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W hat?” I said brilliantly.

“That’s what I have to explain,” Rhea began, only to have Mircea stop her with a gesture.

“Did you see that?” he asked sharply.

“See what?” Pritkin replied because he’d caught the same undertone I had. Not fear exactly, because Mircea didn’t show much of that, even here. But the sudden hypervigilance of a predator who senses a greater one.

And this one was looking out of the door, where the horde of gods had just disappeared again. “The last time they came for us, they were closer,” he said tightly.

After a stunned silence, there was a sudden rush of commentary from almost everyone, all talking over each other. Enid leaped back to her feet, ?subrand tucked her close and pulled his pike, and the witches’ wands suddenly appeared out of their little knot like a porcupine bristling its quills. Only Rhea seemed calm and unbothered.

“That’s not possible,” she assured him. “This room is on a time loop.”

“Maybe, but I thought the same thing earlier,” I said, a chill running down my spine. “I told myself I was imagining it.”

“You weren’t.” Mircea’s voice was abrupt, the way it never was because he was a diplomat. One who didn’t want to get eaten, presumably, because he pointed at the entrance to the hall, visible a little way beyond the door. “The first time they tried to come in here, they were several yards short of that. The time before this, when I first noticed something wrong, they were feet away. This time, they were past the doorframe.”

“But that’s not possible! ” Rhea said again, suddenly looking panicked.

“It’s possible,” I said. “The gods don’t have our limitations—”

“But they can’t time travel! ”

“Can’t they? We don’t know what abilities they have—”

“If they could, we’d be dead already!” Rhea said fervently. “They could have reset your fight to make sure you lost! They could have—”

“ If they had the power,” I said. “But that’s at a premium around here, and time travel takes a lot of it. But even a small talent might allow someone to realize what was going on—”

“And tell everyone else to speed up,” Pritkin said, looking grim.

I grabbed Rhea by the shoulders. “What did you mean, you wanted to stop us from winning. Quickly!”

She stared past me for a second, at the currently empty atrium, then snapped out of it. “You can’t let Mage Pritkin win,” she said quickly. “The fey won’t follow him. They’ll say they will, do all the right things, even crown him. But at the final battle, the Alorestri army doesn’t show up. The gods break through and—”

“Break through where?” I said, shaking her a little, because she kept looking at the damned atrium. “Rhea!” My voice snapped like a whip, and she refocused again. “ Where do they come in? ”

“Here. In the desert outside Vegas. Where the library landed.”

“The site of Zeus’s humiliation at your hands,” Mircea said to me, and Rhea nodded.

“Yes, he wanted to erase that defeat by using it as the gods’ entry point into Earth. He told me there was a laboratory, one of the sites where his people had done experiments on the creatures of Earth and Faerie in the past. But unlike most, this one had a portal—”

“We’ve seen it,” Mircea said, glancing at me. “Or one like it. But that one was destroyed.”

“Then they must have had another—”

“They had many of them,” ?subrand said. “I saw the ruins of several as a child. My Father was fascinated by them.”

“—with the ability to move about between worlds,” Rhea finished. “They parked one in the desert and used its portal.”

“But how did they open it?” Pritkin said. “Even if they had such a thing, with Artemis’ spell still intact—”

“My God,” Mircea said, suddenly putting a hand to the wall, as if he needed its help to stay standing.

“What?” I asked, feeling my stomach sink, because he never looked like that.

He looked up at me, and his eyes were terrible. “Dorina—”

It took me a second, and then, “Oh. God.”

“What is it?” Zara said sharply.

“Mircea was lost in Jotunheim,” I said, not having time to go into it all now. “We were in a battle at the portal to that world, and I left him on the other side. With Dorina.”

“You had no choice,” he said. “I never blamed you—”

“ I blamed me. And sent Dory through to find you, and bring you back—”

“Through?” Zara repeated. “How? The way to other worlds is blocked, save for Faerie!”

“Not to my daughter,” Mircea said. “She has the ability to open portals, even ones sealed by Artemis herself. A gift of her lineage.”

“Fortune’s Blade,” I added.

“Yes, that was what they called my wife,” he explained to the others who hadn’t seen the terrible place where the gods had made their servants—and their monsters. And where we’d finally learned the truth about who Elena really was. “The Goddess Fortuna created her to use as a weapon against Zeus, giving her the power to follow him no matter where he went in the Nine Worlds or beyond, but the experiment failed. It was only when she had a child that the blade Fortuna sought was born.”

“Two blades,” I said, because Elena and Mircea had had twins, if very unconventional ones. “And I sent Dory through the portal that the Pythias had, here in the library, to try and bring you back—”

“So she said.” It did not make me feel better that Mircea still looked haunted.

“She found you?”

“Yes, but we were separated in some of the fighting that followed. I made it back to Earth, along with my wife, who was killed in the invasion. But my girls—”

His voice broke, and even though we didn’t have time for it, I put a hand on his arm. He’d suffered so much to put his family back together, tried so hard for so long—it couldn’t all be for nothing. “This isn’t over,” I said, and the dark brown eyes met mine.

