with before descending into a growl. “You destroyed us! You and that bastard of a sire of yours—”

“I am not my father,” Æsubrand said, low and dangerous. That tone would have had most challengers backing up because there was more to the prince than his size. He carried an air of menace about him, of anger and danger, and a temper barely kept in check that warded off most people.

But not this one.

“Then where were you?” The scream was back and loud enough to draw all eyes in the area. Including those of four more silver-haired types in the crowd, none of whom looked happy to see my companion.

Great.

“Pritkin, we have an... issue,” I said, hoping that the link through the crappy translator spell was still working, only to be cut off by a growl from Æsubrand,

“I do not need his help!” he said—right before he was slugged in the face hard enough to punch all the way through it.

Or it would have done that to a human. In his case, it was enough to send him staggering back a few steps, blood blooming bright and vivid on his face, before another and another and another came in such furious succession that I barely saw them, but they managed to send Æsubrand to the ground.

For a split second, before he flipped back to his feet, also almost too fast to see, with his spear in his hand.

“I do not wish to fight you,” he told the fey after spitting blood.

“I’ll bet you don’t, you coward,” the other snarled and jumped him, along with all four of his friends.

But it quickly became obvious that whatever these guys had been in their old lives, they hadn’t been warriors. Using the spear’s shaft like a fighting staff, Æsubrand laid them out so fast that Pritkin’s response was still crackling in my ear when they hit the dust. “Come again?” I heard before Æsubrand screamed.

“I don’t want to fight you!”

That did not mean that the fey didn’t want to fight him, though, and they were already back on their feet and coming, although more carefully now, and pulling a variety of weapons from underneath their clothing.

“On my way,” Pritkin said urgently because I guessed he’d heard that. “Take cover.”

“Trying,” I said, ducking behind a rusted t-shirt display, not that any of the combatants had even glanced at me.

They were too busy confronting the guy who laid into them a second later, disarming them with a few quick strikes, which only enraged them further. And it seemed to freak him out as well because the stoic prince had tears streaming down his face as he proceeded to beat the living crap out of them, all while taking blows that I knew damned well he could have blocked or evaded. I’d seen him fight.

But it looked like he also wanted to bleed, which all six fey were doing by the time Pritkin ran up with only one boot on, although that had taken him maybe ten seconds.

He assessed the situation but didn’t interfere because Æsubrand had been right: he didn’t need the help. They came at him again and again, the fey bodies taking abuse that would have had a human needing an ER or worse. And were battered back again and again until their hair ran with streaks of red and bruises bloomed on bare arms and on the torso of one guy who was only wearing an open leather vest over his jeans.

But Æsubrand didn’t look any better.

And yeah, it was deliberate. He was letting them get their blows in, too, but being subtle enough about it that I didn’t think they knew. But Pritkin did.

I saw his jaw clench as they landed several horrific cracks on Æsubrand’s ribs, but he still stayed on the sidelines. And so did I, although I could have shielded him, at least. But somehow, I didn’t think that would be appreciated.

And the fey didn’t kill him as I’d half feared. Not even when they bore him to the ground and pinned him there, with three of them working him over at once. He could have gotten out of it; I knew damned well he could, but he just lay there unflinching, taking the beating.

Even when the first fey spat in his face and screamed what I guessed were obscenities in his language mixed with just about every human one I’d ever heard.

“You left,” he panted, blood dripping from a bisected lip. “You left, and we died. I could kill you for that alone, but I’d rather you live with it. Live and remember... how you failed your people. Live and suffer... as we have suffered... as we still do every goddamned day!”

He made a furious gesture, which these fey seemed to talk with as much as their mouths, and the five left their prince lying in the dust. They staggered off, with those who could still stand helping several who looked like they were about to face-plant any second now. But their friends supported them, as I guessed they’d been doing for the last fifty years after somehow escaping the cataclysm in Faerie.

They picked up their useless weapons as they went, but no one came back to use them.

They weren’t going to give him an honorable death in battle, I realized.

They weren’t going to give him anything at all.

“Give us a minute,” I told Pritkin softly, who looked reluctant because he didn’t know how Æsubrand was likely to react after that. But he went, perhaps because the silver prince didn’t look capable of standing, much less anything else.

But looks could be deceiving. No sooner had the fey left and the crowd, which had gathered to watch the show, dispersed than Æsubrand was back on his feet with his pike held loosely in the fingers of one hand. He stared in the direction that the retreating fey had gone, expressionless, for a long moment.

Then he sat down in the dirt and hung his head, defeat in every line of his body.

I didn’t think it was the physical kind.

“Um,” I said, biting my lip because I hated it when people asked me if I was all right. And because, in his case, the obvious answer was no.

But it brought his attention back up, and he looked at me through straggling strands of bloody hair, the pewter-colored eyes lost in bewilderment. “How did we get here?” he whispered.

I crouched down and didn’t ask what he meant because that was obvious, too. As was his distress, and clear lack of anything to help frame the moment. I glanced around, hoping for inspiration, and found it in the faded image on a gray tee hanging off one of the vendor’s racks and rippling slightly in the breeze.

“I don’t know what Apocalypse means,” it proclaimed. “But it’s not the end of the world.”

And the fact that people were still wearing stuff like that here...

God, I loved humans.

“Look,” I said quietly and pulled out my tattered tarot deck.

Pritkin had returned it to me on the roof earlier, having rescued it from one of the few remaining pieces of Augustine’s armor that had still been clinging to me after everything.

“You’re going to do a reading for me?” Æsubrand said hollowly. He’d been to Earth before, long enough to know what that was, but he didn’t appear impressed.

“Not exactly.” I dumped out the cards, which were muttering incoherently because they’d been through the wringer lately, too. And found the remains of the World card. It had gotten ripped in half during some of our adventures at Nimue’s court, and I hadn’t had time to repair it. “Do you have any tape?” I asked the vendor, who’d just been standing in the RV’s doorway, watching everything with a bunch of coats over his arm.

He nodded, dropped the coats, and went back inside. And returned with a roll of what had to be the oldest Scotch tape on record. It was yellow, peeling, and falling apart, and wouldn’t hold anything together.

I looked up at him again. “Glue?”

He went back inside once more, and I started pawing through the coats.

“They did not deserve this,” Æsubrand said, looking at the crowd again, his voice soft yet with an undercurrent of something I couldn’t name.

“No, we failed them,” I said, trying to decide between a rustic, Wild-West-looking dark brown suede with a fringe, a moth-eaten nubby black, or a pale tan sheepskin with worrying stains on it. I chose the brown and tried it on.

It was too big, but it was dark enough, and if there were bloodstains on it, they didn’t show. I decided it would do and started to pull it off when I saw him. Another ghost peering at me through the crowd, half eclipsed by passing bodies.

Only this one I knew.

But it couldn’t be, I thought, frozen in shock. I was losing it, whatever remained of my mind. I knew I was—

And then I knew it again when he was suddenly gone, in between one blink and the next, leaving my soul hurting and my stomach flipping—

And my wrist throbbing when a half-bewildered, half-angry prince grabbed it. “Do you not care?” he demanded. “You are surrounded by... by all this... you see it as I do, yet you do not care?”

“We failed them,” I said, focusing on him or trying to, even as my mind reeled. “It doesn’t mean we have to keep on failing them.”

“Meaning what?” he stared at me with wide, desperate eyes as if I were the oracle my position made me out to be. When I was just a person, like him, trying to find a path through this and failing as often as not.

And possibly going mad in the bargain!

The vendor was back, and I handed him the brown coat. “Add that to the others. How much do I owe you?”

I pulled out some gold coins that Pritkin had given me before we started this little equipment trip, which I guessed Mircea had supplied because we sure hadn’t brought any with us. But the man shook his head. “On the house,” he told me from around his blunt.

I blinked at him. “Seriously?”

“You’re Pythia. Aren’t you.”

I didn’t say anything because his tone didn’t make it a question. And because I didn’t want to end up with the crap beaten out of me like Æsubrand if angry types in the crowd overheard. But the man didn’t seem to need confirmation.

“It’s all over town,” he told me. “You can’t keep secrets around here. Too many like him,” he nodded at Æsubrand and tapped the side of his head.

“I do not have that ability,” Æsubrand said, frowning, while I wondered just how many people were tiptoeing through my head.

“I had a shop once, a dispensary,” the man said abruptly, returning my attention to him. “One of the real ones, not those trash fake things on the Strip, you know?”

I nodded.

“Like to have it back. Like to have my family back, too.” He looked at me steadily for a minute out of a lined and dirty face. “Give ‘em hell, Pythia.”

He pressed something into my hand and went back inside, and I looked down to see a little pot containing something off-white and sticky. And while obviously homemade, it did sort of look like glue. It came with a small brush that I used to dab some of the contents on the ripped-up card and mush it back together.

It wasn’t the greatest job in the world, with the two halves slightly off-kilter from each other, but it held. Enough that the enchantment took hold again, the one my old governess had paid a witch to cast on it years ago, and that had somehow persisted through every adventure I’d had. The voice that came from the card was wrong; instead of deep and resonant, it was high and breathy, as if it was having a day, too.

But it was clear enough.

“—indicating that the road is nearing an end, and your efforts are about to bear fruit. But it speaks of endings that may not always be what we want. The fruit could be sour or sweet, depending on what you now do. This card says to use its insight to your advantage to change the outcome of your situation. Good or bad, it is telling you that this is your World, your actions, your choice.”

I looked at Æsubrand to find him staring at the card, a look of mingled pain and wonder on his features. “You haven’t failed your people yet, prince.”

“I no longer deserve that title,” he whispered, still gazing at the mutilated little thing in my palm.

“Then win it back.”

He looked up, and something like fire kindled in those strange eyes. “When?”

“Tonight. Tell the others.

“We’ve rested long enough.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was hard to see ghosts in daylight, even for me. The sun made the almost transparent bodies so pale that they were barely an outline on the scene, even when looking straight at them.  Like an image painted on glass and then erased so that only the memory of the lines remained.

That was why I waited until twilight sent long fingers of shadow flooding over the desert and darkness had almost fallen before venturing out to the edge of town. And then beyond it, into the wide-open spaces that were all that existed for miles, now blooming in dark reds and mauves, deep, burnt umber, and that peculiar sunset yellow that makes everything look slightly sepia-toned. Everyone thought I was resting before dinner, which wasn’t remotely possible. I couldn’t rest until I knew...

Whatever there was to know.

But for a while, there was nothing but wind and the faint memory of the day still staining the horizon. It was a ruddy sunset, with only a little yellow flickering at the edges, like the flames of a fire. I watched it as I finally rolled to a stop and sat there in the gathering gloom, and thought I’d gotten that wrong.

Not a fire, but a bonfire, only not like the one in Stratford. Just the regular sort, blowing in the wind of an English coastal night and scattering sparks like stars across the sky. While clouds scattered the moonlight, the tide lapped the beach.

It looked like the bonfire that lived in my dreams.

The two places couldn’t have been more dissimilar, coastal Wales and the parched Mojave, with the Vegas shrub leeching whatever water the sun had left in the air, shriveling the sinuses, and drying the eyes. But mine were wet anyway, from memory. Of the last time I’d seen him, my own special ghost, the very last time...

Or was it?

I waited, my heart in my throat because I didn’t know. The jalopy ticked and coughed as I sat there, the engine turned off but not yet silent. Offering a wheezing commentary on the day and on the foolishness of my quest because there was nothing here.

There couldn’t be; he was gone.

I knew that, as sure as I knew anything, and I didn’t need the mournful wind over the sand to tell me so. I was freaked out and imagining things, and who wouldn’t be after the last week? Or when faced with what lay ahead, who wouldn’t want the whispered voice of a friend in her ear or the reassuring press of a hand, even a ghostly one?

Maybe especially a ghostly one.

I thought I’d seen him in the crowd, just for a second, when I was talking to Æsubrand. But try as I might and scour the surrounding streets as I had thereafter, for hours, there had been no further glimpse. Nor of the ghosts who’d been stalking me earlier, all of whom had suddenly disappeared.

Instead, I’d found only one mad old thing in a darkened alley, where the roofs of two adjacent houses almost met and left the area in the shade, enough so that I could just make him out, pawing through a garbage can and muttering to himself. And then swiping at me with a clawed hand when I got too close and threatened whatever prize he’d thought he’d found inside. The pale eyes had been as crazed as my own probably had last night, and he’d hissed at me, warning me off.

There had been no others, and there were none now, even when the sunset faded into a sullen line before winking out altogether, like the world shutting its eyes. And leaving the desert bathed in moonlight and looking strangely ghostly itself. The temperature started to drop as soon as the sun vanished, leaving me huddled in my Old West coat even though it was only September here, but it was unseasonably cold for Vegas, and I was getting uncomfortable.

For more than one reason.

What the hell was I doing?

I needed to get back. They’d be looking for me soon, and I had given everyone enough reasons to side-eye me lately; I didn’t need to add another. Not when I expected them to follow my lead, and wasn’t that a joke?

The lead of Cassie freaking Palmer, who had elevated fake-it-‘til-you-make-it to a high art form but was about to run face-first into the pointed stick of consequences as if I’d been doing anything else since I got here. Or even before. I was frankly amazed that I was still alive, not that that was likely to continue for much longer.

Yet people had kept looking at me all over town while I hunted for someone who wasn’t there. As if I were Gertie or Agnes and knew what to do. Vendors, trying to push free food on me, people in the crowd watching me with half-hopeful, half-fearful eyes, Æsubrand staring at my poor, tattered card as if it held all the wisdom of the ages...

God, what was I doing? Sitting in a rapidly cooling Jeep or whatever it had been before a thousand repairs had made it into this, and hoping for what? A miracle? Because those didn’t happen anymore if they ever had!

I needed to start the freaking Jeep, needed to drive off into the smear of color left by the sunset before I got anyone else killed, needed to stop tearing up like a little bitch because I didn’t have time for this. I didn’t have time for anything! Including this latest breakdown or whatever the hell I was doing!

Only I couldn’t leave because I’d also managed to drop the fucking keys, and they weren’t in the seat or the Jeep’s rusted floorboard, meaning they’d fallen outside into the sand. And wasn’t that perfect? Wasn’t that exactly what I needed?

I floundered out the door and got down on my hands and knees, scouring the darkened landscape, but I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t feel them, either, just more dirt under my fingernails, under my tattered, lousy manicure, under my skin like everything anymore. And suddenly, it was all too much.

I sat in the sand with my back to the rusted jalopy, pulled my knees up to my chin, and cried. And cried and cried and cried, and wasn’t sure who I was even crying for. Myself? All the people I was about to let down? Billy Joe?

Because he wasn’t here, he was dead and passed on, and I was glad he was! Glad he couldn’t see the woman he’d given his life to protect and who had managed to fuck it all up anyway. And who was about to get killed by a bunch of fucking assholes who had wrecked the world he’d died to save!

Only no, she wasn’t because she couldn’t even manage to find the fucking—

Keys.

I blinked because they were somehow right in front of my face, but not on the ground. They were literally right there, dangling in mid-air, gleaming a little in the moonlight and blurred by my tears. And while levitation was a skill that witches were taught, I wasn’t doing that.

I wasn’t doing anything except backing up fast until I hit the fender of the Jeep, and yet there they still—

“Billy?” I heard my voice croak, but nothing answered except the wind.

I scrambled to my feet, tears drying on my cheeks, and stared wildly around, but still... nothing. He wasn’t there, nobody was there, just the same boring desert I’d been looking at for half a bloody hour now. But then I turned back around and—

“Fuck!” I yelled because the keys bumped me in the nose; they were so close.

“Ah, that’s better,” the wind sighed. “I thought I was going to have to deal with you in a state.”

I grabbed the keys, and they were just keys. Colder than they should have been, but that could have been the night air. Only it wasn’t the goddamned night air!

“Billy!” My voice broke again, but this time, I didn’t care. “Where are you?”

“Wondering if it’s safe to come out.” A ghostly cowboy hat just peeked over the opposite side of the hood when I whirled around at his voice, which had come from a new direction. “Is it the wrong time of month? Cause you’re a little scary right now.”

“Billy!” I screeched, but the hat was gone by the time I ran around the Jeep. But I spied it on the other side of the vehicle now, back where I’d just been. And visible through the pitted surface of the one window this thing still had, although why it did, I didn’t know, as it had no roof. Or much of anything else, which was why, this time, I went through the Jeep; only no, that wasn’t right.

I tore through it, leaving the doors open behind me and panting and staring around when I reached the other side because the damned hat was gone again! And ghosts didn’t leave footprints, so I was left with nothing. Except the slowly warming keys in my hand and another round of am-I-crazy-or-not playing through my head.

“Billy,” I said, only it came out as a sob that time. I fumbled for the necklace he’d once haunted, the one I still wore despite the fact that he wasn’t in it anymore, and even though I’d had to battle a crazed countess for it because I couldn’t let it go. And slumped back against the Jeep, utterly defeated and completely alone.

“You’re not alone,” the wind said, only it wasn’t the wind’s voice this time. And it wasn’t the brush of the wind against my hand, either, as fingers closed over mine. And it wasn’t the wind’s arms I threw myself into and almost went through the body I’d grabbed until it solidified abruptly to keep that from happening.

“Hey! Give a guy a little notice next time, okay?” Billy said because it was Billy. It was him!

Only I had no idea how.

“It’s a long story,” he said through duck lips because I guessed I’d said that last out loud. And because I’d grabbed his cheeks in my palms to keep him in place, so I could look at him.

He was so perfectly how I remembered that for a second, I was suspicious. But ghosts didn’t change appearance unless they wanted to, and I guessed he hadn’t wanted to. Everything was identical to how he lived in my memory: the ruffles on his cowboy shirt, the faded denim on his jeans, the hat that said he’d seen a frontier that he never had because Billy hadn’t gotten further West than the Mississippi, where he’d swindled some gamblers in a card game and met an early demise in a sack at the bottom of the river.

But he was here now, with the same hazel eyes I remembered so vividly, looking into mine with understanding but a bit of apprehension at whatever was on my face.

Because this wasn’t possible.

“It isn’t Samhain,” I whispered, which was the only time of year I was supposed to be able to see him. I saw dead people all the time, ghosts, zombies, god knew what else, especially here. But he was gone, finally transitioning to whatever lay beyond this world and every other.

“Yeah, about that,” he said as I gripped his arms tightly enough to make him wince. “Cut that out!”

“How?” I demanded, my voice thick with all the things I couldn’t seem to say.

“It’s complicated—”

“How?” I shook him.

“When the gods tore Earth a new butthole, it weakened the fabric between here and... there,” he said as if searching for the right words. “Those of us who’d crossed over had a brief window before things shored up again to make a decision—come back or stay where we were. I came back.”

“Why?” I stared at him. “You were happy—”

“But you weren’t. I could watch things here after I left, kinda off and on, like a TV with bad reception. But enough to know that you didn’t return from Faerie. Everybody said you were dead, but I knew damned well you weren’t. Human souls don’t reincarnate like the fey, and if you’d suddenly popped up in the hereafter, I think I’d have known. So you were on some jaunt through time like usual and—”

He stopped because I was shaking him some more. “You were happy!” I screamed. “You were safe! You should have stayed there—”

“I was happy and will be again as soon as you fix this,” he said as if that was in any way likely! “But you need help, and I couldn’t just leave you, could I? It was always the Cassie and Billy show, remember?”

I stared at him, caught halfway between utter relief and creeping horror. Because if he was back, he could be killed, and I didn’t mean the usual way. Things were stalking this Earth that ate souls, consuming their essence in a finality that far transcended death and left me in a state of abject panic for Billy, the one person who I’d thought was okay.

Was I going to lose him, too? Was that my ultimate fate, to lose them all? Was this how my story ended, all alone with everyone I’d ever cared about dead and my world in ruins around me?

I felt dizzy suddenly.

“—and I knew you’d be back, that one day you’d pop back outta time and you’d need some help from someone who—” he stopped. “Is something wrong?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. When I tried, I just started laughing and then found that I couldn’t stop until I was gasping for breath and only staying on my feet because Billy, a man who’d crossed the great divide and been safe, had come back...

To this.

“Cass. Cass. Listen to me,” but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t seem to do that, either. I couldn’t seem to do anything but screw up—

Billy finally lost patience and shook me back—hard. And kept on doing it until I was in jeopardy of whiplash and had somehow managed to gulp my way back to sobriety. Or whatever it was called when you’re no longer dealing with insipient hysteria.

I honestly wouldn’t know anymore.

“Tell me,” he said flatly.

So I did. I stood there in the desert, probably looking like a madwoman talking to myself and gesturing like crazy, like that poor bastard in the alley, and sometimes crying and sometimes laughing, and through it all, just drinking him in because I still didn’t believe it. This was a trick; someone was... was doing this to me, one of those fey back in town working with the other side to drive me over the edge they had to know I was teetering on.

And if anything could do it, this would be it. To bring Billy back and then have him just vanish. I kept reaching for him, touching him lightly on his sleeve or hand, even though it was visibly creeping him out, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

But he stayed there. Pausing to roll a cigarette after a while, because my story was not short. And weirdly, it was that simple gesture, from striking the match on his boot heel to the lumpy, I-rolled-this-when-half-drunk shape of the thing, and the way the smoke wove in and out of his semi-transparent form that finally convinced my disbelieving brain.

I’d seen him do that a thousand times. I even remembered the scent of the tobacco, which he’d purchased from some Native Americans because he liked the herbs and bark they mixed in with it. It had a completely different scent from modern tobacco and had memories hitting me so hard they were almost painful.

I told myself that was why I kept tearing up, or that it was the smoke in my eyes that wasn’t smoke because that tobacco mix was still at the bottom of the Mississippi along with Billy’s bones.

Get a grip! I thought as my voice wavered for the fiftieth time, and Billy pretended he didn’t notice. And the only other eyes out here were a coyote’s, gleaming for a second in the moonlight, wondering who this crazy woman was for an instant before he found somewhere else to be.

And then I was finished somehow, with the whole sorry tale. And Billy and I were sitting on the ground, or in his case, hovering slightly over the top of it, staring up at the stars that had started to peek out of the blue-black haze overhead.

For a moment after I finished, there was only silence and the soft sounds of the desert at night. The wind whispered over the sands, an owl called to its mate, some distant insect chirped its availability to the ladies, and the sparse desert vegetation rustled with the things evading the owls. And I found myself relaxing for the first time in days.

The mad rush, rush, rush, the relentless pace of life lately, the feeling that I even had to slurp my soup in a hurry because the next crisis was headed this way any second now, gave way to something else. Not peace exactly, because there was no true peace in this world. But this far out, there were no reminders of all we’d lost, either.

No ruined cities burning themselves onto my eyeballs, no desperate people trying to eke out an existence in the wastelands, no gigantic predators prowling the land searching for all the little scurrying things in the desert, just waiting for us to make a move. No anything but chill night air that didn’t feel so uncomfortable anymore; maybe I was getting used to it. Or maybe with Billy back, I felt complete again for the first time in ages, instead of like I was missing my right arm.

Whatever it was, I could finally breathe.

Of course, I knew it couldn’t last. Knew that, in my time, he wasn’t there and wasn’t going to be. But he was here now, and I was so, so glad to have him!

I found and squeezed the insubstantial hand lying on the sand alongside mine, and it felt so good! And it squeezed back before Billy turned to look at me through a haze of smoke. And finally found his words, only they weren’t the right ones.

“What the ever-loving fuck?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

What?” I looked at Billy Joe blankly.

He stared back. “I mean, I knew something wasn’t right. The whole metaphysical atmosphere around here was churned up after that battle at the warehouse. Do you have any idea how much power you guys were putting out?”

“Um—”

“It looked like a goddamned supernova, and nobody knew what was causing it! None of my sort could even get close enough to take a peek without risking getting ripped apart, although there were guesses. All of which pale by freaking comparison to the truth!” He stared at me some more, the hazel eyes accusing. “What the actual fuck?”

“Billy!”

“And you wonder why I came back!”

“You shouldn’t have—”

“Oh, hell yes, I should! You know, this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants shit might have worked for your mom, but she was freaking Artemis. You aren’t—”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you don’t know that! And those bozos you pal around with are no better! Pritkin and his stupid demon half, with a beef that’s been going on for more than a century and is now threatening the goddamned world! Mircea and his let-me-manipulate-you-into-something-crazy-yet-again bullshit. Jonas and his arrogance—”

“He isn’t arrogant—”

“You’re right—he’s worse. Here, Cas, just drain this half of a god I hunted down for you like a good girl—the absolute psycho!”

I almost smiled at that because Billy always had a way of cutting through the BS. “Okay, maybe he is a little psycho—”

“And you’re no better!”

“What?”

I thought he was joking at first, but his brows had pulled together, and he looked pissed. “I was gone for a few months, and this—this is what you get up to?”

“It wasn’t me!”

“It never is! Yes, somehow, here you are, right in the middle of—”

He cut off abruptly, which might have given me a chance to get in more than a couple of words, but he held up a finger. And since he’d also cocked his head and seemed to be listening for something, I swallowed my comment back down. And waited while nothing happened except for the wind throwing a tumbleweed around.

Until a dim scarf of a ghost zoomed up and stopped abruptly in front of Billy Joe.

It was disturbing, consisting of nothing but a vague, amorphous torso and a couple of huge, pale eyes. And even that much looked like it was disintegrating. Some parts were thicker than others, to the point that they mostly obscured the landscape behind them, but others were so pale that it looked like he had holes in what I was charitably calling a body.

I finally decided that he looked like an amoeba, which was not normal. Ghosts tended to keep the shape they’d died with, or else took on an appearance that had meaning for them in life. An elderly woman might show up youthful again or wearing her wedding dress, for instance, but this?

Nobody would want to look like this. Yet he did. And that, plus the lack of anything like a human shape, made me wonder if he’d started out as one to begin with.

“Relax, it’s just Hansen,” Billy said, like that explained anything.

“Who?”

“One of my guys. He’s part of the crew who found you for me and has been watching you ‘til I got here.”

I didn’t understand that, but there were other priorities right now. “Why... does he look like that?” I whispered.

“Like what?” Billy glanced at him. “Oh, yeah. I forgot you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“Sometimes, when the so-called gods can’t catch something more tasty, they go after whatever they can find. And one of ‘em found Hansen. And ate about half of him before another god attacked the first, and he managed to tear away—literally.”

I stared at the little thing that had once been a man, after all, or the ghost of one, until a god had—

Gooseflesh broke out all over my arms.

“Can’t he... feed back up and... and fix that?” I whispered.

“Yeah, but food is kinda hard to come by these days, and when he does get energy, he doesn’t like to waste it manifesting the limbs that bastard tore off. It’s wasteful. Now, hush.”

I hushed because I couldn’t form thoughts currently, not that it mattered. If words passed between the two spirits, I couldn’t hear them. But it looked like information was conveyed somehow because, after a minute, Billy sighed.

“The goon squad has noticed you’re gone,” he told me. “And they’re panicking. Pritkin can’t raise you on whatever communication link you two got going—guess you’re outta range—and they’re tearing up the place looking for you. Better send that fey telepath, what’s her name—”

“Bodil.”

“Better send her the message that you’re coming back.”

“For what?” I said because nothing had changed there. Yes, Billy had returned and was reaming me a new one—and really, why hadn’t I expected that? It was our usual method of communicating, after all. And while that was both great and terrible, it didn’t change what was coming.

Or the fact that I wasn’t ready.

“Oh, give me a break,” he said. “For once, can we skip this shit?”

“Skip what?”

“You know very well what!” He knocked his hat back on his head and took on a gormless, big-eyed expression that didn’t make sense until I figured out it was supposed to be me. “Oh, no, I’m just a poor widdle Pythia, powerless and scared and surrounded by big bad gods—”

“Cut it out.”

“—who I throw around easier than a professional wrestler kicking a newbie’s ass in the ring—”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“—and then crack ‘em open and suck ‘em dry like—what’s that stuff in the silver pouches?” he snapped his fingers at us. The little part-ghost and I looked back at him blankly. “You know,” he said impatiently. “The foil ones?” Still blank. “You pop a straw in and drink ‘em with lunch. They’re fruit juice, or they’re supposed to be fruit juice; God knows what’s really in there—”

“Juice boxes?” Hansen offered, making me jump because I hadn’t known he could talk.

“No, they’re pouches,” Billy insisted, “but whatever. You drain gods like they’re juice boxes,” he told me. “And yet, poor you, you can’t handle all this pressure—”

“Stop it!”

He didn’t stop it.

“I think it’s habit at this point,” he said accusingly. “You know you can handle this; I know you can handle this; everybody else knows you can handle this, but we gotta do this stupid ceremony anyway. It’s like that boxer with his rituals before going in the ring—”

“What boxer?” Hansen asked.

“Any boxer; they’re all superstitious as shit. But specifically, this one guy I knew in Philly. You remember,” Billy said to me. “One of Tony’s guys. Big, ugly bruiser, with a nose that had migrated two-thirds of the way across his face ‘cause it had been broken so many times—”

“Eddie,” I said. “And he has nothing to do with—”

“He has everything to do with this,” he said, warming to the topic. “He was a legend on the local circuit,” he told the little ghost. “Maybe could have even hit the big time if he hadn’t sold his soul to Tony the Bastard to get out of some gambling debts, and if he hadn’t been a little past his prime. Anyway, he had this ritual before every fight, where he had to have exactly three drinks at this certain bar and play this one song on the jukebox—”

“What song?” Hansen asked breathlessly, seemingly hanging on Billy’s every word like some kind of ghost groupie.

“It doesn’t matter what song,” I said, but nobody was listening.

“Eye of the Tiger,” Billy told him. “You know, from Rocky? It got him all pumped up before the fight, and the drinks probably helped, too, even though he wasn’t supposed to have ‘em. But they’re kinda lax on the local circuits, and anyway, even if his opponents knew, they wouldn’t have cared. I mean, better for them if he was a bit tipsy, you know?”

What do you think you’re doing? Bodil’s voice demanded in my head, suddenly enough to make me flinch.

“Oh, much better,” the little ghost said, nodding.

Nothing, I thought back, as hard as I could, which was apparently too hard because she screeched slightly and went silent.

Shit.

“But one day,” Billy said, “Eddie rocks up to get his usual on the eve of a big fight, and you know what the owner had done? He’d had the jukebox removed!”

