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I had my heir to find, my power to regain, and two worlds to save, and Bodil was going tohelp me, all of them were going tohelp me, or a rogue god was going to be theleastof 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.

Nonothing,because this isn’t about us; it’s about ourworlds.So we suck it up, we do the job, and since the job requires us to be alive, we swallow our pride and wehide.Wecrawl.We do whatever we have to because if we don’t, there isn’t anybody else, and there never will be.

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Or maybe not, I thought, barely aware of it when the giant got bored, the arm was withdrawn, and sunlight flooded back into our gloomy little world.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

“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 Ihadseen 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.

“Watchthis,” 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...