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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 aslave!” Enid raged.“And Iwon’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 andfight, 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 goddamnedsecond?”

“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.“Andwhatdid you think when you came here without me?We were supposed torendezvous!”

“I know, but—”

“Which would have allowed me to tell you that freakingPoseidonwas 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—”

“WhenI’mlike 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, Itold youso!”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 freakingarmy full of godsstarts 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—”