Hansen gasped.

“Yeah,” Billy nodded. “It was old, a relic of another time, and had finally given up the ghost—so to speak. So he’d had it trucked off, and when good old Eddie heard, he freaked out. I mean, what was he gonna do? It was bad enough he was facing a real bastard in that fight, one he wasn’t sure he could beat, and now his go-to song wasn’t available, either?”

What just happened? Bodil demanded, coming back into hearing range and sounding furious.

“What happened?” the little ghost echoed.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Billy said.

Sorry, I mentally whispered.

“The barkeep tried to play the song for Eddie on his Walkman ‘cause the guy was like a walking mountain of muscle, and he probably thought his days were numbered otherwise. But it wasn’t the same. Rituals gotta be observed exactly, you know? That song had to be played on that jukebox while Eddie drank exactly three gin and tonics in that bar. And now the whole thing was ruined.

Who is Eddie? Bodil asked. I guessed she could hear Billy because I could, and she was in my head, but it still weirded me out.

It’s a long story, I told her. And it was getting very long. “Billy—”

“But you remember what happened, right?” Billy asked me. “Cause that’s the moral of the story.”

“I didn’t pay much attention to Tony’s prize fighters—”

“Well, luckily, I did. And good old Eddie had to fight ‘cause Tony wanted him to take a dive in this other bout that the fat man was gonna make bank on in a couple weeks, betting on his opponent. And Eddie didn’t get to that fight if he didn’t win this one. So, he had to win—there was no other choice. And here’s the thing—he did.”

“He won?” the little ghost gasped.

“Sure did. It turned out that the ritual was just a thing he always did ‘cause back when he first started fighting, he’d done it once and then gone on to win a match he hadn’t thought he would. And he’d kept it up ever since, even though he didn’t need it anymore. Even though he’d grown past that nervous kid a long time ago and was now the saltiest of salty dogs. Like a certain someone who went toe to toe with Zeus and left him scurrying away with his tail between his legs—”

“I thought I wasn’t Artemis,” I said sourly.

“You’re not. But you’re not this, either,” he said. “Cowering in the seat of... whatever that thing is... and sobbing your heart out—”

“I get it, okay.”

“—afraid of those bastards in there when they should be afraid of you—”

“I’m not afraid of them—”

“Uh-huh. Which is why you were doing what? Coming out here so we could talk privately? I’m a ghost. We can talk anywhere. You were thinking of leaving; don’t tell me you weren’t—”

“Why would I tell you anything when you already know everything?”

“Oh, sarcasm,” he smirked. “Nice. But it’s not gonna work. Not with me—”

“So what if I was?” I said, fed up. Why had I ever missed this guy? “What if leaving is the best thing I could do for them?”

“Right, ‘cause they’re going to handle this without you—”

“Better than me leading them off a cliff!”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he said, and then he finally noticed that I was trembling. Because, sure, I’d been talking a good game, first to Pritkin and then to Æsubrand, but it was all bullshit. I had no game, no plan, no nothing. I’d been out here because I couldn’t be there, with everybody looking at me like I was the solution to all their ills when I was part of the damned disease!

Or I might be, given half a chance.

I looked at Hansen, or what was left of him, and my entire soul cringed. That was what we were, I thought. That was what we did, what I had done to those gods, only I hadn’t stopped short.

Would they have looked like him if I had, doomed to go through life with no resemblance to what they’d once been? Or as mad as that old ghost I’d seen in town, who had probably starved to death in the aftermath of the gods’ wrath and, even now, was looking for scraps of food he could no longer eat? I shuddered all over, and suddenly, Billy got it.

I heard when he put it together and exhaled in that particular way he had when something finally made sense. He’d always read me better than anyone, and I’d never been able to lie to him. Not even when I wanted to.

“We’re too much alike,” he said, his expression softening as if I’d said that last out loud, and maybe I had. Who knew anymore? “Two losers trying to make a difference and failing most of the time. But not all of the time. Not when it matters.

“When it matters, we do okay.”

“Do we?” I had been staring fixedly at the ground, but now I looked up at him and knew it was all over my face, whatever mix of emotions I was feeling: fear, anger, desperation, and a deep-seated insecurity that had never entirely gone away. And had recently been dredged up by the fact that I could literally turn into one of the monsters we were fighting at a moment’s notice.

“You’re not scared of them,” Billy said, his voice soft. “You’re scared of you.”

“Shouldn’t I be?” I said angrily, wiping my damned eyes on the sleeve of my coat. And managing to drag a piece of the ludicrous fringe across my eyeball. Goddamnit! “I told you what happened, and Pritkin’s demon won’t help!”

“Yeah, fuck him.”

“And on my own, I can’t—”

“You’ll be fine.”

“Let me get a word in edgewise!” I snarled, and he held up his hands in his you’re-being-unreasonable-but-I’m-indulging-you gesture that was not one of his more endearing traits. “How the hell do you know I’ll be fine? How do you know anything?”

“I know you,” he said simply. “You were caught off guard before, and it’s like a drug—trust me, I know. Ghosts live off of life energy, too; hell, everything lives off of life energy, that’s why it’s called that. But when you get hit with a big bunch of it, all at once... It’s heady stuff. It can mess with you for a while.

“But the important thing to remember is that you came back. And it wasn’t Pritkin—any part of him—or Mircea who did that; it was you. You standing there with all the power in the world, or at least enough to get clean away before the god brigade showed up, yet you stayed. Like an idiot, you stayed,” he amended because this was Billy. “And risked your life to save Asshole and Company from the results of their own folly.

“I’d have expected nothing less. Cause you’re Cassie Palmer, and you may go down one day, but it won’t be like a little bitch, crying in a car. It won’t be to one of the morons waiting in that city and probably pissing their godly pants right now. It won’t be running away because you’re too scared to be who you were born to be and to do what you were born to do.

“No. It won’t be that way at all. Now, will it?”

I blinked at him through yet more tears because that’s all I seemed to do anymore—cry. “Pritkin said the same thing, more or less,” I whispered. “But—”

“But it didn’t hit the same way, coming from him.” Billy nodded. “Understandable.”

“Why understandable?”

“He’s just the toy boy. I’m the real man in your life.”

I rolled my eyes. “He isn’t a—”

“Sure. And if he didn’t have all those muscles and, uh, other things, and those incubus moves—”

“That’s enough!”

“—would you still be hanging around Mr. Moody Pants? Oh, Billy, his eyes are soooo dreamy—”

“I never said that!”

“You didn’t have to. You get all cow-eyed. It’s honestly embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you—”

“Goddamnit!”

This is so bizarre, Bodil said to someone else.

What is? Enid asked, her voice echoing distantly in my head. Did you find her? What is she doing?

Arguing with a dead man.

What?

“Get out of my head!” I told her angrily.

“So, what happened to the prizefighter?” Hansen asked.

“Oh, him.” Billy shrugged. “Like I said, he won. Turns out the ritual was just something he’d convinced himself he needed ‘cause, I don’t know, he’d been punched in the head one too many times and thought it was a requirement. When the only real requirement was for him to get off his ass and go do what he knew how to do better than just about anybody else—”

“I said I got it, okay?” I snapped.

I hope so. We’re supposed to be leaving in less than an hour, Bodil commented, causing my blood pressure to rise precipitously.

“I’ll be back in a minute and get out of my goddamned head!” I snarled and felt the connection finally drop.

“Will you be going back?” Billy asked archly as I climbed to my feet, feeling cold, sore, grumpy, and faintly stupid.

“Yes!”

“Good. Then we can talk about what I came here to talk about, but was interrupted by the angst-fest.”

“Are you going to tell her about the army?” Hansen asked breathlessly, or maybe he always sounded like that.

Then his words sank in.

“What army?” I demanded, looking back and forth between the two of them.

Billy smiled.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Of course, our arrival was announced. There were sentries posted all around the perimeter of the sprawling camp in the desert and for miles beyond, seemingly behind every hill and outcropping, some of which were living and more of which were not. Zombies made fine scouts, as the sun didn’t bother them, the night’s chill didn’t affect them, and nobody could play dead any better.

Well, almost nobody, I thought, watching masses of ghosts hovering in the sky over the camp. They were drifting across the hills and the plains beyond like low-lying clouds and flying beside us as we jounced and bounced along on what was in no way a road. They were everywhere, darting like shadows in the night, but nobody saw them.

Well, nobody but me and some of the zombies. A few of the latter twitched a little whenever ghostly hands brushed them, and I thought I saw others following some of the more bloated spirits with hungry eyes. Probably because their bokors were skilled at the ghostly form of necromancy that my father had practiced, and they saw whatever their creatures did.

That was why the crowd of people—thousands of them milling about everywhere—opened up before us, and we were allowed to rumble through the encampment and up the side of the hill that we’d left only a day ago.

The group at the top had grown, morphing from a collection of misfits shooting each other hostile glances into the leaders of an army. I stared around as we piled out of the jalopy, witnessing sights I’d never thought to see in a million years. And still didn’t quite believe.

“The enemy of my enemy,” Mircea murmured, and yeah.

I guessed so.

There were a lot of former enemies encamped around here. The dark mages had taken up a large area of desert to the left, separated from their light mage counterparts by a river of zombies, demons, and golems mixing together pretty freely. That much I’d expected, more or less, just not the numbers, which had grown immensely as word went out.

But to the right was something I definitely hadn’t expected. And standing next to Jonas at the top of the hill, looking at some papers on a table they’d scrounged up from somewhere, was the last person I’d have ever thought to see there. Ever.

“This is the end of the world,” I said, staring at Zara.

With the black robes she had found somewhere and her salt and pepper hair fritzing out in all directions as if she’d recently been struck by lightning, she was the perfect example of a dark witch. Only there weren’t any of those. The covens didn’t believe in that nonsense; they believed in what worked. Which I guessed was why, in an encampment to the right, was every goddamned witch on the planet.

Seriously, there were thousands.

“It appears that the war party won,” Pritkin said, looking at them with slightly widened eyes.

“Well, if we’re ever going to do anything, now would seem the time,” Topknot said, coming over from the edge of the group on the hill. “You’re late. We were starting to worry.”

“You came with us to the city,” I said, confused.

“Yes, and left it shortly thereafter, once we’d had a chin wag with Devlin.” She harrumphed. “Devlin. I might have known. May as well have called himself devil. Speaking of which, where’s the other one? The natives are getting restless.”

“In the other, um, Jeep,” I said, assuming that she was talking about Rosier because Pritkin was standing beside me.

And yeah, the “natives” were restless, I thought, as a demon the size of a house with a long tail and claws as big as me circled another of its kind in the valley below, obviously about to throw down. And they weren’t the only ones. It looked like half of Hell was here and not happy about it.

“Didn’t drive w’ him on the way back? Don’t blame you there,” she said, clapping me on the back. “Well, come on then. Time to join the conversation.”

“It isn’t,” I protested as the two Hell-beasts started savaging each other. Some of the dark mages seemed to be betting on the outcome as I saw money exchanging hands. “You have your part to play,” I told her, tearing my eyes away. “And I have mine. They’re not the same.”

“Oh?” She sized me up. “And exactly how do you expect to get into that city on your own?”

I started to answer, then thought better of it. “It’s complicated.”

“It always seems to be with you.”

“We should check in,” Mircea said smoothly, ever the diplomat. “Let the others know we’re about to start. They’ll need to coordinate their attack.”

Which was how I found myself pushing through the throng of evil-eyed Corpsmen toward the summit of the small mountain or large hill. I couldn’t be sure which, as I couldn’t see it too well since it was covered by people who hated me. But flanked on one side by a half-demon with glowing green eyes—Pritkin had gotten into it with dear old dad on the way here, and I guessed it had had an effect—and on the other by a master vampire, nobody so much as twitched a finger in my direction.

But if looks could kill—

Well, it would save Zeus the trouble.

“Stay behind me,” Alphonse said, trying to shove me to the back.

“Leave her be,” Mircea told him sharply. We do not need to look weak—or divided, he added mentally. And loudly enough that it resonated along the bond.

But Alphonse wasn’t playing along. “She almost barbequed half the guys here. I don’t think any of ’em are mistaking her for weak,” he said aloud and didn’t bother to lower his voice.

Do not provoke them, Mircea thought at him, hard enough to make me wince.

“I’m not provoking anybody, and you don’t command me,” Alphonse said. “Nobody does anymore, and if I wanna guard Cassie, I’m gonna guard Cassie.”

“Yeah, only I can’t see where I’m going,” I said before Mircea decided to do more than talk.

Master vamps didn’t take that kind of defiance from a subordinate, especially not one who belonged to a master of his own family line. In the absence of Tony, Alphonse was Mircea’s unless he’d been emancipated because Tony had been Mircea’s. Or at least, that was how it used to work. I had no idea what the protocol was now.

“You don’t need to see. You need to live,” Alphonse told me. “Which you’re damned well going to, or I’m gonna start ripping off some limbs.”

Great.

You are going to remember your place, Mircea told him, and Alphonse abruptly dropped back.

“Mircea—” I began, twisting my head to see what he’d done to poor Alphonse, but the tall-ass fey were in the way.

He’s all right,” Mircea assured me, “and will be along pres—

The communication cut out as quickly as a radio going silent as the bond flickered hard.

We exchanged a look because that could be inconvenient on our upcoming mission, like trying to discuss our crappy bond in the middle of a crowd of enemies.

“It will be all right,” Mircea told me softly.

Yeah.

Sure.

Okay.

“How are they shielding so many?” Enid asked from somewhere behind me, sounding awed.

“They aren’t.” Pritkin stuck a hand slightly out from his side, palm down, and frowned. “There are no wards here.”

“Don’t need ‘em,” Jonas said, catching sight of us as we surmounted the hill and striding over.

The old man who walked stoop-shouldered and frail was gone, and in his place was someone who exuded primal energy. He no longer had the wild mane of white hair, but if he had, it would have been crackling around his head to rival Zara’s. He did have the disconcertingly sharp eyes, however, which felt like they were boring a hole through me.

“Don’t,” Pritkin warned him, something his old boss completely ignored.

“Come to your senses, have you?” Jonas demanded.

I decided to ignore that because obviously not.

I was here, wasn’t I?

“What is the plan?” Mircea asked, attempting to change the direction of the conversation. To my surprise, it worked.

“You tell me.” The gimlet-eyed gaze skewered him and then me some more. “I know you have one. Spill it. We’re your allies, Cassie, whether you believe it or not,” he added before I could say anything. “Help us help you!”

I glanced at my two companions, but Pritkin was still frowning at the non-wards, and Mircea looked noncommittal. It was up to me. “I don’t need your help getting into Vegas,” I said evenly. “We’re using... another path... into the city. I need you to pull whoever Zeus has sent to guard Rhea off Dante’s.”

“Yes, he has her well-guarded,” the old man confirmed, turning back and leading us to the table where maps of Vegas were scattered around. “That’s why we don’t need wards,” he added. “The bastards know we’re here but haven’t come out. They’re clustered in the city, waiting for us to come to them, where they have the upper hand. And, no doubt, some very nasty shocks prepared.”

He glanced up at me. “You’re walking into a trap.”

Yeah.

No shit.

“Is Zeus there?” I asked, not knowing if Jonas could tell.

“No. Or if he is, he’s keeping pretty damned quiet. We have our best telepaths, including fey ones,” he added, nodding at the small cluster of people behind me. “But they haven’t picked anything up. And considering how... antsy... the other gods get whenever he’s around, the odds are that he hasn’t yet shown his face. But that could change at any time.”

“He isn’t here,” Bodil confirmed as I shot her a glance. Her eyes were distant and unfocused, but her voice was sure. “But he is expected. We need to hurry.”

“Can you?” Jonas asked, looking pointedly at me.

“If you’re asking about what happened before,” I began.

“Of course, I’m bloody asking about before! I need to know that we’re not sacrificing ourselves just to put a new god into power, one who won’t be any better than that fuckhead Zeus!”

It was a fair question. I hated it, but it was. “What happened before,” I said evenly, “won’t be an issue with the Pythian power—”

“How can you be sure? It’s godly energy—came from Apollo himself, if the rumors are true.”

“They’re true.” I kept forgetting how little most mages knew about the court or what powered it. Even Jonas, who had been married in all but name to my predecessor Agnes for decades, still viewed us as a mystery. Which was probably why he was narrowing his eyes mistrustfully at me.

Well, that and the fact that I’d set half his men on fire yesterday.

“The Pythian power never overwhelmed me,” I explained. “Maybe because I couldn’t just take whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. It gave me what I needed to do my job, but no more. I used to think it was my human stamina that gave out when I shifted too much, and maybe it was at times. Once the Pythian energy cut out, I had only my strength to draw from, and it didn’t last long.

“But other times, I think it was throttling the flow. That it had me on a leash this whole time; I just didn’t realize it until... until recently.”

“And thank God it did!” he said bluntly. “So what the devil is the plan?”

“I told you. I can get to Rhea, but I can’t talk to her with the gods sitting on top of her. I need them pulled off. They have to believe that I’m with you, trying to get into the city, not that I’m already there.”

“And exactly how do you plan to get inside the city without them seeing you?”

“That’s my concern—”

“Not if we’re buying you time with our blood, it damned well isn’t! I need to know—”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said, cutting him off because it was true. And because I didn’t have hours to spend trying to convince him. “You either trust me or you don’t. And keep in mind why that scene at HQ happened. Because you were going behind my back, intent on forcing me into something I could have told you wouldn’t work. I had already thought of and dismissed the idea, but you had to have your way.

“How did that work out for you?”

I don’t know where that voice came from, but it was strong, decisive, and Pythia-like. Enough that Zara gave a snort, and Topknot muttered some more. “Damned right. Telling a Pythia what she must and mustn’t do!” the old battleaxe said as if she hadn’t been doing the same thing since I met her.

“And I am Lord Commander!” Jonas raged.

“Yes, you are,” I agreed. “And a fine one.”

That stopped him, as I don’t think he’d expected me to see it that way. But while Jonas and I had clashed more times than I could count, there had always been respect there. At least, there had been on my end.

“You’ve done better than I could have dreamed,” I told him honestly. “Or that anyone could have expected. You all have. But this is my fight now. Help me or not, but either way, I will enter the city tonight. And the gods will not see me.”

Jonas stared at me for a long moment, and I could almost see the thousand questions wanting to burst out of him. But he’d been around Pythias his whole life. He knew better than to press.

“The dumber sort of so-called gods might take the bait,” he finally said, going back to our previous topic. “The ones barely clinging to some semblance of mind. But there are others in there, Cassie. Smarter ones; strategic ones. We’re not going to pull them all, no matter what we do.”

“I know,” I said evenly. “I’ll deal with the rest.”

Jonas had some colorful words to say to that, and I honestly couldn’t blame him. But there was no other way. I just had to hope that my plan would work once we got into the thick of it.

But then, when had one of my plans ever worked?

I saw Mircea shake his head slightly at me before I could admit to anything, and yeah. Telling Jonas that we still didn’t have full control would not be wise. But then, actually losing it would definitely not be!

Which was number 872 of the reasons why I was miserable. I didn’t like keeping things from an ally, especially not when he was offering to take the brunt of an attack by a few hundred gods on him and his men. Damn it, we had to hold it together.

I had to!

“Cassie will be fine; you have my word,” Mircea said.

“Yes, and the word of a master vampire is so reassuring to me,” Jonas retorted spitefully. But I guessed he didn’t have a better idea, and we were out of time. So it was agreed.

The different groups—Corpsmen, dark mages of all descriptions, witches, and the demons under Rosier’s control—would make a dozen assaults along different sections of the city’s perimeter, not giving the gods any idea which group I might be in and forcing them to divide to conquer. Our forces would use every trick in the book to kill, maim, trap, or otherwise seriously inconvenience the trash that would initially be thrown at them, forcing those with more of a mind to have to get off their godly asses and do some work.

It wasn’t mentioned that, once that happened, I would have a very limited window in which to reach my objective because that kind of opponent... well. Our forces wouldn’t last long against them. Not long at all.

This is it, I thought blankly. If we failed, there wouldn’t be a second chance. I had to reach Rhea and hope against hope that she had a way to help us, or else the only other choice would be to go hunting. And without Pritkin’s incubus, getting enough power to take even me back in time was likely to drive me completely mad.

I wouldn’t care about what happened to everyone after that. I wouldn’t care about anything but the hunger. And gaining enough power to meet Zeus head-on when he returned, and fight to unseat and replace him.

And if I succeeded, to become even more of a monster than he had ever—

“Cassie.”

I realized that I’d moved without realizing it, away from the knot of leaders and off to one side. They were still close enough that keen ears, or ones helped by a convenient spell, could overhear us, and Pritkin did nothing to interfere with that, possibly because a silence spell would have raised suspicion. And because he didn’t need it.

He, Mircea, and I had already said everything there was to say back in town and knew this was the only plan. I was just losing it at the last minute, and I couldn’t do that. I had to project strength even if I didn’t have any left, had to look confident even if I didn’t feel it, had to be Pythia instead of the scared, overwhelmed girl I’d once been.

I already know, I thought, looking up at him angrily.

And was enfolded in arms that were everything I needed right then. Mircea was there, too, standing off to one side and gazing at me with a confidence I completely lacked. Our small group of fey was also drifting over and towing a dazed-looking Alphonse along with them.

And finally, one more addition: Zara, sweeping down the incline to where my little group stood and getting in my face.

“I know,” she told me, low and even. “If anyone ever has, I know. It doesn’t matter, do you understand? What that old fool thinks, what anyone says, none of it. You have this responsibility and you alone, and you can handle this. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s don’t underestimate a witch with her back to the wall. And whatever else you may be, you are a witch, Cassie Palmer, and a good one.

“Go in there and prove it.

“She’s waiting.”

And yes, she was. Rhea was waiting, and she couldn’t come to me. I had to go to her, and there was only one way to do that.

“Come closer,” I told them, and the group moved in. And to my surprise, that included Zara and her little knot of witches.

“We’re coming,” she told me stubbornly. “The others know what to do; the war party has waited for this, lived and breathed and dreamed about nothing else for years. But I’m doing what I’ve done for years and protecting my coven.”

“But... I’m not your coven,” I whispered.

“If you’re not after all this, I don’t know who is,” Gray Curls said testily. “Now, what’s all this about another path?”

Everyone looked at me.

“Come close,” I told them again. “And stay close. Do not get distracted by anything you see or hear. Stay with me, and don’t use magic. It’ll only attract them.”

“A-attract who?” Enid said nervously, looking around.

“Ghosts,” I said, and grabbed Hansen.

It wasn’t hard, as he had been right on my ass this whole time, he and a mass of his friends, like a cool, vaguely clammy mist. Not because I was a ghost magnet or because I was Pythia, a human designation that the dead could give a shit about. Not even because Billy Joe had told them to before leaving with a smaller group for the city and Rhea earlier.

But because there was a reason that some spirits hung around after death.

In fact, there were thousands of them, each as unique as the spirit itself. Lost loves, old regrets, children they wanted to watch grow up, or, as had been the case with Billy Joe, ambitions left unfulfilled. But one overriding reason showed up more than all the rest combined.

It was one that these spirits knew better than any other, having been thrown into the afterlife in a torrent of godly rage that was nothing compared to the one they felt now, haunting the desiccated corpse of the world they had once called home.

Revenge whispered through the air all around me.

Revenge burned in a thousand thousand ghostly eyes.

Revenge thrummed in dead heartbeats and then howled through the air so suddenly and so loudly that even the group at the top of the hill heard it, as the countless ghosts in the skies over the camp all fell on us all at once. Causing Jonas and company to look around in confusion as a sudden windstorm sent their maps and papers scattering on the breeze. And then obscured my view entirely, the mass of spirits around us so thick that they blotted out the stars.

REVENGE!

It was a roar to me, although I couldn’t tell if the others heard it, although they looked spooked enough. Yet, it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. It was the sound of hope.

“Then take us there,” I whispered back. “And you will have it.”

And then we were gone.

Chapter Thirty

The world changed abruptly, turning gray as if a veil had been flung over the top of it and then whiting out entirely. Only to be replaced with a very different landscape that slowly emerged from the fog, one of swift-moving, pale outlines of desert outcroppings, rippling sands, and squat bushes, as we were borne through non-time on a rushing torrent of ghostly power. I could just make out our surroundings, but I couldn’t concentrate on them because they were whizzing by too fast.

Our pace far exceeded what the jalopies had been able to do and was frankly terrifying—and unexpected because ghosts could barely lift anything. I was used to them having to exert a marathon’s worth of effort to knock a pencil off a table, which is why most didn’t bother. But these were bothering, and there were so many of them that they could bear us along on a white cloud of power like a magic carpet worthy of Aladdin.

It was like the necromancer I’d seen in Stratford being borne aloft by the ghosts he’d enslaved, only in our case, it was a multitude, and they’d volunteered. Which was great except that I couldn’t control them like he had. Or even see properly with the ungodly speed.

“Where are we?” Bodil yelled, looking frantic. I guessed this was another thing a few thousand years of life hadn’t prepared her for.

Me, either, I thought, trying to figure out how to explain with the ghostly wind tearing my words away.

In your head! She yelled back mentally, and so loudly that my ears hurt in sympathy.

“Where the devil did you bring us?” Æsubrand echoed, his hand on his sword before I could answer.

“Oh,” Enid squeaked while Zara and crew just stared about with shining eyes, looking like they were having the time of their lives.

I was glad somebody was enjoying it.

“The Paths of the Dead!” I yelled to be heard over the wind. “Don’t resist, and don’t stray off!”

“Stray off? Stray off?” That was Alphonse. And it looked like whatever Mircea had done really had been temporary because he was vocal again and loud about it. “How the hell do we do that? Can you even stop this ride?”

No, I thought, as the city loomed ever closer.

“Why are we not to stray off?” Enid shouted, staying on point. Because the girl had developed a good set of survival instincts. Or maybe she’d already had them from growing up at the poisonous fey court.

“Some of the ghosts here are on our side!” I said, wondering if I had ghost particles in my mouth because it kind of felt like it. I spat them out. “But the rest…”

What about the rest? Bodil hissed in my head.

“They’re hunters! This is where ghosts go who run out of power and can’t maintain their hold on our world anymore! The rest come here to feed!”

“They cannibalize each other?” That was Enid, looking shocked.

“Only the weaker ones,” I said, which didn’t seem to help.

Alphonse had a lot to say about that, but most of it was borne away by the winds before it reached me.

“Yes, and they’ll do the same to you if they can!” I added as they needed to understand that much, at least. “Don’t give them the chance!”

And suddenly, I had a knot of people closing around me as everyone tightened the hell up. I barely noticed, being too busy watching the city coming swiftly closer. The ghosts weren’t wasting time, rushing us across the desert as if we’d been shot out of a cannon and straight toward—

“Watch out!” I yelled because I didn’t know who was driving this thing. And taking us straight at—

“Fuck!” Somebody yelled. That sounded like Pritkin, who was right behind me and holding onto my waist, but I could barely hear him because of the wind. Or the babble of thousands of voices, I realized, which is why it got worse as the ghostly brigade veered sharply to the right to miss a patrolling god. We were going so fast that it looked like he’d flashed into existence out of nowhere.

The ghosts screamed by him before I could tell if the god had sensed our passing, and we were too far away in an instant for craning my neck to do any good. Not that I could see anything with the masses of white, churning energy behind me, literally thousands upon thousands of ghosts, combining their strength to do this, but not, it seemed, entirely coordinated. Because the next time we saw a god—

“Auggghhhh!” I yelled as my party split, with half abruptly going one way and half another. Pritkin held onto me with a death grip, but Mircea, Alphonse, and the fey were jerked away. The witches somehow stayed on this side, however, holding tight and no longer looking quite so much like they were enjoying things.

“Get us back together,” I yelled, although I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. “Tell them!” I yelled at Hansen, who I still had by what I hoped was the scruff of his neck.

“I’m trying,” he said, sounding entirely too calm for the moment. Especially as buildings were whizzing past us now. Not all in a row, as would be the case in a moment, but close enough to indicate that we were passing through the city’s outskirts.

And unlike the rest of the world I’d seen so far, Vegas was... well, not intact. There were burnt-out buildings and empty lots with just a few ruins, misshapen by the occasional rainstorm that happened a few times a year and scattered by the wind. But there were other buildings still standing and even looking pretty solid.

Better than I’d have expected, although that wasn’t the point, Cassie!

That was the point, I thought, as I watched Mircea’s group trying to curve back toward us like people riding the world’s craziest motorcycle. They were all leaning this way as if attempting to influence direction, but it wasn’t enough. Maybe because the gods we’d passed had company.

I didn’t know if they were there in anticipation of an assault or just doing the usual hunt for food, but there were a lot of them. Most looked human, albeit multiple stories tall, and appeared as if they were the godly version of street people. Their robes were tattered and dirty, their faces slack and staring, and their eyes burned with a hunger I knew all too well.

And there were enough of them that Mircea’s crew were having to dodge in and out of the crowd, which had gathered around something that—

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, shit.

“Don’t look,” Pritkin said roughly into my ear, but it was too late. I’d already realized that it was another god on the ground, one who was only faintly moving, maybe because he’d been ganged up on. I stared as another crouched beside him, ripping into the prone body with ravenous savagery and pulling out what would have been intestines if the gods had any. Instead, wild pieces of power burst out in lightning-like filaments, causing a mad scramble by everyone in the vicinity.

“Hold on!” Pritkin shouted because the ghosts had all started to babble at once, making the roar around us increase despite the fact that we’d slowed way down.

His arms also tightened around me, probably with worry, but he didn’t need to. I wasn’t remotely tempted right now. Maybe because I was too far away from the feast, or maybe because they were hurting him, all those hungry gods now tearing into his body. They looked like a pride of lions savaging a gazelle, only the damned lions would have killed it first!

The gods hadn’t been so kind.

I finally looked away, horrified and sickened, and then screamed because we were about to plow into another man-shaped tower ourselves.

He was heading at a run for the feast and had cut across our path unexpectedly, causing us to dodge just in time and almost spill out onto the desert scrub in the process. But we were caught at the last minute by the mass of ghosts and thrown back up into the air, just in time to encounter another body that was somehow in our way. And this one we didn’t miss.

