—a magic nested deep in a hundred years of my nightmares.
This wasn’t magic. It was power—god power—frayed and tortured, harnessed and wielded by a god.
The same stench of power that had fueled the monsters who attacked us all those years ago.
Coming face-to-face with that power sent my mind reeling, panic rising.
“Brogan,” Mad Mat said from behind a curtain of shifting, burning magic. “No need to hide in the rabbit’s shadow. I see you. You may be late, but you are just in time to see Lula breathe her last breath.”
CHAPTERTWELVE
Istepped out of the hallway and into the room, Lorde growling beside me. As I crossed the threshold, a hissing, fizzing sensation rolled over my skin. Shadow stripped away, the room instantly brighter.
Mad Mat’s eyebrows climbed. “I see I misjudged you.” The smile was sickly and cruel. “You should be dead, my friend. Tethered spirit.”
Mad Mat’s hands were behind his back. A wall of power separated us, symbols flaring to life at the ceiling then falling to create a pile of ashes on the floor, chalking a line across the entire room.
Everything behind him was more difficult to see, as if a wall of water separated one reality from another.
Magic shifted like a hand over the water’s surface.
Lula knelt in the corner to the left. Her hands were tied behind her back with a rope that was a snake, smoke, fire, steel, pulsing and shifting between forms in a rolling undulation.
Her head hung, the red of her hair blurred and dulled by the wall of power between us. She wore a tank top and jeans, her bare feet curled beneath her. Magic glyphs pulsed and burned on her exposed skin, sending up thin tendrils of smoke.
I cataloged every detail in a second. Mad Mat hadn’t moved. “How are you back in flesh?” The words were mildly curious. Nothing important, just a passing interest.
Which was false. Everything about Mad Mat was false, an illusion. This house was an illusion. That friendly voice was an illusion.
But the concentrated god power here was not an illusion.
“Gods watch me,” I said. “And they seem to have an opinion on how alive or dead I might be. Let Lula go, and you and I will settle this.”
Something in the room thumped, then went silent. I worried Abbi had made the sound trying to help.
Lorde took a step toward Lula.
“No.” Mat pointed at the dog. She froze mid-step, whining.
The thump rose and fell again.
“Gods watch you?” Mad Mat sneered. “Do you mean Cupid? If he interfered with your death, he has done you no favors. Connections and destruction are nothing when the Grim Reaper has been denied his prey.”
“Let Lula go,” I repeated.
“Oh, I intend to. But not until I get what I am owed.”
“I don’t have the book.”
“Of course you don’t.” Mad Mat drew one hand forward, flicking a finger. The book appeared floating in mid-air in front of him. “I have the gods’ spell book. The Hunter brought it to me. What I want is the key.”
I held very still. Lu had stolen the key, a slice of silver shaped like a crow’s wing. She wore it on the chain around her neck, along with the stopwatch that could halt time and bridge the veil between the living and tethered spirits.
I wanted to look over and see if she still had the chain around her neck, but I kept my eyes on the god, afraid to tip my hand. “I don’t have the key.”
Mad Mat smiled, and it made my gut clench. Every instinct in my body kicked into fight or flight, but flight was winning.
I thought I heard the thump again through the ringing in my ears.
