“Ari,” Evie said, her tone brimming with warning.
Trust me, she mouthed again.
Evie’s lips tightened. The ground beneath us rumbled.
“Careful,” Mom said with a chuckle. “You might be the fae queen, but Ari is something more.”
Evie could have killed Mom in a dozen ways by now, but she stayed her hand for me. I hoped I wouldn’t regret asking her to stay back. Ari tugged me forward.
“You bitch!” I said, yanking my arm away.
Ari blinked, then realized what I was doing. She had me secured with a snap of silvery magic, looping her power around my wrists like handcuffs.
She shoved me in the back toward my mother.
When we stopped a couple of feet from the wards, Mom smiled. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
She flicked her hand toward the wards. “You’ll need to bring those down so we can do the tradeoff.”
I looked over my shoulder toward Evie. She watched me and Ari with a carefully blank face, but just as I was about to turn around, her eyes widened.
I turned to see Cernunnos right behind my mother. Evie swore and dropped the wards just as her father sent a wave of power at the weapons, sending them both flying toward us.
Ari shoved me backward and leapt through the air, silver power opening a small blue portal. Both weapons tumbled through a second before the portal closed. Evie’s power rumbled, sending the wards up once more.
Mom let out a shriek of rage and disappeared just as four veins of power roared toward her. Cliona, Evie, Ari, and Cernunnos’s magic collided and exploded, sending us all ass over teakettle.
When the literal dust settled, Evie let out a shriek of rage and stomped toward us. “Where is that bitch?”
I started laughing, getting a mouthful of dirt in the process.
Evie’s cool fingers touched my back. “Are you alright?”
I rolled over and let my arms flop out to my sides. “I’m fine. We still have the body?”
“Yep. And we have the weapons.” Evie plopped down beside me. “Your mom is a real piece of work.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Ari rolled over and propped her chin on her hands. “Did you notice anything off?”
Evie frowned. “Off about the crazy woman willing to trade her daughter for weapons? Or off about the carved up rotting body sitting on a stainless steel table in my yard like the world’s most fucked up barbecue?”
A cackle escaped me. “I’d like to just kill her. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? A sharp dagger right through the heart, maybe a good twist to really sell it?”
Evie nodded. “Yeah. I’ll help. You can stab her in the heart, and I’ll put one through the kidney.”
“I get the liver!” Ari called. “You can’t live without one of those.”
“Knowing my mother, she has two of the most important ones. Just because she really doesn’t want to die.”
“Or maybe she’s got one of those fucked up mirror bodies where everything is on the opposite sides,” Ari mused. “Wouldn’t that be some shit if you were sure you landed a mortal blow only to nick her appendix or something?”
Cernunnos stepped through the wards and nodded to Ari. “I’m glad you called.”
“Ha,” I said. “She was too cocky not to have something up her sleeve.”
Cernunnos smiled and sat down beside me. “Evie had perfect timing. I can’t handle those weapons. Sending them sailing through the wards was the only thing I could do.”
