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“Oh, try it on someone else.”I took another swig, choked again, and got thumped on the back.Which helped not at all because nothing was caught in my throat; it was just on fire.I handed the bottle back and told myself to get wasted later.

“Meaning?”he asked, putting it on the other side of the bench.

“Meaning that you always have a plan,” I wheezed.“You know how to get to Rhea.Don’t tell me you don’t.”

“I have an idea,” he agreed reluctantly; why, I didn’t know, since it was our only play.If the power hadn’t come to me, it was with my heir.She could send us back to our own time.

Of course, if she could send us, she could also send herself, and hadn’t done it, which was more than a little ominous.But I decided to leave that problem for another day.I had enough on my plate as it was, and anyway, she was the only possible chance we had, so getting to her was the plan, whether it was easy or not.

“Why does it sound like I’ll hate it?”I asked.

Pritkin pulled me in closer, and I went happily.It was the only good thing about this, the fact that he was with me.If I’d been here alone...

Well, I have been finishing that bottle and hoping it finished me at the same time.But Pritkin had a way of making even insane odds sound doable, maybe because he’d battled through them enough.We both had.

If I had to be at the end of the world with someone, I was glad it was him.

“The Circle recently cut a portal from its HQ in Stratford to its new, temporary digs on the outskirts of Vegas,” he told me.

“The old shoe warehouse?”

He sighed because he hated when I called it that.But I wasn’t trying to belittle the Circle’s accomplishments.After the demise of MAGIC, the old supernatural version of a United Nations out in the desert, where the local branch of the Silver Circle had once been based, they’d had to find another home and find one fast.They faced an unexpected war that wouldn’t wait, and the warehouse had been innocuous-looking and big enough...

But they’d still acted like it was embarrassing for the world’s premier group of mages, which was weird since their old HQ had been a hole in the ground.

I decided not to mention that.

“And?”I prompted because Pritkin looked like he wished he hadn’t said anything.

“The idea was to link our main bases of power so that, if an attack was made on one, the others could quickly come to its aid,” he told me.“Or help with an evacuation if needed.After the Black Circle attacked your court and we took far too long to respond, leaving you fighting a war with only a handful of newspaper reporters for backup—”

“Hey, the reporters kicked ass.”

“Yes, they did,” his hand tightened slightly on my arm.“But it was a close thing, and nobody wanted a repeat.The Pythian Court was, therefore, put right at the top of the list for areas to be linked into the new system, and plans had already been drawn up to provide a shortcut to it when I left the Corps.Or not directly to it, as that would compromise security, but in the region.”

“So we get to the shoe warehouse, and we get to my court?”

“To Dante’s, or just down the street from it,” he corrected, talking about the vamp-owned casino where my court had somehow ended up.

It was a long story.

“The difficulty is getting to the warehouse, considering where we are now,” he added.“The desert here is far too open, and I have seen no less than three giant shapes in the distance since coming up here.”

“Gods?”I said in alarm, staring out over the sand.

It didn’t help much, as the moon was barely a sliver in the sky, and the aurora borealis, which had brilliantly lit many of the nights in Faerie, was nowhere to be seen.The desert was dark, but there was no light pollution, allowing the Milky Way to arc overhead and provide a starfield all the way to the horizon.It wasn’t bright, but I could see how he could make out vague shapes, especially if they were moving.

But what were a bunch of gods doing in the middle of nowhere?

“I don’t know,” he confessed when I voiced my thoughts.“I also don’t think a god would have been fooled as easily as the creature attracted by our portal, but I cannot say for sure.”He shot me a look.“I haven’t had as much experience with them as you have.”

“Ha ha.”And then I realized what he’d meant.“You think it was the portal that attracted him?”

“What else?”

“I thought he must have seen one of you.”

Pritkin shook his head.“He was already coming our way when we topped the rise of the hill.At a guess, the power of a portal from Faerie was discernible even at a distance, and he came running.But we’ve done no magic since, having practically none available, yet there were other creatures like him in the vicinity.”