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T his isn’t the hard way,” Alphonse hissed at me a few moments later. “It’s the creepy way!”

And yeah, it was. But it was also the only thing that might buy us enough time to reach our objective before our allies gave out. Assuming we made it that far.

“What was that?” Purple Hair said, jumping slightly as something brushed against her.

It was the same something that was falling all around us now, like tiny, twinkling Christmas lights or ephemeral fireflies. I didn’t know if there hadn’t been any similar creatures closer to the barrier or if the light from the human world had masked them. But it wasn’t doing so now, and they were everywhere, glittering in the dim white nothingness like a sparse rain.

“Ghosts, or what is left of them when they run out of power,” I said, taking point along with Hansen. “These are the Paths of the Dead, and they’re the only ones here.”

“Then why is it so noisy?” Mircea asked, staring around.

He didn’t see anything, as we were no longer skimming the surface of reality, not having the power to hold ourselves there. As a result, we couldn’t even see the shanty town anymore, with its wonky structures, narrow alleys, and thousands of smokestacks. Instead, we were much farther inside the Paths, trusting Hansen’s skill to guide us the rest of the way.

The good news was that this place stood outside time, meaning that not a moment would pass while we trudged the long distance into town. The bad was that Mircea was right: it was noisy as heck in here. Screams, some of which cut off abruptly, explosions, moans, and groans filled the air, some fairly close, others so distant that my ears strained to hear them, but all were strange.

It was usually eerily silent here.

But not today, which made me terrified that a god had found his or her way in to feast on the fallen. Apollo had done that once, not that he’d had a choice after me, Pritkin, and a few thousand rakshasas banished him from the human realm. But it seemed unlikely in this case.

The ghosts who fell here were almost entirely out of power. The only creatures who could be bothered to pursue them, or who even knew how, were others like them: stronger, fatter ghosts who came here to hunt. And those ghosts hunted silently, while the little remnants they pursued were too senseless to evade or even to scream.

Even humans would make a better meal for the gods, and one considerably easier to get. Yet the Balrog-looking thing outside the walls had entered without hesitation, knowing both the way in and the way out despite having no ghost to help him. As if he’d been here before...

Damn it, I didn’t need this!

Or this, I thought, when Hansen stopped and just hovered there, looking confused.

“What?” I said.

“N-nothing. I’m just trying to remember…

“Remember what? I thought you knew the way?”

“Y-yes, but it’s been a while. Nobody comes in here anymore, or at least, I don’t. There are things that prowl the white expanse…”

“He doesn’t know where we are?” Pritkin asked sharply.

“He’s adjusting course,” I said, hoping that was true.

“What course?” Alphonse demanded. “There’s no damned street signs, or landmarks, or anything in here! Don’t tell me that little fucker is lost!”

“I’m not a little fucker,” Hansen said indignantly. “And he’s welcome to try if he thinks he can do better!”

“None of us can do better,” I said soothingly, or as much as possible with frazzled nerves. “We’re relying on you—”

“I know that!” Hansen looked slightly panicked now, which didn’t help my blood pressure.

“What’s he saying?” Alphonse demanded.

“I think we would all like to know,” Mircea agreed.

“He’s… reorienting himself—”

“He’s lost! Son of a bitch! ” That, of course, was Alphonse.

Then it got worse.

“What is happening?” I asked Hansen, who looked as spooked as I felt when a harsh wind suddenly swept over us, hard enough almost to rock me off my feet.

“I... don’t know...”

“Whaddya mean, you don’t know?” That was Alphonse, only it sounded like he’d heard what Hansen said, which was ridiculous. I hadn’t translated it yet. But neither of them seemed to notice that. “This is your world—”

“It is not my world! I fought to stay out of here and succeeded. This place gives me the creeps—”

“Said the ghost!”

“Exactly! You have the protection of a body. We ghosts only have whatever shell we can afford the power to project. And here, it’s often not enough. They eat you,” he added, with his big eyes glancing around nervously and his voice lowering. “Swarms of them, tearing away bits of your power until there’s nothing left. Until you’re entirely gone with even the memory of you faded from the world—”

“ What eats you?” That was ?subrand, trying to shove Enid behind him, only she wasn’t having it. Maybe because she wasn’t a damsel in distress, and her magic was more likely to help us here than his sword.

“Everyone, these days! Ghosts, demons, the occasional god. Gods,” Hansen added bitterly. “More like vultures preying on anything they can find. And that’s if you’re lucky—”

“Lucky?” Mircea said before Alphonse could. “How is that lucky?”

Everyone else looked very interested in that answer, too, but Hansen suddenly realized they could hear him. And appeared weirded out, having spent who knew how many years invisible and unheard. “What… how?” he whispered.