I had a half second to see a godly torso, bare except for a few livid welts that spoke of the savagery of god-on-god violence. And then we were plowing right through the middle of it, tearing past skin and bone and through blinding, brilliant energy that I could see all around me for a second but not touch. Not on the wrong side of the barrier of non-space, with its membrane separating us from our reality, if only barely…

For an instant, I felt it anyway, or at least an echo of it, all that burning, delicious, dangerous power—

And then we were out the other side and circling around in a wide parabola because that seemed to have freaked out the ghosts, too. But the god was either too mad or too crazed with hunger to have so much as paused, although he had prey closer than he realized—much closer. That little trick had almost thrown us out of non-space.

“No, no, no!” Hansen was yelling, I guessed to his fellow ghosts. “You can’t touch them! They’re too powerful, and their magic can pull us back in. You must avoid them!”

There was a rumble like thunder all around us as if the other ghosts were saying “No shit” all at once, or words to that effect. And then they started to straighten up, only another body was in the way. And this one definitely did not look human.

He was too late to benefit from the feast, as the fallen god had already disappeared, consumed by the crowd now fighting over scraps. So the hulking, fiery, massive thing beside us screamed its rage at the heavens as we circled him, mouths agape. Or at least mine was until I managed to tell my brain to shut it, but I didn’t have to tell anyone else.

For once, no one was saying anything, not even the quarreling ghosts who had gone dead silent. They seemed to know and fear this one, and why the hell not, I thought wildly. He looked like a goddamned Balrog.

It shouldn’t have surprised me. Gods were energy beings and could look like anything they chose. Zeus had demonstrated that often enough, seducing various women in a multitude of disguises, many of them not remotely human. And while those with some brains probably preferred human guise, as it made it marginally easier to interact with their followers, the rest...

Didn’t care. Very definitely didn’t, I thought, as a burning orange-red maw worthy of a primordial entity roared again in frustration and fury, causing the remaining feasters to jerk their heads up, and then abruptly head for the hills lest they be the next thing on the menu.

But while that helped us somewhat because nobody was running in this direction, the other half of our party was suddenly inundated with panicky gods. I sat there, my heart in my throat, and could do nothing but watch as Mircea and the rest desperately tried to find a path through the crowd and back to us. And failed.

Probably because the metaphysical space around them was being churned up like waves on the sea. Crashing ones, knocking them and their ghostly crew this way and that, like a boat trying to ride out a gale. Stray pieces of energy peppered them, power arced and snapped overhead, and godly limbs came within a hair’s breadth of smashing through them as they struggled to ride out the storm.

And as they flashed in and out of non-space, showing up for a second at a time before the ghostly horde pulled them back in.

“No,” I whispered, watching them flicker between regular, human-like coloring, which is how they looked on our side of the barrier, to the ghostly outlines they took on in the real world. And not once, but over and over again, as their ghostly host struggled to hold onto them while godly energy pulled and tugged and jerked the other way. And then my brain caught up to my horror, and I shook Hansen mercilessly. “No!”

“I know, I know! I’m telling them,” he said frantically, no longer calm because who the hell could be calm in this?

“Go down,” Pritkin said, suddenly grabbing Bodil and causing her to hiss at him. “Tell them to go down and find a place to hide on the ground. They’re too high, almost at the eye level of those bastards. They’re going to be seen!”

Bodil nodded, recovering fast, and her vision went distant again. And she must have gotten through to Mircea, whose metal gifts were also formidable, or maybe Hansen did to the ghosts, because the brilliantly white clouds bearing the others aloft abruptly started to descend. For a second, I thought we were okay, that this was going to work, and that everything was going to be—

“No!” I screamed before Pritkin’s arm tightened in reaction, enough to cut off my air.

All I could do was watch as the group of terrified people flew straight through the middle of a running god, who had changed direction at the last second when lunged at by another. He plowed into them, and worse, he was crackling with power from the other god’s attack. It was enough not only to send them back into real space but to pulverize them when they got here!

“No! That’s them! That’s them!” Enid screamed, pointing.

And I realized—they hadn’t gone through the god, as I’d initially thought. They’d gone through the gap between his legs. And came shooting out the other side, screaming and careening straight into us, hard enough to send both our parties falling and tumbling and hitting the earth, with explosions of ghostly power going on all around us to cushion the fall.

It seemed to have worked; we didn’t die despite hitting the ground really goddamned hard from what had to be six or eight stories up. I slammed into it with only a thin ghostly cushion and my own palms shielding me, hard enough to just stay there for a second, trying to get my breath back. And wondering if my wrists were broken, only to be distracted from the pain by something else.

Something much, much worse.

I had landed face down and was now staring at the darkened ground from a few inches away. It shouldn’t have been interesting; it was just cracked dirt littered with pieces of shattered concrete and a few hardy little weeds. Yet it was.

Because it wasn’t a ghostly outline.

We were back in the real world!

The others must have been trailing some of that godly energy they’d been hit with when they crashed into us, forcing us out of non-space. I stared around, my head reeling like an accident victim who’d just had an airbag go off in her face, and realized the truth. We might have survived the fall, but that didn’t mean we weren’t about to die of something else, because the Balrog had sensed something.

And even though the ghosts recovered faster than we did and jerked us all back into the Paths in a few scant seconds, it wasn’t fast enough.

The monstrous-looking thing was on top of us, snarling and growling with arms slashing through the air as if it could sense us, and maybe it could. I didn’t know all of their abilities from my brief time as one of them, but it sensed something, being on us before the clouds had even cleared. And they cleared pretty darned fast because Billy’s buddies were freaking cowards!

The ghostly host panicked and scattered on the wind, leaving us behind, teetering on the brink of the human world so closely that I could feel some of the heat coming off the goddamned Balrog. Who was now stomping about, looking for us. He didn’t appear to know what we were, but there was power in the area, and he wasn’t leaving until he tasted it.

And Æsubrand was about to help him.

I guessed the idea was that if he was going out, it wouldn’t be flat on his back with fear clawing at his belly. Which, okay, I could sympathize, but his alternative wasn’t going to work any better. But he apparently didn’t agree, rolling back to his feet before I could form the words to stop him, gripping his spear in one hand and his sword in the other, ready to throw down.

Or, at least, he was until the young fey discovered exactly how powerful a couple of master vamps could be. Mircea and Alphonse seized him and bore him to the ground, and struggle as much as he would, he couldn’t break that hold. Not that he wasn’t trying.

Do something! I mentally hissed at Bodil, who I guessed deputized Enid because she was closer. Or maybe for another reason.

If I’d had any doubts that the silver prince was smitten, they vanished when the beautiful half-fey calmed him with a single touch.

So great, one problem solved and one big fiery motherfucker of a problem left to deal with. And this one wasn’t getting bored and leaving. This one was doing the exact opposite of that, and maybe he had some rudimentary intelligence left, after all.

Because when the frantic search turned up exactly nothing, he paused suddenly and—

He’s coming in! Bodil warned me, and yeah. Got that, I thought, as a godly paw tore a hole in non-time and came through. At approximately the same moment that I grabbed a spark of the godly energy still spritzing around like fireflies and pulled us all out, just in time to witness a fiery red and black-encrusted god the size of a casino tower vanish into nothingness.

But it was a nothingness that could still see the real world if he was close enough to the border, so I didn’t waste time.

“Run!” I breathed, scrambling to my feet.

“What?” Zara asked, her eyes huge, as I guessed she’d been distracted.

“Run!” I screamed, and we ran across an empty lot and behind a burned-out hulk of a building, which must have been built better than most, as it was still standing.

“What the—”

“Silence!”

“Shut up!”

That was Mircea and Pritkin, back-to-back, taking charge and pointing out the obvious as a furious, tricked god tore back out of non-space and started staring around.

Rebar, I thought dizzily, focusing on a few twisted pieces sticking out of a mostly missing concrete column. This was probably a parking garage at some point when, you know, people had cars. I hadn’t seen any since we arrived, not that I’d had much time to notice, but if anybody needed a place to park, Vegas could still oblige.

“Cassie!?” Purple Hair grabbed me and had Zara clap a hand over her mouth so fast that she only got the one word out.

Rebar and concrete had stood up to hurricanes before, so I didn’t know why I was surprised that this example had managed to do the same to the Apocalypse. But I was staring at it as if transfixed while a demon-looking thing that wasn’t a demon, that was far, far worse, tore around the landscape. And then roared, ear-piercingly loud, probably alerting everyone else that something was interesting here, right here, just over here, before beginning to throw stuff around.

A car—and oh, look, they had one at least—sailed by overhead, with the rusted-out undercarriage blotting out the moonlight for a second. Then it was gone, and Hansen was back, looking as apologetic as a stump of a man could. And I grabbed him, and we were suddenly back in non-space again and moving.

And it seemed that my feet were smarter than my brain, which was still waxing lyrical about the advantages of good construction, even while we fled through the white night. But this time, our ghostly army was nowhere to be seen. Nothing was except for pale outlines of buildings and a barrier of—oh.

So that was where all the cars had gone.

I stared upward at an absolute wall of burnt-out cars towering over us for what had to be four stories before we fled through the middle of it. We didn’t have time to go around, and the only thing that mattered now was putting space between us and the asshole back there. Because he might be an idiot, but he was a loud idiot, and others weren’t so stupid.

And they were expecting us.

I didn’t know if Jonas’s plan was going to work because we’d just let everyone know that something interesting was happening in the city. But something interesting was happening outside, too, as the cavalry came to the rescue in the force of a dozen loud explosions from seemingly all sides. Maybe because they were on all sides, as all of our allies attacked at once, giving the gods more to think about than some asshole having a temper tantrum.

At least, I sincerely hoped so.

I got a flash of Bodil’s black eyes in my mental vision and then of Jonas’s resolute face. He knows we arrived, she whispered. I managed to get that much through. He says to hurry.

“Then let’s not… disappoint the man,” I panted, although I didn’t know why I was so badly out of breath.

And then I did when we all tumbled back into real space the next moment, with a very apologetic Hansen looking at me with those huge eyes.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he said frantically. “But I can’t do it alone, and you’re not powerful enough to help me—”

“Help you do what?”

“Keep all of you skimming along the surface of real space. It takes too much energy. You either need to go farther in or stay out. But this won’t work, not with just the two of us.”

“But we can’t see where we’re going if we’re farther in!”

“I know! I know! I’m sorry!”

Goddamnit.

Chapter Thirty-One

I paused for a moment to take stock while we all tried to remember how to breathe. We’d left the car barrier behind, which from this side had clearly been put there deliberately—to keep the gods out fifty years ago? Or to keep us out now?

I didn’t know, but it was solid, the pieces having been welded together into an impressive partition. It linked up with other stretches of “wall” for as far as I could see in the darkness on either side, made up of anything that could be scavenged from the ruined sections of the city. That included pieces of broken buildings, ripped-up sidewalks, concrete offramps and barriers, light posts, roofing, an upside-down semi-truck and trailer, and what looked like part of a blue pool liner, now discolored and droopy, half-melted by fire and yet still bearing the imprint of a cheerful-looking, green turtle.

And what was inside said partition... well, that was different.

Ringed by a desert wasteland, a barrier of burnt-out junk, and a pile of collapsing buildings was something that, while not a paradise, was closer than anything I’d seen so far. It started as a shanty town, which was what we were currently on the edge of, with little aluminum, plywood, and tarp-covered huts and disintegrating tents forming a maze for what looked like miles. But in the distance was something far less expected.

I couldn’t see it well at first, just a smear of brilliant lights above the wonky smokestacks of the makeshift town. But Mircea showed it to me, with my vision abruptly zooming ahead as if I was using high-powered binoculars, ones I didn’t need because vampire eyes were better any day. And gave me glimpses of glittering fountains, manicured gardens, and whole, untouched buildings, many with their original signs still in place.

Palms likewise still swayed slightly in the night breeze, backlit by orange and pink explosions from our allies on the other side of the city. People still moved around, although in horse-drawn carriages instead of cars, as I guessed the gasoline had given out a long time ago. And a neon cocktail glass half a story high still lit up the night, although whether there were any drinks on offer, I couldn’t tell.

I also couldn’t tell if there were any gods around, which I should have been able to if they were the size of the ones outside. But were they? Would they expend the energy if they weren’t worried about fighting for survival or trying to impress?

I didn’t know, but no fifty-foot-tall giants were striding about the landscape. In fact, the city looked weirdly peaceful, and except for the horses, some of which were now rearing in fright at the loud noises, almost normal. Which was the most obscene thing I thought I’d seen yet.

Then, a wave of dizziness hit me hard enough that everything skewed wildly. But Mircea didn’t steady it, maybe because he wasn’t in charge of what was happening, after all. It seemed that he hadn’t lent me his skill so much as I’d taken it.

I’d done that sort of thing once or twice before, and he’d done it to me, but this time was different. This time, I wasn’t just borrowing abilities. I glanced at Mircea, disoriented and off-kilter, and saw my own face looking back at me.

It was his features—dark, expressive brows, whiskey-colored eyes, high cheekbones, and sensual lips—down to the livid scar that even vampire healing abilities hadn’t been able to touch. But to my confused brain, they registered as mine. And when I tore my gaze away, focusing on the city again to try to sort out my messed-up head, it flickered back and forth and shook at the edges because I was suddenly seeing through three pairs of eyes spaced too far apart.

“Dante’s,” Pritkin said, pointing at a livid hulk on the horizon, just peeking out from behind another building. But mine and Mircea’s lips moved at the same time.

And then the weird, triple-vision steadied, and I was staring at a shadow moving behind the curtains separating the expansive balcony of my penthouse from the living room. I couldn’t see who was casting it, but somebody was awake. And looking so close that it felt like I could reach out and—

“Yeah, but how do we get there?” Alphonse said, jolting me back to myself. “The damned ghosts have deserted us!”

“Are they coming back?” Someone asked; I think it was Zara.

I looked at Hansen, who I was still carrying around like a clutch bag, and belatedly let him go. “Are they?” I croaked, surprised to hear my own voice emanating from my lips.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “If Billy Joe was here, there’d be a better chance. They listen to him—”

“But I sent him to Rhea.”

It was a real bitch, but that was the way my life was going lately. I’d sent Billy to try to get the information we needed by just having a chat with my heir. Or, if Pritkin’s incubus had it right and she couldn’t see him without her clairvoyance, not being a necromancer, he was to scope the place out and let us know what we were walking into. The ghosts were supposed to take us to rendezvous with him, but so much for that idea.

As usual, we were doing this the hard way.

“We’re on our own,” I guessed, and Hansen didn’t deny it.

“Well, this is just great!” Alphonse exploded. “How the hell are we supposed to get there now?”

“Walk?” Purple Hair said dryly. “It’s not that far—”

“You know damned well what I meant!” Alphonse said, with enough menace in his tone to have her reach for her wand.

“He’s right,” Topknot announced, pushing her hand down. “It’ll take hours to walk that far, and our allies won’t be able to keep up the attack for anything like that long.”

“And those bastards will spot us sure as hell,” Butch Cut agreed. “As soon as we get anywhere close.”

“Maybe not.” That was Enid, who was surveying the shanty town with narrowed eyes. “These are the servants’ quarters, housing for those who do the work the gods can’t be bothered to. Cooking, cleaning, errand running—”

“So what?” Alphonse demanded.

“They’re gods,” Æsubrand added. “They may not need any of that.”

“Well, they need something,” Enid pointed out. “They’re protecting these people, or they wouldn’t have lasted this long, and feeding them, too. Or allowing them to feed themselves,” she added, looking at a nearby, struggling patch of garden.

“We call them the Craven,” Gray Curls said and spat on the ground. “They’re the ones who decided that worshipping the gods was better than death, and look what they received in return. Survey the bounty their bootlicking bought them!”

“Some do better than this,” Butch Cut said. “Those who live in the city proper—”

“Those who live under the knife, you mean! With a blade constantly at their throats!”

“The gods keep them around for ego,” Zara explained to me, “and as an enticement for the demons desperate enough for a power boost to risk coming to Earth.”

“Staking out gazelles at the watering hole,” Pritkin murmured.

The gray head nodded. “Something like that. A lot of the lesser sort can’t travel the hells or don’t dare with the war raging there. They prefer for their prey to come to them.”

“The demons who venture here desperate for power keep the idiot squad outside fed,” Butch Cut added. “Along with any humans who run afoul of their masters and get thrown over the wall. In return, the Mindless protect the gods who matter against attacks by resistance groups like the Circle. To get to the big shots, you have to wade through all that.” She hiked a thumb at the chaos behind us.

“In other words, humans are meat,” Zara said bitterly. “Kept to raise the next generation and keep this whole nightmare going.”

“The war party wanted to attack the gods while the demon wars were keeping them occupied,” Topknot added. “Trying to make this world too risky for them to bother with having it as their headquarters.”

“Sounds good to me,” Alphonse commented.

“Does it?” Zara snapped. “And what do you think will happen to these people, and all the rest like them, when there are no curbs on what the Mindless can do anymore? As soon as the gods who matter leave, those monsters will run amok, killing everything and everyone they find. But did the war party ever think about that?”

“They want to go down fighting,” Æsubrand said, fingering his spear. “It’s understandable.”

“It’s folly! Getting people into safe zones before the damned gods move into the hells and leave us to the tender mercies of their idiots was the only way to survive!”

“There is no way to survive this,” he said, looking around, his face expressionless. “There is only death here. Can’t you smell it?”

“That’s the latrine,” Gray Curls said dryly. “Plumbing stopped working a while ago. They mostly use open trenches now. Probably why half this place has dysentery, but the gods don’t care. They can’t catch it—”

“So you’re saying we just walk in?” Purple Hair, who had been growing more and more restless at the history lesson, interrupted to ask Enid. “Act like we own the place?”

“No. We act like we serve the place,” said the woman who had spent her whole life doing exactly that. “Nobody pays any attention to servants. They often don’t look at us twice, any more than you would a chair or table. It’s just there to serve its function and requires no notice unless it’s malfunctioning. Otherwise, it may as well be invisible.

“Just like we will be.”

“Yeah, except they’re expecting us,” Alphonse pointed out. “And a lot of us don’t look like servants—”

“And what does a servant look like?” she challenged, eyes flashing.

They continued to argue, but I wasn’t listening anymore because Mircea was suddenly in my head. What just happened? he asked, sounding as shaken as I felt.

Possibly because we weren’t really all that separate even now. It was better than a minute ago; listening to the others had drawn me back into myself enough to tell that I had my own body and pair of eyes. But while I heard his words in my head, my lips moved at the same time that he spoke, as if they were my own.

I don’t know.

That is... unfortunate. I hoped you had done something—

Does that mean you didn’t?

No. Perhaps Mage Pritkin—

It wasn’t me, Pritkin’s voice echoed in my head as clearly as Mircea’s, despite him not having that gift. But I wasn’t sure that who originally owned a talent mattered anymore.

Then who was it? Mircea rasped.

Nobody—or all of us, depending on how you look at it. I was afraid that something like this might happen.

Afraid of what? I would like an explanation before we proceed any further!

As would I. That was Bodil.

Not now, I told her.

Yes, now. This doesn’t merely concern the three of you. We’re all at risk if the spell you share is beginning to run out of control.

What? Who said anything about that?

He was thinking it, her head nodded slightly toward Pritkin. I cannot read the other so well. She sized Mircea up. You have an... unusual mind.

Run out of control how? Mircea demanded, ignoring that and looking at Pritkin.

That is the problem, Pritkin said. I don’t know. Earlier, the spell was simply cutting out at random moments or not available at a distance, which should not have mattered to a soul bond. We were in England, and you were here, but the bond should have nonetheless connected us on a metaphysical level. I assumed the reason it did not was due to the missing element, namely my other half, but—

But what happened just now was not simply cutting out, Mircea said.

No.

Then what the devil was it?

Pritkin’s jaw tightened. I just indicated that I don’t know. Spells usually work, or they don’t, but occasionally, one will... go wrong. Morph into something unintended, as you should know.

Mircea scowled at the memory of the geis he’d had put on me as a child, which had been meant to keep me safe. But it was also meant to allow him a certain amount of control over me and my gifts. It was a choice he’d come to regret, as it was designed for humans, which I was not.

And in the struggle for control between a demigoddess and a centuries-old master vampire, the spell had gone crazy and almost taken him along with it.

Yes, but there’s usually a trigger for that sort of thing, Pritkin added, hearing my thoughts.

A trigger like me absorbing a couple of gods’ worth of energy, I said grimly. I should have known that would come back to bite me!

But you don’t have it now, Mircea said. You used it up—

But she had it for a while, Pritkin reminded us. Long enough for that much power to have done something to the spell. Something that could endanger us all. He looked at me. Do we abort?

For a moment, I thought I hadn’t heard him right. What?

Do we go back? he repeated as if that was in any way possible. Before this gets worse and endangers the mission—

How does this get any worse? I asked, gesturing at the sounds of battle that were loud enough now that people were coming out of their “homes,” looking sleepy and staring about in fear. There are no second chances! We all knew that!

Then we go now, Bodil said.

That is not your call, Mircea told her tightly.

Nor is it yours, vampire. She looked at me. Choose.

I was starting to hate that word, I thought, and glanced at Mircea and Pritkin to see how they were taking her decision to discount their input. But they were looking at each other as if still deep in conversation, one that, judging by their expressions, wasn’t going well.

You’re blocking them? I asked, surprised that even Bodil could manage that.

We need to talk.

Now?

Yes, now. Cassie... She paused and looked at me with an odd expression. What do you think the rest of us are doing here?

I looked back at her, bewildered. Trying to reach Rhea—

No. The only person who must reach your heir is you. We are here to die for you if need be, to allow you to succeed. You are the only one who can save our worlds, so you are the only one who matters.

That’s ridiculous! We don’t even know—

No, that is the truth. Everyone knows it, but you. She looked around and then spoke aloud before I could stop her. “Cassie is confused about who must survive this and reach her heir. Is it you?” she asked Enid.

The beautiful redhead looked startled, maybe because she’d been in conversation with the witches about something. But then her eyes focused past Bodil and onto me. “No.”

“Who then? You?” Bodil challenged Æsubrand.

“No. Although... I would prefer to live.” But the silver prince wasn’t looking at me when he said it. He was looking at Enid.

“As would we all. But our survival isn’t required. Is it?” she asked Alphonse, who was scowling.

“You know we already settled this,” he said, surprising me. “As long as I get to kill that rat fink Tony first—”

“Then is it you?” she demanded of the witches, who stared back at her impatiently, all five of them.

“You know why we’re here,” Zara said.

“Yes, or I would not have permitted you to come,” Bodil replied with the casual authority of a queen.

“Cassie must survive,” Pritkin said. “We all understand this.”

“Do we?” Bodil asked Mircea.

“You know perfectly well we do—”

“Then who chooses?”

“Chooses what?” Alphonse asked.

Then Bodil shocked everybody by sending them a precis of our unspoken conversation, all at once, like a download straight to the brain. I saw several shudder, heard one of the witches hiss, and Alphonse staggered back a step as if slugged and then cursed. “Don’t do that!” he snarled. And then he realized what had been sent, and his eyes focused on me. “You only noticed this now?”

“It only just happened,” I began, but Bodil cut me off.

“Who chooses whether we continue or not?” she asked again.

Everybody looked at me.

“Wait. When was this decided?” I said. “Because we don’t know that I can use the Pythian power if Rhea is now Pythia. Or that it’s still able to come to either of us at this point. And if it isn’t, I’m not any more important than anybody else—”

“We discussed it last night while you were talking to dead people,” Bodil said. “And your ability to use the Pythian power is irrelevant. If you can’t, you will find another way home.”

“What other way?” I asked, looking at her like she was crazy because she might be. “Do you think I would be risking all this if I had another way?”

“I didn’t say that you had one; I said you will find one. The rest of us won’t.”

“And you know this how?”

Bodil gave me another look I didn’t understand. “I have been in your head for days now,” she finally said. “And it is a strange place. You summoned gods in Stratford, not to use them for power or to help yourself, but to allow you to rescue your friend. You afterward fought the Silver Circle to defend the lives of witches who had recently tried to kill you and took on a trio of gods, only to give away the power you obtained in a bid to save us all.

“And right now, this task might be easier for you alone, but you brought us with you without so much as a moment’s question, for you will not leave us behind. People you only met a few days ago, and in my case, who immediately imprisoned you!”

“What is this?” I said, frowning.

“Even now, right now, you could abandon the mission, take power from one of those creatures out there, and return to your time as the only god standing. You could complete your mother’s fondest wish of ruling all and ruling alone, seated above the world on a golden throne! Nimue would have taken that chance in a heartbeat; Aeslinn risked everything for less; Caedmon has spent the whole war maneuvering to expand his influence and his lands, setting himself up to rule all once the fighting is done. But you...

“The very idea appalls and distresses you so much that your entire soul shudders away from it. Instead, you took time in the midst of unimaginable trauma to help encourage another enemy,” she nodded at Æsubrand, “when he was at his lowest—”

“He isn’t my enemy,” I said, staring at her. “None of you—”

Bodil laughed. With bombs going off in all directions now and a panicked crowd of people piling their belongings onto their backs or running past without them, she stood there and laughed. She was mad, I thought, goosebumps breaking out on my skin.

“Not mad, just surprised,” she said, shaking her head. “As I have been since I met you. And no, you don’t have any enemies, do you? The dark mages follow you as well as the light, although you killed some of both recently. You bring zombies and demons, witches and mages together, along with a host of spirits, and think nothing of it. And they follow you equally without thought—”

“They follow me because they’re desperate!”

“They follow because nothing has happened for fifty years but us dying,” Mircea said harshly, his dark eyes suddenly boring into mine. “Then, in two days, you changed everything.”

“I didn’t change it!”

“If not you, then who?”

“You’re a leader, Cassie,” Zara said, a rueful smile on her lips. “Whether you like it or not. So, lead. What do you want us to do?”

I stared at them, feeling the ground shifting underneath me because this was my worst nightmare. I couldn’t do this, especially not now, stranded on the outskirts of the city with who knew what kind of dangers between me and Rhea. And with the only spell that might help me suddenly going haywire!

I wanted to go home. I wanted to crawl under the covers of my big round bed at Dante’s—my Dante’s—not whatever the gods had left of it. I wanted Tami to bring me some little initiates to read a bedtime story to, or have one of my acolytes stop by with hot chocolate and some ridiculously huge éclair because the roly-poly grandmas were always trying to fatten me up, or have Pritkin arrive for some alone time that wasn’t in a cramped shower in a goddamned war zone.

That was it; that was everything I wanted in the world. And the path to it was right there. I looked at Dante’s, now backlit by a strange green haze, from whichever group was spending their lives in that direction to buy me time. Time that I was wasting, as usual!

So, I finally did what I should have done ages ago.

And womaned the fuck up.

Bodil smiled at me gently. “When I first met you, I thought you would be the death of me, and I may still be proven right. But I believe that you will be the savior of our worlds if anyone will. So, Cassie Palmer, what do we do?”

“Check the tents for clothing, the nicer sort, the kind that servants might wear,” I said hoarsely and looked at Enid. “We’re going to walk right into Dante’s like we belong there.”

“And how do we get there in time?” Alphonse asked, his eyes narrowing.

“The hard way.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

This isn’t the hard way,” Alphonse hissed at me a few moments later. “It’s the creepy way!”

And yeah, it was. But it was also the only thing that might buy us enough time to reach our objective before our allies gave out. Assuming we made it that far.

“What was that?” Purple Hair said, jumping slightly as something brushed against her.

It was the same something that was falling all around us now, like tiny, twinkling Christmas lights or ephemeral fireflies. I didn’t know if there hadn’t been any similar creatures closer to the barrier or if the light from the human world had masked them. But it wasn’t doing so now, and they were everywhere, glittering in the dim white nothingness like a sparse rain.

“Ghosts, or what is left of them when they run out of power,” I said, taking point along with Hansen. “These are the Paths of the Dead, and they’re the only ones here.”

“Then why is it so noisy?” Mircea asked, staring around.

He didn’t see anything, as we were no longer skimming the surface of reality, not having the power to hold ourselves there. As a result, we couldn’t even see the shanty town anymore, with its wonky structures, narrow alleys, and thousands of smokestacks. Instead, we were much farther inside the Paths, trusting Hansen’s skill to guide us the rest of the way.

The good news was that this place stood outside time, meaning that not a moment would pass while we trudged the long distance into town. The bad was that Mircea was right: it was noisy as heck in here. Screams, some of which cut off abruptly, explosions, moans, and groans filled the air, some fairly close, others so distant that my ears strained to hear them, but all were strange.

It was usually eerily silent here.

But not today, which made me terrified that a god had found his or her way in to feast on the fallen. Apollo had done that once, not that he’d had a choice after me, Pritkin, and a few thousand rakshasas banished him from the human realm. But it seemed unlikely in this case.

The ghosts who fell here were almost entirely out of power. The only creatures who could be bothered to pursue them, or who even knew how, were others like them: stronger, fatter ghosts who came here to hunt. And those ghosts hunted silently, while the little remnants they pursued were too senseless to evade or even to scream.

Even humans would make a better meal for the gods, and one considerably easier to get. Yet the Balrog-looking thing outside the walls had entered without hesitation, knowing both the way in and the way out despite having no ghost to help him. As if he’d been here before...

Damn it, I didn’t need this!

Or this, I thought, when Hansen stopped and just hovered there, looking confused.

“What?” I said.

“N-nothing. I’m just trying to remember…

“Remember what? I thought you knew the way?”

“Y-yes, but it’s been a while. Nobody comes in here anymore, or at least, I don’t. There are things that prowl the white expanse…”

“He doesn’t know where we are?” Pritkin asked sharply.

“He’s adjusting course,” I said, hoping that was true.

“What course?” Alphonse demanded. “There’s no damned street signs, or landmarks, or anything in here! Don’t tell me that little fucker is lost!”

“I’m not a little fucker,” Hansen said indignantly. “And he’s welcome to try if he thinks he can do better!”

“None of us can do better,” I said soothingly, or as much as possible with frazzled nerves. “We’re relying on you—”

“I know that!” Hansen looked slightly panicked now, which didn’t help my blood pressure.

“What’s he saying?” Alphonse demanded.

“I think we would all like to know,” Mircea agreed.

