Page 33

“Call it up?”I asked, but suddenly, everybody was talking at once.

“And leave Pritkin?”Alphonse demanded.

“Better than dying alongside him!”Topknot said.

“We need him for the wards on the lower levels,” Purple Hair protested.

“Do we?”Topknot grinned; she clearly enjoyed a good argument.“He’s not been in there for fifty years!We know the place better!”

“I need him for Vegas,” I said harshly.

“Sounds like a you problem,” Gray Curls muttered.

“We could help you in Vegas,” Butch Cut began before being shouted down by her sisters.

“Are you mad?”

“Speak for yourself!”

“That place makes this one look like a walk in the park!”

That last was from Topknot; surprisingly, Zara hadn’t said anything.But she hadn’t volunteered, either, and I didn’t expect her to.Not to mention that I wasn’t leaving Pritkin behind anyway, so they could all bite me!

“If you know how to get in, get in,” I told them tightly.“I’m going for the cage.”

I started off, but Alphonse grabbed me.“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe.”I honestly didn’t know anymore.“But if we can’t get through this, we can’t get through Vegas, so we might as well find out.”

“Find out later when you’re rested up, not now!”

“He’s got a point,” somebody said, but I didn’t look around to see who because, no, he didn’t!

“Pritkin isn’t going to wait!Not even with his father here.He can’t becausetheywon’t!”I gestured at the horde.“They’re going to hang Caleb any minute now, Pritkin’s going to do something, and all hell is going to break loose—”

“Looks like it’s already here,” Alphonse said.

“I have to go!”

“Then I’m going with you.”

I stared at him.“Why?You’d be better off with the witches—”

“Sure, like I’d have been better off staying with the fey and letting you go off and get killed—”

“I’m not going to get killed!”

“Yeah, only say you do because you’re apsycho, almost as much as that weirdo you’re dating, and then what happens to me?I’m not staying here, okay?I got a life, and maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s alife, and I wanna get back to it—”

“Alphonse—”

“—and I need you for that, so you don’t die.But I know you; I try to stop you, and it’ll not only get worse, it’ll getweird, and I can’t deal with any more of that right now—”

“Alphonse—”

“—and maybe I like the idea of saving the world.It has a ring to it: Alphonse, Hero of Mankind.”He rolled the words around in his mouth as if testing them out.“Yeah, sounds about right.”

I just stared at him because everybody was insane except me, and I wasn’t sure about me.But there were necros in the crowd; they hadn’t all left.And nobody seemed to be attacking anybody, maybe because the new arrival was bossing his groupies around, sending them scurrying off in search of his son.