Page 29

Damiel faded away. Everyone and everything faded to white.

Except for Faith. And the smell of cookies.

“You,” I said to the sixteen-year-old girl. “It’s you. You’re the one Damiel warned me about. It’s your magic I keep smelling everywhere. You’re the one behind the curse.”

“Yes.” Faith didn’t look triumphant or boastful. She just looked determined. “I’ve been following you longer than you realize, watching from afar.”

“How long?”

“Since you found the dead vampires in Purgatory.”

So every time I’d smelled cookies, that had been Faith using her magic.

“Why were you watching me?” I asked her.

“To make sure you realized that all the victims are connected and the ‘curse’ was contagious.”

“You planted the strip of leather with the vampires’ symbol on it near the fire elementals. And you wanted us to find you in that barn with Drummoyne’s ring on you.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re pretty smart,” I told her. “But you’re also pretty crazy. And whatever you are trying to do, I will stop you.”

“Why do you have to make this so difficult?” she sighed.

“That’s what I do.”

A soft meow drew my attention downward. I found Angel standing beside me in this great white nothingness.

“What are you doing here?” I asked my cat.

She didn’t explain why she was here with me when everyone else was gone. Then again, she was only a cat. Just because I wanted to believe she understood me, that didn’t mean she actually did.

“Now, let’s get started.” Faith sat down on an old wooden rocking chair that had spontaneously materialized behind her. “We have a lot to get done.”

Two knitting needles appeared in her hands. Rolls of yarn popped up all around her. As Faith rocked, she knitted. Since I was guessing this was some kind of a vision or dream, the yarn had to represent something. Maybe it meant she was creating something. She had mentioned she had a lot to do.

“What exactly do you want to get done?” I asked her.

Faith glanced up from her flashing needles. “Isn’t it obvious? I want to black out all the world’s magic.”

She sure didn’t dream small.

“And how are you going to do that?” I asked.

“Not me. You, Leda. You are going to do it.”

“Assuming blacking out all the world’s magic is possible, which I doubt—”

“Oh, it is very possible. You just need to know how to do it.”

“The curse. That’s why you created the curse,” I realized. “To make people afraid to access their magic because using that magic almost surely meant their death.” I considered her closely. “You’re a telepath. We labeled this thing a curse, like it was made from fairy magic. But the curse isn’t fairy magic, is it? It’s telepathic magic. The curse is…well, it’s nothing but an idea. Your spell planted the idea in people’s heads that their magic had turned against them. And so their magic does turn against them. Idea becomes reality.”

Faith just kept knitting; her creation, whatever it was, was all the way down to her lap by now. “Ideas are very powerful. My idea, the idea of the curse, has silenced the world’s magic. But not yet all of it.”

“The gods and demons still use magic,” I said.

“And so do the monsters.”

“Good luck silencing the monsters,” I told her. “The Legion of Angels has been trying to accomplish that for centuries. Their magic is too chaotic, too wild.”

“That’s where you come in, Angel of Chaos. You have power over the beasts. You’re just going to do what you did to the monsters at the Silver Shore. Just like I told you to do.”

The Silver Shore…

“You…you put those dreams of Nero in my mind.”

“Of him, of his father, and of your father.”

“Damiel, the real Damiel just now at the gala, he said he never trained me in telepathic resistance. For days, you have been putting the image of Damiel in my mind, making me think he was training me…” I shook my head. “But he seemed so real.”

“I drew on your memories of him,” Faith told me. “I prompted your mind to create a Damiel Dragonsire real enough to fool itself.”

“So my mind was effectively fooling itself.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

I tried to work through what she’d said. “Faris was in my dreams. Except that was you too. Because of those dreams, I thought my mind was too weak to keep out the gods and demons. So I sought out Damiel’s help to make me stronger. But it was never Damiel; it was you. And you used those training sessions, those mental attacks, to weaken my mind.” I chewed on my lower lip. “And what of my dreams of Nero? Were those fake too?”

“Naturally. Emotional turmoil weakens mental defenses.”