“He’s… reorienting himself—”

“He’s lost! Son of a bitch!” That, of course, was Alphonse.

Then it got worse.

“What is happening?” I asked Hansen, who looked as spooked as I felt when a harsh wind suddenly swept over us, hard enough almost to rock me off my feet.

“I... don’t know...”

“Whaddya mean, you don’t know?” That was Alphonse, only it sounded like he’d heard what Hansen said, which was ridiculous. I hadn’t translated it yet. But neither of them seemed to notice that. “This is your world—”

“It is not my world! I fought to stay out of here and succeeded. This place gives me the creeps—”

“Said the ghost!”

“Exactly! You have the protection of a body. We ghosts only have whatever shell we can afford the power to project. And here, it’s often not enough. They eat you,” he added, with his big eyes glancing around nervously and his voice lowering. “Swarms of them, tearing away bits of your power until there’s nothing left. Until you’re entirely gone with even the memory of you faded from the world—”

“What eats you?” That was Æsubrand, trying to shove Enid behind him, only she wasn’t having it. Maybe because she wasn’t a damsel in distress, and her magic was more likely to help us here than his sword.

“Everyone, these days! Ghosts, demons, the occasional god. Gods,” Hansen added bitterly. “More like vultures preying on anything they can find. And that’s if you’re lucky—”

“Lucky?” Mircea said before Alphonse could. “How is that lucky?”

Everyone else looked very interested in that answer, too, but Hansen suddenly realized they could hear him. And appeared weirded out, having spent who knew how many years invisible and unheard. “What… how?” he whispered.

“I am picking up your voice in Cassie’s head and sending it out to the others,” Bodil said as if that was in any way normal. “It is faster than her constantly translating for you, and we may need speed.”

“Why do we need speed?” Mircea said. “No time is passing!”

“For exactly the reason you fear, vampire. The battle is here, as well.”

“No, not the battle,” Hansen whispered. “But a battle, yes. HE’s here,” he added, and the emphasis gave the innocuous little pronoun all sorts of terrible connotations.

“Who? Zeus?” I asked worriedly.

“No, not the chief vulture!” Hansen said contemptuously. “HIM. The one who watches. The one who sends his legions out to hunt. The one who rules this realm as if born to it—”

“There’s no one born to it—”

“No, but he acts as if he is! And he has enlisted others, oh, yes, a multitude of followers. They practically worship him, although he isn’t a god, and help him, too. No one knows exactly what he is, but he craves power, more and more, and sends his allies out to get it for him. And if you’re unlucky enough to have them come across you, well then—”

He cut off abruptly, sounding strangled. I wasn’t sure if the others heard that, too, but it kind of looked like it. Enid was pale, and the witches had clumped together closely enough to look like one body with multiple heads.

“Well, then? Well, then, what? What the fuck happens?” Alphonse all but roared. And then shut up abruptly when the noise, which had escalated along with the wind, suddenly cut out. “Shit,” he whispered.

“Let’s move,” Hansen said, and all but fled into the distance, causing the rest of us to have to run to keep up.

And run we did, because we did not want to meet HIM. But somebody wanted to meet us, that was certain. In the stillness behind us came a new sound, first distant and hard to hear but rapidly drawing closer.

Very rapidly, I thought, looking over my shoulder as everyone else was now doing. But seeing nothing to account for the low, roaring, moaning cry that quickly became so loud that it shook the space around us like an earthquake in the air. And then I saw them, but far too late: an absolute mass of ghosts, stretching across the horizon like a boiling cloud of white with grayish faces popping out here or there like flashes of lightning.

And I guess the rest saw them in my mind, or in what Bodil was sending, because—

“Shit!” Somebody said, and yeah. The damned thing looked like the mass that had carried us to Vegas, but I didn’t think it was. Because this one was angry, with some of the ghost heads snapping and biting the air, and because Hansen was screaming and trying to flee, but not fast enough.

I don’t think anything could have been fast enough as the great mass swooped down on us like a storm, breaking over our heads in an instant, and this time, there was no gentle transition. A cloud of ghosts snatched us up so fast that a few of our legs were still running in the air; it was like falling into the midst of a tornado and being swept away, helpless and thrashing. And screaming—suddenly, we were the ones making noise, not that anybody could hear it over the roar.

And I screamed with all the rest, having no idea what the hell this was, how to break free of it, or where the ghost squad was taking us in such a damned hurry.

But they were tearing over the landscape at what would have been a terrifying pace, only Alphonse was right, there were no landmarks to show the speed. Just boiling faces yelling at me on all sides until I wanted to cover my ears, only I couldn’t because hands had grasped my arms and legs and coiled around my torso. And I guessed that was true of everyone because I caught glimpses of Pritkin fighting, Alphonse thrashing, and Mircea lying there stoically, because we might need our strength.

Then we were dumped out onto a hard surface, just as abruptly as we’d been grabbed, and I looked up wildly to see—

Oh, no.

“Cassie—” That was Pritkin because he’d seen him, too.

Is that who I think it is? Mircea’s voice rang in my head.

Who do you think it is? Bodil asked because she recovered fast. Everyone else was looking disoriented, staggering about or lying on the ground with me and appearing vaguely green, although the latter could have been from the weird lighting. It was different here, maybe because of all the ghosts who were boiling over the top of us like an angry sky.

Or maybe because of that, I thought, as the eyes of the man who turned on us abruptly glowed brilliant green with necro magic.

My father, I finally answered Bodil, as the skinny blond surveyed us without favor.

He looked the same as the first time I’d seen him, in Stuart-era clothing and a floppy hat. There was a rag at his neck pretending to be a cravat, buckles on his shoes, and a rip in one of the stockings trying to hide a pair of skinny, hairy legs because he’d never cared much about clothes, even when they were part of a disguise. A disguise that he was about to use on a trip back in time in his own bid to change history, and where he would shortly meet a pissed-off Agnes and me on November 5, 1605.

Holy shit.

“Here,” Pritkin whispered, handing me the scarf he was wearing and had been using to keep from breathing in too much sand as we jounced along in the “car.” I’d had a similar one but had lost it somewhere, and quickly pulled this one over my head. Roger Palmer couldn’t be allowed to recognize me.

This was my present, but his past, a far distant past in which he didn’t even have a daughter. If he saw me now and then recognized me in 1605, it could… well, I didn’t know what it could do, but probably nothing good! In the worst-case scenario, it could change time while I was in the midst of trying to change time, which might result in my never getting here in the first place, and this future solidifying forever.

And suddenly, all the possible ways that could happen rushed into my mind, jostling each other for room and eclipsing everything else until I shoved them forcibly back out again. Only they didn’t go far. They just stayed on the edges of my consciousness, muttering fiercely, and damn, my head hurt, I thought, staring relentlessly downward and hoping Dad would pass on by.

Pass by? Bodil said, understandably confused. Why would you want that? Can he not help us—

No! That was all three of us, Mircea, Pritkin, and I, because we were the only ones who—

Only we weren’t, were we?

Fuck! Mircea said and jumped Alphonse, who had known Dad when he worked for Tony the Bastard.

“What’s all this, then?” Dad asked as the two vampires wrestled about.

“Hey! Hey, I know y—” Alphonse began right before his master’s master slugged him in the mouth.

And this time, Mircea wasn’t holding back. Blood bloomed in the air, and Alphonse went down and stayed down. Mircea had been a warrior before he was a diplomat, and it showed, although Alphonse’s inertia was probably more because Mircea had had a chance to get a mental lock on him.

Very interesting mind, Bodil murmured in my head.

“What the hell are these… people… doing here?” Dad asked tetchily. “You know, this is all I need right now!” The ghost cloud started talking at once, sounding like a great rumble of thunder, which Dad didn’t seem to like any more than I did. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he yelled, flapping his hat at them. “You all drive me crazy!”

To my surprise, they shut up. Except for one ghost, a very familiar sight in a flowered housecoat and an old trench coat, who was one of the personal spirits, for lack of a better term, that Dad kept close to himself. Although why he did, I’d never been entirely certain.

She was mad as a hatter, only that was being mean to hatters.

The old bag lady, or so she’d been before Dad picked her up somewhere, kept flitting around his head. “I found them,” she sing-songed. “I saw them first. Didn’t I, Buddy?”

I didn’t know who she meant until another form coalesced out of the cloud and drifted downward. Although “drifted” was hella misleading because it made him sound like an angel, which he definitely wasn’t. “Buddy” appeared to be the ghost of something very much non-human, or else the gods had done something far worse to him than to Hansen.

“Augghhh!” Enid scrambled back in horror because he was closest to her, and I guessed she was still seeing the spirit world through Bodil’s mind. “What are you?”

Poltergeist, my brain threw up the word, although I had no idea from where.

“Poltergeist,” Daisy the Bag Lady said, glancing at him. “Oh, stop that,” she snacked him on the slavering snout he’d manifested to go with the rest of the hideous, mutated body. I supposed it was his best attempt at a werewolf, only I’d never seen any that looked like that.

But her rebuke had an effect, and a second later, he morphed back into a pudgy, florid-faced ghost wearing an old-fashioned, three-piece suit that was straining over his not-inconsiderable belly.

“Sorry, m’dear,” he said to Enid. “Forgot I was in character. I used to tread the boards back in my day. But I must say, it’s much easier to get into costume now, eh?”

He elbowed her and was immediately skewered by Æsubrand’s spear.

“Oh, ho, it’s like that, is it?” he asked, winking at him. And floated off the spear as if it was nothing, which, for him, it was. “Understood, understood.” He doffed his homburg. “My apologies, dear lady, I didn’t mean to frighten—”

“Would someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Dad shrieked.

“We found ‘em out by the border in Pigville,” somebody said from the cloud.

“Don’t call it that,” Daisy admonished.

“Then what would you suggest we call it?” Somebody else asked. “When I had my farm, I kept pigs in better conditions than that!”

“I don’t know; it has its charms—”

“What charms?”

“I used to live under a bridge,” she said. “They have walls.”

“If somebody doesn’t start making sense—” Dad seethed.

“Like I said, we found ‘em in Pigville, only they wasn’t,” the first voice said again. “They was here, on our side, and pretty far in, too.”

“Oh, were they?” Dad seethed, surveying us. “Come to spy on me, have you? You know what I told McIntyre would happen the next time he tried that shit? If you don’t, you’re about to find out!”

“The Hole, the Hole, the Hole,” the cloud started chanting. “Throw them in the—”

“Oh, here now. Is that really necessary?” Buddy asked—too late, as we were already being snatched up and carried off toward another thing that was not supposed to be here at the end of the world, namely a small encampment. Dad had told me once that he’d camped out in the Paths of the Dead, but I hadn’t quite believed him.

I believed him now.

And he wasn’t exactly depriving himself. A much nicer tent than the ones back in Pigville, the kind with multiple rooms, was sitting square in the middle of nothing, along with a folding chair, a long, scarred Formica table, a dorm-style fridge with a spitting talisman on top of it—for power, presumably—and a camp stove. There was also a mountain of magical junk off to one side, some of it still emitting tiny bursts of power, which was soon fighting with other half-dead magical objects, which the cloud began raining down on top of it.

“Not now!” My Father said as junk began bouncing all over the encampment. “Damn it, I’m not picking up after you lot again!”

“What is that?” Enid asked, probably able to feel the power in the mountain from here.

Dad was a garbage man, I told her silently, courtesy of Bodil. He used to decommission stuff like that to harvest whatever remained of its power.

Why?

To sell. Power is money, or it used to be. I don’t know what he’s doing with it now, but he eventually scraped together enough to make a talisman capable of holding his and Mother’s souls when—you know, it’s a long story.

She just stared at me.

And then screamed when we were jerked around the side of the mountain to where a violently purple fissure lay, boiling with magical energy and spitting out tongues of flame yards high. “In the Hole, in the Hole, in the Hole—”

Can you hear me? Mircea asked urgently, and for a second, I thought he was talking to me.

Until Hansen answered. “Y-yes?”

“Good. Then say what I tell you.”

And I guessed the little ghost agreed because he floated up in Father’s face and began boiling with power. To the point that the chanting abruptly died down, and Dad’s narrowed baby blues focused on him. “Oh, look,” he said sarcastically. “We have a volunteer to help fuel the spell.”

“You have no such thing.” And it was bizarre, but although it was Hansen’s amorphous non-face and stumpy body, it was Mircea’s intonation. To the point that I could almost see the contemptuous curl of his lip.

“What happened to you?” Daisy gasped, taking in the state of our guide.

“Exactly what you think,” Hansen said. “And the same or worse will happen to all of you should our mission fail.”

“What mission?” Dad demanded sourly.

“They’re dressed like the gods’ servants!” a voice from the cloud said. “In those stupid tunics they all wear. Don’t believe them!”

“We’re dressed like people who want to sneak into the city under their noses,” Hansen retorted in his own voice before Mircea got him back under control. “Have you not heard of the great spirit, Billy Joe? For it is he who has sent us, and we are on a mission of vast scope and import.”

“Import? What’s that?” Daisy whispered to Buddy. “Didn’t anybody tell him? Trade has kinda died down.”

“It means importance!” Buddy huffed. “Were you raised in a barn?”

“No, but I slept in one a time or two.”

“Shut it,” Dad said and scowled at Hansen. “So, I take it you brought them here?”

“Indeed. To rendezvous with the army my master is assembling to take on the gods.”

At that, the cloud burst out laughing, and even Dad’s lips twitched.

“Oh. Is he?”

“Yes, a course of action that you are currently interfering with, and thus aiding their cause. Our host is legion—”

“Your ‘host’ is a bunch of lunatics if they’re the ones who went screaming through here not long ago,” Buddy said. “Great lot of lummoxes, running into people and knocking things over—”

“What things?” Hansen snapped, and that sounded more like his own voice again. “You’re ghosts. You don’t have anything!”

“More than you, remnant,” Buddy said, offended.

“Ooh, we have a camp! Can I show them around the camp before you feed ‘em to the Hole?” Daisy asked Dad.

“What is this ‘Hole’?” Æsubrand demanded, staring at it.

“Oh, that’s where we keep all the energy we’ve saved up for the spell—” she began before Dad clapped a hand over her mouth and stuffed her under his arm.

“We care not for your plans,” Hansen intoned, back to Mircea’s voice. “We have our own. Allow us to pass through to the city to complete them, and you may continue with yours. If you oppose the gods and what they have done to this world, we fight on the same side and may part as friends.”

“They’re not lying about everything,” Buddy said. “There’s a fearful racket going on in the city at the moment. We heard it when we were close to the barrier.”

“It is our allies attacking,” Hansen said. “An army of witches, mages of all sorts, demons—”

“Demons!” Dad scoffed. “They could give a shit about the world. I tried to get power out of them, and do you think they’d give me any?”

“They were saving it up for this,” Hansen said. “One great assault on our enemies—”

“Yeah, that’s going to work.” Dad rolled his eyes. But then they narrowed again, and he surveyed us, piercingly enough to make me duck my head.

“What are you thinking, boss?” Daisy asked, pushing her lips past his fingers.

“Distraction. We’re about to set off one hell of a disturbance in the spiritual realm, maybe enough to draw some attention. If the damned gods nose about at the wrong moment, it could be a real pain in my ass. Not to mention the risk of dragging one of them along with me, and wouldn’t that be something?”

“No,” Daisy said fervently. “It wouldn’t.”

“This might be useful.” Dad looked at Hansen. “Are you about to make a ruckus?”

“Huge.”

For the first time, Dad smiled. “Then via con Dios, motherfucker.” He looked at the cloud. “Take them into Vegas and shove ‘em out.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

I knew we’d reentered the real world when an explosion went off almost in my face. I froze, staring at a wall of fire exploding against a shield that hadn’t been there a second ago, but which was saving my ass right now. The fire licked around the bright blue bubble of Pritkin’s armor, trying to consume it and us, but flickered out after a moment in a wash of steam as the water element swallowed it whole.

And put it out.

“Shield, shield, shield!” Pritkin was yelling, but other protection spells were already blooming across our party. The witches threw a gold one over themselves and Alphonse, Enid shielded herself and Æsubrand in green, Bodil was outlined in a darker sapphire than Pritkin used, but which seemed to do the trick, and Mircea—

“Mircea!” I screamed, and Pritkin threw our shield outward at the same time Enid did hers, almost crushing Mircea between them.

But Pritkin managed to pull him inside, and we all hunkered down while another barrage fell around us, with chaos raging outside the thin bubbles of our spells.

For some reason, our allies had decided to focus their attack, not on the edges of the city as they’d planned, but in the center. Or maybe they were doing both; I couldn’t tell with explosions hitting down everywhere, buildings crumbling, and shards of glass, concrete, and faux stone thick enough to count as a hailstorm threatening to bury us alive. And people screaming and running and getting brought down by what amounted to a dozen daggers in them as soon as they moved, because this was not survivable!

“What the fuck!” I saw rather than heard Alphonse say, as a bunch of tunic and sandal-clad types like ourselves, probably some of the gods’ human servants, were nailed to the roadbed by a cluster of wooden splinters as big as saplings.

And that seemed to be enough for Mircea. He snatched me up from the crouch I’d instinctively sunk into and yelled at Pritkin. “Let’s go!”

“In a minute!” Pritkin was looking around wildly as if trying to get his bearings, like that was remotely possible in this!

“No, now!”

“I don’t know where we are yet!”

“And a delay will change that how?”

Pritkin didn’t answer, but a blue, 3-D, map-like grid of the city popped into the air a moment later. It was fritzing in and out, probably from all the magic being tossed around, but he finally stabilized it enough to figure something out. Because after staring at it for a second, he abruptly took off.

“Come on!” he yelled over his shoulder, and everyone came on. All of us scurrying through the streets hunched over protectively, not that it helped. The shields were the only things keeping us alive, and I didn’t know how much longer they’d hold.

Because this was a magical barrage.

A palm tree vanished to our right, not going up in flames so much as disappearing into thin air from a nearby explosion. It shook our shields and collapsed the buildings on both sides like dominoes, spilling debris into our path and sending more bouncing overhead, with some of the spinning pieces being larger than me. I stared at them as we ran through the middle, until the clouds of dust that accompanied them coated the outside of our shields so thickly that I couldn’t see anymore.

Pritkin did something that cleared them off, but that only showed me a billowing yellowish storm on all sides, punctuated by screams, explosions, and quakes, the latter shaking the road under my feet. We somehow stayed up anyway, which was good since a cracking sound was our only warning before the street itself erupted, carved down the middle by some blast from far enough away that I couldn’t tell it apart from all the rest. But the result would have swallowed us whole if Mircea hadn’t thrown us to one side.

We hit the ground, and I looked across the street to see the rest of our party doing the same, while the edges of the roadbed speared upward between us in a long, jagged line. And then I wasn’t seeing them anymore, but not because I’d looked away. A metal shard had come out of nowhere and pierced our protection, dripping with a glowing orange curse and coming within a whisper of taking out my right eye.

Mircea swore and jerked me back, and Pritkin tossed a shoulder, sending the evil thing flying back out again, but the fact that it had gotten in at all…

“Do you know where we are now?” Mircea yelled at Pritkin.

“Yes!”

“Then let’s go!”

We scrambled back up with the ground still bucking like an angry horse and took off, the witches and fey right on our heels. I had no idea how Pritkin could see well enough to orient himself, map or not. The city was quickly turning into a giant debris field, and nothing looked familiar.

But he seemed to know where he was going, only it wasn’t to Dante’s.

A moment later, we burst through the door of a wrecked and burning souvenir shop, which must have sold ice cream once upon a time as well as tacky Vegas trinkets, because the empty tubs were still in place behind the dusty counter. As cover went, there wasn’t much here, with magical fire eating holes through the suspended ceiling. And trying to do the same to my head, until Pritkin and Mircea grabbed my arms and all but carried me into the back of the shop.

It was a little better here, with whatever was consuming the front not having gotten this far yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Smoke billowed in the doorway behind us, making it hard to breathe, and sparks were threatening to set alight the debris-strewn floor and stacks of wooden pallets blocking a large walk-in freezer. They held long-rotten vegetation for the sandwiches the shop had also sold, I guessed, catching sight of a diagram on the wall of how to assemble a BLT.

Put the avocado between the bacon and lettuce, to keep the hot side of the sandwich separate from the crisper toppings—

Cut it out! Bodil snarled, jerking me back to the present.

Enid was babbling something in another language and clinging to Æsubrand, while looking around like she couldn’t believe we’d made it this far.

“My shields are goddamned wrecked,” Topknot snarled. “What the hell is Jonas about?”

“Those were Forbidden spells,” Gray Curls added breathlessly. “They had to be!”

“I guess the gloves are off,” Butch Cut said, looking shaken.

“Where is that bastard Hansen?” Alphonse demanded.

I looked around, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. Of course, I couldn’t see much with a new wave of smoke hitting me in the face. “Hansen!” I gasped, but heard nothing back.

“He can’t even die, and he left us?” Alphonse snarled.

Yeah, it looked that way.

Where are we? Mircea asked mentally, to be heard over another world-shaking explosion from somewhere nearby.

That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Pritkin said, staring around the room as if looking for something. Something I guessed he didn’t find, because the map was back a second later, still fritzing like mad, but he finally got it steady enough to point to a glowing yellow dot—us, I assumed. And, shit.

It’s only a few more blocks to Dante’s, Zara said weakly, and yeah. Even her mental voice didn’t sound convincing.

A few blocks? That was Æsubrand. We won’t make it a few feet! Enid’s shields are almost gone!

I’m sorry! I’m sorry! The shaken redhead said. I’ve never seen spells like those!

Few have, Pritkin said grimly.

What the devil is Jonas doing? Topknot demanded, still looking furious.

I asked them to pull everyone off Dante’s, I told her miserably. I probably should have specified by something other than knocking it down.

They’re trying to confuse the gods, Mircea said. And leave them no idea where to focus their attention.

Yeah, but while they’re doing that, they’re blowing us up, too! Alphonse snarled. And some of us don’t have shields!

We’ll protect you, Purple Hair promised.

You’ll try, sweetheart. But no way your magic lasts that long. Not in that! He gestured savagely at the door while looking at Pritkin. Will yours?

Pritkin didn’t answer, maybe because he was no longer listening to our little freak-out. Instead, he was staring from the map to the dented and schedule-covered walk-in freezer door. Somebody named Carlos had called in sick, and somebody else had been annoyed enough to scribble te jode Carlos underneath his shift in green ink that had stood the test of time.

And then the whole shop—what was left of it—shook violently, as something exploded close enough to send a debris cloud billowing in at us thick enough to coat everything with a fine white powder.

Help me! Pritkin said out of the fog, and for a moment, I didn’t know what he meant. We all needed help!

But then he dropped his shields to start pushing pallets and boxes aside frantically, shoving them away from the freezer door. It was a testament to how bad things were that even the vampires didn’t ask why. Everyone joined him while the street outside was swept by a wind so hot, I thought it was going to melt my hair.

But the door proved to be jammed even once we had it cleared, and wouldn’t open. Until Mircea shoved everyone aside and ripped the entire heavy, insulated thing off its hinges. “Yeah!” Alphonse said. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

And just like that, we were in, although why we were, I didn’t know, as this was exactly what it appeared to be: a freezer that hadn’t been opened in fifty years. There was a yellowed plastic strip curtain, steel racks on the walls, tubs of dried-up sludge on the shelves, and, worst of all, a group of skeletons slumped in the corner, one human and three rats. They must have gotten trapped in here when the world went to hell, I thought dizzily, or came in looking for refuge, and then the door stuck and they couldn’t get out.

I wanted to look away, but I kept staring at the still-legible nametag on the rotted top of the employee’s uniform. It said Jeff. I wondered if he was the guy mad at Carlos.

I wondered if my brain would just shut the hell up.

Mircea pulled the no longer attached door shut behind us, wedging it in the gap, and turned on Pritkin. Explain.

The Corps was worried about protecting the Pythia after the Dark Circle attacked Dante’s in broad daylight, Pritkin said hurriedly. What they called the Battle on the Drag. They almost killed Cassie and her court before we could get there, and in fact would have done so but for her court’s resilience and her own ingenuity—

And some reporters, I added shakily. They helped, too.

Yes, but the battle was too close to be acceptable, and opened the Circle’s eyes to the fact that the war was changing, and they had to change with it. They thereafter cut a portal from their temporary HQ in the desert to Dante’s to allow them to reach Cassie faster in an emergency—

He’s talking about the shoe warehouse, I added, because all this was fifty years ago from Mircea’s perspective. Where I fought the Mindless.

And how does that help us now? Mircea demanded. That building was destroyed!

But the portal may not have been, Pritkin said. It was closed off, sealed up for the last fifty years, with no one around to use it. And closed portals—

Don’t technically exist in our world, Mircea said, his eyes widening.

So why the fuck didn’t we just use that? Alphonse demanded. You mean we came all this way when there was a perfectly good portal just sitting out there?

Sitting out there under a pile of debris from the collapsed building, and with gods patrolling the area, I said. I sent Billy to check it out last night. They must expect me to come back there—

So you thought this would be easier?

“It was supposed to be!” I said out loud, because I’d been thinking the same thing.

“The point is, the portal came out here,” Pritkin said. “Right here. The Corps ran this place as a front—”

“Which would be great, except that we don’t need shoes!” Alphonse raged. “We don’t need to get to the damned desert, we need to get to Dante’s—”

“Shut up,” Æsubrand yelled. “Just shut up! He’s trying to tell us something!”

“I’ll shut you up,” Alphonse began, before Mircea twitched a hand. It wasn’t much of a gesture, but it worked. Maybe because Alphonse remembered what had happened the last time he challenged him.

“Your point?” Mircea said, looking at Pritkin.

“The portal was originally cut all the way to the casino,” Pritkin said. “I checked with Jonas yesterday. But after what happened in Hong Kong, the Corps rethought that plan—

“What happened in Hong Kong?” Enid asked, looking worried. Probably because she didn’t know where Hong Kong was. As far as she knew, it could be a block over.

“A group of the gods’ servants tried to reroute power from a ley line sink to flood the portal system, hoping to destroy anything connected to it,” Pritkin said. “Specifically, they wanted to take out some of the vampire senates, as most of them had portals.

“The attack was stopped, but the Corps took the lesson and decided it was too risky in the current climate to carve a conduit directly through the casino’s protections. Instead, the last section was blocked off, and the mouth redirected here, a safe distance away—”

“Safe,” Alphonse and Æsubrand muttered together, then looked at each other in surprise.

So nice to see they were making friends, I thought grimly.

“Where?” Mircea said.

“Right here. Probably on that wall,” Pritkin said, pointing at the only one without shelving. “I need to see if I can reignite it.”

“And it’ll take us straight to Dante’s?” I asked, clutching his arm.

“It should.” He thought for a moment. “Or it will backfire on top of us. You should probably wait outside...” His voice trailed off.

“This portal, it is powered by a talisman, yes?” Bodil asked, an eyebrow quirking.

Pritkin sighed. “A talisman powers it, yes.”

“Then, after fifty years of accumulated power, if it backfires, it will take out the entire block,” she said dryly. “I do not think waiting outside will help.”

Alphonse had some colorful phrases to reply to that, and this time, Mircea didn’t stop him. Maybe because he agreed. But all he said, looking at Pritkin, was, “Can you do it?”

“Yes.”

It was stark, with no qualifiers, and I suddenly felt my spine unclench. Despite looking like Rambo half the time, Pritkin had a scholar’s mind and usually qualified everything, hedging his bets because there were few absolutes in the world. But apparently this was one of them.

“I will help,” Bodil announced, and he didn’t argue.

“The Lady Bodil is right,” he cautioned the rest of us. “Talismans are usually drained on a regular schedule if not used, to prevent… complications. This one has not been. The portal will be powerful.”

“In other words, prepare your buttholes,” Alphonse muttered, and I felt mine clench. Or maybe that was over a new barrage outside, as I guessed Jonas had decided there was still something left around here to kill.

The rest of us gathered in a knot over by the door, with the witches casting protection spells that I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t need. Pritkin and Bodil put their heads together, muttering stuff I could almost but not quite hear over the thumping of my heart, the boom, boom, crash, boom, from outside, and the rattling of the metal shelving that was almost constant now as Jonas worked on wiping this part of the city clean off the map.

Then Pritkin’s spell took, just that fast, before I or my butthole was remotely prepared. The entire back wall of the freezer disappeared, and—shit! We had a split second to stare at a swirling maw as red as hell before the portal grabbed us, hard and fast, like a starving giant throwing us down its throat.

And throwing hard. This was no simple transition, like walking through a doorway, as was the case with the more expensive portals, or even riding a rushing river of power like with the illicit sort that smugglers often carved into Faerie. No, this one literally made my soul feel like it was being sucked out of my body as I went flying through the bloody mouth as violently as being thrown out of an airplane.

There was an instant of “oh,” a second of “auggghhhh!” and a brief sensation of weightlessness. And then I was flung out of the other side so fast that I hit the floor and went sliding across a great expanse of marble completely out of control. And would have kept on going, but something stopped me.

Something huge and warm and strangely shaped and glistening.

Something that looked a lot like a giant foot encased in a golden sandal, once my eyes stopped crossing long enough for me to focus on the massive thing, and the equally huge body towering over me.

“So glad you could join us,” a great voice boomed, echoing around what might have been the lobby at Dante’s, but I couldn’t tell.

But not because it had been remodeled, although it had, looking like Caesar’s with an upgrade, with gorgeous statuary, lush potted plants, and a brilliant mosaic in a dome overhead made of millions of pieces of glass showing Zeus triumphant. And not because I was too busy screaming for everyone to go back, go back, go BACK, although I was. But because my voice and my air were cut off the next second by that giant sandal starting to grind me into the ground.

Chapter Thirty-Four

It should have worked. It should immediately have been all over. With nothing to show for our bravado and daring and monumental effort but a smear of clairvoyant on the priceless marble flooring.

But it didn’t, and for a moment, I didn’t know why. I only knew that I could suddenly breathe when the sandal disappeared. And that something was happening as I lay on the ground, stunned and silent and gasping like a fish out of water. Then Enid reached me, with Bodil on her heels, and got me sitting up so they could pound me on the back, like that was going to help!

It didn’t, but that did, I thought, staring.

And then I stared some more, because what I saw across the great expanse of the lobby didn’t compute.

