Chapter 22

One foot in front of the other, I kept going, grateful I had taken my pills before Kierce left. For him not to return, Harrow must have needed the help. Had someone been there? Had he found Lyle? Had the dybbuk found him? All good questions, but I didn't have a single answer.

One thump turned into two and then three, and I spun around, expecting to see…I don't know what. A coal-eyed, flame-haired monster? I gawked to find Lyle sprinting down the road toward me. His clothes were filthy. His hair was a bird's nest of tangles. Dirt smudged his face and hands, and he had lost a shoe along the way.

"Wait." He flung out a hand. "Don't leave me."

"Lyle?" I couldn't believe my luck. In fact, I didn't believe it. "Harrow's been looking for you."

"It got me. That thing. It got me." His cheeks gleamed with sweat or tears or both. "Then you showed up. In the cemetery. You distracted it. And I got away." He glanced back, just once. "Please, God, let me get away."

"It?" I scanned the night but found nothing amiss. "What got distracted?"

"I parked over there." He almost collided with me. "Hurry up. We have to go. Now."

"Okay." His iron grip on my arm didn't leave me wiggle room to break away. "We'll go."

Unsure who I had called last, I kept mashing redial with my thumb, praying someone would answer.

"This way." He guided me off the road. "We'll get in the car and go find Samuel."

Alarm bells clanged in my head. "The car you were in the other day?"

"Yeah." He kept dragging me, even when I stumbled. "Help me find it."

"Maybe we should wait for Harrow." I dug in my heels. "He's on his way."

"Here?" Lyle whipped his head toward me. "Samuel is coming here?"

"Yes," I lied through my teeth. "We just spoke. He's worried about you. He'll want us to wait for him."

"I can't." A whine left his throat. "I can't wait." He dug his broken nails into my arm. "We have to go."

"The car's not there." I hadn't wanted to tell him, unsure how he would react, but I couldn't handle a wild-goose chase in my condition. "It was stolen."

And burnt to a crisp, but I kept that part to myself to keep from freaking him out further.

"Stolen?" As understanding sank in, the fight drained out of him, but he kept hold of me. "Damn it."

Motes on the edge of my vision solidified into Johnny, who stumbled back with wide eyes. "You."

"Ignore him." Lyle gripped the back of my neck. "We should get off the road."

Ignore him?Had he really just said that? Like it was nothing?

"You can see him." I tested his grip, but it was iron. "You hear him too."

"We have to go." Lyle hopped from foot to foot. "It's coming."

Voices hissed on the edge of my hearing, spirits warning me, just as they had in Bonaventure.

Too bad they weren't more specific about whether I should run with Lyle or from him.

If I survived this, I would have to sit the spirits down and explain why more details were always better.

The rustle of leaves and snap of twigs to our left sank my stomach into my feet.

"He's here, he's here, he's here."

"Run."

"Go."

The disturbance kept coming, drawing nearer, but the voices rang louder.

I must be closer to Bonaventure than I thought for the same frightened spirits to reach out.

"He'll gobble you up."

"He'll swallow you down."

"He'll devour you."

"Johnny, get out of here." I put my phone away and dug out a handful of graveyard dirt from my bag. "I'm calling for backup."

The boy didn't want to go, but I didn't give him much choice. I flung the dirt at him, banishing him. The sting might take a minute to get over, but he would be sent back to his grave. He would be safe there.

I wished I could say the same for the other two boys, but I had yet to catch sight of them.

"No, no, no." A pitiful wail escaped Lyle, and he crumpled to the ground at my feet. "It's here."

"It's okay." Diving back into my bag, I found a lancet and popped the cap. "Help is on the way."

"Help has arrived," Armie called from the shadows in his usual upbeat tone.

"Armie?" I couldn't believe my ears. "How did you know where to find me?"

"Shifter, remember?" He tapped the side of his nose. "I saw you reached out several times, but the calls kept dropping when I tried to answer them. When I couldn't get through, I came to investigate."

