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“I could go down and...talk to Jonas,” Pritkin said, as if he was substituting ‘talk’ for something far more painful.

“You could end up on a slab!”Æsubrand said in a shrill whisper.He seemed to be focused on that.

“I could cause more of a distraction than you think,” Pritkin insisted.“It wouldn’t last long, but it would give the rest of you a chance—”

“To do what?”I demanded.“There’s a hundred war mages down there!”

“That’s whatIsaid,” Alphonse agreed, causing Pritkin to shoot him a look, which did as much good as that ever did with him.“Don’t get pissy with me because your boys went nuts,” Alphonse added.“You ain’t distracting shit down there, not with them all set to martyr themselves.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pritkin said tersely.

“I know you’re gonna get caught.I know Cas won’t leave without you.I know that’ll screw all of us, so—”

“She’ll leave without me.We discussed this.”

“Sure.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you don’t know your woman as well as I thought.”

“The coven could try something,” I said, because they were both looking at me suddenly, only to get whisper-shouted down before I finished the thought.

“Try what?”Topknot demanded.

“Speak for yourself!”Gray Curls hissed.

“We’d end up like the bokors before we got halfway down the stairs,” Butch Cut agreed, her forehead frowning.“And I’m not feeling a lot of wild magic in here, so we’re on our own, and I’m not exactly flush—”

“None of us are!”Zara said.“But we’ve got to get Cassie through that portal!”

“Oh, so you’re a true believer now?”Purple Hair challenged.“Earlier today, you were trying to kill her!”

“Feels like longer,” Zara muttered.

And then the witches did what witches do and descended into squabbling while I held onto the bottom of the rusty iron railing and tried to think.But my brain had been through enough that all I was getting back was a distant hum.It was as if my CPU was set on idle and wouldn’t be budged.

Which was a problem with Jonas about to murder everyone in the room!

But still, nothing.

I needed sleep.I needed a vacation.I needed to quit gripping the rail so tightly because the orange flakes were embedding themselves into my flesh!

“Stop that,” Pritkin told me gently, prying my hands off and leaving me wondering if I could get tetanus from this crap.And if I’d live long enough to have to worry about it.And where they’d gotten enough water in the Sahara to rust anything.

And then I stopped worrying about it, because what the fu—

“What is going on?”Alphonse yelled, not that it mattered.Suddenly, the war mages were scattering, the portal was bulging, the prisoners were screaming, and someone new was coming through the brilliant swirl of green.

Make that something, I thought, right before a glowing golden torso the size of a god, because it was one, tore out of nothing, spearing light so bright around the cavern that it forced me to shield my eyes, even while expecting to be torn apart any second.

He must have followed the mages, I thought, my heart thudding as Pritkin dragged me to my feet.He must have traced Jonas’s guys back here.I remembered Zara saying that some of them had a little mind left.

But not us, apparently, as we were pelting straight for the thing!

That was even true of Æsubrand, who was being dragged toward the stairs at the far end of the ledge by Alphonse; I didn’t know why.But he was fighting, and Alphonse was punching him in the head.And I didn’t know who to root for because I was kinda with the silver-haired bastard on this one.

We needed to get out of here!