I scowled at her. “You don’t have a shred of decency in you, do you, Faith?”

Anger flashed in her eyes. “I am decent. Do you think I wanted to do all this? Believe me, I didn’t. But I have no choice. It’s the only way.”

“How can killing that many people and making everyone afraid to use their magic possibly be the only way to anything?” I demanded.

Faith shook her head. “You don’t understand. It is the only way. For a few minutes, I can’t have anyone on Earth use any magic.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the only way to find my brother!”

I twirled my finger around. “Backtrack. What does no one using their magic have to do with finding your brother?”

She expelled a frustrated sigh. “I told you he went missing and I couldn’t find him. Well, I actually do know who took him. It was the Guardians.”

“Your brother is a telepath too, isn’t he? Like you.”

“He is,” she confirmed.

“And he’s as powerful as you?”

“Yes.”

That explained why the Guardians had taken him. They were collecting powerful supernaturals. Well, Faith was the most powerful telepath I’d ever met. Her magic was so seamless, so perfect. She’d completely fooled me.

“And now you’re trying to rescue your brother from the Guardians,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But, seriously, what does no one on Earth using their magic have to do with finding him?”

“All the magic in the world, it’s so noisy.” She waved her hands on either side of her head, sending ripples across her knitting. “Like an ocean of crashing waves, always moving, never resting. I need it to be quiet, so I can focus on a very particular magic. The Guardians’ magic.”

If she could do that, it meant Faith wasn’t just a powerful telepath; she was also a unicorn, a magic sensor. It was one of the eight kinds of passive magic that Cadence and Damiel had described to me.

“So you’re trying to find the Guardians’ Sanctuary,” I said.

“Finding it is not the problem. I know exactly where their Sanctuary is. It’s here, on Earth.”

I’d been told the Guardians’ Sanctuary was in a different realm.

“The Sanctuary is in a different realm, just not on a different world,” she said.

She’d read my thoughts again. Damn it!

“Their Sanctuary is here. It’s actually many smaller sanctuaries. They are hiding in plain sight, where the gods have no power.”

In plain sight…where the gods have no power…

“The plains of monsters,” I realized.

“Wow, you actually are as smart as people say.” She sounded surprised.

“The Guardians are living on the plains of monsters?”

“Well, not exactly on the plains of monsters. Their Sanctuary of sanctuaries exists in a slightly different dimension, just a little offset from our own. That’s why it’s impossible for people to get there, even using teleportation magic. Right now, the only ways in or out are tiny gateways we can’t see or feel.” She knitted as fast as she spoke, and her creation was taking shape; it looked like a chain. “All the wild magic from the monsters masks the Guardians’ Sanctuary and seals it off from us. And the busy magic across the world makes those gateways even more impossible to find.”

“It’s so noisy,” I repeated her earlier words.

“Right,” Faith said. “But if I could silence all the world’s magic for a short while, including all the monsters’ magic, then in the silence, I could find the narrow, barely-perceptible passage into the Guardians’ secret place. I could find a way to my brother. So you see, Leda, this really is the only way to save him. And I will save him, make no mistake about that.”

“Even if saving your brother means killing tons of other people?”

“Yes.” Faith’s eyes sparkled with the madness of unwavering determination.

“You’re right, Faith. I don’t understand,” I told her. “Like you, I had my brother taken from me, stolen by the Guardians. And also like you, I am determined to rescue him.” I slammed my fist into my open palm. “But not by sacrificing everyone else. You would bring down the whole world to get your brother back? That’s not right.”

