Page 19 of Another Damned Storm

There were some who could harness the magic in that dust, such as witches, alchemists, and the like. While it would do me no good trapped in the Nassa, I had the sense it was her death that had drawn him to my realm.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He dragged his gaze back to me and offered me a lazy shrug. “I might be a friend.”

“Which means you might be a foe,” I shot back.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, and the distinct jingle of coins snared my focus. There were only a handful of worlds where metal coins were used, and the human realm was the most populous among them. “Or maybe I’m no one, and I’m only here to bargain for a treasure.” His gaze drifted back to Anya.

Impatience crawled along my nerve endings. “You want the pixie dust.”

He laughed, but it was a decidedly hungry sound. “It’s valuable stuff where I come from.”

“And where is that?”

He rolled his shoulders back and sniffed. “The human realm.”

“How did you find this place?” The Nassa was hidden in its own little pocket of the universe. It might not be the best kept secret, but anyone who came here was either born here, sent here, or had enough power to navigate time and space to find this little sliver of strangeness.

“How does anyone find any place? I wander.”

“No one simply wanders into this realm.”

He sucked air through his teeth and jingled the change in his pocket again. His gaze hopped over my shoulder then snapped back to me. He was like an addict looking for his next fix.

I shot a glance behind me. Notlikean addict. I would wager hewasan addict, and pixie dust was his drug of choice.

“Her death drew you here, correct?” I asked.

He chewed on his bottom lip. “Maybe.”

Almost certainly an addict. “What’s your name?”

“Criton.”

I couldn’t recall ever hearing the name before, but an air of power surrounded him. “Are you a god?”

“Demigod.”

So, half god, and from the look of him, there was a hefty dose of trouble mixed into his blood.

Of course, if you asked anyone in Othrys, the realm that was home to the Titans and many other gods, they would tell you the same about me.

“And you’ve developed a taste for pixie magic?” It wasn’t all that unusual for demigods to search out ways to boost theirpower, but pixie magic was a rarity. “I thought they were nearly extinct.”

Another jingle. Another hungry glance. “They are.” He rocked back, yanked his hands out of his pockets and shook out his arms. “What do you want for it?”

I supposed the dust resulting from Anya’s death was mine to bargain with. I was the one who ended her life, after all. But the fact that a dead pixie was enough to draw him into this realm was what really interested me.

The rusty gears in my mind began turning once again, groaning and grinding, but finally functioning despite the pit of misery swirling deep inside me. “I believe the real question here is: what are you willing to do to earn it?”

8

NEVER

How long should I wait?That was the question burning in my brain as I studied the eerie landscape sprawling around me.

At least I could see farther than ten feet in front of me. The tropical forest on Hook’s island was dense and claustrophobic. This weird ass place was a different kind of forest, with giant trees and a boatload of open space. There were clusters of smaller, spindly trees with pale, waxy bark and yellow leaves filling in the yawning space in places, and little thickets of brush here and there.