“That is what Dorina said. That she would come back to me, would find a way—”

“And you think she did.”

“I think they let her, followed her, used her, and then killed her!” Mircea said, his eyes suddenly flooding red. “They played us—”

“Maybe they got through another way,” Alphonse said, only to have an enraged master vampire turn on him.

“There was no other way! And what do you think happened to her as soon as she opened that gate for them? Thinking she was coming home to me?”

“The same thing that is about to happen to us,” ?subrand said, as the scholar came in again, screaming. Only it sounded more like a warning now.

“Billy—”

“Ahead of you,” he said, but Rhea grabbed my arm.

“Remember, if you win, you lose!”

“I don’t need to remember; you’re coming with us!”

“I’m already there,” she said and stepped back before I could stop her. And then Billy pulled the rest of us into the Paths of the Dead.

“ No! ” I screamed. But it was too late. The gods were suddenly everywhere, a boiling, clawing mass of them, and the last thing I saw was Rhea disappearing under their weight before the white nothingness took us. “Rhea!” I screamed.

“Cassie! Cas!” Billy was shaking me, and I was trying to focus, but I couldn’t—

“Why would she do that?” I yelled as ?subrand grabbed me and started dragging me away. “Why would she—”

“She was under a curse,” Pritkin reminded me. “She couldn’t leave.”

“Cas! Listen to me!” Billy yelled.

“No, we have to go back! We have to help her!”

“Maybe she’ll come to us,” Butch Cut said. “If she’s a ghost now…”

“The gods feed on life energy! ” I said savagely. “There won’t be a ghost!”

Billy slapped me hard. “Where. Do. We. Go?”

“What?” I stared at him.

“Go! Go! ‘Cause we’re about to have a shit ton of gods in here, and with that many, it won’t take ‘em long to find us!”

“Her father,” Pritkin said suddenly.

“What?”

“Take us back to Roger Palmer! He is about to cast a spell to return to the past; we’re going to ride it!”

Everybody looked at him like he was crazy, maybe because dear old Dad was more likely to throw us in the Hole to help power the spell than take us along. But I didn’t see an alternative, and I guessed they agreed. Because nobody argued when Billy started off.

And then sped up when screams of rage burst into being behind us, as the gods realized that most of their prey had eluded them.

“Fuck!” Billy said, because there was no time for anything else. And we weren’t far enough inside the Paths to hide, evade, or do anything—

Except that, I thought, as he pulled us back out again.

We hit real space on the other side of the atrium, but there were gods there, too, because they had our number now, and there was nowhere else to run. We started backing away, into the soot-filled room, with a line of gods stalking us. But unlike the others, these weren’t immediately attacking; I didn’t know why.

And then I realized: they were the smarter ones, who had just sent the cannon fodder into the Paths after us. They were waiting on the others to return, the ones they didn’t mind losing. They’d had to come through the lobby to get here and had seen what we’d left of Poseidon and his boys.

They didn’t want to end up the same way.

But I guessed they could communicate with the fodder, because more and more were popping out of nowhere constantly, crowding that side of the room. Several were covered with fresh blood, Tony’s blood, or possibly Rhea’s, that she’d spilled to save me, making something in me go cold at the sight. Yet it had all been for nothing.

We weren’t getting out of here.

“When I tell you,” ?subrand said softly. “Take the Pythia and go. Get her back home—”

“No!” Enid hissed. “No, you’re not doing this!”

“There’s no other choice,” he said simply.

“No!”

“It won’t be enough,” Bodil said. She’d been so quiet that I had almost forgotten she was there. But she was, and her eyes were distant, as when she was seeing something in her mind and borrowing other people’s vision. “There are hundreds more outside, flooding the building on all sides. We’re about to be overrun.”

“Take her and go!” ?subrand said, shoving me at Pritkin.

Only Pritkin immediately handed me off to Mircea. “Take her,” he told him harshly. “Get her to her father. Get her home.”

No , I thought, but didn’t say the word because I couldn’t. For a second, I couldn’t think, move, or do anything but stare at him in frozen horror. Enid was losing her shit, screaming at ?subrand even as Alphonse pulled her away, but I didn’t do anything.

This wasn’t happening.

“Alphonse,” Mircea said. “Take Cassie as well, and go.”

“What are you doing?” Pritkin demanded.

“You plan to combine your power with his, two triskelion spells instead of one, yes?”

“Do you see an alternative?”

“No. I will help you.”

No, I thought, but my lips still wouldn’t move. No.

“You can’t; you don’t have the gift,” ?subrand said, as the room filled with gods.

“If he does, I do,” Mircea said, nodding at Pritkin. “Take the spell off of Cassie,” he said. “And let us see what three of us can accomplish.”

Three of us, I thought blankly, as Alphonse grabbed my arm.

Three of us, as he started to pull me away.

Three of us, as the gods tensed, preparing for a fight.

“Three of us!” I screamed and grabbed the spell that Pritkin was trying to unravel, the one that bound us together into a triumvirate of power, the one that looked a lot like the old triskelion designs, with three spirals of energy connected into one being.

