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“William,” I say, not loudly. He’s already moving.

“Odette.” Louder. “Odette.”

Tara’s knees go. I have her, but I’m holding a glass, and Tav is there before I have to choose. He gets one arm behind her back and the other under her knees and lowers her to the floor at the end of the bar as if she weighs nothing and might break. He kneels with her head against his thigh.

“Boss,” he says. “Boss, stay right here. Okay? Right here.”

He looks up at me. His hands are holding her steady, and there’s nothing for them to do.

“Lenart,” he says. “What do I do? Tell me what to fix.”

I don’t have an answer for him.

I crouch on her other side. The green skirt has spread over the floorboards. Her breathing is fast and shallow, too fast, and her eyes are open but they keep sliding off my face.

Then I see her arm.

The line nearest her left wrist has gone dark. It’s black. As I watch, the one beside it darkens, from the wrist upward. Then the next. I look at her right arm, and it’s happening there too.

Two hours. She’s had them for two hours.

“Odette,” I say again, and I can hear the panic in my voice.

I’ve stopped breathing. I don’t need to. I don’t start again.

The first ward goes at the far end of the room.

I wouldn’t know it if I couldn’t see it. The carvings in the brick by the front doors, the ones nobody notices unless the wards are lit, flare silver the way they did on the Solstice, all at once. Then they go dark.

The music is still playing. For a second, nobody understands.

The brass in the nearest arch lights and dies. Then the crown molding along the left wall. Section by section, it’s coming down the room toward the bar.

Toward her.

Near the red door, a vampire I’ve known since 1911 turns his head toward the werewolf at the next table, slowly, and I watch his fangs come down. The werewolf is already on her feet. One of Mrs. Varga’s harpies backs into the wall with her wings half open, staring at a man she’s been drinking beside all night as if she’s only now seeing what he is.

Somebody shouts, “The wards! The wards are down!”

Then everybody is moving.

Corinne is at the front doors with her headset on, sending people out two at a time. The troll who laughed at Calloway is holding the other door open with one arm. Mr. Abernathy has dropped his glass. He’s standing in the spilled champagne by the stage with both hands over his mouth.

“Exits,” William says into his radio. He’s standing over us, one foot on either side of Tara’s skirt, and his voice carries across the whole room without his raising it. “Front doors and the dock. Everybody out, single file, nobody runs. Pell, take the red door. Nobody goes downstairs.” A breath. “Stop the champagne. Nobody drinks. Nobody touches a bottle. Kit, step back from the bar and keep your hands where Pell can see them. Priya, put the tray down. Leave it where it is.”

He holds out his hand to me without looking down, and I give him Tara’s glass.

“Abernathy sent it,” he says. Quietly, now. Not into the radio. “Tav checked the seals. Kit poured. Priya carried it.” His hand has gone to stone around the stem of the glass. “That’s four places. It could be any of them. It could be none of them.”

“Find out,” I say.

“I’m not leaving her.”

“I know.”

His wings come halfway open over us, and stay there, between Tara and the room.

Merek comes through the crowd, and the crowd gets out of his way.