I even did the dog trick of tilting my head to the side, thinking that would make it any less crazy, but no.

Enid started trying to pull me away, but Bodil stood there flatfooted and gaping like I had just been. And still was even while trying to get back to my suddenly much bigger and more brightly colored feet. But that’s hard when you’re simultaneously also growing to the size of a rather large barn.

Just like Pritkin, who was now huge and soloing somebody who looked a lot like Zeus but wasn’t, unless that wily old chameleon had switched faces again. This one had a long black beard and bushy eyebrows of the same color above vividly blue-gray eyes, the color of storm-tossed seas, which matched the golden trident he was holding, and, oh, I thought. That was why Bodil looked so gobsmacked.

What a way to meet your grandpa.

And then a trident the size of a steam train was being flung at me, and I was rolling and hoping I didn’t crush anybody and flipping back to my feet because suddenly, I had a lot of goddamned energy to work with. And no explanation whatsoever of how I’d gotten it. Or how he had, I thought, as another impossibly huge man gave a yell that shook the rafters and jumped the length of a football field onto what I guessed was Poseidon’s back, and—

“Mircea!” I screamed at him. “What is happening?”

No idea, he gasped mentally. Perhaps our third—

But our third couldn’t explain anything as he was busy. Our third was—well, that’s why they call them war mages, I thought, staring once more. And okay, Pritkin was borrowing something from our bond, because that was vampire speed, I realized, as an even dozen spells hit Poseidon all at once.

And some of them must have been the Forbidden stuff the witches had been talking about, because they actually staggered him. So much for humans being weak, I thought viciously, and threw the energy coiling around my hand. It wasn’t in the form of my usual whips this time, but it seemed to work just as well, and would have taken the giant golden god square in the chest if he hadn’t moved like quicksilver.

As it was, it cut as a swath across one arm, causing him to roar in outrage, a sound that was cut off abruptly when Mircea plunged fangs into the great neck, changing the roar into a scream. And while it was still echoing around the room, Pritkin jumped him from the front. And started viciously carving into the great body with a pair of giant knives he shouldn’t have had because they were longer than a sofa.

They were also golden bright and began causing light to spill out from the great body, spearing around the room and reflecting off all the gilt this and marble-covered that to be almost blinding. I put up a hand to shield my eyes and felt my stomach churn hungrily, but before I could even be tempted, all that golden light suddenly wasn’t there anymore. I thought for a second that the guy staggering back from the assault had reabsorbed it, but then I saw Pritkin’s eyes, glowing so vividly green that they looked like two lasers in his face.

And realized the truth: he’d absorbed it.

He’d absorbed all of it.

“What the hell?” I said, but nobody was listening.

Maybe because Poseidon had just clawed Mircea off his back and thrown him across the room, and almost simultaneously, Pritkin was staggering back from some blow I hadn’t seen, because I’d taken a split second to blink. And then I did it again, and Mircea was suddenly mid-jump, with fangs and stabbing down again. Until Poseidon lashed out with a huge arm, and this time, he sent him flying the full length of the lobby toward the far wall before crashing through it.

Dust billowed, a god roared, and Pritkin recovered and stabbed him through the shoulder, and would have gotten the heart except that the old bastard moved too fast. In fact, the whole fight was happening at speeds that I doubted anybody else could follow at all, because the rest of our group did not seem to be moving.

They looked frozen in place, almost as if I’d stopped time, only I couldn’t currently do that. But maybe I could do something else, I decided, because Pritkin was somehow holding his own, with the help of a bunch of huge weapons that seemed to have levelled up in size and power right along with him. A handgun went off, but since it was now the size of a car, it resounded around the room more like a cannon, and caused a spear of pure, golden-white light to carve its way out of Zeus’s brother and slash around the room.

It didn’t slash our frozen group, however, as it was far too high, all of this taking place well above their heads. It did carve a swath through the group of massive gods that had just run in from outside, though, probably in response to their master’s call. Or possibly their dad’s, as they looked decidedly fishy.

One woman had googly eyes and enough fins to qualify as aquatic, a man had tentacles for hair, and the rest… well, they looked like the people at Nimue’s court, except they made her courtiers appear like the posers they were. This was the real thing, with brilliant, glowing eyes in every shade from blue and green to pale, translucent nothingness; with hair floating out around them as if on unseen waves in every color except the normal ones; and with delicate, although gossamer fins instead of brows and more fins edging the gills in their necks and the backs of their arms.

Who’d have expected Zeus to leave his very aquatic brother in the middle of a desert, I thought, right before Pritkin fell, with three of the new arrivals jumping him at once, and I remembered that I wasn’t here as a goddamned spectator.

I still had no idea how, but I had power. Why I wasn’t going mad from it, or what the hell was going on, I didn’t know, but I didn’t need to. All I needed was that, I thought, as a couple of huge golden whips rolled out from my hands and, a second later, were flying through the air to wrap around two of the bastards menacing Pritkin.

I yanked and they went flying, one with his head now separated from his body. And causing Mircea, who had just reentered the room, to go sliding on his knees and bending backward to avoid them. And then springing back up and leaping for the third of Pritkin’s attackers, tackling him with fangs out and eyes glowing a brilliant amber gold, while Pritkin snarled and jumped back to his feet.

Just in time to counter the sword Poseidon was bringing down on his head.

He met it with those long, golden knives crossed in front of him; I saw that much. And then it was hard to see anything except in flashes, as the battle sped up to the point that it was all I could do just to stay on my feet and keep fighting. Because these foes weren’t mindless.

And I didn’t need anybody to tell me that they’d been battling at each other’s sides for thousands of years as they moved almost as one, without the need for communication. Or maybe they were doing it the same way we were—silently—but I heard nothing before they were on me. Along with a few dozen more who ran in from the street, where I guessed they must have been waiting for us to arrive, and started this way.

But then Pritkin—I guessed—opened the portal again, sucking half of them down its throat as they ran by. I wanted to ask what good that was going to do, since the damned thing let out only a couple of blocks from here, but didn’t get a chance. Not before a scream resonated through my head: Down!

I got down, or as low as a five-story woman could, hugging the ground and then rolling and dodging and lashing out with my whip at the myriad of weapons that followed me. And then clattered to the ground all around me when the portal reversed, overloaded, and exploded, blasting the room with fifty years’ worth of pent-up energy. And sliced through the phalanx of godly types still on their feet like a scythe through wheat.

Bodil hadn’t been wrong, I thought, as a rush of crimson energy boiled just overhead, so hard and so impossibly hot that it felt like my face was burning off. And a lot of other people’s literally were. Body parts rained down everywhere, as some of these “gods” must have been of the demi variety, spilling blood instead of power, although there was some of that, too.

I immediately absorbed it, feeling it radiate through me and then outward through the bond, reinvigorating me before doing the same to my triumvirs. And they needed it, because Poseidon was raging now, and he was worth a battalion, all by himself. The deaths of his people had changed the tenor of the battle, and he wasn’t playing anymore.

He created a golden shield, used it to bisect the livid red beam, and redirected it at Pritkin, who dodged just in time to keep from flying apart into ash. But the beam cut a swath through the wall behind him, and I do mean that literally, with daylight streaming in through a jagged tear that looked like the Joker’s fiendish grin before the energy blast abruptly cut out, the talisman’s power expended. And I scrambled back to my feet to help my triumvirs before it was too late.

Only to be immediately hit by something that dropped me back to my knees, screaming. It felt like being flayed alive, like hot knives piercing all over my body, like acid-laced fire. Like that, I thought, seeing a spell with black flames and purple tips running over me, sucking my power away, and hurting, God, so much!

I fell out of slow-time while the battle raged around me, and I realized: the gods hadn’t thrown this. Over by the main doors, a group of mages had shown up, and I guessed all the dark ones weren’t on our side, after all. These looked a lot more prosperous than the rag-tag group I’d been hanging out with, and they were more powerful, too, twisting the fiery knives trying to eviscerate me and causing them to sink farther in, threatening more than pain, but thrash as I did, I couldn’t free myself.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to.

Because we had magic users, too, didn’t we? And while they hadn’t been able to help against actual gods, the dark mages were another thing entirely. And it looked like Zara and company hadn’t been the peace party because of a lack of strength.

A raft of spells, so thick they almost looked like one, flew at the mass of mages, and—

Damn, I thought, staring as the spell tormenting me broke and fled. Probably because the casters had just broken and fled, what ones of them still could. Which wasn’t many; the witches’ spells had bisected some, cutting them right in two, had eviscerated others, leaving them tripping on the bloody ropes of their own intestines, had flayed still more alive, leaving the red meat of their bodies springing out of their skins even as they tried to run, and had immolated most of the rest.

It didn’t look like many of the idiots had bothered to shield.

I guessed that would have cut down on the amount of magic they’d had to send at me, and they probably hadn’t thought they needed to, as we were fully occupied with a genuine, senior god. And in all this, who would notice a tiny knot of witches, muttering in a corner? Not them, I thought, watching as the few shielded ones turned and ran.

But they weren’t the only newcomers, and it looked like the gods had been busy. An even dozen of their demigod children, those who had evaded the portal’s fury, came for us while I was trying to get my breath back. And they came fast.

The witches turned their barrage on them and dropped a few, but the majority seemed almost spell-proof, with the wicked curses sloughing off them with no more effect than rain. I struggled back to my feet, but it didn’t go well, not only because I was slipping on blood and burning body parts from the rain the portal had caused, but because whatever the mages had done to me had lingering effects.

The pain was fading, but my eyes kept trying to cross, and my limbs didn’t always do what I told them. I kept falling back onto my butt while Alphonse kept yelling at me to “get up, get up, get up, goddamn you!” And I tried, I was trying, but when I attempted to tell him that, my tongue tripped on the words, too.

“Minute,” I managed to get out, which didn’t help, as we clearly didn’t have one of those.

Or maybe we did, I thought, as Æsubrand said an emphatic word that Bodil’s link to me translated as “Finally!”

And stepped forward.

Nobody went with him. Enid was cradling Zara in her lap, who had gotten hit by something in the melee; Bodil was still just standing there, looking at the battle raging between Poseidon and my two triumvirs as if she could follow it; and Alphonse was now punching my oversized leg, as if that was going to help.

It did not. Meanwhile, Æsubrand leisurely pulled his weapons, the bright new sword he’d bought in town, and the rusty pike he’d been carting around all this time, the one item that he possessed of his old world. And smiled.

“Let us dance, then,” he told the advancing horde, like a complete madman!

“Help him!” I managed to say to Bodil, but she didn’t even look at me.

A distracted, “He’s fine,” was all I got back.

But at least Alphonse finally noticed what was happening and turned, just in time for the tide to break over top of us. And jumped one of the fish-looking bastards, taking him down in a rolling, snarling, fighting knot of didn’t see that coming, did you? I thought. Or that, because in the little demonstration Æsubrand had given in town, he had been holding back even more than I’d thought.

A lot more, I thought, watching him carve through three demigods in a matter of seconds. Because yeah. He had god-blood, too, didn’t he?

And they’d made the same mistake the mages had, watching me instead of the human rabble around me, and had paid the same price. But there were a lot of them, and I was still struggling, although I managed to grab one of the assholes trying to carve me up and threw him at a couple of the others. I missed, but I must have thrown hard, because he didn’t get up again.

And then I roared at them, my voice suddenly coming back, and that seemed to have an effect. They started looking at each other, and when I staggered back up, keeping to my feet this time, they backed the hell off, deciding to opt for another spell instead of direct contact. And then kept on deciding that as they started stumbling around as if they suddenly couldn’t see straight, either.

Or walk straight, or do much of anything else straight, because Enid was back on her feet now, too, the witches having taken Zara, and she was pissed. Whether because these bastards were menacing her man or me, I wasn’t sure, but I was sure that Margygr magic worked on them as well as everyone else. They were staggering like drunken sailors, and a few ended up cursing each other instead of me, and while I assumed they’d throw it off eventually, they didn’t have eventually.

Æsubrand, bleeding from a couple of wounds somebody had managed to get into him, was nonetheless on his feet. And it seemed that the fey were like vamps: if they could move, they were deadly. Something he proved as he and Alphonse, the latter’s mouth red with demigod blood, jumped the disoriented squad and fucking laid waste.

“I don’t even know why I came,” I said thickly—to no one, as no one was paying the huge golden woman any attention.

Well, except for one.

In retrospect, getting back up had probably been a bad move, as it drew a certain god’s attention. And suddenly my still less-than-coordinated ass was having to dodge spears of water that curved upward out of a huge pool and fountain halfway across the room behind me, which must have been part of the reno, because it certainly hadn’t been here before. But it was there now, full of leaping horse sculptures that I almost couldn’t see anymore as the water spears were slashing everywhere like a demented octopus.

And anything they touched, they carved through.

The water wasn’t touching me, not yet, but it was lashing at me, and everywhere it did so, the bright haze around me began to shrink. Only no, I realized a second later, it wasn’t shrinking. I was.

Several of Poseidon’s endless array of children jumped me, seeing their chance. And then not seeing anything when I put a whip through one’s eye and watched his face melt, and curved a strand of magic around the other one’s throat, popping off his head like a champagne cork out of a bottle. And felt nothing except disappointment that there wasn’t anything inside but blood.

Shit, I thought distantly, grabbing another and then another, ripping their heads off looking for power that I suddenly, desperately needed, because the damned fountain was stealing all of mine. And my triumvirs couldn’t help, as they were locked in a life-or-death struggle with a much larger foe, meaning that I was on my own. And then another idiot jumped me, I guessed trying to prove his worth to Papa, and I didn’t even bother to attack him, just screamed my rage into his useless face so loudly that he actually let me go.

Just in time for Æsubrand to run him through, and jerk me away from another, and that was a lot easier than it would have been a moment ago, because I was almost back to normal human size. Goddamnit! I needed power!

“The water!” Mircea yelled. “It’s eating our energy!”

Yeah, I’d gotten that!

And then someone else grabbed me, only it wasn’t an enemy, this time. Or maybe I’d been wrong about that. Because the knife Bodil was suddenly holding against my throat didn’t feel friendly.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Bodil!” Pritkin yelled, enraged, but Bodil’s knife at my throat didn’t waver. Except to press inward slightly, enough that I felt a trickle of blood, human-warm and red, start down my neck.

It was enough to throw me out of the godly hunger that had started to claw at my psyche again, and to remind me: no matter what it felt like when power was surging through my veins, I wasn’t a god. No more than those poor bastards I’d just killed had been, whose blood still stained my hands and was spreading rapidly across the water-drenched floor. We were all playing with fire, when one stroke of a blade in the right place would mean lights out—permanently.

I froze.

“Great Poseidon!” Bodil’s voice echoed around the space, sounding triumphant and subservient and almost giddy, all at once. “Great Poseidon! Your granddaughter beseeches thee!”

And, okay, that got his attention. He paused the fight, which had been trending that way anyway, as Mircea and Pritkin had been distracted, staring at me. The great lips pursed thoughtfully.

“Granddaughter? What is this?”

“Great-granddaughter in fact,” she said, her voice quavering with what might have been pride or possibly fear, as those blue-gray eyes were hard to meet. “Daughter of Aliacmon, son of Palaestinus, son of mighty Poseidon!”

“Are you?” The huge golden hand did something that made a transparent version of Bodil jump out in front of us, edged in faint golden light. It vanished after a moment, and one of the huge, bushy brows raised. “Yes, I see that you are. And yet you come here with my enemies?”

“It was the only way to reach you, great king, after my world… died.”

“Yes, shame about that,” he said, with no inflection in his voice. And already, I understood why Zeus had won the struggle over who would lead the gods. He had been so solicitous, so persuasive, so real in his supposed care for the half-human daughter of his greatest foe, that he had almost convinced me.

This guy couldn’t convince a deaf man of his sincerity, but maybe I was wrong. Because when Bodil spoke again, there was reverence in her voice. And eagerness.

“Yes, my world—my mother’s world—is dead, and I would find a new one in my father’s realm. I would join you, and serve you, most ably—”

Are you mad? Mircea’s voice echoed through our minds. He will betray you! Whatever you think—

But I guessed Bodil wasn’t interested in hearing Mircea’s take on things, because his voice abruptly cut out.

“I offer this one’s life as proof of my sincerity,” she said, her voice echoing around the room. And it was all there, what I should have seen before but hadn’t: ambition, pride, and enough ruthlessness to have allowed her to use us to reach the only family she had left. “I will kill her for you,” she added. “Now!”

“No! Bodil!” Enid screamed.

“What are you doing?” That was Æsubrand, looking bewildered.

“I’ll gut you for it,” Pritkin said, sounding more vicious than I had ever heard him. “If it’s the last thing I do—”

“You will die here today,” she told him contemptuously. “You all will! The gods have no need of you, or of this one!”

And I felt the knife bite deeper into my flesh.

“Hold!” the towering god said, his voice so loud that I thought I would die with busted eardrums. “Bring her to me.”

“Grandfather?” Bodil sounded suddenly unsure.

“I will end this one myself.”

“But… she is more dangerous than she appears. You see how many of your children she has killed, how ruthlessly, how effortlessly—”

“Effortlessly when stolen power was thrumming through her veins, perhaps,” he said. “Not now. That is the problem with demigods, is it not?” he added, coming over himself, since Bodil hadn’t moved, and shaking the room with each footstep. “Some of them fight well, but in the end, they are not gods. Just trumped-up flesh that dies as easily as any human.”

He went down on one knee, shrinking slightly to get in my face, while his remaining children formed a wall at his back. Not that it was needed. Mircea and Pritkin had reduced in size, too, not as badly as I had, but they must have been feeding me some of the power they’d gotten from somewhere.

They were half the size they’d been, and Poseidon had more reinforcements arriving every moment, ranging in size from human-standard to towering. They ran in, wild-eyed and dirty in burnt tunics and robes, probably summoned from all over the city by their father’s call. And started attacking viciously as soon as they arrived, forcing Mircea and Pritkin to defend themselves.

This was over, I thought, as Poseidon got in my face, blocking out my view of the room, of my partners, of everything. Run! I thought through the bond, but couldn’t tell if they’d heard.

I guessed not, as sounds of battle came from beyond the big body, and no, no, no! They couldn’t die with me! “Run!” I screamed at the idiots. “Cut the bond!”

But nothing changed. I stared up at the massive face, now gazing almost fondly into mine, and wished I’d died already. I didn’t want to see this; I couldn’t see this!

“Yes, that’s what I expected,” he said. “My brother has developed a strange belief in your abilities, to the point that he almost equates you with your mother. But you aren’t your mother, are you? You’re just another pathetic demigod, panicking now that the end is near.”

“Please, my king,” Bodil said, and there was genuine fear in her voice. “Let me do this for you. Let me take the risk—”

“What risk?” Poseidon asked. “You will be rewarded, daughter, but this pleasure… I reserve for myself. Come here, so that my power doesn’t take you, too.”

I was surprised he cared. Was surprised he didn’t just blast us both at the same time, but I guessed that might make the demi squad unhappy, to see how easily he killed their sister. And how little he really thought of them.

Throw her a bone, keep them on the leash, it was what the gods had always done, I thought blankly, my head buzzing. I vaguely heard Enid screaming fey curses, saw Æsubrand grab her to hold her back, glimpsed Mircea and Pritkin battling off to the left, trying to reach me, even though they never could. But suddenly, it all seemed irrelevant.

All I could concentrate on was a huge pair of gray-blue eyes, and all I could feel was a sense of wrongness. Not that I was dying; I’d been expecting that for a while. But it wasn’t supposed to be him.

“Your brother,” I croaked, as Bodil let me go, and pushed me back at the same time, I guessed so I couldn’t get a knife into her. Or the whip I no longer had. “He wants to be the one to kill me.”

And I guessed I’d managed to say something funny, because Poseidon laughed, the sound echoing around the large space. “Yes, he left strict instructions to that effect. Too bad you died in battle before I could save you for him.

“You see, Pythia,” and in his voice, the title was an epithet, “your dear mother took everything from me. My wife, my realms, my power. I am going to enjoy taking the last part of her left in this world.”

I tried to say something else—to him, some final words of defiance; to Bodil, standing snuggled up against him like the favorite daughter she hoped soon to be; to Pritkin and Mircea—so much… but I couldn’t. I’d faced death before, but it had never been so sure. And while I’d always assumed I’d go out screaming, when it came down to it, I just stood there, numb and waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

I realized I’d closed my eyes at some point, like a blindfolded idiot in front of a firing squad, but apparently, I wasn’t to be allowed even that. He wanted to see my eyes when he killed me, and fuck him! If he wanted to see them, he could damned well see them.

I opened them to glare at the bastard who was drawing out my death, only I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anything but a blinding torrent of power, slamming into me so hard that it blew me back against the side of the fountain, where it felt like I’d just broken every bone I had. I lay there, stunned and gasping and wondering why I wasn’t dead yet.

For a second, I didn’t know, and suspected that he just intended to leave me like that, to bleed out slowly while I watched the rest of my friends be killed in front of me. But then, through the blazing aftereffects of all that light, I finally made something out. Poseidon, falling backward, while a torrent of power gushed up from his almost bifurcated throat; Bodil, her right arm and the golden knife it held disintegrating, dripping blood and liquified flesh and showing bone; Mircea leaping onto the collapsing god, and sinking his sword in deep; people screaming and running and the life blood of an elder god spurting—

Lifeblood.

I blinked, half convinced all that gleaming gold was just in my mind, but no, it was everywhere, coating every surface in the area and puddling by the body, which was fighting ferociously but silently, as Bodil’s attack had severed his vocal cords and he couldn’t roar.

I got to my hands and knees; I have no idea how. I could barely feel my body anymore, except for screaming agony. But I’d been in agony before, and there was a sure-fire cure for that. Yes, there was a cure for everything, just there, right there, if I could drag my broken body that far—

And I could. One leg no longer worked, one arm was fire, probably broken, and the pain in my ribs made it almost impossible to breathe. Even worse, my vision kept hazing in and out, bright with leaping after effects one minute, and almost grayed out the next. But there were drips of god-blood on the ground, and my searching hands found some.

They were small, as he’d thrown me quite far, and almost imperceptible to sight, being lost in a flood of brighter light from the battle, but I didn’t need sight. I could feel them calling to me, each singing a song unmistakable to my ears, and I searched them out and soaked them up. Each little hit was another few inches forward; each smear a feast compared to what I had left; and then I found a small puddle and shoved my whole face into it, sopping it up and a powerful hit of strength along with it.

It wasn’t enough to heal, although I could feel Mircea’s ability along the bond, also singing out to me. But there wasn’t enough power for that, no, not even close. But it gave me the energy to keep going, to keep dragging my leg behind me, to keep smearing my own blood across the floor, although not enough to stop me, not with the song of all that power pulling me forward like a magnet to metal.

I slapped my palm down on a dribble and pushed off it to the next. I dragged my bleeding leg through a smear and felt some small strength flow back into it. I snarled at my own weakness and kept.

On.

Crawling.

Until I finally reached it, the outer edges of that vast puddle flowing out from the great writhing body. The torrent hadn’t stopped or even slowed down, for Bodil, half dead though she was, along with Mircea and now Pritkin, were attacking the fallen god. His forces were in disarray, some trying to help him while stumbling through a field of Margygr magic, others were standing there stupefied in horror, and still more were rushing back out the way they’d come. And being cut down as they did so, as the witches were back in it, throwing everything they had at Poseidon’s demigod children, including some spells that I strongly suspected weren’t on the approved list any more than Jonas’s had been.

But Æsubrand was fighting to get to Bodil, somehow not understanding that she’d basically just decapitated a god, until Enid jerked him back, and screamed something at him I couldn’t hear, because I couldn’t hear any of it.

Couldn’t see anything but gold, couldn’t feel anything but hunger, couldn’t focus on anything but—

Ahhhh. Yes. That.

Poseidon was trying to heal himself, but he suddenly found it a lot harder than a moment ago. I was fighting him now, too, with everything I had, but not the way the others were. I fought for this, life-giving, life-affirming, life, flooding into veins starved for it, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

And I got help. I didn’t know why I hadn’t felt him before, perhaps too busy fighting to pay attention. Or freaking out, or dying, or starving, because I had been starving, I was always starving, it was hard to notice after a lifetime of it, but I could tell now, when I suddenly wasn’t anymore. Like I could tell who had been helping us, providing power we didn’t have, but he did, from the spill-over from the fight in the warehouse.

Pritkin’s incubus had absorbed some of the energy of that fight through the bond and held onto it. And then hitched a ride in spirit form with his other half into something far worse than hell because he loved me, too, he’d said as much once. And he couldn’t not come, no matter what he claimed.

He’d been the reason for the weird triple vision on the road, testing out the bond; he’d been the one helping us earlier, flooding that same bond with enough power to allow us to mimic gods, at least for long enough not to die—

And suddenly, it all made sense. Incubi could take traits from others if they consumed part of their souls, and the spell the three of us were under was a soul bond. All he’d needed to make a couple of extra demigods had been my mother’s legacy in my blood and power, and thanks to the fight, he’d had some of that. And now we both did.

He combined his abilities with mine with no words needed, and began feeding alongside me. And as it turned out, a prince of the incubi and a daughter of Artemis together could pull power from the dying bastard on the ground faster and harder than he could reclaim it. Yes, I thought, overwhelmed at the energy flooding into me, yes, this, just this, forever this!

And even more crazily, I wasn’t going mad with it.

You kept me sane, I thought at him in wonder, and felt it resonate through the bond. I felt Mircea and Pritkin realize who was with us, and their shock, surprise, and strange joy. And then an invitation, a hand outstretched, a brother willing to reconcile, finally understanding that this was what he had been born for—but would it be accepted?

So much hate, so much fear, so many recriminations and accusations, and stupid, stupid quarreling that had limited both of them—

Was it enough?

No, the incubus snarled. But it’s a start.

And the next moment, there he was, a fourth fully back and integrated into our bond, only not a fourth anymore, I realized. A third. And I was breaking away from the now nonexistent puddle, was grabbing Bodil, was healing her with Mircea’s ability before she could bleed out, and it was easy.

Everything was so easy.

Like that, I thought, shoving a burning golden whip into Poseidon’s side. Like this, I thought, pulling it out and drinking my fill, bathing in it, all that power, all that light. The fountain was going berserk behind us, but not like before. Like it was out of control and just spurting water everywhere, which mixed with the golden haze and the light from the glass mural overhead, while the dome was lit up by spell fire from outside so brilliantly that it rained down prisms like a multicolored disco ball.

But Poseidon was a beast, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. And healing Pritkin, who took a trident through the heart a moment later, and Mircea, who was staked by somebody who had realized what he was a moment after that, and Æsubrand, who wouldn’t stop believing he could fight a god no matter how many times said god pounded him into the freaking marble, was taking a toll. A big one, I thought, as the room spun dizzily around me.

Slow down! Pritkin snarled in my head, and he was right. We were hemorrhaging power almost as fast as we took it in. But the operative word was almost, I thought viciously, and plunged my whip in again and again, up to the hilt, using up most of the slower gush of power healing myself from the beating I was taking from the dying god, but didn’t care because everything I took from him, he didn’t get back.

Until suddenly, there was nothing left to take.

The death of an elder god, it turned out, was anticlimactic. One second he was there, an almost human-sized body shrunken in power but still deadly enough to kill one of his own servants who had gotten too close, cleaving the man in two with a final burst that I think had been aimed at Pritkin. And the next he was gone, just sparkles on the air like the ones the faded ghosts gave off in the wastelands, mere glowing specs on the night.

Then even they were extinguished and we were sitting there, staring at each other, bloody and battered and exhausted, with Pritkin’s hair all standing on end, Bodil nursing the stump of her missing arm, and Mircea looking cool and calm except that his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t hold his sword anymore.

“Here,” Alphonse said, taking it gently from him, because Alphonse was somehow still alive, too—how were we all still alive?

“I don’t know,” Pritkin said hoarsely, having heard my disbelief through the bond. “God as my witness, I don’t know.”

“Fuck gods,” Mircea said viciously, and yeah.

Yeah.

Chapter Thirty-Six

It wasn’t over yet.

That was the only thought running through my head as we carried Zara down the nearest hallway, and I attempted to heal her on the fly. To my shame, I’d forgotten about her for a moment, but she had been badly wounded, with a stubborn spell I didn’t know burning a hole through her belly. Only a ward by the other witches, which they’d had to cut her open to insert well below the skin, had kept it from eating her alive.

I finally managed to pull it out, snapping and lunging like a vicious purple snake, and shook it off my shielded hand into the hallway, where it promptly ate its way through a wall. I sealed up the wound afterwards, but she didn’t get back on her feet, having lost too much blood. And there was no time to find something to use as a stretcher.

There was no time for anything.

“Here,” Mircea said, and took her from the flagging coven, cradling the nearly unconscious woman to his chest like a baby.

“Thank you,” Topknot gasped. She was no longer young, and this had already stretched her to her limits, as it had all of us.

Including Æsubrand, who was limping badly, and Alphonse, who was struggling to heal a head wound until Mircea brushed his temple and sealed it up, and Enid, who was missing a large clump of her abundant auburn hair on the left-hand side, a testament to the fact that something had gotten through her formidable shields, and—

And everybody, with not one of us less than a bloody mess.

And blood loss wasn’t something that Mircea’s abilities could replace, leaving me and Bodil, who had lost the most, gasping in effort just from making it this far. But we didn’t have a choice because they were coming; Bodil could see that much, or rather hear it, in the shouted commands from the other gods who had dispersed to deal with the threats from our allies. And who were only now realizing that the real threat was behind them.

“How long?” I panted as we started running again, because I could hear them distantly in my head, an echo of her abilities coming through.

“Not long.”

“How long?” I needed a timeframe, damn it!

“A few minutes. The death of an elder god resonated through metaphysical space like a bomb going off.”

“How many?” Mircea said hoarsely.

“All of them.”

“Goddamnit!” I snarled.

“Go… ahead,” Zara said breathlessly. “We’ll… hold them…”

“Yeah, for about a second,” Alphonse said, “and that’s if they even notice you’re there before they fucking run you over! You saw what one of those bastards was able to do—”

“That was an elder god,” Purple Hair said. “The others might be… easier...”

“You can’t even convince yourself!”

