“You owe me. I saved your life.”
“Which gives you one wish.” The fae rubbed his hand over his face in a weirdly human gesture. “A mulligan is complicated.” Then he waved at the center of the blast zone. “What would you do different? How could they survive that?”
Nero didn’t have an answer. He’d been lucky to have been in an energy state when the boom hit, and he’d barely survived it. The others might not be able to ride the wave like he had, and Coffee was a traditional werewolf. He never fully dissolved into energy but sprouted his snout and tail in an excruciating agony that took time. Coffee definitely wouldn’t survive, but Nero had faith in his team to figure it out.
“We wouldn’t attack at all,” he said. “We’d take time to plan—”
“Not possible. You still have to attack today.” Then, before Nero could argue, Bitterroot held up his hand. “I don’t make the rules.”
Nero choked back his frustration. Much of his brain was still screaming in horror, but what focus he had found a solution. “Can you hold on to the mulligan? Let me use it when I’m ready.”
Bitterroot frowned, and a single brilliant red butterfly set off from his arm to flutter in front of their faces. He caught it gently, speaking quietly to it in a language Nero didn’t understand. The fairy waited a beat, then another, as if listening to an answer. In the end, he looked up at Nero. “I can hold it for seven-times-seven days, that’s all. And you’ll have to pay.”
Forty-nine days to find an answer to an explosion that had taken out a mile of Wisconsin. “Deal.” His team was worth whatever the cost. No question.
Bitterroot’s expression hardened. “You’ll serve me, Nero. A year of your life for every day that I hold the mulligan open.”
Nero’s breath caught. Fairyland was a place of nightmares. No mortal belonged there, and no one came back sane. “Deal,” he repeated, his voice strong, though inside he shuddered at the magnitude of what he’d promised.
“Standard rules apply. You can’t tell anyone about this, and you can’t go bargaining with another fairy to change this one.”
Nero nodded. That part he’d already known. “Agreed.”
“Agreed.” Then Bitterroot stuffed that bright red butterfly in his mouth and swallowed it whole. He grimaced at the taste as he glared daggers at Nero. “Don’t ever make me do that again.”
Then he disappeared.
It was done. When he was ready, he’d call on Bitterroot and be zipped back in time to fifteen minutes ago—before the blast, before they even attacked. He’d be able to redo everything, making sure everyone survived.
But how?
He didn’t have time to figure it out now. Police sirens were wailing in the distance, and he needed to come up with a cover story before they got here. The good news was that whatever he said wouldn’t ultimately matter. Eventually he’d go back in time and fix the problem before it started.
In fact, he realized, everything he did for the next forty-nine days didn’t matter. So long as he figured out how to defeat that fire blast, everything would reset once he used the mulligan. His team would survive, and life would go on as if this never happened. For them, at least. For him, he’d have to pay Bitterroot back. Which meant he’d be in Fairyland trying to hold on to his sanity, but that was a small price to pay for their lives.
Chapter 2
“THERE WASnothing anyone could do. It’s not your fault.”
Captain M spoke with compassion, and everyone at the conference table nodded sagely at Nero. He gave them a weak smile, trying to make nice with all the Wulf, Inc. brass. There were three of them there—all badass werewolves looking dour—plus a thick-lipped ghoul representative from the Paranormal Alliance who never spoke to anyone and a gelatinous alien in the shape of a man. At least Gelpack was familiar to him. The see-through alien had shown up a month ago, talked with this same brass, then moved in as if he was one of the team.
“This was not your fault,” emphasized the wolf version of a wizard. He was the only werewolf who could throw magic, and that had earned him a spot as VP and the handle Wiz. A little bit on the nose, but it was appropriate.
“I know,” Nero said, trying to invest his words with conviction. “It was a failure of intelligence. We should have known that the demon had fireball capability.”
“On a galactic scale.” Captain M shuddered as she looked at satellite imagery of the now-renamed Burnt Lake. “And you needed better gear. Stuff that resists plasma fire.”
“Fire is not a plasma,” corrected Wizard. Arrogant bastard. “This appears to be magical plasma that burns.”
Captain M’s head snapped up. “Do you have anything that’smagic plasma–resistant?”
Wizard closed his mouth. Up until a day ago, magic plasma was a myth. But then, a year ago, no one believed in gelatinous aliens, spell-casting wolves, or that a ghoul could make it into the upper echelons of the Paranormal Alliance. But there you go. The conference table was filled with myths turned into reality. And apparently his entire team had been decimated by just another myth.
“What we need,” said his captain, her words laden with the anger of a woman who’d been banging this drum for a while, “is some science skill.”
Gelpack spoke up, his voice sounding like it was coming from under water. Which, given the “man’s” consistency, it probably was. “I thought magic and science were different.”
“They are—” said the captain, but Wizard interrupted.
