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“Referring to him as ‘misbegotten spawn’ likely doesn’t help,” Enid said from the backseat and received another lesson in the human expletive form for her troubles.

“That was being kind!”Rosier snapped.“Wait until you see—just wait until you get a good look at what he’s been wasting his time with!”

I also found myself curious about that.It was impressive that he’d even survived, which was more than I was certain was going to be the case for us.Because Rosier did not, it seemed, actually know how to drive.

But we somehow made it nonetheless, as a moment later, what had looked like nothing but bare desert suddenly wavered around us, blurred, and then we crashed through some sort of illusion, straight into—

Okay, wow.

“What’s this?”Enid said, looking around in amazement, and she wasn’t the only one.Because this wasn’t a compound, as Mircea had called it.It was a town, or more accurately, a small city, that we found ourselves screeching to a halt on the outskirts of.

The screeching was necessary as we’d immediately been surrounded by a hodge-podge of unhappy-looking, weapons-wielding guards, half of whom looked to be fey in origin.Much of the rest were human, and I guessed the remainder were demons.Maybe?

It was hard to tell as I had never seen anything like them.

The one holding me at spearpoint was ogre-ish, with oversized tusks growing out of a human face, a shock of bright red hair, and muscles Arnold Schwarzenegger would have envied in his prime.He was accompanied by a woman with green hair done up in about a hundred multicolored ribbons, a leather bustier, and a skirt that was more patches than anything else.And when she bared her teeth at me, they were pointed.

I stared dizzily back, dazed from the journey and still trying to figure out what this was, which did not seem like the reaction she wanted.Because she grabbed my already hanging-by-a-thread robes and tried to jerk me out of the jalopy.She was battered back by a crack to the chin from Æsubrand’s spear, which I guessed was sturdier than it looked because it stayed intact as he leaped out of the vehicle and started a fight with half the guards there.

“You, uh, you gonna help him?”I asked Bodil, who was watching the silver prince through narrowed eyes.

“He needs to work off some steam,” was her only reply.

“He’s doing well enough on his own,” Enid murmured without the usual sneer.Maybe because Æsubrand had only a few battered pieces of armor left on his torso, and the rising sunlight was gleaming on muscles that were smaller than the ones the ogre-man boasted, but still an impressive display.

I glanced at Bodil, who rolled her eyes at me before a red-skinned demon snatched Rosier out of the vehicle and smacked him less than gently down onto its hood.“You were told not to return!”the creature growled, its eyes flashing gold before Rosier sent it flying into the distance.

Which didn’t help our case, as he was immediately piled on by a dozen others.

“Get off me!”he roared as the witches exited a nearby jalopy.

But they weren’t attacking or being attacked, as I’d have expected.Instead, they were staring around in confusion.And being greeted by a few of the guards, one of whom hugged Butch Cut and wasn’t zapped for his trouble.At the same time, assorted townsfolk ran up and called out to the rest to stop the beatings.

“Wait!Wait, wait, wait!”Zara was yelling, staring around at the growing crowd.And then she spied Rosier and marched over, pushing her way through the throng of guards, all of whom gave way before her.“What the hell is this?”

Rosier, who was now being held down by eight different demons, stared up at her in fury.“What the fuck does it look like?They’re attacking me!Get them off!”

“I thought you were supposed to be powerful,” I reminded him, trying to catch up.

“Not after rescuing you!”he snarled, but he was looking at Zara.“Call themoff!”

She did not call them off; she was too busy looking from him to me to Pritkin, who had been driving the vehicle at the front of the cavalcade and had just fought his way back to us.

He and Mircea had been leading because Mircea was the only one who knew where this “compound” was, and Pritkin hadn’t wanted me heading into something I wasn’t prepared for.You know, again.So he’d stuck me in the back and was now looking like he regretted it.

But no sooner had he shown up than the fighting stopped, but not because most people were listening to the witches.But because someone else had arrived at the same time, whom I had never seen before in my life.Someone with a powerful build, an attractive face, and a mass of black curls on his head that contrasted with piercing green eyes.

His skin looked Italian or maybe Spanish, or perhaps he had just been out in the Vegas sun a while.His face could have graced a Hollywood romance, and his body was bangin’, especially in a leather vest that left his arms bare.But I ignored all of it because the eyes...

I knew those eyes.

And I guessed he knew me, too.Because he ignored the ruckus, the guards who had just piled onto Æsubrand en masse, finally bringing him down and causing Bodil and Enid to have to do something, the splayed-out, furious demon lord screeching from the hood of the car, and the man pulling me back against him, because he knew those eyes, too.And stopped dead in his tracks to stare at me.

“Cassie,” he said hoarsely, and the voice was the same, as well.

And for some reason, after everything, that was what did it.My brain decided it had had enough for one day, the desert went swimmy, and I sagged back against Pritkin, whose arms tightened abruptly.And then the sun came up and I went out, at almost the same moment.

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