“They’ve been fighting for a while,” Butch Cut pointed out. “And Marsden was throwing everything he had at them. Maybe they’re exhausted—”

“So are we!”

“Do you… have a better… idea?” Zara demanded, as we stopped at the huge bank of golden elevators, which had somehow escaped the renovation. Or maybe the gods just liked the human faces, caught mid-scream, that writhed all over the carved surround.

“Yeah, we get the hell out of here!” Alphonse snapped. “Now, while we still can!”

“Not without Rhea,” I said, frantically hitting buttons. And wondering why none of them were lighting up.

“Fuck Rhea! We don’t have enough time to make it to her, much less—”

“What is wrong with these things?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm. And failing because I sounded like I’d been running a marathon and was reaching mile fifteen.

“No power,” Pritkin said, his own voice clipped.

“Why not?”

“At a guess? The fight triggered the wards, and electricity—”

“Doesn’t play nice with the big boys.” Damn it!

“Can you turn the wards off?” That was Mircea.

“Turn them off?” Alphonse stared at him. “I’d say we’re gonna need ‘em!”

“The gods put them in place. Do you really think they don’t know how to bypass them?”

Alphonse swore. “Turn ‘em off!” he told Pritkin, who shot him the look that deserved.

“They’re new. I don’t have the passwords—”

Alphonse swore some more.

“Can you reach Rhea?” I asked Bodil. “Send her a message and let her know we’re here?”

The dark head shook. “I… have never met her. I cannot… make a link with someone… I have never set eyes on.”

“If we don’t go now, there won’t be time to get away,” Alphonse pointed out, and while Mircea didn’t agree, he didn’t correct him, either. None of them did.

Instead, they all looked at me, as if I was supposed to fix this somehow, when I didn’t have any more left in the tank than they did. But I’d brought them here. This had been my decision, and was now my choice.

Again.

“Go,” I said. “I’ll make it to Rhea on my own—”

“Like hell!”

“Bullshit!”

“You won’t even make it up the stairs!”

“No, Lady Cassandra is right.” That last, surprisingly, was Æsubrand. “The rest of you go, and get as far from the casino as possible. The gods are coming here; the peripheries of the city should be largely unguarded—”

“What do you mean, the rest of you?” Enid said, frowning.

“—and prepare to try again later if she fails—”

Enid grabbed his arm. “What are you talking about? What are you going to do?”

“I do not have time to argue with you,” he said sharply, and she flushed puce, the hazel eyes snapping. But then, to my surprise, he took her hand off his arm and held it in his, and his touch was more gentle than I’d ever seen him be with anybody. “You must trust me,” he said softly. “I can do this. I can get her there.”

“How?” That was Pritkin, sounding sharper than usual.

“You know how.”

“No, in fact, I don’t.”

“I don’t, either!” Alphonse said.

“What a surprise,” Gray Curls snapped, causing Alphonse to snarl at her. It did not appear to faze the old woman.

“What is it?” Enid demanded, but was already looking like she knew she wouldn’t like the answer.

The silver prince glanced around our group, as if hoping for a way to avoid this, but I guessed he didn’t find it. “There is a reason the gods didn’t want the fey to combine magics,” he finally said. “Why they worked so hard to keep the elements from mixing, and why any triskelion they found, they killed.” He paused, and then came out with it. “Triskelion isn’t just a symbol, it’s a spell. One that kills the caster.”

“What?” Enid said politely, as if assuming she had misunderstood.

“Along with anything else in the vicinity, even gods,” Æsubrand continued. “Several lost their lives to it in the past, which is why mixing bloodlines was forbidden. Only those of us who possess at least three of the four elements can cast it—”

“Which includes me,” Pritkin said, looking shocked. Because I guessed that was one spell he didn’t know.

But Æsubrand only smiled. “After what I just saw? No. You are needed for the final battle, all three of you, whilst I… am not.”

Enid had something to say about that, had a LOT to say, in some language I didn’t understand because my translator was acting up. But I didn’t need to. It was all over her face, in the rapidity of her conversation, in the way she raged and clutched his arms and shook him hard.

It was in her terror and her tears.

She wouldn’t leave him. I knew she wouldn’t. And Æsubrand knew it, too.

He slipped a ring off his finger, a simple thing with a symbol carved into a flat black stone set in silver. And took her hands in his before closing them over it. “Lady Bodil will bear me witness. I choose you as my rightful heir, and whilst that won’t afford you much as things stand, if you return to our time, my people will protect you, including from my father. They will fight for you, die for you if need be—”

“I’m a slave!” Enid raged. “And I won’t—”

“You are no slave!” Pewter eyes flashed. “You are the heir to two kingdoms, and a queen!” The eyes softened. “You will be a great queen—”

She slapped him—hard. Mircea gave an aborted laugh I didn’t understand and turned away, and Bodil smiled briefly, pained as her expression was. Æsubrand looked shocked because I guessed he still didn’t know who he was dealing with.

“I’ll do no such thing!” Enid snarled, jerking him down to her by the fall of bloody silver hair. “I will stay here and fight, and so will you!”

And then she kissed him—passionately—and Alphonse cursed some more; it was becoming almost constant with him. But I barely heard this time, being too busy focusing on something else. Something distant, just on the edge of my hearing, but that sounded a lot like—

“What was that?” Bodil asked, her head jerking up. Because she’d heard it, too, which meant that maybe I wasn’t completely losing my—

“Son of a fucking bitch!” Billy’s furious voice broke over me, louder now. “Can you stay in place for half a goddamned second?”

“Billy!” I screamed and looked around frantically, but didn’t see him.

Until I did, boiling down the corridor toward me with what looked like a hundred ghosts at his back.

“Who the hell do you think?” he snarled. “And what did you think when you came here without me? We were supposed to rendezvous!”

“I know, but—”

“Which would have allowed me to tell you that freaking Poseidon was holding down the fort, along with like three dozen damned demigods! But you don’t show, and then Hansen comes flying in to tell me—”

“Yes, but—”

“—that you got dropped off blocks from the freaking hotel on one of the streets Jonas—damn him straight to hell—is bombing the shit out of! And then, just when I’m pretty sure he’s killed you, a portal goes off—”

“Billy!”

“—and blows up in my face when I go to investigate! I thought you DIED. I almost DIED—”

“You’re already dead, and I’m trying to tell you—”

“—and when I finally decide to check here anyway, ‘cause why the hell not, WHAT DO I FIND IN THE FREAKING LOBBY?”

“You know, I can’t even talk to you when you’re like this,” I snapped. “Do you have any idea—”

“When I’m like this?” Billy cut me off, more pissed than I’d ever seen him. “Do you understand that every god in the goddamned city is converging on this hotel right now? That they’re coming to—oh, fuck it!”

That last was because of a bunch of gods, tearing in through the lobby doors and stopping on a dime, so fast that the ones in back started piling up on those in front, and they began cursing each other. Until the rest saw what I no longer could, because the corridor walls had hidden it. But fortunately, it seemed to catch the eye, with them all staring with open-mouthed astonishment at the carnage we’d left behind.

Or at least, most of them were.

Some minor deity I didn’t know with a mop of bright black curls, olive skin, and a sweet young face, caught sight of us, screamed a word I didn’t know, and pointed. And then they were all coming, and Billy was screaming, and Alphonse was yelling, “I told you so, I told you so!” And I was considering pissing myself, because I’ve never particularly wanted to go out all stoical and heroic.

And the next thing I knew, Billy had grabbed me and we were inside the Paths of the Dead, and not just him and I—all of us. And we weren’t just barely inside, either. I could only see the world of the living in faint outlines, through all the billowing white nothingness.

Because yeah, Billy was a ghost. He could navigate these paths as well as anyone. He could—holy shit!

“Get us to Rhea!” I said, grabbing him back. “Hurry!”

“What I’ll do is get you the hell out of here!” he snarled. “Before the freaking army full of gods starts to wonder where you vanished to and comes in here looking—”

“No!” I shook him. “You can get us to her before they do! We’re outside of time! They aren’t getting any closer—”

“They’re getting closer, just slower than a second ago. We’re still too close to the border. And I can’t pull us any further in, because your batshit crazy Dad has his goon squads out, patrolling the—”

“I know!” I could still hear them distantly, roaring like a storm on the horizon. Which didn’t matter because they weren’t here! “This will be good enough. Just get me there! Now!”

Billy said some things that had my eyebrows lifting, because he was suddenly rivaling Alphonse’s knowledge of the expletive form. Although that could have been because some of the gods had just ripped a hole into non-space somewhere behind us, causing us all to hunch down in the fog and pray—or at least I was. But they didn’t come this way.

“What are they doing?” I asked Billy in a whisper.

“They don’t come here much,” he whispered back. “And when they do, they stay close to the barrier. I think this place creeps ‘em out—”

“I’m starting to like it,” Mircea said, and yeah.

Yeah.

“My boys are leading them astray,” Billy added, and I only then noticed that his army had dispersed. “But I don’t know for how long—”

“What the hell is happening?” Alphonse asked, grabbing my arm. “How did we get back here? And who are you talking to?”

“A ghost—”

“Is that rat fink Hansen back?”

“No, Billy Joe—” I paused. “Can’t you hear him?”

“I no longer have the strength to broadcast his words,” Bodil told me. “I can hear him in your head, as can Lord Mircea, but I cannot—”

“It’s okay,” I told her.

“It is not okay!” Alphonse said, shaking me. And getting his hand struck away by Pritkin.

“We have to get out of here!” Alphonse yelled before Mircea, who had just handed Zara off to Pritkin, struck him square in the mouth.

For a second, we froze and all held our breath, because if anyone had heard that…

But Dad’s army was still loud as shit, and Billy’s guys sounded like they were dive bombing the gods and screaming. Nobody was thundering this way. Yet.

“Take him out,” I told Hansen quietly, who was the only one who’d stayed close besides Billy Joe. “All the way out—of the city—”

“Like hell!” Alphonse whispered, his face still bloody from Mircea’s blow until he absorbed it again. “That was stupid, but I’ll be damned if you’re gonna go back in time and leave me in this hellhole!”

Mircea moved forward again, his face terrible, but I waved him off. I didn’t need the help. I so freaking didn’t!

“What I think is that Billy is about to take me to my heir,” I told Alphonse quietly. “The only person who can get us out of this. If you want to go home, she’s the way—”

“Bullshit!” Alphonse suddenly looked more like the master vampire who had been Tony’s chief enforcer. The thick eyebrows were lowered, the dark eyes were bloodshot and terrible, and the fangs were out. “You handled plenty of power back in that lobby just fine, and didn’t go crazy—I saw it! So, you’ve figured that out, meaning you can grab one of those gods over there who’s lost in the fog, suck him dry, and take us back—right now! And you’d better do it, or else—”

“Or else what?” I asked low and vicious, and then didn’t give him time to answer because I didn’t give a shit about his answer. “You act like you’re in charge here. You’re not in charge. I am. And I’m going to see my heir. And let me make something extremely clear. If I do not see her, I am going nowhere, no, not even if I die here. Because without her information, going home does nothing. Home is where all this started. Home is where we lost. Home is where I get to see my world and their world,” I gestured savagely at the fey, “and every other goddamned world die because we fucked. It. Up. But we’re not going to do that this time, and the reason we’re not is Rhea, who is right upstairs. And I didn’t come this far to fail her and everybody else now!

“So you’re going to do exactly nothing except what I tell you. You’re going to fall in line, we’re going to go upstairs, and then, when I damned well feel like it, we’re going home. With the information we need to make sure this hellhole never becomes a reality. Otherwise, I’ll tell you what “or else” means. It means you stay here, right here, and either the gods rip you to pieces, or you bake in the desert alongside everyone else until they do to our world what they did to Faerie. That is the only “or else,” Alphonse. So what is it going to fucking be?”

He blinked at me. “I… guess we’re going upstairs.”

“Goddamned right!” I looked at Billy. “You have a problem with that?”

“Well, I did until a minute ago.” He tipped his hat back. “Think I’m kinda on board now.”

“Then let’s get this damned thing done!” I said, and stomped off.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

At least we know why Rhea didn’t come down to meet us,” I said, staring at the spells crossing and crisscrossing the outside of the Penthouse I used to call home. They glowed brightly with every color of the rainbow, and a few that weren’t found there and were so strange that they made my eyes want to cross. A thousand, thousand glowing lines wrapping up my heir so tightly that nobody could hope to cut through them all.

Which is why we didn’t try.

We just went through them instead.

Even in the spirit world, I felt their tug in my flesh, the anger in the pulsating bonds fighting me as I pushed through them, as if they knew I was there. But we were in another world, which worked by different rules. So they snapped and snarled and grumbled and lashed out—

And we walked through just the same, until we stumbled out the other side as if emerging from an electrical storm.

Into a darkened suite, with only a single light burning.

It was on a desk facing the expansive windows to the balcony, holding a tarot spread and a mug of what I already knew to be tea. But Rhea wasn’t sitting there; nobody was, like nobody appeared to be moving anywhere within the suite, something so wrong that it sent a chill up my spine. This place was usually a madhouse.

It had little girls running everywhere, playing with dolls, building blocks, crayons, or bossing around the animated footstool that followed them about like a puppy. Petitioners sat kicking their heels in the waiting rooms outside my audience chamber, or attempting to bribe my appointment secretary to move them up the list, while I hid out in the kitchen to avoid them and snare a snack at the same time. A ghost or two floated through, drawn by the sheer number of clairvoyants in one place, and occasionally offering commentary. And Reggie, our token war mage, could be found on the balcony “training” Jesse, my majordomo Tami’s son, who had decided he wanted to be a war mage despite being a necromancer.

But none of that was happening today. Today, it was as silent as a tomb, with the only sounds coming from the spirit world behind me as I approached the barrier. And felt the tension against my fingertips when I got too close.

“Careful,” Billy said. “You step through, you’re back in real time.”

“How long do we have?”

“Not long. They’re pretty stupid, these “gods,” even the ones who haven’t gone completely nuts. But it’s not gonna take long for ‘em to figure out they don’t need to go on a wild goose chase through the Paths after you, but can just come here. It’s not like they don’t know what you want.”

“Just grab her and we’ll go somewhere else!” Alphonse said, which didn’t sound like a bad idea.

“Help me find her,” I said, and everyone scattered.

I approached the table, where the tarot cards were in a messy spread. The High Priestess lay across the World card, which was a much nicer version than mine, with pristine edges and no dirty fingerprints, as if it hadn’t been used often. Or possibly at all, as what was the point of a tarot deck with no clairvoyance?

I wondered what that had been like for Rhea, stuck in this horrible place with no friends, no allies she could reach, and no power to see a potential resolution. And for so very long. I had been here a few days and had already come close to breaking; how had she managed fifty years?

And what had it done to her, I wondered, shivering slightly.

Then I didn’t have to wonder when a lone figure stepped through the doors from the darkened balcony, backlit by the light from distant explosions.

Rhea didn’t look that different. She was older, with the nineteen-year-old I’d known now a woman grown. But she was still young, as mages typically live two hundred years or more, so at not quite seventy, she wasn’t even middle-aged.

But the years showed in other ways. There were lines on the once fresh face that shouldn’t be there, a darkness in the eyes, a frown on the forehead with a rut deep enough that it spoke of long periods with no reason to smile. There was also a weariness in how she walked, a slowness that spoke of having nowhere to go.

Had they left her all alone? I thought, tearing up for the girl I’d known. Had she had to see everyone else fall, and been the only one left standing?

I suddenly feared for her, and for us, not sure if I would have survived mentally intact through something like that. My God, fifty years. I’d heard that number since I arrived, and even before in Faerie, but it only hit me just now.

Fifty. Years. Alone.

Was she even sane?

And then she sat at the table, the light shining on her dark chignon, picked up her half-cooled mug of tea, and brought it to her lips—

And froze.

For a long moment, she didn’t move. Just stared at the High Priestess card, which was now several inches over from where it had been. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I’d reached through the barrier to touch it, but I guessed I must have, because the card was lying beside the World in the Future position, rather than on top of it. And after a moment, Rhea stretched out a trembling hand to pick it up.

Then she was on her feet, screaming: “Cassie!”

And I was stepping out of the world of the dead into that of the living, tearing through the last shreds of that other space, and was immediately grabbed by my half-crazed-looking heir. Who stared at me for an instant in complete disbelief, before shaking me violently, hugging me, and then staring at me some more. Before collapsing, weeping, to the floor, which is where we were when the others came running back in.

Mircea was still holding Zara, who was looking more alert; Billy was zooming around the room, saying shit, shit, shit, although I didn’t know why; and Alphonse—

Alphonse was killing Tony.

“Wait!” Rhea screeched, seeing them at the same time I did.

Alphonse did not wait. I didn’t know where he’d come up with him, but the portly little bastard who had raised and tormented me in about equal measure was dangling by the neck from one of his former servant’s beefy hands, and if he hadn’t been a vampire, he’d have been sans a head right now. And then he was being beaten against anything and everything, as if he were a club that Alphonse had decided to use to wreck the room, and Mircea was telling him to stop, and he wasn’t stopping.

Because Alphonse didn’t care about a fist to the mouth. Alphonse didn’t care if he died for this. Alphonse had crossed worlds and great spans of time and almost died a dozen times for this moment, and he intended to enjoy it.

Maybe that was the real reason Tony wasn’t yet dead but was instead being slammed against the floor, the walls, and every piece of furniture Alphonse could find. It was fast turning the lovely decorating Tami had done into kindling that I was afraid was going to stake Tony before I could find out why Rhea was yelling. For some reason, she seemed to be against his imminent demise.

And then Mircea passed Zara off to Pritkin, grabbed his wayward grandson, and shook him. Which did nothing but shake Tony, too, because Alphonse wasn’t letting go. “Mine,” he snarled, and to my surprise, Mircea nodded.

“The offense was enough; he is yours. But not yet.”

“When?” It was an animalistic sound, deep and guttural and so full of rage that it was almost indecipherable, like the first word had been. And I realized something.

Alphonse might just hate Tony more than I did.

Which probably explained why he didn’t let him go, even when he sat him in the one chair that hadn’t already been wrecked, which happened to be Rhea’s. And stood behind him with a meaty hand on his shoulder while Tony stared at us. And then stared some more when the rest of our party popped back into real space, causing the fat man to screech a little.

“W-what is going on?” he demanded, his voice a little high.

“We have guests,” Rhea said, as if she couldn’t quite believe it, either. But she was back under control, tear-streaked face and all, her hair a little messy, but otherwise, the very image of a Pythia in a long, white lace dress of the type I thought she’d abandoned. But maybe, after everything, it had been a comfort to her, a reminder of better times.

I found myself wanting to hug her, so I did.

For a moment, she hugged me fiercely, as if she’d never let me go, her fingers digging into my back. But then she tore away, staring first at me and then at the rest of the blood-covered group. “That was you outside. I thought it was Father trying to reach me again, but it was you—”

“And we have a bunch of gods on our tail,” I told her. “I’m sorry; it wasn’t easy to get to you—”

“I don’t know how you managed it at all! Nobody else—but then, I don’t know why I’m surprised. I knew you’d find a way. I knew you’d come!”

“And it is wonderful to see you again,” Mircea said, breaking in smoothly. “But perhaps we can talk at a later time?”

“Yeah, we need to go,” I told Rhea.

“Go? You just arrived—”

“Did you miss the part about trailing a fuck ton of gods?” Alphonse demanded. “I just gotta kill this guy, then we can—”

“No!” Rhea and Tony said together, causing me to look back and forth between them in confusion.

“I can’t go beyond the threshold,” Rhea said shakily. “If I do, I die.”

“She bears a curse,” Pritkin confirmed before I asked. “Not one I’ve ever seen.”

He sounded astonished, probably because that was two new spells in one day.

“Can you remove it?” Mircea said tightly.

“Possibly. Eventually…”

Pritkin didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t need to. We all knew the rest. We didn’t have eventually.

“What is he even doing here?” I asked, glaring at Tony. Who was wearing a nice, plush bathrobe and slippers and looked suspiciously comfy, other than for the blood stains from the beating Alphonse had been administering. “Do you know what he did?”

“Yes,” Rhea said. “What I sent him to do.”

I just stared at her for a second. “Come again?”

She put a shaking hand to her forehead, and yeah, I knew the feeling. “I sent him back in time. To find you in Faerie. And bring you here,” she said, speaking slowly and distinctly so there could be no mistake.

Only that didn’t help, because, “What?”

“I know how it sounds—”

“You know, I kind of doubt that!” I said, feeling like my own head was about to explode. “Rhea, you don’t understand—”

“It’s you who doesn’t understand,” she said, shaking off her shock, because she was nothing if not resilient. “I need to explain, and I have rehearsed this so many times, but—”

“You thought there would be more time,” Mircea said, causing her to look at him in surprise.

“Time? No, that isn’t the problem—”

“Isn’t it?” I asked, grabbing her. “So, if you sent him, you can still use the power?”

“No. The gods didn’t dare reabsorb it, for fear of what it might do to them, but—”

“Then can I?” I said, not letting her finish.

“No. Or rather, I doubt it. You’re often the exception to the rules, but the Pythian power only interacts with our clairvoyance, and the gods rescinded Apollo’s gift. Without it—”

“Goddamn it!”

“But you said you sent Tony?” Pritkin repeated.

“It would have been more accurate to say that I asked him to go,” Rhea clarified, looking from Pritkin to me. “The power to do so came from the orb containing your parents’ souls, and, ultimately, from your mother—”

“Well, that’s just great!” Alphonse said. “How the hell are we going to get back now?”

“The same way we got here!” I looked at Tony. “Tell me you still have it!”

“You know, I don’t think I like your tone—” he began, before Alphonse ripped out his comb-over. “Son of a bitch!”

“It won’t work.” That was Rhea, talking fast. “Not unless you want to wait another fifty years. Your mother is dead and cannot access the Pythian power. All she had to work with was the excess charge built up in the orb over the last five decades and her own residual power. But two trips through time, one to get Tony there and one to return all of you, has expended it. She was so exhausted, she couldn’t even talk when they returned.”

“I am not staying here for another fifty goddamned years!” Alphonse roared.

“I’d worry more about surviving the next few minutes,” Billy said, as the whole room suddenly shook like—well, like there were a bunch of gods at the door.

“Saferoom,” Tony snapped. “Now!”

“What saferoom?” I said, but Rhea was already moving. Out of the living room and into the hub beyond, where a bunch of corridors met. She took the one to the audience chamber at a run, before looking back at the rest of us. “Come on! The wards won’t hold!”

“Why are they bothering with that?” Alphonse asked, as the entire suite quaked with the ferocity of the assault. “Don’t they have the password?”

“No, Zeus set the spells himself,” Rhea told him as we rushed after her. “No one gets in but him.”

“That… must have been fun,” I panted.

“He’s a monster,” she said fervently. “But he was useful. I think he was trying to suborn me in the early years, to get me on his side—”

“He’s good at that.”

“Not good enough,” it was vicious. “But he was willing to provide some comforts, including books, in the early days. I told him I was bored, with nothing to do here—”

“And how are books supposed to help us?” Gray Curls demanded.

“It’s not the books. It’s what they came in.”

And then she threw open the great outer doors to my audience hall, only… it wasn’t the hall anymore. Instead of a sunlit space with an expansive row of floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, a ridiculous throne I’d never liked, and a lot of honey-colored wooden floors so shiny that they looked more like petrified stone, there was… a library. The Pythian library, or so I guessed.

It was kind of hard to tell as it was looking the worse for wear.

That wasn’t too shocking since the last time I’d seen it, it had been carrying a furious Zeus off on a trip through time, including a visit to every major disaster, metaphysical or otherwise, in the last four centuries. The idea had been to kill him, which hadn’t worked, but it must have been a hell of a ride. When the remains of my library finally came to rest in the Vegas desert, he ran off into Faerie without so much as a peep, instead of coming after me or my court.

Of course, that had been the tiny rump of a god that was the only thing left of the All-Father in my time. Zeus had ripped off part of his soul to possess a demon lord, allowing him to follow her into the Hells on one of her hunting expeditions. He had become suspicious about what she was doing with the power she was taking from all those demon lords, but didn’t want to accuse her until he found evidence, hence the disguise.

And hence his survival when she went on her rampage and killed the rest of him, along with a number of other gods, before banishing those who remained. That small piece had endured, but small or not, it had still been too much for me to overcome. Even with the sacrifice of my library, which had been spelled to move about as the Pythian Court did.

Or it had been. It looked like a burned-out mess now, with the big rotunda where Zeus had been briefly held prisoner now destroyed, its ceiling collapsed, the priceless treasures it had once held unrecognizable trash, and the busted columns and wonky walls looking likely to collapse on us at any moment. But I hoped not, because Rhea was already leading the way across it.

“Hurry!” she said unnecessarily, because it sounded like the gods had just broken through. “In here!”

We ran across the ruined mess and inside one of the oddest features of the library, the series of rooms that were the repositories of each Pythia’s personal papers. There was a main library for general reference, or there had been, but every Pythia also decorated a personal space to hold the records of her reign. And to ensure that said records never decayed, a time loop was placed on each of them, repeating the same short period over and over, forever.

I had been in a handful of them with Rhea once, and they reflected the taste and temperament of their Pythia. Most were quite comfy, with plush places to sit and read, lovely surroundings, and occasionally refreshments. The snacks replenished themselves every time the loop began again, so the tea was always hot, and the pastries were always fresh and unbitten, no matter how many Pythias had been noshing on them through the years.

This was not one of those rooms.

Instead, we ran inside a small, cramped space with rough stone walls, a shelf full of scrolls, and a single oil lamp swinging on a chain overhead. And a scribe from the old temple at Delphi, getting a scroll off a shelf and then turning, his eyes widening in shock as our motley crew muscled in. And then he started to scream bloody murder and to whack people with the rounded wooden end of the scroll, but almost nobody noticed because we were too busy noticing something worse.

Namely, the crew of gods that had just appeared in the doorway on the other side of the atrium. And who immediately started toward us, boiling across the ash-covered floor fast enough to kick up black dust everywhere. Only to almost reach us before we could even react, while Topknot was cursing, Billy was yelling, and Alphonse was trying to pop Tony’s head off, because he was damned if he was going to die first.

And then the furious mass vanished, between one blink and the next, just blipping out of existence.

“What the—”

“Is this a trick?”

“Are they in the Paths again?”

“Will somebody get this oaf off of me?”

That last was Tony, who managed to shove Alphonse away while I was noticing something interesting. The clouds of black soot were no longer billowing, but lying in heaps on the floor as quiet and unbroken as they’d been when we arrived, without even our footprints to disturb them. Likewise, the remains of the once pristine museum cases holding the many valuable gifts given to Pythias over the centuries were not crushed underfoot, but lay in heaps where they’d been when we’d crossed between them.

And then I remembered what was different about this particular room.

“We’re back in time,” I said.

“Whaddya mean, back in time? She said the power don’t work!” Alphonse snarled, looking at Rhea.

“It doesn’t, but the spell on this room does.”

“What spell?”

Rhea started explaining how the room worked, and I realized what she’d done. My God, she’d just bought us all the time in the world. Or all the time until we starved to death, but still.

I’d take it.

“This particular archive had something go wrong with the time loop,” she finished. “No one knows why, but instead of providing several hours for a Pythia or her acolytes to consult the manuscripts as all the others do before looping, this one starts over every few minutes.”

“But the gods weren’t in here. They were outside the room,” Mircea said, his forehead wrinkling. That was unusual for him, as he was normally lightningly quick. But time travel tended to be hard for everybody.

“Yes, and they still are,” I said. “But the time loop on the room started over, taking us along with it. They didn’t move, we did—to the beginning of the loop. And a few minutes ago, they weren’t here yet.”

Rhea nodded. “They’ll show up again near the end, but for now, they are still hunting for you through the hotel. But the loop will almost be finished when they find you.”

“And will then start over again before they can reach us?” Mircea asked a little sharply.

Because yeah, that had been close.

“Yes.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, good,” Enid said, and sat down abruptly.

“What the hell use is a loop like that to anybody?” Alphonse asked, scowling.

“None,” Rhea said. “It’s defective.”

“Is it?” I asked, glancing at her. “Think an old Pythia knew we’d need this more than a manuscript someday?”

She looked surprised for a second, then smiled. “I learned a long time ago, Lady. Never underestimate a Pythia.”

I thought she could be talking about herself, as much as the ancient Seer who, thousands of years ago, had bought us a reprieve.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Tony,” Rhea said, sitting on the edge of a dusty table. “You begin.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s probably better that way,” he said, darting little glances at Alphonse and Mircea, who were on opposite sides of him. As if not sure who to be more worried about.

It was Mircea. Alphonse would merely kill him; Mircea would make him wish he were dead. But right then, he was looking at his wayward servant with more curiosity than anything else, and I had to admit to sharing it.

What was Antonio Gallina doing with Rhea, of all people?

And maybe I said that out loud, because he answered me.

“The gods put me here,” he said, looking aggrieved. “I’m basically a jailer, to make sure their captive Pythia doesn’t off herself and deprive them of their little trap. Zeus gave up trying to persuade her to join him a while ago, but he figured she could still be useful. He expected you to show up sooner or later and didn’t know if you could tell whether she was alive or not. If she was alive, this would probably be your first stop, and his brother could kill you before you caused any trouble. But if she wasn’t, you’d be off doing who knows what, and he couldn’t have that. So I was plonked down in the same prison to make sure their bait kept breathing.”

“Some reward for screwing us all over,” Alphonse said, and to my surprise, Tony agreed.

“It was that damned Pythia!” he said viciously. “She said if I did what she told me, I’d live. But you call this living? Stuck in here all the time with little Miss Perfect over there, while the world goes to hell? You call this—”

“What Pythia?” I interrupted.

Tony paused to glare at me with his mouth still open, maybe because he wasn’t used to being interrupted. Especially not by the little girl he’d once kept at his court to predict calamities, so he could profit from them. But I wasn’t that kid anymore and hadn’t been in a while, and I guessed it showed on my face.

Because after a moment, he cleared his throat and moderated his expression. “You know, I should start at the beginning.”

“Make it quick!”

“Why? So Alphonse can kill me faster?” he said nastily, because he couldn’t keep up even the pretense of civility for more than a few seconds.

“He’s not going to kill you,” Rhea began.

