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“Oh, but my loyal soldiers aren’t the ones you should be worrying about,” Kia said with a slow, savage twist of her lips.

And that’s when Regin and all ten of his immortally-insane progeny stepped out of the shadows, joining Kia. Regin looked at me and Nero with cold calculation, like he was assessing a pair of fish he’d just snared in his net.

Shit.

“So you’re working with Regin now?” I asked Kia.

“Oh, not just now. I have been working with him for quite some time.”

“That is a really bad idea,” I told her.

“Only for you,” she said through a satisfied smile.

“No,especiallyfor you,” I warned her. “Regin is a psychopath.”

Wait, bad argument. We’d already established that Kia was pretty psychotic herself. I didn’t need to give her one more reason to hitch her wagon to Captain Crazypants over there. Actually, come to think of it, what possible reason could she have to ally with Regin?

“Why are you helping him?” I asked her.

Her response was cryptic—and oh-so-smug. “We are helping each other.”

“Until you’re not.” I tucked my hands behind me. I felt my magic pour down my arms, prickling, waking, readying. “He’s totally going to stab you in the back, you know.”

Kia’s bone-chilling laughter echoed off the library’s pretty walls.

“She’s even more nuts than I thought,” I said to Nero.

“She does seem to have lost perspective over the years,” Nero agreed.

Lost perspective. I freaking loved Nero’s insults. They were so understated—and yet, when you peeled back the layers of civility, so viciously blunt.

“None of this matters,” I said to Kia, Regin, and anyone else who was listening. “Ok, you have an army. Well, so what? So do we. And our army is going to win.”

“So you are the weapon my brother created to defeat me. A god-demon hybrid.” Regin looked at me with those hard, soulless eyes of his. He was clearly unimpressed with what he saw. “Faris isn’t half as clever as he thinks he is.”

“Which is still twice as clever as you,” I retorted.

I was really glad Faris wasn’t here to hear me speaking up for him. He’d definitely take my words as an undeniable, irrevocable signal of submission to his authority.

“And, you’ve got it all wrong anyway, Uncle Reg,” I continued. “Faris didn’t create me to defeatyou. By then, everyone had already forgotten all about you.”

Regin scowled at me. “No, Faris created you to be a weapon against the demons.”

“And now gods and demons are all working so splendidly together,” I said pleasantly. “Good for us. Bad for you.” I looked at Nero. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’m not really enjoying this family reunion.”

I set my buzzing, tingling hand in Nero’s, so we could escape together. I lit the final spark of magic to teleport us away…

But instead we hit an invisible wall and bounced back, slamming into a bookcase. And then into each other.

“Are you all right?” Nero asked, helping me to my feet.

I blinked back dizziness. “What happened?”

Dislodged books were raining down all around us.

“Ihappened.” Vertigo stepped out of the shadows, fire in her eyes, a sneer on her lips. “Teleportation? Really? Don’t you think we’ve already thought of that? There is no escape from here. This is the end of the line for you.”

CHAPTER 27