I know why it kills a single caster , I told them mentally.

“No!” Pritkin screamed, but it was too late. Because Bodil had seen the spell in ?subrand’s mind, and with the last of her power, she sent it to me. And as Zara had said, whatever else I might be, I was a witch.

And a good one.

“Triskeles,” I whispered, and couldn’t even hear myself, because the gods had realized we were doing something, and all of them had jumped for us at once.

I had a moment to see a wall of creatures leaping for us, some human, if grotesquely oversized, some animal-like, with slavering jaws full of teeth and slitted pupils, and some things that must have come from other worlds I’d never seen, because my brain broke to look at them—

Then everything slowed way, way down.

It looked like I’d cast a slow time spell, giving me the chance to see the fluttering of silken robes, the glowing of tiny motes of power in the air, the fury and confusion and growing fear on godly faces as they realized something was wrong—

Then the faces were gone, eaten away while still halfway through the leap by a tide of golden light. It swept over the group like a tsunami, eating its way up outstretched arms, across faces caught between fear and fury, through bodies of all descriptions, and instead of growing weaker as it went, it glowed all the brighter. It’s feeding off their energy, I thought, feeling the heat on my face; it’s feeding off them!

When it had fed enough, it swept outward, burning through the room of ancient magical beings like a scythe through wheat. Then surging beyond, fueled by the energy they’d provided to take on the rest. I didn’t know if it was Bodil’s abilities or if I was still connected to the spell, but I could see it flooding the hotel, surging up the walls of hallways, crashing over beings that suddenly turned the other way and tried to run, only it caught them before they could.

And just like water, bright, sunlit, beautiful water, it kept on going, rushing out into the street like a churning golden tide, swamping the masses of gods converging on the casino, dissolving ancient creatures full of power into sparkling nothingness, like foam on the sea. And then it was flowing away through the city, running down ruined streets like a flash flood, catching any stray godly forms and eating through them, too, dissolving them between one step and the next.

And before I could recover from that, something rippled through the air, something great and grand and powerful, and I crouched down, wondering if this was their retaliation. If Zeus was right on their heels and boiling towards us, bent on revenge. Because it sounded like a 747 taking off, right overhead, so loud and so strong that I cringed before it, for I had nothing left.

But someone else did.

“Come on!” The witches were crowding around, tugging me back up, and giving me what strength they had. It wasn’t much, just tiny hits of power on all sides, which made me feel less like passing out, but it wasn’t going to be remotely enough to fight with!

Only maybe fighting wasn’t needed.

“Your father’s spell!” Billy was yelling in my face. “Come on, Cas! He’s leaving! Get it together!”

I got it together. And sent everything I had, all that the witches had been able to give me and all I still had in my suddenly starved veins, outward like a lasso. Straight at the massive spell screaming by overhead—

And caught it.

Yes, it felt exactly like a 747, I thought, as I was jerked off my feet as if I’d roped a whirlwind. Or maybe worse, I didn’t know, as I’d never tried to ride one of those! But it must feel something like this, I thought, fighting with the spell, which seemed to know we shouldn’t be there, and was bucking like a Bronco, trying to throw us off.

But while this wasn’t a shift in the normal sense, there was something about it… a taste on the wind, a familiar song in my ears, something that resonated with me like an old friend. I knew shifts. They were my very best thing.

And I was damned if I wasn’t going to make this one work for me!

Billy was there, laughing in my ear. “Ride ‘em, cowboy!” he said, and I looked around to see that Pritkin had scraped up enough power from somewhere to encase the others in his shields, and they were coming, too. Including the witches who weren’t remotely supposed to be there, but who had earned a ticket if anyone had.

The ride smoothed out after a minute, like the takeoff of a jetliner when it reaches cruising speed. I didn’t see Dad, up ahead; I didn’t see anything but the cascade of falling years, peeling away from us on all sides, and peeling fast.

This wasn’t going to take long, I thought, and I guessed the same thought occurred to Billy.

“I gotta go, Cas,” he told me.

“What?” I looked at him and saw him already growing transparent. “No—”

“You know I can’t go back with you. I got people waiting on the other side, just like you got yours here.” He glanced at the bunch trailing behind us, and his lips quirked. “You’re determined to have this mage, aren’t you?”

I looked back to see Pritkin straining to hold onto the shield, red-faced and swearing at it, but somehow keeping it intact. “Yeah. I’ve even been thinking about, you know, proposing, assuming we all don’t die.”

Billy’s head tilted. “Isn’t that the guy’s job?”

“Normally, but he has issues around marriage. Do I have your permission?”

“Since when did you need my permission for anything?”

“Your blessing then?”

“Well, since you put it like that...” he hugged me swift and hard. “He’s still not good enough for you,” he whispered in my ear. “But for what it’s worth, yeah. Go get the goober. And deal with this shit! You wanna be doing this sort of thing forever?”

“No,” I said emphatically, and he smiled.

“That’s the right answer.” And for a second, I thought I felt a ghostly kiss on my cheek. “Knock ‘em dead kid,” he told me, for the second time.

Which was why I stepped back into my own time with tears on my face.