“Like hell I’m not!” Alphonse snarled.

Then we all had to pause so Topknot could spell the screeching scholar who’d just come in and immediately tried to bean her with a scroll.

He fell over into a stunned sleep and then the gods showed up and started running for us again, and damn, that didn’t get any easier! I thought, staring furious death in the face. Until they winked out just in time, and Alphonse grabbed Tony by the neck.

“Talk!”

“Okay, okay! I was going to anyway!” He took a moment to adjust his bathrobe. “I went to see Lady Phemonoe, in that fine house of hers in London. I’d figured out who Roger Palmer was married to, and why his wife was so shy, wanting to stay tucked up in that patch of woods all the time. Or, I thought I had,” he amended. “I thought she was just the Pythia’s missing heir, and I was in line for a serious reward.” He snorted. “Reward my ass!”

“You went to see Agnes?” I said.

“Yeah, I’d been there once before, ‘cause Rasputin was recruiting. He intended to challenge for the role of Consul of the North American Senate a long time before he actually did it. He was in bed with the gods, and they were giving him orders to destroy the senate’s power, as they figured our consul was gonna be a problem for them in the war to come. Only I didn’t know that then. I just knew he was dangling some pretty fine offers my way, but they carried a lot of risk. I don’t like risk—”

Mircea snorted, although whether because Tony was a notorious coward or because of the incredible risk of what he’d been doing with the gods ever since, I didn’t know.

Tony pretended not to notice. “Anyway, when I went to see the Pythia the first time, I was vague about all that, but she figured out I was being offered a dangerous opportunity and told me the reward wasn’t worth it. That it wouldn’t go like I planned, which…” He glanced around. “Pretty spot on there.

“So I told Rasputin and his thugs that I’d think about it—”

“What did they want with you?” Mircea interrupted to ask, and Tony shot him a look.

“What do you think? I was yours, all right? I could access your court whenever I needed to, and I had old associates who lived there all the time. And you were her highness’s right-hand guy. You knew all her secrets and were in on every plan; hell, you made half of them! And knowledge is power. But you were damned tight-lipped and your guys weren’t any better. Nobody could get anything outta them, so they needed someone on the inside—”

“You,” Mircea said. And it was amazing how much menace he managed to put into that one word.

“I told ‘em no, all right?” Tony said, looking like he’d figured out who he needed to fear. “Or I put ‘em off, anyway, ‘cause telling guys like that a flat no ain’t healthy! I was gonna respectfully decline later, only then I met Roger the Bastard Palmer. Worst decision I ever made was not killing him immediately—”

“What did my father have to do with this?” I demanded.

Tony switched his look to me so he could glower, which he didn’t dare do to Mircea. “Everything! It all started going bad as soon as I met him! I shoulda known; I even told Alphonse that that guy was nothing but trouble—”

“But you didn’t kill him.”

“No, more’s the pity!” He sent me another baleful glance. “Bastard sold me this BS about being a down-on-his-luck garbage man. One who was good at enchanting stuff as well as disenchanting it. And I always needed mages. The crap ones I had kept blowing themselves up or getting one of my shipments confiscated ‘cause their shit wards failed right alongside a goddamned Coast Guard ship, and then I had to kill ‘em—”

He waved it away. “Anyway, I needed competent help. And when I had him checked out, I discovered that he was up to his eyeballs in trouble with the Dark Circle. But that didn’t bother me. Their guys are good, and if he’d gotten in with them, it meant he knew his stuff. And if he’d managed to piss ‘em off, so much the better, ‘cause he couldn’t just up and leave me, could he? He needed a bolt hole, and I needed wards that worked!”

We had to pause again for the scholar to show up and freak out, and the gods to come screaming at us once more. And damn, I hadn’t thought they’d gotten that far, I thought, as one of them, an old man with a beard as long as he was tall, almost reached the hallway where the rooms were. He was close enough that I could see the veins in his neck sticking out, and the hunger in his eyes.

I shivered and looked away because Tony was continuing.

“But one of the guys I’d had checking Roger out recognized the broad he had with him—uh, recognized your mom,” he amended, as I glared at him. “She’d been in all the papers after she up and ran off with some mage—your dad, I guess—and he had an eye for a pretty face. So I went back to see Agnes again—”

“Lady Phemonoe,” Rhea said angrily, because we were all on edge.

“Whoever, to get the damned reward. She was offering a fuck ton of money for information that would lead to her heir’s return. So I figured, what if I could tell her exactly where she was? That would be worth even more, right? Not to mention making a friend in high places, which I might need depending on how things went with the rebellion.”

“But it didn’t go well. I figured it would be easy since I already knew her, and since I had the info she was after. That got me an audience right away, but it was weird. We were talking, all normal like, then her eyes turned white out of nowhere, and she started speaking in this monotone and told me to join Rasputin if I wanted to live. Told me I’d end up worse than dead if I didn’t. Told me—damn I don’t even know what all she told me, because she freaked me the hell out. And then she said to leave and never return, or she’d kill me herself!”

“What did you do?” Pritkin asked, looking intrigued.

“What the hell do you mean, what did I do? One of the most powerful women on the planet, who’s buddy-buddy with the Silver Circle, threatens me with worse than death? I fucking ran! All the way back to Philly! And I damned well stayed there!”

“Of course you did,” Pritkin said thoughtfully. “Tell me, had Cassie been born by then?”

Tony looked like he didn’t understand the question, but he answered. “Yeah. That was why I thought it was a good time to go to London. Roger’s wife had just popped out a baby, so I didn’t figure either of ‘em would be going anywhere.”

Pritkin nodded and looked at me. “The Pythian power?”

“What?” I said.

“You told me that it uses a Pythia’s clairvoyance, and that you haven’t had many visions since you achieved the office as a result.”

“Yes?”

“Wasn’t the same true of your predecessor?”

“I… suppose so. The power uses our eyes—our metaphysical ones—to keep watch over the timeline, and we can’t use them simultaneously. It would be like a human trying to look in two directions at once.”

“Yet Lady Phemonoe had a vision. That was a vision, yes?”

“That was a vision, yes.”

“Then it is safe to assume that the Pythian power must have permitted it—” He paused, looking frustrated, for another round of screaming and godly fury, before continuing. “—or perhaps even planted it, as it did not want Mr. Gallina—”

“His name is Tony, or Fat Asshole if you prefer,” Alphonse said.

“You always were a huge pile of shit, you know that?” Tony asked.

Alphonse punched him in the back of the head again.

“—to tell Lady Phemonoe where to find your mother,” Pritkin soldiered on. “Whom the Spartoi were stalking at the time. Had she shown back up at the Pythian Court—”

“She would have been killed,” I said. There was no doubt about that; I’d seen what hunted her.

“Almost certainly. That is why she and your father fled to begin with.”

“The Spartoi?” Zara asked.

“Demigod sons of Ares,” Mircea explained. “They were aware that the spell Artemis had used to bar the gods from returning to Earth drew part of its power from her soul. If she died, and her soul left this realm—”

“Daddy’s home,” Gray Curls said, scowling.

“Essentially, yes.”

“Is that how they did it, then?” Zara asked. “Is that how the gods got in?” She looked at Rhea, who blinked.

“No. Artemis perished some years ago, but her soul remains in this realm. Antonio had Cassie’s father make the orb, a magical talisman, to trap both of their spirits after the assassination—”

“I was owed, all right?” The fat man said when everybody looked at him. “No reward, a death threat, and then the damned Spartoi crawling all over the place—because somebody talked and they got wind of it! But I saved you, okay?” He looked at me. “I put them off! Told ‘em I had no idea where they got the idea that I was sheltering the Pythia’s missing heir, and if she was around, you’d damned well better believe the reward was mine!

“And they bought it—”

“Of course, they did,” Mircea said. “Avariciousness was a far more believable defense than mere ignorance.”

“—so you wouldn’t even be here if not for me!”

“Should I thank you for killing my parents, too?” I asked, trying and mostly failing to keep my temper. “For trapping their souls so you could gloat over them like a trophy, just because they refused to have me See for you? For orphaning and then abusing me—”

“Abusing!” Tony snorted. “You were fine. Yeah, you had nightmares once in a while, but you were gonna have those anyway. I didn’t make you a Seer; you already were one. I just figured you should be mine in place of all that money I missed out on and all that risk I took for you. And for a while, you were really paying off. Shorting that airline stock alone made me millions—”

He was interrupted by me grabbing the front of his robe.

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now! You murdered them to steal me away; you tormented me my whole childhood; you ripped Eugenie apart—”

“That traitorous bitch! She wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone. She wouldn’t—”

I belted him, which did nothing except hurt my knuckles, and then Alphonse did it, which had a lot more effect. Tony ended up on the floor, his jaw broken for a second before he healed it, and glowered up at us. Then he spat blood and a tooth.

“You get nothing, you hear me?” he said. “Nothing more from me until I get a guarantee—”

“The only guarantee I’ll give is to kill you fast,” Alphonse said, as I spotted something gleaming softly in the dust. “And believe me, that’s a mercy considering what I was gonna do—”

He was interrupted by the scholar and the murderous horde of gods again, while I crouched down and retrieved something from the floor. Something that had fallen out of Tony’s pocket when he hit the ground. Something that looked a lot like—

“Give me that!” he reached for it, only to take a boot to the face from Alphonse. I didn’t even reply. Just scooped my parents’ orb into the scarf Pritkin had lent me, tied the edge into a knot around it, and then tied the whole thing around my waist.

“I think I can take it from here,” Rhea said.

“Yeah!” Tony nodded. “Why don’t you do that? Tell ‘em what they owe me! Tell ‘em they wouldn’t even have this chance but for me! I saved the goddamned world!”

“You haven’t yet,” she said.

“Well, if they succeed, I will have! Who else were you gonna send back there? And you know, I could have stayed, right? I could have flashed back in, gone through a portal to Earth, and—”

“Watched it fall all over again?” she asked archly. She looked at me. “Tony did as my mother instructed, and joined Rasputin’s rebellion. I believe that Mage Pritkin is right and that the Pythian power wanted him to survive so that he could be useful now. And the only way to do that was to have him join the dark.

“But while he served them ably, they did not reward him as he expected. I also do not think he anticipated this,” she gestured vaguely at the destruction. “Or how little respect he receives now—”

“I’m a court jester!” Tony interrupted. So much for not saying anything else. “They keep me around to laugh at! No chance at advancement, money, influence, power—no nothing. Just an eternity of this until chicky poo here dies and they don’t need me anymore, then it’ll probably be lights out. Unless I off myself before then ‘cause I can’t take it anymore!”

“Trust me, you won’t make it that long,” Alphonse said.

“And you think I care?” Tony snarled, although he clearly did. “This wasn’t the deal!”

“The gods change the deal as it suits them,” Mircea said. “As you once did to those over whom you had power.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me all this?” I demanded. “Instead of shifting us all with no notice and almost getting us killed?”

“Why, you know that never occurred to me,” he said, sarcastically wide-eyed despite still being on the floor. “Sure, I been risking my ass for nothing, when I shoulda just talked to you. I’m sure you woulda been fine if I just waltzed up at that party the fey were throwing, and we’d had a nice, long conversation—before you blasted me out of existence! I wouldn’t have gotten three words out, and you know it!”

And, okay, couldn’t really argue there.

“Plus, you were hanging around this jackass,” he hiked a thumb at Alphonse, “and then you went missing and—I grabbed you as soon as you showed up and weren’t with him, okay? Only he threw himself at you at the last minute and got caught in the backwash. And I guess your Mom was about outta juice, ‘cause she dropped you in the right year but the wrong place, while I ended up back here.”

“He was supposed to bring you to me, but there were too many people around you when the shift happened, and it drained your mother too badly,” Rhea said. “She is still recovering—”

“So we didn’t know if you made it or not,” Tony added.

“Grabbed us, why?” That was Pritkin, ignoring yet another round of scream, clunk, augghhh from the scholar and the gods, which was almost becoming normal background noise at this point. “Why did you send him back?” he asked Rhea.

“To stop you.”

“From losing the contest?” I asked.

“No. From winning it.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

What?” I said brilliantly.

“That’s what I have to explain,” Rhea began, only to have Mircea stop her with a gesture.

“Did you see that?” he asked sharply.

“See what?” Pritkin replied because he’d caught the same undertone I had. Not fear exactly, because Mircea didn’t show much of that, even here. But the sudden hypervigilance of a predator who senses a greater one.

And this one was looking out of the door, where the horde of gods had just disappeared again. “The last time they came for us, they were closer,” he said tightly.

After a stunned silence, there was a sudden rush of commentary from almost everyone, all talking over each other. Enid leaped back to her feet, Æsubrand tucked her close and pulled his pike, and the witches’ wands suddenly appeared out of their little knot like a porcupine bristling its quills. Only Rhea seemed calm and unbothered.

“That’s not possible,” she assured him. “This room is on a time loop.”

“Maybe, but I thought the same thing earlier,” I said, a chill running down my spine. “I told myself I was imagining it.”

“You weren’t.” Mircea’s voice was abrupt, the way it never was because he was a diplomat. One who didn’t want to get eaten, presumably, because he pointed at the entrance to the hall, visible a little way beyond the door. “The first time they tried to come in here, they were several yards short of that. The time before this, when I first noticed something wrong, they were feet away. This time, they were past the doorframe.”

“But that’s not possible!” Rhea said again, suddenly looking panicked.

“It’s possible,” I said. “The gods don’t have our limitations—”

“But they can’t time travel!”

“Can’t they? We don’t know what abilities they have—”

“If they could, we’d be dead already!” Rhea said fervently. “They could have reset your fight to make sure you lost! They could have—”

“If they had the power,” I said. “But that’s at a premium around here, and time travel takes a lot of it. But even a small talent might allow someone to realize what was going on—”

“And tell everyone else to speed up,” Pritkin said, looking grim.

I grabbed Rhea by the shoulders. “What did you mean, you wanted to stop us from winning. Quickly!”

She stared past me for a second, at the currently empty atrium, then snapped out of it. “You can’t let Mage Pritkin win,” she said quickly. “The fey won’t follow him. They’ll say they will, do all the right things, even crown him. But at the final battle, the Alorestri army doesn’t show up. The gods break through and—”

“Break through where?” I said, shaking her a little, because she kept looking at the damned atrium. “Rhea!” My voice snapped like a whip, and she refocused again. “Where do they come in?”

“Here. In the desert outside Vegas. Where the library landed.”

“The site of Zeus’s humiliation at your hands,” Mircea said to me, and Rhea nodded.

“Yes, he wanted to erase that defeat by using it as the gods’ entry point into Earth. He told me there was a laboratory, one of the sites where his people had done experiments on the creatures of Earth and Faerie in the past. But unlike most, this one had a portal—”

“We’ve seen it,” Mircea said, glancing at me. “Or one like it. But that one was destroyed.”

“Then they must have had another—”

“They had many of them,” Æsubrand said. “I saw the ruins of several as a child. My Father was fascinated by them.”

“—with the ability to move about between worlds,” Rhea finished. “They parked one in the desert and used its portal.”

“But how did they open it?” Pritkin said. “Even if they had such a thing, with Artemis’ spell still intact—”

“My God,” Mircea said, suddenly putting a hand to the wall, as if he needed its help to stay standing.

“What?” I asked, feeling my stomach sink, because he never looked like that.

He looked up at me, and his eyes were terrible. “Dorina—”

It took me a second, and then, “Oh. God.”

“What is it?” Zara said sharply.

“Mircea was lost in Jotunheim,” I said, not having time to go into it all now. “We were in a battle at the portal to that world, and I left him on the other side. With Dorina.”

“You had no choice,” he said. “I never blamed you—”

“I blamed me. And sent Dory through to find you, and bring you back—”

“Through?” Zara repeated. “How? The way to other worlds is blocked, save for Faerie!”

“Not to my daughter,” Mircea said. “She has the ability to open portals, even ones sealed by Artemis herself. A gift of her lineage.”

“Fortune’s Blade,” I added.

“Yes, that was what they called my wife,” he explained to the others who hadn’t seen the terrible place where the gods had made their servants—and their monsters. And where we’d finally learned the truth about who Elena really was. “The Goddess Fortuna created her to use as a weapon against Zeus, giving her the power to follow him no matter where he went in the Nine Worlds or beyond, but the experiment failed. It was only when she had a child that the blade Fortuna sought was born.”

“Two blades,” I said, because Elena and Mircea had had twins, if very unconventional ones. “And I sent Dory through the portal that the Pythias had, here in the library, to try and bring you back—”

“So she said.” It did not make me feel better that Mircea still looked haunted.

“She found you?”

“Yes, but we were separated in some of the fighting that followed. I made it back to Earth, along with my wife, who was killed in the invasion. But my girls—”

His voice broke, and even though we didn’t have time for it, I put a hand on his arm. He’d suffered so much to put his family back together, tried so hard for so long—it couldn’t all be for nothing. “This isn’t over,” I said, and the dark brown eyes met mine.

“That is what Dorina said. That she would come back to me, would find a way—”

“And you think she did.”

“I think they let her, followed her, used her, and then killed her!” Mircea said, his eyes suddenly flooding red. “They played us—”

“Maybe they got through another way,” Alphonse said, only to have an enraged master vampire turn on him.

“There was no other way! And what do you think happened to her as soon as she opened that gate for them? Thinking she was coming home to me?”

“The same thing that is about to happen to us,” Æsubrand said, as the scholar came in again, screaming. Only it sounded more like a warning now.

“Billy—”

“Ahead of you,” he said, but Rhea grabbed my arm.

“Remember, if you win, you lose!”

“I don’t need to remember; you’re coming with us!”

“I’m already there,” she said and stepped back before I could stop her. And then Billy pulled the rest of us into the Paths of the Dead.

“No!” I screamed. But it was too late. The gods were suddenly everywhere, a boiling, clawing mass of them, and the last thing I saw was Rhea disappearing under their weight before the white nothingness took us. “Rhea!” I screamed.

“Cassie! Cas!” Billy was shaking me, and I was trying to focus, but I couldn’t—

“Why would she do that?” I yelled as Æsubrand grabbed me and started dragging me away. “Why would she—”

“She was under a curse,” Pritkin reminded me. “She couldn’t leave.”

“Cas! Listen to me!” Billy yelled.

“No, we have to go back! We have to help her!”

“Maybe she’ll come to us,” Butch Cut said. “If she’s a ghost now…”

“The gods feed on life energy!” I said savagely. “There won’t be a ghost!”

Billy slapped me hard. “Where. Do. We. Go?”

“What?” I stared at him.

“Go! Go! ‘Cause we’re about to have a shit ton of gods in here, and with that many, it won’t take ‘em long to find us!”

“Her father,” Pritkin said suddenly.

“What?”

“Take us back to Roger Palmer! He is about to cast a spell to return to the past; we’re going to ride it!”

Everybody looked at him like he was crazy, maybe because dear old Dad was more likely to throw us in the Hole to help power the spell than take us along. But I didn’t see an alternative, and I guessed they agreed. Because nobody argued when Billy started off.

And then sped up when screams of rage burst into being behind us, as the gods realized that most of their prey had eluded them.

“Fuck!” Billy said, because there was no time for anything else. And we weren’t far enough inside the Paths to hide, evade, or do anything—

Except that, I thought, as he pulled us back out again.

We hit real space on the other side of the atrium, but there were gods there, too, because they had our number now, and there was nowhere else to run. We started backing away, into the soot-filled room, with a line of gods stalking us. But unlike the others, these weren’t immediately attacking; I didn’t know why.

And then I realized: they were the smarter ones, who had just sent the cannon fodder into the Paths after us. They were waiting on the others to return, the ones they didn’t mind losing. They’d had to come through the lobby to get here and had seen what we’d left of Poseidon and his boys.

They didn’t want to end up the same way.

But I guessed they could communicate with the fodder, because more and more were popping out of nowhere constantly, crowding that side of the room. Several were covered with fresh blood, Tony’s blood, or possibly Rhea’s, that she’d spilled to save me, making something in me go cold at the sight. Yet it had all been for nothing.

We weren’t getting out of here.

“When I tell you,” Æsubrand said softly. “Take the Pythia and go. Get her back home—”

“No!” Enid hissed. “No, you’re not doing this!”

“There’s no other choice,” he said simply.

“No!”

“It won’t be enough,” Bodil said. She’d been so quiet that I had almost forgotten she was there. But she was, and her eyes were distant, as when she was seeing something in her mind and borrowing other people’s vision. “There are hundreds more outside, flooding the building on all sides. We’re about to be overrun.”

“Take her and go!” Æsubrand said, shoving me at Pritkin.

Only Pritkin immediately handed me off to Mircea. “Take her,” he told him harshly. “Get her to her father. Get her home.”

No, I thought, but didn’t say the word because I couldn’t. For a second, I couldn’t think, move, or do anything but stare at him in frozen horror. Enid was losing her shit, screaming at Æsubrand even as Alphonse pulled her away, but I didn’t do anything.

This wasn’t happening.

“Alphonse,” Mircea said. “Take Cassie as well, and go.”

“What are you doing?” Pritkin demanded.

“You plan to combine your power with his, two triskelion spells instead of one, yes?”

“Do you see an alternative?”

“No. I will help you.”

No, I thought, but my lips still wouldn’t move. No.

“You can’t; you don’t have the gift,” Æsubrand said, as the room filled with gods.

“If he does, I do,” Mircea said, nodding at Pritkin. “Take the spell off of Cassie,” he said. “And let us see what three of us can accomplish.”

Three of us, I thought blankly, as Alphonse grabbed my arm.

Three of us, as he started to pull me away.

Three of us, as the gods tensed, preparing for a fight.

“Three of us!” I screamed and grabbed the spell that Pritkin was trying to unravel, the one that bound us together into a triumvirate of power, the one that looked a lot like the old triskelion designs, with three spirals of energy connected into one being.

I know why it kills a single caster, I told them mentally.

“No!” Pritkin screamed, but it was too late. Because Bodil had seen the spell in Æsubrand’s mind, and with the last of her power, she sent it to me. And as Zara had said, whatever else I might be, I was a witch.

And a good one.

“Triskeles,” I whispered, and couldn’t even hear myself, because the gods had realized we were doing something, and all of them had jumped for us at once.

I had a moment to see a wall of creatures leaping for us, some human, if grotesquely oversized, some animal-like, with slavering jaws full of teeth and slitted pupils, and some things that must have come from other worlds I’d never seen, because my brain broke to look at them—

Then everything slowed way, way down.

It looked like I’d cast a slow time spell, giving me the chance to see the fluttering of silken robes, the glowing of tiny motes of power in the air, the fury and confusion and growing fear on godly faces as they realized something was wrong—

Then the faces were gone, eaten away while still halfway through the leap by a tide of golden light. It swept over the group like a tsunami, eating its way up outstretched arms, across faces caught between fear and fury, through bodies of all descriptions, and instead of growing weaker as it went, it glowed all the brighter. It’s feeding off their energy, I thought, feeling the heat on my face; it’s feeding off them!

When it had fed enough, it swept outward, burning through the room of ancient magical beings like a scythe through wheat. Then surging beyond, fueled by the energy they’d provided to take on the rest. I didn’t know if it was Bodil’s abilities or if I was still connected to the spell, but I could see it flooding the hotel, surging up the walls of hallways, crashing over beings that suddenly turned the other way and tried to run, only it caught them before they could.

And just like water, bright, sunlit, beautiful water, it kept on going, rushing out into the street like a churning golden tide, swamping the masses of gods converging on the casino, dissolving ancient creatures full of power into sparkling nothingness, like foam on the sea. And then it was flowing away through the city, running down ruined streets like a flash flood, catching any stray godly forms and eating through them, too, dissolving them between one step and the next.

And before I could recover from that, something rippled through the air, something great and grand and powerful, and I crouched down, wondering if this was their retaliation. If Zeus was right on their heels and boiling towards us, bent on revenge. Because it sounded like a 747 taking off, right overhead, so loud and so strong that I cringed before it, for I had nothing left.

But someone else did.

“Come on!” The witches were crowding around, tugging me back up, and giving me what strength they had. It wasn’t much, just tiny hits of power on all sides, which made me feel less like passing out, but it wasn’t going to be remotely enough to fight with!

Only maybe fighting wasn’t needed.

“Your father’s spell!” Billy was yelling in my face. “Come on, Cas! He’s leaving! Get it together!”

I got it together. And sent everything I had, all that the witches had been able to give me and all I still had in my suddenly starved veins, outward like a lasso. Straight at the massive spell screaming by overhead—

And caught it.

Yes, it felt exactly like a 747, I thought, as I was jerked off my feet as if I’d roped a whirlwind. Or maybe worse, I didn’t know, as I’d never tried to ride one of those! But it must feel something like this, I thought, fighting with the spell, which seemed to know we shouldn’t be there, and was bucking like a Bronco, trying to throw us off.

But while this wasn’t a shift in the normal sense, there was something about it… a taste on the wind, a familiar song in my ears, something that resonated with me like an old friend. I knew shifts. They were my very best thing.

And I was damned if I wasn’t going to make this one work for me!

Billy was there, laughing in my ear. “Ride ‘em, cowboy!” he said, and I looked around to see that Pritkin had scraped up enough power from somewhere to encase the others in his shields, and they were coming, too. Including the witches who weren’t remotely supposed to be there, but who had earned a ticket if anyone had.

The ride smoothed out after a minute, like the takeoff of a jetliner when it reaches cruising speed. I didn’t see Dad, up ahead; I didn’t see anything but the cascade of falling years, peeling away from us on all sides, and peeling fast.

This wasn’t going to take long, I thought, and I guessed the same thought occurred to Billy.

“I gotta go, Cas,” he told me.

“What?” I looked at him and saw him already growing transparent. “No—”

“You know I can’t go back with you. I got people waiting on the other side, just like you got yours here.” He glanced at the bunch trailing behind us, and his lips quirked. “You’re determined to have this mage, aren’t you?”

I looked back to see Pritkin straining to hold onto the shield, red-faced and swearing at it, but somehow keeping it intact. “Yeah. I’ve even been thinking about, you know, proposing, assuming we all don’t die.”

Billy’s head tilted. “Isn’t that the guy’s job?”

“Normally, but he has issues around marriage. Do I have your permission?”

“Since when did you need my permission for anything?”

“Your blessing then?”

“Well, since you put it like that...” he hugged me swift and hard. “He’s still not good enough for you,” he whispered in my ear. “But for what it’s worth, yeah. Go get the goober. And deal with this shit! You wanna be doing this sort of thing forever?”

“No,” I said emphatically, and he smiled.

“That’s the right answer.” And for a second, I thought I felt a ghostly kiss on my cheek. “Knock ‘em dead kid,” he told me, for the second time.

Which was why I stepped back into my own time with tears on my face.

Chapter Forty

I woke up in a gorgeous suite that was more like a round pavilion perched on a mountainside overlooking the sea. Half of the walls were just columns draped with diaphanous white curtains, and sunlight glistened on the water far below. It reminded me of the triskelion spell so much that, for a minute, I was back there, in a soot-filled ruin of a library, staring death in the face.

And then Pritkin rolled over and pulled me close, mumbling something in his sleep.

I lay there for a while, feeling dizzy and trying to sort out what I was seeing from my memories. It didn’t help that my recall of the previous day was hazy, especially the period shortly after we’d returned from that other time. Separating from Father’s spell had been rough, and then our landing had been… disorienting.

We’d popped back into our time in the middle of a huge crowd of yelling and cheering people, half of whom were already drunk, and the rest were working on it. Maybe because we’d shown up just in time for the final challenge in the contest for the throne that the Alorestri were holding. Which, judging by the bets being placed, was about to begin.

It had been too much, too fast, fearing for our lives one minute, and being caught up in a happy, boisterous crowd the next, full of laughing people in colorful silks, with no scars on their bodies or trauma in their eyes. And no idea just how fast everything could fall apart.

It was like watching them dancing on the edge of a knife without even knowing it was there.

It was obscene.

I saw Mircea through the throng, staring around with something almost like horror on his face, while the witches huddled together and looked as weirded out as they had been by the murderous group of gods. Maybe more so, as they’d seen gods. I didn’t think they’d seen anything like this.

None of us knew what to do, and I’d been too exhausted to figure it out. The scene had been spinning around me to the point that it was all I could do to find a seat on the rugged cliffside we were standing on before I passed out. And stare stupidly down at the perilous obstacle course set up on a long stretch of beach.

I’d assumed we were all going to do that, just find a place to observe, since we couldn’t afford to win. But then I’d noticed Æsubrand and Pritkin having an intense-looking conversation off to the side while the crowd gave them the stink eye. And I started to get worried.

Not about the crowd’s reaction, as our whole party was getting the same looks from those close enough to notice us. We were all dressed worse than servants, in dirty, blood-stained tunics that had definitely seen better days, and in Æsubrand’s case, a few filthy pieces of armor that he’d concealed under a shawl. To say that we stood out in the sleek and perfectly coiffed crowd was an understatement.

But then I was back on my feet, bone-weary though I was, because—

“What are they doing?”

“It’s alright,” Enid moved to my side.

“How is it alright? They’re going down there!”

And they were. Pritkin and Æsubrand, instead of coming over and finding a seat, were jumping down the cliffside like two mountain goats and then running across the beach. Within seconds, I almost couldn’t see them anymore; just two stubborn heads, one bright gold in the sunlight and one a shining silver banner, joining the other contestants and getting booed by the crowd, who had probably thought we had dropped out, having missed the last two trials.

“Yes,” Enid agreed. “Mage Pritkin has offered to join Prince Æsubrand’s cohort; therefore, both of his wins now belong to him.”

“Æsubrand is going to be king?” I said, understanding nothing.

“Well, he has to win first.”

I rolled my eyes. Because traversing a death-defying obstacle course that wound in and out of the water, featured beasts of sea and land, and doorways that were spelled to be fiendishly hard to open, might intimidate most people. But after what those two had been through?

This was a walk in the park.

But there was still a problem.

“What if the Alorestri won’t accept him, either? What if the same thing happens when he tries to lead them into battle?”

“It won’t.” Her lips quirked. “If I know anything about these fey, they are loyal to blood above all, and he has ancestors from all three royal houses. It is one reason Lady Bodil chose to back him. She knew that, of all people in Faerie, his right to rule could not be questioned.”