“You sing of virtue, but for all your efforts, you still haven’t gotten your brother back,” she replied. “He’s been gone for two years, and you’ve made no progress at all. So what if you gain the power of Ghost’s Whisper? Telepathic magic might help you find him, but it won’t help you save him. Because you can’t get into the Guardians’ Sanctuary. The only way to save your brother, my brother, and all the others trapped there is by doing things my way. And my way requires sacrifice. You know what they say. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

I snorted. “If you’re quoting that tired old idiom to me, then you don’t know me at all. I always eat my cake. Otherwise, why the hell is it there? I will keep the world safe and save the people I love. Because you can’t sacrifice one to have the other. I can’t destroy the world to save my brother because then there won’t be any world for him or me or anyone else to live in. Just as I won’t sacrifice my brother for the world because he is a crucial part of my world. Yeah, it’s tough and the solution is not always obvious. That’s why sometimes you just need to get a little creative to make everything work out. But turning to death and mass destruction? Come on, that’s just a cop out.”

“We’re just going to have to agree to disagree.”

“Another worn-out expression. You can do better, Faith.”

“Sit down, Leda.”

A rocking chair appeared behind me, and I fell back into it. Suddenly, a pair of needles were in my hands and I was knitting too. Not that I knew the first thing about how to knit. Even so, my hands were knitting away fast, creating…something. I wasn’t sure yet what it was.

“Stop it!” I growled at my hands.

But they didn’t stop. They just kept on knitting.

“That won’t work,” Faith told me.

“No, what you’re doing won’t work.”

“I expect you’ll fight me every step of the way.” She leaned forward and looped one knitted chain around my ankle, then another around the other ankle. “For what little good it will do you. You heard Damiel, and I’m sure you can feel it yourself. Your mind is as brittle as eggshells. My idea is stronger than all your willpower. You will play out the design I’ve set for you, just like everyone else infected with this ‘curse’ has.”

I gritted my teeth. “We’ll just see about that.” Despite my words of protest, I kept on knitting. “Your idea won’t work anyway. I don’t have enough magic to compel all the world’s monsters, all at once.”

“You are the Angel of the Plains of Monsters, aren’t you? The wilderness is your territory.”

“That’s just a title, Faith. It doesn’t mean all the world’s monsters obey my commands.”

“But they will.”

“I told you. I simply don’t have enough magic.”

She glanced at Angel. “Maybe your cat can help you.”

Some needles appeared in Angel’s front paws, and she began knitting too.

“What the hell? Leave my cat be,” I growled at Faith.

Angel meowed in protest, like all this knitting hadn’t been her idea, and she wasn’t happy that she’d been dragged into it.

“The Silver Shore was just the dress rehearsal, but this is the real deal. When you’re done knitting, you will take control over all the gods, demons, and monsters on Earth and send them running at the Magitech barriers,” Faith told me. “The impact will kill them all. Then, with the world’s magic finally silent, I can find my way to the Guardians.” Her eyes lifted in hope. “And rescue my brother.”

“And how is Angel a part of this insane plan?”

Damiel appeared beside me. “Your cat is special. Faith has realized that. Otherwise, Angel wouldn’t even be able to be here.”

“She is connected to you,” Cadence added. “She is your Companion, your partner animal.”

“My Companion? And how are you two suddenly here now?” I blinked a few times, but they didn’t disappear.

“We’re here to help,” Eva said as she and Jiro stepped toward me.

“Though we hate to interfere,” said Jiro.

“He hates to interfere,” Eva told me. “I love interfering.” She glanced at her husband and addressed him now. “Yes, Jiro, we all know you’re a stickler for the rules, but exceptions must be made now and again.”

He rolled his eyes. “Or all the time.”

Eva flashed him a grin. “Exactly.”

Eva was Cadence’s aunt, her mother’s sister, if I remembered that right. And Jiro was Damiel’s cousin. And, honestly, they were both really weird.

“This is a private party,” Faith declared. “None of you were invited.”

She waved her hand, like she was flicking away a fly.

Nothing happened. But Faith’s frown told me that something should have happened. And it told me that Damiel and the others were actually here; they weren’t just more of her illusions.

“That won’t work,” Nero told Faith, appearing now too.

Nyx was beside him. “You cannot keep us out,” she said.

“I take it Valora isn’t trying to control you,” I said to the First Angel.

“No.” A hint of amusement twinkled in her blue eyes. “But that was a good one. I could hardly keep a straight face as your mind came up with the idea.”

