“Because he was the only one who could,” she said, lifting her chin proudly. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a hard target. But it was all part of our plan. He killed me so I could hitch a ride on Marci’s death to the spirit world and becomethis.” She threw out her hands in a grand gesture as her voice echoed again through Julius’s fire.
Say hello to the Spirit of Dragons, your new god!
Julius stumbled backward. Even the joy at discovering his sister wasn’t actually dead and Bob might not actually be the murderer he’d feared couldn’t gain traction next to the incredible strangeness of feeling another dragon in his fire. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
“No one’s ready for this,” Amelia assured him, smiling her cockiest smile yet. “Itoldyou I had bigger ambitions than Heartstriker. But I’ll have to fill you in on the details later. Right now, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
She turned as she finished, pointing through the dark of this new Pit at the structure that marked its center. In the same place the pillar of trash had been back in the real world, a silver casting circle glittered on the silted ground. Inside it, silver ribbons of spellwork crisscrossed like the net across a dream catcher, pinning down an older man Julius recognized immediately as Sir Myron Rollins, the UN’s undersecretary of magic. What he was doing there, Julius didn’t know, but though his eyes were closed, his hands were moving, clenching and unclenching around the dark, irregular object he held clutched to his chest. A head, Julius realized in horror. Emily Jackson’s head.
“Why isthathere?”
“Because she’s the key,” Raven said, his croaking voice suddenly huge and terrifying. “Sothat’show she was doing it.”
“Doing what?” he asked.
Both spirits ignored him.
“That would explain a lot,” Amelia agreed, looking around. “The only question now is where’s the owner of this house of cards?”
“That’s not the only question,” Julius snapped, his voice frantic as he realized there was no one else waiting in the dark.
“Where’s Marci?!”
***
Marci was getting pretty darn sick of being snatched into the dark.
The hands that had dragged her into the pile of debris let go almost immediately, leaving her to fall backwards through trash that felt increasingly like the world of spirits she’d just left. What little light there was in the Pit had vanished in the first inch, leaving her struggling in a crowded dark that reeked of fetid water, grime, and magic.
Somuch magic. More than she’d ever felt floating freely on this side. It was so strong, it burned her skin, making her hiss even as she reached out frantically with her mental hands, grabbing as much of the ambient power as she could to use as a barrier. And a megaphone.
“Ghost!” she cried, letting the power amplify her call. When there was no reply, she tried again.
“GHOST!”
Again, there was no answer, and Marci clenched the magic with a curse. She’dknownsomething was wrong when he’d stopped talking. But when she went to grab another handful of magic to try blasting her way out of whatever this was, something struck her from behind, shoving her out of the dark and into a blinding sea of lights.
Marci fell on the ground with a grunt, blinking rapidly as she struggled to adjust her eyes. When she could more or less see again, she raised her head and found herself in a familiar place.
It was the DFZ. Not the ruined one, but also not the one she remembered. Instead, she was standing in the crowded square from the endless city she’d found inside the DFZ’s vessel in the Sea of Magic, and the DFZ herself was right in front of her.
“Welcome back.”
Marci shoved herself to her feet, glaring at the hooded figure of the girl who appeared to be the city’s self-image when she wasn’t being a rat. “Where’s my spirit?”
The DFZ’s glowing orange eyes twinkled cruelly in reply, and then she flicked her hand to drop something small, white, and limp at Marci’s feet. Something that looked terrifyingly like a dead cat.
“Ghost!”
She scooped her limp spirit into her arms. “What did you do to him?”
“Only what was inevitable,” the city replied casually. “He was weak. I was strong. He set himself against me. I struck him down. Cause and effect.”
“But hewasn’tagainst you!” Marci shouted. “Neither of us is. We’re here tohelpyou!”
“Do I look like I need your help?” the DFZ said, looking up at the endless expanse of superscrapers that rose above their heads. “Where do you think you are?”
Now that she’d said it, Marci realized with a start that she didn’t know. Itlookedlike they were back in the DFZ’s domain at the bottom of the Sea of Magic, but that was impossible, because they weren’tinthe Sea of Magic. This was the physical world, not the land of spirits, and yet it felt all wrong. The magic here wasn’t the normal soft, ambient power she was used to. It wasn’t even the heavy magic of Reclamation Land, or the boiling magic she’d felt when Ghost had flown her through the city. Whatever was going on here, it was new, and it was getting stronger by the second.