For Armie to panic, his must have been the last number I called, the one I kept mashing redial on.

"I found Lyle." I indicated the lump curled into the fetal position. "Well, he found me."

"Don't let it." He rocked on the ground, his arms hugging my ankles. "Please, don't let it."

"Looks like the dybbuk got to him." Armie stepped from the trees. "Poor guy sounds mad as a hatter."

"Yeah." I wavered with the lancet between my fingers. "I'm glad you saw my calls. I couldn't get through to Josie or Matty either. I hope it's okay I dragged you away from work."

In hindsight, I should have waited for Johnny to tell me if he found Josie before I banished him.

Then again, the other boys had yet to appear. With a dybbuk on the prowl, I might have saved him. But I would have damned the others in the process. I wasn't sure how I could live with that, but I had to focus on getting Lyle help for now. The man had clearly been traumatized to be reduced to this pathetic shell.

"Maybe this is a cellular dead zone?" Armie glanced around. "Don't sweat it, Bijou. I'm here now."

The flash of his teeth wasn't as reassuring as usual, and I was too strung out to find a smile for him.

"Can you try your phone?" I couldn't wrestle free of Lyle. "I need to call Harrow, and an ambulance."

The dybbuk had yet to kill a human as far as we knew, since they tended to only kill what they could eat, but something had put the fear of God in Lyle, and a dybbuk could use a knife, gun, or its fists just fine.

"Sure." He took his cell out of his pocket, mashed a few buttons, then pressed it to his ear. "No dice."

A bone-deep dread produced a sour taste in the back of my throat when he ended the call too quickly to have let it ring more than once. If it had at all. From this angle, I couldn't be certain he had pressed send.

Which was ridiculous. Where was this coming from? The painkillers? One weird look under the hospital portico?

"Oh." I swam through the rising tide of voices stuffing my ears. "What should we do about Lyle then?"

Guilty or innocent, I had no clue what had gone on here. He was a slobbering mess of humanity exposed to too much for his brain to cope. I was starting to sympathize as the spirits begged me to run, run, run.

"I'm more worried about you." He got within touching distance. "Can you piggyback?"

"What? No." A cold sensation caressed my arms as ghostly fingers slid over me. "We can't leave him."

The spirits had given up on verbal entreaties and moved on to attempting force to get me out of harm's way. But who was the danger? Lyle was pathetic, and Armie was…Armie.

"If the roles were reversed, he would leave you." Armie noticed the lancet. "You can put that away."

Hoping against hope, I prayed my mind was playing tricks. "I promised Harrow I would keep one on me."

"Come on, Bijou." He chucked me under the chin. "You don't need that. You've got me."

The sobbing at my feet continued, until I wasn't sure how Armie overlooked it. "Where's Josie?"

"At home, probably." He rolled a meaty shoulder. "That's where I left her when I went to work."

It made sense. His story. And this was Armie. Armie. But I couldn't shake my unease.

"Okay." I jabbed my pointer with the lancet, but he shackled my wrist before I touched blood to my arm. "You're hurting me."

"It won't hurt for much longer," he promised, and the gleam in his eyes turned him feral.

"Let's go with your idea." I fought to regulate my heart. "I can piggyback."

"You're afraid." He inhaled, his chest expanding. "I can taste it."

If he was determined to read from The Villain's Handbook, I would quote from How to Be a Damsel.

"Why are you doing this?" I kept enough tension on the arm he held that he forgot about the other one. The one with the lancet still pinched between its fingers. Spinning it around, I sank it into the thick meat of my palm as hard as I could without drawing his attention. "I thought we were friends."

With blood already in the air, he didn't blink when more pooled hot and sticky in my hand.

"We are friends." His brows drew down into a deep V. "That's why I'm doing this."

Faking like I meant to rub my sore wrist, I smoothed blood down my forearm across the brand.

A long sigh moved through him before he slapped me so hard I tripped over Lyle and landed on my bad hip.