Nyx unfolded her arms, revealing a pair of bracers on them: silver metal with lines of set gemstones that swirled with magic. Damiel crossed his arms over his chest, showing off a pair of matching bracers. Cadence, Eva, and Jiro also wore the same bracers. And so did Nero. He held a pair in his hands too. He attached them to my forearms now.

“What are you doing?” Faith demanded, uncertainty creeping into her voice.

“Magic,” Nero replied coolly.

And then they all began chanting something. I recognized the language, if not the exact words. It was the ancient language of the original Immortals.

“When your mother Grace was pregnant with you, Leda, she performed a series of rituals on you to boost your telepathic magic,” Eva said to me as the others continued their chant.

That’s what the goddess Saphira’s bodyguard Calix had told me. Those rituals were aimed specifically at boosting my future-gazing powers within the telepathic spectrum. It was a power that had eluded the gods and demons, forcing them to depend on ghosts.

“Ancient Immortal rituals,” I said.

“Rituals even more ancient than I am.” Eva playfully nudged Jiro with her elbow.

He rolled his eyes at her lame joke.

Eva cleared her throat and continued, “But Grace did not complete the Last Ritual on you.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Jiro spoke now. “Partly because the Last Ritual is kept on a distant world, guarded by powerful magic.”

“Was kept on a distant world, guarded by powerful magic,” Eva corrected him. She glanced at me. “We took care of that.”

“That’s where you’ve all been,” I realized.

“We left several days ago, after our family dinner,” Cadence said.

Whenever one of them stopped chanting to speak to me, the others grew louder to compensate for the drop in volume.

“A few days ago, Eva and Jiro came to our family dinner to warn us that a great threat to you waited on the horizon, Leda,” Cadence told me.

“That great threat is Faith,” I said.

I looked at the young telepath. A look of total concentration had furrowed her brow. When Nero and the others had started chanting, my hands had slowed, then stopped. Faith was obviously trying to get my hands to start knitting again.

“Yes, Faith is that great threat,” Cadence confirmed.

“That’s why Eva followed you into the kitchen during charades?” I said to Nero. “To warn you?”

“Yes. We knew someone would attack your mind and whittle away your mental defenses. But we didn’t know how to stop this invisible threat that could attack you from afar. Eva told me about the rituals your mother performed on you. She said if we could perform the Last Ritual, we could complete the cycle and give you the telepathic power you needed to fight off this attacker yourself.”

Damiel continued where Nero had left off. “The Last Ritual was said to be guarded by powerful magic and terrible beasts. We knew it would not be an easy feat. So Cadence and I enlisted the help of the First Angel, and together with Eva and Jiro, we set out for this distant world. We knew the attacker was already in your mind, so we couldn’t tell you anything about it, Leda. Nero stayed behind to keep an eye on you.”

I cast a sidelong glance at Nero. “A distant eye.”

“We are one, Leda. Had I stayed too close to you, the attacker would have been able to use our connection to get into my mind too. And then she would have learned what we were doing. Much as it pained me, I had to keep my distance from you, emotionally more than physically.”

“Our fight… That happened right after dinner.” I took a deep breath as the truth sank in. “It was all staged, wasn’t it?”

“Of course the fight was staged. Did you really believe I’d ever be angry with you for trying to protect our child, Leda? I don’t want Faris or anyone else to use her as a weapon any more than you do.”

“I…I guess I feared you were angry with me because I’m kind of angry with myself,” I admitted. “I should be strong enough to protect our child. I hate that I’m not.”

Nero set his hands on my shoulders. “You are strong, Leda.”

“And this ritual will make you stronger,” Eva told me.

Then she moved off and continued chanting with the others. I was glad that Nero stayed by my side. I needed him now more than ever.

Faith had rearranged all her many bundles of yarn, and she was knitting furiously again. My hands began to move, to knit slowly. That encouraged her, and she redoubled her efforts. I tried to resist her, but my hands kept going.