“I am picking up your voice in Cassie’s head and sending it out to the others,” Bodil said as if that was in any way normal. “It is faster than her constantly translating for you, and we may need speed.”

“Why do we need speed?” Mircea said. “No time is passing!”

“For exactly the reason you fear, vampire. The battle is here, as well.”

“No, not the battle,” Hansen whispered. “But a battle, yes. HE’s here,” he added, and the emphasis gave the innocuous little pronoun all sorts of terrible connotations.

“Who? Zeus?” I asked worriedly.

“No, not the chief vulture!” Hansen said contemptuously. “ HIM . The one who watches. The one who sends his legions out to hunt. The one who rules this realm as if born to it—”

“There’s no one born to it—”

“No, but he acts as if he is! And he has enlisted others, oh, yes, a multitude of followers. They practically worship him, although he isn’t a god, and help him, too. No one knows exactly what he is, but he craves power, more and more, and sends his allies out to get it for him. And if you’re unlucky enough to have them come across you, well then—”

He cut off abruptly, sounding strangled. I wasn’t sure if the others heard that, too, but it kind of looked like it. Enid was pale, and the witches had clumped together closely enough to look like one body with multiple heads.

“Well, then? Well, then, what? What the fuck happens?” Alphonse all but roared. And then shut up abruptly when the noise, which had escalated along with the wind, suddenly cut out. “Shit,” he whispered.

“Let’s move,” Hansen said, and all but fled into the distance, causing the rest of us to have to run to keep up.

And run we did, because we did not want to meet HIM. But somebody wanted to meet us, that was certain. In the stillness behind us came a new sound, first distant and hard to hear but rapidly drawing closer.

Very rapidly, I thought, looking over my shoulder as everyone else was now doing. But seeing nothing to account for the low, roaring, moaning cry that quickly became so loud that it shook the space around us like an earthquake in the air. And then I saw them, but far too late: an absolute mass of ghosts, stretching across the horizon like a boiling cloud of white with grayish faces popping out here or there like flashes of lightning.

And I guess the rest saw them in my mind, or in what Bodil was sending, because—

“Shit!” Somebody said, and yeah. The damned thing looked like the mass that had carried us to Vegas, but I didn’t think it was. Because this one was angry, with some of the ghost heads snapping and biting the air, and because Hansen was screaming and trying to flee, but not fast enough.

I don’t think anything could have been fast enough as the great mass swooped down on us like a storm, breaking over our heads in an instant, and this time, there was no gentle transition. A cloud of ghosts snatched us up so fast that a few of our legs were still running in the air; it was like falling into the midst of a tornado and being swept away, helpless and thrashing. And screaming—suddenly, we were the ones making noise, not that anybody could hear it over the roar.

And I screamed with all the rest, having no idea what the hell this was, how to break free of it, or where the ghost squad was taking us in such a damned hurry.

But they were tearing over the landscape at what would have been a terrifying pace, only Alphonse was right, there were no landmarks to show the speed. Just boiling faces yelling at me on all sides until I wanted to cover my ears, only I couldn’t because hands had grasped my arms and legs and coiled around my torso. And I guessed that was true of everyone because I caught glimpses of Pritkin fighting, Alphonse thrashing, and Mircea lying there stoically, because we might need our strength.

Then we were dumped out onto a hard surface, just as abruptly as we’d been grabbed, and I looked up wildly to see—

Oh, no.

“Cassie—” That was Pritkin because he’d seen him, too.

Is that who I think it is? Mircea’s voice rang in my head.

Who do you think it is? Bodil asked because she recovered fast. Everyone else was looking disoriented, staggering about or lying on the ground with me and appearing vaguely green, although the latter could have been from the weird lighting. It was different here, maybe because of all the ghosts who were boiling over the top of us like an angry sky.

Or maybe because of that, I thought, as the eyes of the man who turned on us abruptly glowed brilliant green with necro magic.

My father , I finally answered Bodil, as the skinny blond surveyed us without favor.

He looked the same as the first time I’d seen him, in Stuart-era clothing and a floppy hat. There was a rag at his neck pretending to be a cravat, buckles on his shoes, and a rip in one of the stockings trying to hide a pair of skinny, hairy legs because he’d never cared much about clothes, even when they were part of a disguise. A disguise that he was about to use on a trip back in time in his own bid to change history, and where he would shortly meet a pissed-off Agnes and me on November 5, 1605.

Holy shit .

“Here,” Pritkin whispered, handing me the scarf he was wearing and had been using to keep from breathing in too much sand as we jounced along in the “car.” I’d had a similar one but had lost it somewhere, and quickly pulled this one over my head. Roger Palmer couldn’t be allowed to recognize me.

This was my present, but his past, a far distant past in which he didn’t even have a daughter. If he saw me now and then recognized me in 1605, it could… well, I didn’t know what it could do, but probably nothing good! In the worst-case scenario, it could change time while I was in the midst of trying to change time, which might result in my never getting here in the first place, and this future solidifying forever.