"Restrain her." Armie flicked a hand at me, and Lyle quit blubbering long enough to climb over me and pin me to the dirt. For all his fear, he obeyed without question. "We don't have long before?—"

Lightning arced across the sky, striking a nearby tree, and flames erupted from the branches.

The strike illuminated a figure who stepped from the fire, extinguishing it with a sweep of his hand.

Kierce.

His gaze zeroed in on me, and the weight of his despair clenched my stomach. All I could do was pray his sorrow wasn't meant for Harrow. Badb perched on his shoulder, and he stared at her for the longest time before she flew away.

"Always with the dramatic entrances." Armie fanned his face at the smoke. "Lightning, really?"

"I enjoy the classics." He toyed with arcs of electricity between his fingers. "Let her go, Ankou."

"Ankou," I whispered so softly neither paid me any attention, but my mind whirled with terrible possibilities.

Ankou was a trickster who served as an escort for the dead, like Viduus, but only to those bound for Hell or its equivalent.

No wonder he never told us his animal. He didn't have one. He had lied about being a shifter.

"Don't you ever get tired of it?" Armie—Ankou?—exhaled. "Being the errand boy of a god?"

"I prefer the term personal assistant."

Had they not started tossing around the name of yet another demigod of death, I might have laughed.

Armie did this. Set this trap using Lyle. Probably rigged the threat to Harrow too, convinced I would send Kierce away to help him. And I had, playing right into their hands.

"You're the one screwing with my calls." I couldn't still my frantic heart. "Are Matty and Josie okay?"

Anyone who took such care with their planning would have removed my siblings from the equation too.

"Call me sentimental, but I couldn't kill them." His grin sharpened. "I put them to sleep instead."

Our earlier speculation that the same person who cast the agitation spell on River Street had created the charm struck home. Not witch work then. A minor deity, whatever divine PAs were, had been to blame. He must be the source of divine residue Vi discovered in her ash sample.

"The death charm." I swallowed hard. "That was you."

"Guilty as charged."

Fear pulsed in my chest like a second heartbeat. "You left them to die."

"I put them to sleep," he reiterated. "It's not on me if they're too weak willed to wake up on their own."

Clarity sliced through my panic as I remembered Matty was himself. No spirit occupied his body.

He would shrug it off, the compulsion to dream, and he would save Josie. Even if he couldn't extract her, he knew how we destroyed the last charm. He could do it again. That would wake her. It would save her.

Ankou must have misread my quiet as defeat, and he was lining up a fresh kick for me while I was down.

"Does she know?" Ankou jerked his chin toward me. "You branded her, so she must."

"I know who he is," I spat at him from where Lyle pinned me to the dirt.

"I doubt that very much." Ankou watched Kierce. "Hope wouldn't shine so brightly in your eyes if you did."

A spike of fear pierced my chest when Kierce had nothing to say for himself.

"He's not half as pretty as you think." Ankou drew a thumb along his jaw, mocking Kierce's nervous habit. "Show her, Viduus, who you are under that glamour. Let her see who she's been spending her blushes on, telling her secrets to?—"

"Still as cruel as ever." Kierce thrust out his hand, clawed the air, and tore the fabric of reality. "Is this what you want?"

As he jerked his arm back, he ripped the flesh from Ankou's bones, erasing all traces of Armie.

A creature of bone and sinew stood before me with flesh stretching over its skull the way Josie's dresses strained against my curves. The ragged slash of his lips parted as the scent of petrichor invaded my nose.

"You can't help it, can you?" Ankou heaved a heavy sigh. "Always have to do the right thing."

Slowly, I made the connection between the earlier lightning strike and the smell, and I sought out Kierce.

A gasp lodged itself in my throat as our eyes met over the length of his beak.

A crow. His head…belonged on a crow. A crow.