“You are strong, Leda.” Nero’s hands were still on my shoulders; his voice was a beacon of hope in my heart. “The ritual is unlocking your telepathic magic. You don’t need any Nectar and Venom to level up your magic this time.”

“The idea I planted in her mind cannot be stopped. What you’re doing won’t be enough,” Faith told me and everyone else. “She isn’t stronger than I am.”

“Perhaps not alone, but she has me.”

I could feel Nero’s power flow through the bond we shared, mixing with mine.

Faith continued knitting. And so did I. Even with Nero’s magic added to my own, I wasn’t strong enough to fight her.

“She is too powerful,” I told him.

“She has the blood of the Immortals in her, the blood of their strongest telepaths, the Everlasting. But we will defeat her.” He came around in front of me and looked into my eyes. “You just have to trust me.”

I met his gaze. “I trust you, Nero.”

“Your telepathic magic is about to burst forth, freed by the Last Ritual,” he said. “Your freed magic will combine with all our magic, flowing into you through these magic bracers we all wear.”

“I can feel it coming.” I swallowed hard. “And it’s too much. Too much power for me to control alone.”

“That’s why you need to use Angel,” he said. “Channel our magic through her.”

I looked at my cat, who was still knitting, misery painted all over her feline face.

“She has bonded with you. She is your Companion,” Nero told me. “The Immortals had them, great beasts that fought alongside them. Your Companion has no magic of her own besides her love for you, but your bond with her allows you to use more magic than you could ever handle alone. She is an endless reservoir for that magic. And through your link, you can access it. Use it to defeat Faith and push her out of your mind once and for all. Use it to save this world from destruction.”

His words sang with confidence. With triumph. He spoke like we’d already won. That was one of the things I loved about Nero. He always lifted me up and made me fight for what was right.

I could feel the magic, all that telepathic power, surging into me like an endless river of rushing rapids. I could feel Nero in that river. And Nyx. And Cadence and Damiel and Eva and Jiro.

And I could feel Angel beside me. I sensed her loyalty and love. She wanted to help me.

So I let her help. I diverted some of that magic river into her. She meowed in appreciation, so I increased the flow of magic. She was purring now. And she’d already dropped the knitting needles. I couldn’t drop mine yet. I needed more magic. And it was coming. It hurt like a kick to the head, though.

“I need a distraction,” I said to Nero, grimacing.

“Now is hardly the time for your indecent proposals, Pandora.” His eyes were as hard as granite, his words as smooth as silk.

I laughed, and it hurt. Everything hurt. Everything except for my heart. For the first time in days, that didn’t hurt at all. While the rest of my body was being crushed under the force of so much magic, my heart was soaring.

“Oh, come on, Nero. You know me. I’m sure I could fit in a few indecent proposals. Maybe one or two?”

His eyes ensnared mine. “I would love nothing more than to indulge any and all proposals you make.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said. “Later?”

“It’s a date.” His chuckle was a promise of dark, decadent distractions.

I tried to smile, but my face hurt too much. “Talk to me, Nero. I need something to take my mind off the pain. Tell me about Angel. Did you know what she was when you bought her for me?”

“No. I bought her because she reminded me of you.”

“So it was fate that she and I would come together?”

“Fate. Or design.”

“Given our history, I guess it’s by design,” I sighed. “Someone wanted me to have Angel.”

“Yes.” He grew quiet, reflective.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be distracting me from the pain,” I told him.

“Sorry.”

I forced a chuckle through my tight lips. “Didn’t your father ever warn you about apologizing to an angel, Windstriker?”

Nero grunted. “Indeed.”

“So you and Nyx made up the whole story about Gemini and Sagittarius and Colonel Fireswift.”

“Yes.”

“Just out of curiosity, whose idea was it to make Fireswift the brainwashed angel?”

“Mine, of course.”

I laughed. “Figures.”

Nero and Colonel Fireswift considered themselves archenemies.

“And you and Nyx invented the story so the gala of gods and demons would happen, where you knew Faith would attack my mind. That much is clear. But once you had what you needed for the Last Ritual, why didn’t you just perform it to fortify my mind, so I could fight her off? Why wait for her to attack?”