She looked teary-eyed when she said it, which I hadn’t understood at the time, but there had been no moment to ask before a row of massive conch shells sounded and the race began. And tired or not, traumatized or not, limping badly in Æsubrand’s case or not, the two tore through the competition like a hot knife through butter. And Enid and I had screamed ourselves hoarse in support, because it was all either of us had had the strength left for.

It was only after the fact, when the fickle crowd was going mad and chanting Æsubrand’s name, and fluttering bits of silk were raining down everywhere, because the Alorestri had to be extra even about their confetti, and horns were blaring and music was playing from five different orchestral setups, and I was wondering if this was finally going to be what deafened me, that I realized what Enid’s problem was.

She thought this was the end for them.

She thought this was where they became prince and scullery maid again, and it was to her credit that she was still applauding him even through her tears, as confetti showered her bright red hair and stuck to her wet cheeks.

I hadn’t known what to say, and fortunately, I didn’t try. Because there he came: climbing rapidly up the cliff face, looking cleaner than before thanks to all the water on the course, but no less beaten up, and finally surmounting the top and staring around frantically. For the only person in this whole crowd he gave a damn about.

And that was when I had what little remained of my mind blown. When he finally spotted Enid, he didn’t even hesitate. He pushed his way through the masses, picked her up, spun her around, and right in front of a crowd of thousands, kissed her full on the lips.

And then held up one of the shocked girl’s arms.

“My queen!” he yelled, loud enough for there to be no doubt in anybody’s mind what he’d said. And I’d found myself grinning like an idiot, because damn. I hadn’t thought he’d had it in him.

I found myself still grinning foolishly now, as I lay in bed, staring up at a dome painted with a school of jellyfish so realistic that they seemed to move. Or maybe that was me, as the bed also seemed to be rotating slightly. Not from any physical cause—for once, I’d returned from a mission without needing intensive care—but from the immense changes that had taken place in such a short time that my brain was still trying to catch up.

I’d been too tired to concentrate on much yesterday, barely managing to stay on my feet long enough to make it here before I face-planted. And the whole way, I’d stared at my mud-covered boots or the back of the obsequious flunky who had guided us here rather than the gorgeous scenery. It looked like pictures I’d seen of Greece, with sparse vegetation studding chalk white cliffs and with azure blue water visible from pretty much every vantage point. But I couldn’t enjoy it, because whenever I tried, I felt dizzy again, which was a problem for a palace built on a mountainside!

Falling asleep, I’d assumed I’d be better by today, but it still felt so surreal. As if I was trying to wake up from a very disorienting dream and not quite managing it. Or from one of the illusions the Alorestri crafted so well and so convincingly that, when I closed my eyes, I didn’t know what I’d see when I opened them: this, or that other time.

Because they both couldn’t be real, right?

It didn’t seem possible, even when I rolled over, reached out, and felt the suede of my filthy boots, stained with sweat and blood and soot from my ruined library. And still damp from the water that a senior god had used to try to flay me alive. I jerked my hand back, only to encounter the cool, pristine marble of the floor, and had a shudder tear through me.

For a moment, I genuinely wasn’t sure where I was or who I was, even with my eyes open.

“Cassie,” Pritkin mumbled, probably missing my warmth as I tried to breathe through an incipient panic attack.

“Go back to sleep,” I told him. “Just… getting a bath.”

It worked because he was still mostly asleep, and I managed to keep my tone neutral. And then decided to make a truth out of the lie because I was filthy. I found clothes in a chest that was bigger than me, and had another moment of crisis kneeling there, staring at gossamer stuff that I didn’t dare touch because the rough skin of my fingertips would catch on the fine material.

Finally, I found another tunic, mostly devoid of ornamentation, as I think it was supposed to be an undergarment. But it still had delicate pink coral embroidered along the bottom and was made of a pale, silvery stuff like shot silk, only finer. But it was literally the plainest thing there, so I took it and wandered around the extensive pavilion until I found an outdoor shower.

It was built of piled gray stones that looked like river rocks, worn smooth by long submersion in rushing water. And tastefully weathered wood that formed a stall allowing me privacy, not that anyone else was there. I cleaned myself up using toiletries that smelled like a seaside garden, faintly floral and bracingly fresh, then just stood there for a long time, staring out at the sea.

I didn’t like it here. It was too perfect, too fresh-smelling, too clean. I remembered the smells of that other place: rain and gunpowder from Stratford and the strange, spicy heat of the imps; dust and heat and adobe baking in the sun, along with the scent of frying tortillas and roasting corn from the incubus town; the biting taste of Gray Curl’s homemade hooch as we sat in the desert watching Pritkin sing it a song; Pigville smelling like a latrine, but better than elsewhere in Vegas, which had been highlighted by blood and spent magic and spilled intestines—    

Excellent, you’re finally up, Bodil’s voice said.

I jumped, and almost screamed, just barely managing to hold it in, but not the litany of curses worthy of Alphonse that followed.

Oh, then you don’t want breakfast? I could almost see the raised eyebrow.

“We had better go,” Pritkin said sleepily from behind me, a towel thrown over his shoulder. “She doesn’t hear the word ‘no’ often.”

“Maybe she should get used to it!” I snapped, my heart still pounding. But then she sent an image, including smells, of the feast that waited somewhere nearby, and my neglected stomach rumbled plaintively.

“We have to eat sometime,” he told me, and hugged me close.

It helped a little.

Breakfast was waiting in another pavilion, built slightly lower on the side of the hill with a peaceful morning view of the sea. More columns supported more diaphanous, cloud-like curtains, and a gorgeous mosaic floor glimmered underfoot in greens, blues, grays, and golds, with a group of frolicking porpoises that were almost as realistic as the jellyfish. And the promised feast was every bit as lavish as everything else around here. I didn’t even mind that said tables were built so low that we had to sit cross-legged on some pillows to eat at them, or recline like an ancient Roman as Bodil was doing.

And she wasn’t alone.

The witchy contingent had cleaned up as well and looked good, if rather wide-eyed. Zara wore a multi-layered dress of cascading blue petals that fluttered in the slightest breeze. It suited her far better than the black thing she’d had on when I first saw her, or the blood-soaked tunic she’d been wearing yesterday. Her olive skin still looked a bit pale, and her voice was breathy when she spoke from blood loss, but someone had tamed the mass of grizzled hair into a sleek chignon that reminded me of Rhea’s—

“Don’t,” she said, seeing my face. “Your heir is on Earth, your Earth, with no knowledge of all those years of pain and suffering. I think that was one reason she stepped back in the library. She didn’t want to remember.”

“She won’t,” I said thickly.

“And neither will our counterparts,” she added, ripping into what looked like a chicken leg with a tad more viciousness than technically required.

“Counterparts?” I repeated before the reality hit me.

Because there were duplicates, weren’t there? Of all of them. Zara—my Zara—was a fashionable witch and coven leader back on Earth, with no clue about any of this.

I plopped down beside this version, feeling stunned, and realizing that yeah, I’d just screwed up the timeline, hadn’t I?

Royally.

She patted my hand. “Don’t worry,” she told me. “Miri, Odina, and I are going back to Earth as soon as possible to knock some sense into our younger selves, along with the rest of the covens!”

“What?” I asked, not sure we were talking about the same thing.

She indicated Topknot and Gray Curls, sitting on her other side, stuffing themselves with more food than they’d probably seen in decades, and wearing fluttering dresses of pale saffron and light blue, which put my simple tunic to shame.

“They’re being damned fools,” Topknot, or Miri I guessed, said around a mouthful of fish. “The whole lot of ‘em.”

“Not for long.” Odina agreed. “Wait until I get my hands on them!”

“We didn’t join in the war,” Zara explained, seeing my confusion. “Not a single coven. Too lost in bitterness against the Circle to see that, if they fell, we all did. This isn’t just their fight, and the covens will fall in line. You have my word on that.”

“Thank you,” I told her sincerely. I did not envy her that challenge. But if anybody was up to it…

And I supposed the threat to the timeline was minimal, if there was one, considering that I hadn’t changed the past but the future. Something we were trying to do, to avoid the fate that lay in store for us if we didn’t. And if they could help… well, maybe this was a good thing.

I decided to go with that, since there wasn’t a lot I could do about it otherwise.

“What about the others?” I asked, after a moment.

“What? Oh, yes,” she said, following the direction of my gaze to the other end of the table, where Purple Hair and Butch Cut were wearing matching pale green dresses with a thousand tiny pleats, and staring at the sea as if they’d never seen it before. Which, if they’d both been born in the post-apocalyptic Vegas desert, maybe they hadn’t. “Elspeth and Cara were born after the Fall,” Zara confirmed. “So they don’t have younger selves to worry about.”

“It’s like a dream here,” Cara said, the crown of ribbons around her shorn head dancing in the breeze.

“Maybe for you,” Elspeth said, touching her lavender tresses, which somebody had braided with flowers. “My dreams aren’t this good.” She looked at me. “Is Earth like this?”

“Earth is… different,” I said, wondering what they’d make of it when all they’d known was ruins. “But you’ll see it soon enough.”

“Not so soon. We’ve agreed to stay here for a while and help with the transition.”

“What transition?”

“The new reality,” Bodil said, as the servant who had been making his way around the table reached her and refilled her goblet with wine. “Thank you,” she told him, causing the man almost to drop the pitcher.

“I—I—yes,” he said, wide-eyed, and fled.

I watched him go. “Did I miss something?”

Bodil grinned. And it was such a surprising expression on that stoic face, a look of pure joy, that, for a moment, I was almost weirded out. Then I noticed that those dark eyes weren’t on me, and I looked over my shoulder.

And saw her granddaughter, Rieni, leading Alphonse up the hill.

It was a little mid-twisting, as the last time I’d seen her had been in a ruined Faerie as a zombie being puppeted around by the goddess whose world this was. Although that was almost impossible to remember now, looking at the cheeky young girl in a pale-yellow tunic and trousers, the latter tucked into thigh-high brown leather boots, the kind needed for riding the sorts of steeds they kept here.

She’d started wearing her hair in multiple small braids like her grandmother. In a few years, she’d look just like her. And probably be as formidable, I thought, noticing how easily she led a scary-looking master vampire around.

Although Alphonse was less scary than usual today. He’d cleaned up in a dark-blue ensemble with draperies up top and tight-fitting trousers below. It looked a lot like the one Pritkin was wearing, except his was gray-green.

Thank you, Cassie, Bodil’s voice drifted through my head as she regarded her jewel, as she thought of her. I couldn’t blame her; Rieni shone like the sun.

“You missed the announcement,” Alphonse told me, grabbing a dish of little fish while Rieni sat beside her grandmother.

“The new king freed the slaves,” Rieni informed me. “All of them, just this morning.”

I almost choked, causing Alphonse to pat me on the back in what he probably thought was a gentle manner. “What?”

She nodded. “I suppose it’s hard to keep them in thrall when he’s about to marry one, although it’s going to be a mess for ages. Who will help me in the stables now?”

“Many will choose not to leave,” Bodil predicted, as Alphonse settled on Pritkin’s other side. “Although we will have to pay them, I suppose. My budget may never recover.”

Everybody started talking about who would stay, who would go, and how the covens would need to step up and help the returned integrate into human society. “As if most of them would know!” Odina said sarcastically. But I just sat there, with the disorientation I’d been feeling since I returned increasing rapidly, along with the knot of worry in my stomach.

“Something wrong?” Pritkin asked, but I just shook my head.

“Not to mention that you also missed the broadcast,” Alphonse added, watching me.

I blanked my face and tried to act less like a ball of nerves. “Broadcast? I didn’t think the fey had TV.”

“They do now,” he said, glancing at Bodil.

“What’s going on?” I asked, wondering if I wanted to know.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just, after she got a chance to rest, Lady Bodil here decided that repeatedly explaining everything that had happened to us wouldn’t be fun. So she did it all at once.”

“All at once?”

“She sent her memories of everything from the time we left Faerie until our return directly into the minds of everyone at court,” he said deadpan. “It caused a bit of an uproar.”

“Uproar?” Zara cackled. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it. You do know how to make an impression!” she said to Bodil, who gracefully inclined her head.

“And they believed you?” I asked.

“Feltin did not,” she said, speaking of Nimue’s old lover, who was currently in charge of the government—and in bed with the dark. “He was quite insistent on that fact. But I am not the only person at court with my gift, and others verified that I spoke the truth.”

“Yes, but—”

“And then there was this,” she added, parting the draperies over her simple lavender tunic and slacks ensemble. And revealing—

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, staring at the place where a beautiful, slender arm should have been. Instead, a healed-up stump resided there, almost back at the shoulder level. “I tried to heal you…”

“You did, or I would have bled out in that terrible lobby,” she said mildly. “But your abilities seemed to stop short of regrowing limbs.”

“I don’t think that’s something Mircea can—” I began, before belatedly realizing something. “Mircea! Where—he was here! I saw him on the hillside—”

“He was here,” Pritkin assured me. “He left last night to go back to Earth. He said reporting to the consul couldn’t wait.”

I flashed back to that look of almost horror I’d seen on his face amid all the laughing, oblivious people, and didn’t think reporting was his only motivation to get away.

“But he wants your help with something when you have time,” Pritkin added.

It didn’t take me but a second.

“He wants to go with Dory into Jotunheim,” because, of course, he did. I could still see his expression when telling us what had happened there. The gods had taken a great deal from Mircea, and the man I knew would never rest until he had taken it back.

“Yes.” Pritkin looked at me oddly. “And you’re going to let him.”

I nodded.

“Even though it requires taking him back in time?”

“He could take himself,” I pointed out. It would be an easy jump, as Dory must have just left, and Mircea still had our bond. Although I somehow didn’t think he would use it.

The man I’d met in that terrible future had seen how fragile our existence was, how delicate the balance, how easily it could all be overturned. I didn’t think this was a game to him anymore, or about power or pride or vengeance or whatever had once motivated him. It was about survival.

He would wait for me, and I would be there.

“What about your oath as Pythia?” Pritkin asked, watching me.

That took all of about a second as well.

“What oath? My elevation to the position was so weird that nobody ever got around to administering one. And frankly, having seen what takes place if we lose, I’m fine helping to make sure that future never happens.”

“Agreed.” He clinked goblets with me.

“It doesn’t have to,” Zara said. “Thanks to Rhea, we know the where and the how of the gods’ invasion, and before he left, Mircea gave us the when. Plus, we now know how to kill those bastards! No wonder they murdered everyone who had command over multiple elements. They feared we’d figure out that we had a weapon against them after all, one that actually works!”

I didn’t say anything.

But as usual, my poker face sucked.

“What is it?” Bodil asked, and I was grateful that, for once, she didn’t just pluck it out of my mind.

“It’s just… my plans never go quite like I expect.”

“As long as they work,” she said serenely.

“We’ll make them work,” Pritkin promised and squeezed my hand.

“Here’s to crazy plans,” Alphonse said, and everyone clinked glasses around the table.

Everyone but me.

Epilogue

The wedding was epic, as I supposed befitted a king and his new queen. It took place, not in some grand ballroom as I’d expected, probably because there wasn’t one that would fit all the guests. But at oceanside in the same area where we’d been staying, an old summer palace of Nimue’s.

The entire court had come except for Felton and his supporters, who were currently kicking their heels in lock-up, where they’d stay until after the war. That was okay; nobody was missing them. All of the ex-slaves had come as special guests of the king and queen, and so the entire clifftop was covered in people, with the hoi polloi mixing freely with a lot of disturbed-looking nobles.

But those weren’t the only two groups, and the great mass of Nimue’s people, it turned out, hadn’t belonged to either of them. I’d gotten a skewed perspective, as all I’d seen of her lands was the palace until now. I’d spent most of the last three days watching wagons roll in carrying pink-cheeked types from the countryside, while curious Margygyr heads kept poking above the waves and then ducking back down again before anyone thought they actually cared.

But I guessed some did, because the ceremony was being held seaside so that both the realm’s land and sea peoples could attend, which I thought was damned kind of Enid, who had been enslaved by the one and disowned by the other for her entire lifetime.

I guessed a queen had to be politic.

But that was probably why Rhosier, her friend and fellow runaway slave smuggler, was giving her away. She looked radiant in a dress of the palest shade of blue littered with tiny seed pearls, like ocean foam, all along the edges, and with a train so long and so gauzy that I honestly couldn’t tell where it ended and the tide began. And unlike the elaborate headdresses common at court on such occasions, her abundant red hair was down and blowing in the wind as the two walked to meet Æsubrand.

“It’ll never last,” Alphonse said, from beside me.

“Shh!”

“They’ve known each other, like, what? A week?”

“Something like that.” Preparations for the wedding had been rushed because Æsubrand insisted it take place before he left to join the army, so Enid could rule in his stead with Lady Bodil’s help. But I didn’t think it mattered. I’d never seen two people more besotted.

“I give it a year,” Alphonse said sourly.

“Is that why you’re hanging around?” I asked. “I thought you’d be off chasing Tony.”

“Tony’s dead. Got eaten,” he said with some satisfaction.

“Future Tony. What about the one in this era?”

He grabbed a glass of something vividly teal from a passing waiter’s tray while he thought about it. That wasn’t as rude as it sounded, as fey marriages took days, and what we were watching from the stands for special guests was only one of a myriad of ceremonies, rituals, and banquets planned for the next week. The Blessing of the Sea, I thought this one was called, and everyone pretty much drank their way through all of them.

“Yeah, he’s still out there,” Alphonse agreed. “But it don’t feel as pressing as it used to.”

“Because you already saw him die?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s knowing how he gave up everything to be somebody, and to his allies, he’s just a little bitch. An errand boy. You almost gotta feel sorry for him.” He drank wine, or whatever it was. “I wonder if he’s figured that out yet?”

I wondered, too. Then realized I didn’t care. Tony had loomed so large in the imagination of the little girl I’d been, but now I saw him for what he was.

And I didn’t feel sorry at all, I thought, taking a drink of my own.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ll squash him like a bug if I ever run across him,” Alphonse said. “But it just seems like maybe I got better things to do than chase that little asshole around, you know?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Visiting Sal’s grave,” he said, referring to his lover, whom Tony had sent to her death. “I buried her in the desert, in this little churchyard. It dated back to the Wild West days, so it seemed appropriate.”

I nodded. Sal had been a saloon girl back in the day. “And then what?”

He shrugged. “Thought I might saddle up and go join the Consul’s army. This fight we got coming up, it’s the big one, y’know? And I figure they could use the help.”

I blinked at him. “That sounds dangerous.”

He shot me a look. “After what I’ve seen lately?”

“You join up, and you’ll see more of it.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I never know what you’re gonna do.” He drained the glass. “But this hero thing fits me better than I thought. A guy could get used to this. And maybe pick up a prize along the way.”

“She’s not a prize to be won,” I said, because his eyes were on Enid again, who had just reached her prince charming, who was looking at her as if they were the only two people on the beach.

“No, she’s not,” he agreed. “She’s a woman, just like Sal was. But who knows? Maybe I’ll meet another one of those.”

“I hope so,” I told him, and meant it.

The ceremony finally ended, which meant that some feasting was due to begin soon. That seemed to be the rhythm: solemn ceremony, riotous feasting, and copious alcohol. Time for sleep afterward, when you could no longer stand, then wash and repeat. It wasn’t a bad way to party, if anyone asked me, not that anyone had.

That included Pritkin, who hadn’t shown up for the ceremony and who I couldn’t find at the feast.

That might have been because only about a million people thronged the area, which was under the stars but so heavily strung with lights and festive lanterns that it was impossible to tell. Tapestries blocked the view of the prep areas beyond, which were supplying the groaning tables of food on one side; the happy couple were enthroned on the other under a huge, heavily decorated canopy, and a large space for dancing was in between. And there was no Pritkin anywhere, and when I tried to reach out through the bond, I got exactly bupkis.

It was like he’d blocked me.

Or like someone had, I thought, the paranoia I’d been feeling since we returned blooming into full-on fear. I knew this was too perfect, too pretty, too easy. It was a feeling that had been growing all week, while everybody else drank, feasted, danced, and laughed. I’d felt like a horrible killjoy, but I just couldn’t turn on a dime like that.

I knew I should try to enjoy life while I had the chance, but I couldn’t. Instead, I’d felt almost as keyed up as I had in that terrible future, with the sword of Damocles constantly dangling over my head. And now something really was wrong, I could feel it, and I needed to find him fast and plan our next—

“Ow!” I’d turned to leave the party, only to run straight into a man heading my way. A hottie in a sleeveless white tunic of some silky fabric decorated with shell designs made of crystals and seed pearls, tight-fitting trousers of the same material hugging muscular thighs, and a golden circlet on his—

“Pritkin?” I said, staring at his hair, which was ruining the effect of all that finery. “Where have you been?”

Worry made my voice harsher than really warranted, but I doubted he could tell over the din in here. Or maybe he could, because he pulled me out of the brightly lit area, through the tables manned by the freed but still harassed-looking kitchen staff, because they were having to prepare everything in the middle of a field, and out to the grasses and rocks beyond. But that still didn’t seem to be good enough, as there were hundreds of wagons scattered everywhere, and smaller, less formal feasts happening around them, like tailgaters at a football game. And more energetic dancing was taking place beside the brightly burning fires that dotted the night.

“This way,” he said, leading us to a narrow goat trail heading down the cliff to the beach. I felt myself start to relax, even before we made it to the bottom, because I could breathe out here. The thousand raucous sights, sounds, and scents of the party faded into the background, and there was only clean sea air and a little wind throwing my hair around.

The dress I was wearing was lightweight enough not to impede me, although I hadn’t planned to mountain climb in it. But I somehow got to the bottom without snagging the delicate overskirt, which was way more voluminous than the slender inner layer and had a habit of billowing out at every breath of wind. But it was sturdier than it looked, with its sprinkling of tiny diamonds, and with the champagne color of the fabric almost causing it to disappear into the night, making me look like I was clothed in starlight.

Augustine would have a fit here, I thought, and laughed for the first time in days for no apparent reason.

The light from above spangled the sand enough that we could see, but it didn’t obscure the stars arching overhead. Pritkin finally found a spot he liked, well away from the celebration, although I could still hear music playing distantly. The tide was coming in, but it didn’t quite reach us, and the towering cliff face behind made it feel like we were the only two people in the world, even if it was kind of dark.

Until he pulled something out of a pocket that shone like a small moon.

It took me a second to recognize my parents’ orb, the one I’d taken from Tony, because I had no idea what it was doing here. Other than lighting up Pritkin’s face, which looked a little strange suddenly. Hesitant and hopeful and worried and happy…

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, and his voice had wonder in it. “Isn’t that strange? For one brief moment, absolutely everything is perfect. We don’t get many of those.”

No.

No, we didn’t.

“Why did you bring that?” I asked, taking the orb from him. As usual, it felt smooth and cool and slightly electric. It buzzed faintly, but if there was anything else going on in there, I couldn’t tell. Even Bodil had been stumped when I’d asked her a few days ago.

Maybe my parents were still recovering?

I bit my lip in worry, because what if they weren’t? What if that last major effort, transporting all those people all that way, had been too much? What if—

“Stop it,” Pritkin told me softly.

“Stop what?” I looked up at him, confused.

“That. You’re not Pythia tonight. Let that burden down for a little while. We’re safe here.” His lips twisted. “For the moment.”

Yeah, it was always for the moment. I wondered if we’d ever get to “forever,” and didn’t know. But moments were good, I decided, when he kissed me.

It was soft and strangely tentative, too. And Pritkin wasn’t tentative. Of course, I wasn’t sure I knew this Pritkin all that well.

I’d had almost a week with him now, but it had been filled with delegations coming and going from Earth--the Silver Circle, the Senate, and the Covens, surprisingly. Zara hadn’t wasted any time there, although they’d looked suspicious and hostile when they found the Circle already ensconced. But they hadn’t left immediately, so I supposed that was progress.

We’d been needed for meetings all day, every day, and often not the same ones, so we hadn’t seen each other as much as I’d have liked. Which was probably just as well, as I kept being weird. Like when Caleb showed up with the Circle’s delegation, looking so young and healthy that I’d creeped him out by staring at him for an entire meeting, but I hadn’t been able to stop.

Jonas had come too, striding around, trying to boss the fey and appearing confident and surprisingly sane. Then there’d been delegations from Caedmon and the Blue Fey, as well as our Dark Fey allies in Faerie, including the dragonkind, who had surprised everybody by flying in unannounced and transforming in the middle of court like it was no big thing. Even a handful of disaffected Svarestri had slipped away to plot with the rest.

Not to mention a never-ending number of balls and parties, endless wedding ceremonies, and fittings for the gowns needed for all of the above, the latter from harassed looking seamstresses sent by Enid, who didn’t leave any of her rag-tag group of allies out. It had been a whirlwind, exhausting, and not particularly fun, as all I’d wanted to do was vanish with Pritkin somewhere nobody could find us. Only who would I be traveling with if I did?

I looked up at him now, and wasn’t sure I knew. The green eyes were clear and laughing, the lips had a very strange, happy curve, and the hair… Okay, the hair remained tragic, poking up defiantly from the golden circlet as if saying, “You can’t tame me!”

And no, I thought wryly, I could not.

Sure about that? He asked mentally, and I noticed he was holding something. It wasn’t the orb; I still had that, which was why faint blue-white light was playing over the small box in his hand, which almost looked like—

I looked up at him, startled and disbelieving. And he laughed at whatever was on my face. Which was probably utter shock, because no.

It couldn’t be.

“I’m sorry I was absent all afternoon, but the jeweler didn’t have it ready when I went to pick it up,” he told me, opening the little wooden box. “I had to wait.”

“Oh,” I said brilliantly, because my brain had shut down.

“It’s traditional here, among the Alorestri, to use a green stone. The color is seen as a sign of a relationship growing together and becoming stronger. And you did speak about a partnership,” he reminded me, his eyes going sober as he dropped to one knee. “I thought… it was about time we made it official.”

I just stood there, silently.

“We can change the stone if you’d prefer,” he said, suddenly looking worried. As if the gorgeous cabochon emerald ring in the tiny bed of gold satin was anything but perfect.

It looks like his eyes, I thought, staring at it.

And then I burst into tears.

It was a sign of how well he knew me that Pritkin didn’t tell me to stop. He didn’t tell me anything. Just pulled me close and held me to his chest, a hand on my head and his arms gentle yet firm around me as I cried and cried and cried.

I didn’t even know what I was crying for. For the burden that never seemed to lift off my shoulders anymore, no matter what happened? For the world that ring represented, full of love and peace and happiness that I wasn’t sure I’d live long enough to see, or deserved to see? For the people we’d left behind, an entire generation wiped off the map, except for the two young witches we’d brought back with us?

All those people weren’t here, feasting, wearing pretty clothes, and watching the starlight on the ocean in the arms of someone they loved. They weren’t anywhere and never would be because of me. And the choices I’d made.

There had been so many—hard ones, painful ones, impossible ones. Had I gotten them right? I didn’t know, and maybe never would.

Could I live with that?

Did I have a choice?

And here was another, an easy one, only it wasn’t. I felt myself tearing up again, because I wanted it so desperately, that beautiful ring, but I didn’t deserve it. I knew I didn’t.

“This isn’t a movie, Cassie,” Pritkin told me softly.

“What?”

“What we’re doing. There’s no script where everything comes together perfectly at the end, and only the villains ever lose. Real life is messy, and painful, and full of terrible choices. And victories come at a cost. But the cost of not getting them is greater.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? The experience we just had, that you’ve been beating yourself up over all week, was one of the cleanest victories possible. Was it perfect? No. But it was damned good. As good as we’re likely to get. And you did that.”

“We all did.”

Pritkin huffed out a laugh. “When you’re a leader, everybody blames you when you’re wrong. Take the wins when you get them.”

“This doesn’t feel like a win!” I said passionately.

“Then what would have?”

“I don’t know! Just… better. Cleaner. Less costly. Something—”

“Perfection?”

“Maybe!”

“Too bad we’re only human, then, isn’t it?” I tensed, but there was no mockery in his voice. Just one soldier to another, who’d seen too much and understood the price we paid for what we did, and would pay again. “I’ll keep it until you’re ready,” he told me, shutting the box.

“I’m never ready for anything,” I said shakily, finally looking up and meeting eyes greener than the stone. Different eyes, and yet the same, too. Pritkin, finally together, all of him, as he was meant to be.

“There’s only one of us,” he said simply, reading my thoughts through the bond. “And he loves you.”

And I loved him—so much.

So what was wrong with me?

“I thought I wasn’t Artemis,” I said sourly.

“You’re not. But you’re not this, either,” he said. “Cowering in the seat of... whatever that thing is... and sobbing your heart out—”

Billy, I thought, startled, and glanced around.

“Two losers trying to make a difference and failing most of the time. But not all of the time. Not when it matters.

“When it matters, we do okay.”

He wasn’t there, couldn’t be there. Yet I heard him, clear as day. And I thought for a moment that the orb in my palm glowed a little brighter.

“Cause you’re Cassie Palmer, and you may go down one day, but it won’t be like a little bitch, crying in a car . . . It won’t be running away because you’re too scared to be who you were born to be and to do what you were born to do.

“No. It won’t be that way at all. Now, will it?”

“Cassie?” Pritkin sounded as if he knew something was happening, just not what. That made two of us.

But I knew one thing.

“I’m never ready,” I said again, more strongly, as I took the ring and put it on my finger. It felt good there, right, as if it had always been meant to be. Like the two of us.

“And it’s never stopped me yet.”

Other Works by this Author

Cassandra Palmer Series

Touch the Dark

Claimed by Shadow

Embrace the Night

Curse the Dawn

Hunt the Moon

Tempt the Stars

Reap the Wind

Ride the Storm

Brave the Tempest

Shatter the Earth

Ignite the Fire: Incendiary

Ignite the Fire: Inferno

Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Cassandra Palmer Extra Books

Masks (Mircea Basarab)

Siren’s Song (John Pritkin)

Dorina Basarab Series

Midnight’s Daughter

Death’s Mistress

Fury’s Kiss

Shadow’s Bane

Queen’s Gambit

Time’s Fool

Fortune’s Blade

Lia de Croissets Series

Junk Magic

Weird Magic (Coming 2025)

Author’s Website KarenChance.com