Feathers tickled his clavicles through the open collar of his shirt, but the rest of him appeared humanoid. I hadn't read that Viduus was zoomorphic like so many animal-headed Egyptian gods and goddesses. But I couldn't dispute the truth staring me in the eyes.

Between exposing himself and being exposed by Ankou, Kierce had chosen to show me his true face.

Too little, too late? I couldn't decide. I couldn't think. Not with this insanity sparking around me.

"Put your hands where I can see them."

The familiar voice shot my heart into my throat, and I searched for Harrow.

Kierce must have told him where to go before he transported himself here.

"The hero cometh." Ankou rolled his eyes. "I suppose he'll be wanting my thrall back."

A pitiful whimper escaped Lyle when Harrow stepped into the clearing with us.

"You finished breaking the enchantment." Kierce eyed him with newfound respect. "I regret I left before it was done."

"An enchantment?" I glanced between them, settling on Kierce. "That's why you were gone so long."

A trap. It must have been. One designed to prevent interference.

From the expression twisting Harrow's face, I wasn't sure he even heard us. "Uncle Lyle?"

Lyle flexed his fingers and ducked his head, wanting to hide. I used the opening to jab the lancet into the side of his throat with the most force I could manage. It would barely scratch him, but I gambled on it sending him spiraling into panic.

"She stabbed me." He dove off me and slapped a hand against the side of his neck. "She stabbed me."

A scream of agony lodged in my throat as I hauled myself onto my feet and hobbled toward Harrow.

But he wasn't looking at me. He was staring at Lyle. At what was left of him.

"That's a twenty-eight gauge needle." Ankou pinched the air where the bridge of his nose had been, but it was little more than a suggestion now. "It's maybe an eighth of an inch long." He glanced at Kierce. "I see now why you don't take on thralls."

"Thrall?" Harrow caught me when I fell against his side. "What did you do to my uncle?"

"Only what he asked for." Ankou snapped the thin lid barely covering one of his protruding eyeballs. "I gave him the sight, so he could perceive spirits."

That explained how he saw Bannon earlier but not why he heard him. Those were two different skill sets.

"You did more than that." Kierce studied Lyle. "You gave him the Hunger."

Hunger used in this context, with as many spirits as had been devoured, only meant one thing.

Hissing through my teeth, I steadied myself on my own two feet. "Lyle is the dybbuk?"

"You killed Ormewood," Kierce said, his voice tight. "Phelps and the Minchins too."

"Ormewood was our sacrificial lamb, yes." Ankou flicked his wrist. "I chose a spirit without any pesky morals, fabricated a sympathetic backstory, added kids for spice, then I paid a woman I met under the interstate to pose as a character witness to get Ormewood past Frankie's rigorous vetting process and into a body." He faked a wince. "I might have left out the part where I planned to feed Ormewood's immortal soul to a ravenous dybbuk, but memory is a fluid construct at our age, am I right?"

"What about the kids?" I tasted bile as scenarios flipped through my head. "Where did you find them?"

"Kids are not my favorite." He curled his lip over his teeth. "The three you saw were illusions."

Well, that answered that question. Good to know Josie and I weren't crazy. We really had seen them.

"Lyle is human." Harrow sounded uncertain. "He can't be the dybbuk."

"Lyle's great-grandmother was a Low Society necromancer," Ankou corrected him. "The old girl was dirt poor with next to no power. No one within the Society would marry her, so she took up with a human. A pity, really, how the blood thins with each generation once mortals enter the mix."

The story I told Carter about teaching Harrow some of my tricks hit differently in hindsight.

"That's not true." Harrow circled left, trying to reach Lyle. "He would have told me."

Lyle would have cut out his own tongue before admitting he was tainted with nonhuman blood.

"Ankou is a shepherd of the dead, like Kierce." I had to say it to believe it. "He created the dybbuk."

He murdered Ormewood, Phelps, and the Minchins as surely as if he had killed them with his own hands.

"Correction." He lifted a finger. "I tried to create a dybbuk, but Lyle's blood was too weak."

