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“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 thecity—”

“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 doesnothing.Home is where all this started.Home is where welost.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.Withthe 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.