And suddenly, all the possible ways that could happen rushed into my mind, jostling each other for room and eclipsing everything else until I shoved them forcibly back out again. Only they didn’t go far. They just stayed on the edges of my consciousness, muttering fiercely, and damn, my head hurt, I thought, staring relentlessly downward and hoping Dad would pass on by.

Pass by? Bodil said, understandably confused. Why would you want that? Can he not help us—

No! That was all three of us, Mircea, Pritkin, and I, because we were the only ones who—

Only we weren’t, were we?

Fuck! Mircea said and jumped Alphonse, who had known Dad when he worked for Tony the Bastard.

“What’s all this, then?” Dad asked as the two vampires wrestled about.

“Hey! Hey, I know y—” Alphonse began right before his master’s master slugged him in the mouth.

And this time, Mircea wasn’t holding back. Blood bloomed in the air, and Alphonse went down and stayed down. Mircea had been a warrior before he was a diplomat, and it showed, although Alphonse’s inertia was probably more because Mircea had had a chance to get a mental lock on him.

Very interesting mind , Bodil murmured in my head.

“What the hell are these… people… doing here?” Dad asked tetchily. “You know, this is all I need right now!” The ghost cloud started talking at once, sounding like a great rumble of thunder, which Dad didn’t seem to like any more than I did. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he yelled, flapping his hat at them. “You all drive me crazy!”

To my surprise, they shut up. Except for one ghost, a very familiar sight in a flowered housecoat and an old trench coat, who was one of the personal spirits, for lack of a better term, that Dad kept close to himself. Although why he did, I’d never been entirely certain.

She was mad as a hatter, only that was being mean to hatters.

The old bag lady, or so she’d been before Dad picked her up somewhere, kept flitting around his head. “I found them,” she sing-songed. “I saw them first. Didn’t I, Buddy?”

I didn’t know who she meant until another form coalesced out of the cloud and drifted downward. Although “drifted” was hella misleading because it made him sound like an angel, which he definitely wasn’t. “Buddy” appeared to be the ghost of something very much non-human, or else the gods had done something far worse to him than to Hansen.

“Augghhh!” Enid scrambled back in horror because he was closest to her, and I guessed she was still seeing the spirit world through Bodil’s mind. “What are you?”

Poltergeist, my brain threw up the word, although I had no idea from where.

“Poltergeist,” Daisy the Bag Lady said, glancing at him. “Oh, stop that,” she snacked him on the slavering snout he’d manifested to go with the rest of the hideous, mutated body. I supposed it was his best attempt at a werewolf, only I’d never seen any that looked like that.

But her rebuke had an effect, and a second later, he morphed back into a pudgy, florid-faced ghost wearing an old-fashioned, three-piece suit that was straining over his not-inconsiderable belly.

“Sorry, m’dear,” he said to Enid. “Forgot I was in character. I used to tread the boards back in my day. But I must say, it’s much easier to get into costume now, eh?”

He elbowed her and was immediately skewered by ?subrand’s spear.

“Oh, ho, it’s like that, is it?” he asked, winking at him. And floated off the spear as if it was nothing, which, for him, it was. “Understood, understood.” He doffed his homburg. “My apologies, dear lady, I didn’t mean to frighten—”

“Would someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Dad shrieked.

“We found ‘em out by the border in Pigville,” somebody said from the cloud.

“Don’t call it that,” Daisy admonished.

“Then what would you suggest we call it?” Somebody else asked. “When I had my farm, I kept pigs in better conditions than that!”

“I don’t know; it has its charms—”

“What charms?”

“I used to live under a bridge,” she said. “They have walls .”

“If somebody doesn’t start making sense—” Dad seethed.

“Like I said, we found ‘em in Pigville, only they wasn’t,” the first voice said again. “They was here, on our side, and pretty far in, too.”

“Oh, were they?” Dad seethed, surveying us. “Come to spy on me, have you? You know what I told McIntyre would happen the next time he tried that shit? If you don’t, you’re about to find out!”

“The Hole, the Hole, the Hole,” the cloud started chanting. “Throw them in the—”

“Oh, here now. Is that really necessary?” Buddy asked—too late, as we were already being snatched up and carried off toward another thing that was not supposed to be here at the end of the world, namely a small encampment. Dad had told me once that he’d camped out in the Paths of the Dead, but I hadn’t quite believed him.

I believed him now.

And he wasn’t exactly depriving himself. A much nicer tent than the ones back in Pigville, the kind with multiple rooms, was sitting square in the middle of nothing, along with a folding chair, a long, scarred Formica table, a dorm-style fridge with a spitting talisman on top of it—for power, presumably—and a camp stove. There was also a mountain of magical junk off to one side, some of it still emitting tiny bursts of power, which was soon fighting with other half-dead magical objects, which the cloud began raining down on top of it.