That meant there had been no devourer out tonight. The other Buckley Boys were safe. Thank God.

"He can't control his Hunger." Kierce showed Lyle no pity. "That's why he's..."

We all looked to Lyle, who was weeping again, his fingers tunneling in the soil.

"You can't create a dybbuk without consent." Harrow kept going, even when I tried anchoring him to me, out of range of Ankou. "Uncle Lyle would never have given a spirit permission to enter his body."

"Are we talking about the same Uncle Lyle?" Ankou tapped a finger against his chin. "The same one who refused to give you your mother's ring when you asked for it?" He sucked on his teeth. "Does Frankie know he was listening in on your phone call the night your relationship went to hell? That he called the sentinels on her? That you accepted the blame for what he did to break things off? To protect her? From him?"

"Samuel," I breathed, heart in my throat, chest twisted in knots.

He hadn't turned me in. Lyle had made the call. All this time, Samuel had been protecting me.

"That's in the past," he rasped, not looking at me. "Leave it there."

The sharpness of his tone caused me to flinch, and I wished Ankou had kept his truths to himself.

"See, I don't think I can." Ankou shrugged. "He counted on your sense of duty to bring you home, but he worried once you got here, you wouldn't leave. That grief and love would tumble you back into Frankie's arms. You can guess how very much he did not want that to happen. Especially with him not being around much longer to stop you."

"No." Harrow tightened his grip on the gun. "He wouldn't…"

"Did you know when you create a dybbuk, the spirit mends its host? No? I maybe forgot to mention that part to him too. But! Had it worked, your uncle would have lived forever. Or until his hunger got the better of him. Or the Society heard about him. Or Frankie got tired of him eating her friends." He winked at me then, like old times. "But it sounds great, right? Really sells it."

"He wouldn't give up his soul for eternal life."

"His request wasn't quite so cliché." Ankou delighted in his pause. "He traded his body for her death."

"I…" The blood drained out of my head, leaving me woozy. "He hated me that much?"

"Apparently so, Bijou, if his first thought after receiving a terminal diagnosis that guaranteed his dutiful nephew would rush to his bedside was ‘I would rather sell my soul to the lowest bidder than have my boy rekindle his romance with that hussy.'" He spread his hands. "Hussy was his word choice, not mine."

And just how all stories about bargains made with devils ended, Lyle would have gotten what he wanted. Me out of the picture. Forever. But he would have lost what he loved most: his nephew.

Lyle would have lived on, healed of his sickness, only to find himself facing eternity alone. Harrow would have never forgiven him for killing me, and Lyle would have spent his days in a hell of his own making.

He would have deserved it. He did deserve it. He had killed so many innocents.

"I'm a cop. I would have sent her to prison," Lyle insisted, as if that made it any better. "The law says?—"

Atramentous wasn't a prison. It was a death sentence. No one made it out alive.

"A cop is not a judge," Harrow bit out. "They're damn sure not a jury or an executioner."

"I didn't kill anyone. Those things were already dead. I devoured abominations. Abominations she and those like her create." Lyle scrabbled at the dirt, drool sliding down his jaw. "I staged the crime scenes. I did that. To implicate Frankie. That was my only crime." Mud caked his fingers. "I would have paid for the car. After. No harm done. None."

The confession exonerated Ormewood and Mrs. Minchin, and therefore me, from murdering Phelps and Mr. Minchin, but I found no victory in their deaths.

"All you had to do was turn her in." Lyle wept in great heaving sobs. "Then it would have ended. I would have stopped myself. She would have been held responsible for her crimes and locked away where she couldn't hurt anyone else. Locked away from you. She would have?—"

"—died in Atramentous," Harrow finished for him, proving he knew that much for certain. "You would have killed her either way."

"She was pretty poison," he rasped. "She made you embrace your magic, after I told you. I told you. There's no coming back from it. Once you've tasted power, you'll hunger for it the rest of your life."