“Because the Last Ritual requires an exceptionally powerful telepathic attack to initiate it,” Nero told me. “That’s the main reason Grace couldn’t perform it on you when she was pregnant. She would have needed to wait until you were born. And though she is a powerful telepath, she isn’t that powerful. Eva’s visions indicated that whoever was attacking you is powerful enough to kickstart the Last Ritual. So we waited for that moment.”

“You used Faith’s attack on me in order to help me grow more powerful,” I realized.

He nodded. “Exactly.”

Faith grimaced, and it wasn’t just from the strain of fighting me for control over my mind. She’d thought her plan was so perfect, and she wasn’t happy that they’d tricked her into sabotaging it.

“It isn’t over yet, Leda Pandora,” Faith said through clenched teeth.

She continued her telepathic siege on my mind. My hands knitted faster. I could now finally make out what I was knitting. It was a funeral shroud. In exactly my size.

“This spectacular act of compulsion you expect me to perform, forcing all the gods, demons, and monsters on Earth to commit collective suicide against the Magitech barriers…you don’t expect me to survive it, do you?” I said to her.

“As I told you, some sacrifices must be made.”

“That’s easy to say when you’re not the one making them,” I snapped.

I looked at Angel. I’d pumped so much magic into her that she was glowing like a magic light in a sea of complete darkness. She winked at me, then began to bat her paws at my knitted funeral shroud, unraveling it around the edges.

“Stop it,” Faith growled at her.

Like a good kitty, Angel didn’t stop it. She instead increased her rate of destruction.

“Your hands are hardly clean, Leda Pandora,” Faith said. “Just recently, you sacrificed hundreds of sirens to save the world.”

“I never did any such thing.”

“You certainly did. During your fight with Meda, you freed her from her control collar by placing it on yourself.”

Faith really knew my mind as well as I did.

“Then you had to break free of the collar’s control,” she said. “Well, how do you think the Guardians were controlling people? What do you think was on the other end of those collars?”

“Machines,” I replied. “Lots of machines. I saw them.”

“No, there weren’t any machines at all.”

Images flashed through my mind. I saw myself inside a dark room. The air was hot. I could hear so many voices.

No, they were machines.

Racks and racks filled with humming computers all around me. Lights flickered rapidly. The red lights on the machines pierced the darkness, staring at me like they were alive.

No, they weren’t machines. They were people. I peered through the shadows and saw them standing there, holding hands. They were chanting rapidly, their voices almost deafening as they combined their collective power in an attempt to crush my freewill. They were so loud.

I pushed back against their magic.

Their faces were obscured in shadow. I forgot they were even people. They were only machines. And I wouldn’t let them do this.

There was a burst of magic—my magic—and one of them fell. Then the next. And the next. Soon there weren’t any left. They were dead. Dead machines.

A flicker of light showed me their human faces, then the darkness swallowed them once more. I saw only broken machines strewn across the floor. They were on fire. The building was burning. The roof collapsed on them.

“Now you know the truth,” Faith said as that final image faded from my mind.

She’d ripped apart the fake images my mind had put there to protect me, to make me do what had to be done. My own mind had fooled me. They weren’t machines at all. They were people. Sirens. And I’d killed them all.

“And now that you know what really happened there, you should realize that you aren’t as different as you want to believe,” Faith told me. “You sacrificed those sirens to save the world.”

Guilt choked me. The weight of what I’d done clamped its dirty fist around me and squeezed. I stopped flowing magic into Angel. And she stopped unraveling my knitting.

Faith didn’t stop. She kept knitting. My hands followed her design, creating my own burial shroud.

“The Guardians have taken so many supernaturals,” Faith said. “They have a plan for those people, and in that plan, all of them die. My brother, your brother, and everyone else too. I can’t let that happen. And if you really believe you’re a good person, then you can’t allow that either.”

“Don’t listen to her, Leda.” Nero’s hands gripped my shoulders tightly. “She is trying to twist your guilt for her own purposes. We’ll save those people, and we’ll do it without sacrificing a lot of other people.”

