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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 beeasier?

“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 toDante’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.