“Not now!” My Father said as junk began bouncing all over the encampment. “Damn it, I’m not picking up after you lot again!”

“What is that?” Enid asked, probably able to feel the power in the mountain from here.

Dad was a garbage man , I told her silently, courtesy of Bodil. He used to decommission stuff like that to harvest whatever remained of its power.

Why?

To sell. Power is money, or it used to be. I don’t know what he’s doing with it now, but he eventually scraped together enough to make a talisman capable of holding his and Mother’s souls when—you know, it’s a long story.

She just stared at me.

And then screamed when we were jerked around the side of the mountain to where a violently purple fissure lay, boiling with magical energy and spitting out tongues of flame yards high. “In the Hole, in the Hole, in the Hole—”

Can you hear me? Mircea asked urgently, and for a second, I thought he was talking to me.

Until Hansen answered. “Y-yes?”

“Good. Then say what I tell you.”

And I guessed the little ghost agreed because he floated up in Father’s face and began boiling with power. To the point that the chanting abruptly died down, and Dad’s narrowed baby blues focused on him. “Oh, look,” he said sarcastically. “We have a volunteer to help fuel the spell.”

“You have no such thing.” And it was bizarre, but although it was Hansen’s amorphous non-face and stumpy body, it was Mircea’s intonation. To the point that I could almost see the contemptuous curl of his lip.

“What happened to you?” Daisy gasped, taking in the state of our guide.

“Exactly what you think,” Hansen said. “And the same or worse will happen to all of you should our mission fail.”

“What mission?” Dad demanded sourly.

“They’re dressed like the gods’ servants!” a voice from the cloud said. “In those stupid tunics they all wear. Don’t believe them!”

“We’re dressed like people who want to sneak into the city under their noses,” Hansen retorted in his own voice before Mircea got him back under control. “Have you not heard of the great spirit, Billy Joe? For it is he who has sent us, and we are on a mission of vast scope and import.”

“Import? What’s that?” Daisy whispered to Buddy. “Didn’t anybody tell him? Trade has kinda died down.”

“It means importance!” Buddy huffed. “Were you raised in a barn?”

“No, but I slept in one a time or two.”

“Shut it,” Dad said and scowled at Hansen. “So, I take it you brought them here?”

“Indeed. To rendezvous with the army my master is assembling to take on the gods.”

At that, the cloud burst out laughing, and even Dad’s lips twitched.

“Oh. Is he?”

“Yes, a course of action that you are currently interfering with, and thus aiding their cause. Our host is legion—”

“Your ‘host’ is a bunch of lunatics if they’re the ones who went screaming through here not long ago,” Buddy said. “Great lot of lummoxes, running into people and knocking things over—”

“What things?” Hansen snapped, and that sounded more like his own voice again. “You’re ghosts. You don’t have anything!”

“More than you, remnant,” Buddy said, offended.

“Ooh, we have a camp! Can I show them around the camp before you feed ‘em to the Hole?” Daisy asked Dad.

“What is this ‘Hole’?” ?subrand demanded, staring at it.

“Oh, that’s where we keep all the energy we’ve saved up for the spell—” she began before Dad clapped a hand over her mouth and stuffed her under his arm.

“We care not for your plans,” Hansen intoned, back to Mircea’s voice. “We have our own. Allow us to pass through to the city to complete them, and you may continue with yours. If you oppose the gods and what they have done to this world, we fight on the same side and may part as friends.”

“They’re not lying about everything,” Buddy said. “There’s a fearful racket going on in the city at the moment. We heard it when we were close to the barrier.”

“It is our allies attacking,” Hansen said. “An army of witches, mages of all sorts, demons—”

“Demons!” Dad scoffed. “They could give a shit about the world. I tried to get power out of them, and do you think they’d give me any?”

“They were saving it up for this,” Hansen said. “One great assault on our enemies—”

“Yeah, that’s going to work.” Dad rolled his eyes. But then they narrowed again, and he surveyed us, piercingly enough to make me duck my head.

“What are you thinking, boss?” Daisy asked, pushing her lips past his fingers.

“Distraction. We’re about to set off one hell of a disturbance in the spiritual realm, maybe enough to draw some attention. If the damned gods nose about at the wrong moment, it could be a real pain in my ass. Not to mention the risk of dragging one of them along with me, and wouldn’t that be something?”

“No,” Daisy said fervently. “It wouldn’t.”

“This might be useful.” Dad looked at Hansen. “Are you about to make a ruckus?”

“Huge.”

For the first time, Dad smiled. “Then via con Dios , motherfucker.” He looked at the cloud. “Take them into Vegas and shove ‘em out.”