“Gods, demons, and angels always demand that we make sacrifices for them,” Faith said. “For the so-called greater good. Just like you sacrificed those sirens for the greater good. Well, you know what? I say it’s high time you all made a sacrifice for us. You always boast that you aren’t like other angels, Leda. Prove it. Prove that you’re different. Prove that you can make a sacrifice for us.”

Nero ignored her, speaking to me instead, “You are different, Leda. You aren’t Faris and you aren’t Grace. You don’t sacrifice people to fuel your ambition. Yes, you make mistakes, but you own up to them and you always pull through. You are no one’s weapon. Not Faris’s. Not Grace’s. And not Faith’s. You are Leda Pandora, and Leda Pandora is no one’s bitch.”

“Damn right. I’m not.” I squared my shoulders and stared Faith down. “Maybe I made a mistake. I make a lot of them. Still, killing all these people now won’t make up for my killing of those sirens. The only way I can try to make amends is by saving all the other people the Guardians’ have stolen. But I’ll do it the right way. Not your way. I choose life over more death.”

I nodded at Angel. She dipped her dainty little chin, then pounced on the knitted shroud. She attacked it with claws and fangs, thoroughly tearing it to pieces. Then she got to work destroying the knitted chains Faith had put around me.

Faith dropped her knitting and jumped out of her rocking chair. She rushed toward Angel, grabbing her roughly. But the moment her hands touched my cat, a burst of magic threw her back.

The great white nothingness faded away. We were all back in the ballroom again. And everyone was staring at us.

“Our bodies might have been frozen in place for a bit,” Eva explained.

“How long?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “A few seconds at most.”

My battle of the minds with Faith in the great white unknown felt like it had taken so much longer. Then again, time passed differently in dreams. So why not in waking dreams too?

Faith made it to her feet. Her legs were wobbling, her eyes wide with fear. “My magic.” She ran at me. “What have you done with my magic?!”

Damiel caught her by her arms, holding her in place.

“I haven’t done anything with your magic,” I told her.

Her manic eyes darted about in distress. “It’s gone!”

“It must have overloaded when you tried to kill Leda’s cat,” Eva said serenely. “That will teach you not to touch a living magic conduit.”

Faith’s lips quivered. “So my magic will return?”

“It should,” replied Eva. “Not that it will help you at all.”

Faris flicked his hand. Devlin and the other soldiers here from Heaven’s Army rushed forward and led Faith away. I didn’t like the idea of Faris adding another telepath to his collection, especially one as powerful as Faith, but after what she’d done, it wasn’t like we could allow her to go free.

I really didn’t think a Legion prison could hold her once her magic returned. She was powerful enough to implant any idea in the guards’ heads, including the idea to let her go. I hoped Heaven’s Army could contain her. I thought they could. Gods did have telepathic magic, after all.

“What of the curse?” I asked.

“Now that we know how Faith created it, we can reverse it,” Jiro told me.

I smiled at him. “Even though that means interfering?”

He grimaced.

“Faith was using magic she had no right to use,” Eva told him. “We’re just setting it right. The guilty will be punished. And the champion will be rewarded. Isn’t that right, Nyx?” She glanced at the First Angel.

Nyx looked at me, a sigh heavy on her lips. “Looks like I’ll need to add a new pin to your uniform, Pandora. You know, it’s customary for the Legion to decide to promote the soldier, and only then does the soldier gain magic. You’re doing things backwards again.”

“What can I say?” I smirked at her. “I’m a different kind of angel.”

A few people in the crowd chuckled.

However, Alessandro, the King Demon bellowed, “I demand to know what the blazes is going on! Who is that young girl? And why are you all acting like we just averted the apocalypse?”

“It’s a long story,” I told him. “The short of it is all the gods and demons here nearly died tonight, but I saved you. You’re welcome.” I glanced at the demons, then at the gods. “I expect a statue of me in both of your council chambers promptly. Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be camped out in front of the dessert table.”