"You lied to me." Harrow's gun wavered. "Do we have necromancer blood?"

"No." He kicked his feet in a tantrum. "No, no, no."

"He's not wrong." Ankou, ever helpful, folded his arms across his chest. "It's a fine thread, barely there. I was able to tie a spirit to his for a couple of days, as long as they fed every few hours, but it was starving. It cut itself loose and took most of his sanity with it. That was when Lyle decided to take matters into his own hands."

Ah. That was why he looked normal. Ish. The bond had broken, taking the burning eyes and flaming hair with it.

"I tried to…but my eyes…" Lyle clawed his lids. "I couldn't see. I missed her. A target that big."

Had I cared about his opinion of me, he might have hurt my feelings with that dig. But nah. I wasn't about to give him that kind of power over me.

"Do not insult Frankie," Kierce warned him, "or I will rip out your lungs through your nose."

"Take them." His agreement tapered into a mad cackle. "They're ruined anyway."

"You ran down Frankie?" Harrow's arm fell to his side. "You could have killed her."

"Oh, he planned on it." Ankou tapped his foot, like he wanted to get on with it. "Idiot."

The tone. The voice. The inflection.

It remained the same.

Familiar. Comforting. Trustworthy. Three words I had associated with Armie.

But now instead of teasing Josie, joking with Matty, or trading sarcasm with me, he was talking about my life. About someone who had tried to kill me. Someone he helped hurt me.

All those business trips, the long weekends away, had that actually been on business for his god?

Were there others like me? Pawns in some divine game? What did I matter to an old god anyway?

"His degeneration impaired his senses." Kierce angled his beak at Ankou. "Hunger was driving him mad."

Hunger might have driven him mad, but that wasn't until after he had agreed to host a shade.

And Ankou…

Good God.

He had been waiting at our house after we got home from River Street that night, hadn't he? He cast the spell, so he must have been there. Watching. When I wasn't dumped into the lap of the nearest sentinel, he must have decided he wanted a firsthand account of what happened from Josie to readjust his plans.

"Her death was the bargain." Ankou spread his hands. "I had to pay up or else you-know-what happens."

Quiet throbbed in the space between them, a mutual acknowledgement that sobered them both.

"You can't kill her." Kierce toyed with electricity in his palm. "I won't let you."

A cold spark kindled in my chest while they played tug-of-war with my fate, neither one speaking directly to me, only each other. The spirits' voices redoubled in my ears, feeding my temper, growing deafening.

I was done sitting back, done being a victim, done letting others control my life.

"I won't let you," I corrected him, my fingers tingling as the temperature dropped around me.

"You can't hurt me." Ankou spared me a pitying glance. "You can't stop me." He flicked his fingers at Harrow. "Lyle, do me a solid and keep him out of my hair."

Thunder boomed overhead, lightning spiderwebbing across the sky, and Lyle lunged like a rabid animal. He struck Harrow in the gut with his shoulder, bowling him over, and bit into the forearm Harrow raised to protect himself from the attack. I hobbled toward them, searching for the gun, but Harrow must have dropped it.

"Stay back," he barked, stopping me in my tracks. "I can handle him."

"Stop this," Kierce demanded, stepping between Ankou and me.

"No." Ankou flung out his hand, and bone shards rose from the soft earth. "I don't think I will."

Ankou flung his arm at Kierce, pelting him with shards that spread like vines, forming a cage of bone that dug into his flesh, piercing him, bleeding him. The way he quit struggling, the fight draining out of him, it might have been poisoning him too.

"What in the fucking hell?"

This night just kept getting worse.

"Josie." Fear stabbed me in the heart when she skidded to a stop alone at my side. "Where's Matty?"

"Hey, Josie." Ankou smoothed a palm over his skull. "How do you like my new 'do?"

"Armie?" A thread of uncertainty wobbled in her voice. "No." She tripped over her own feet. "That's not possible."

"As much as I've enjoyed our arrangement, and I did—very much—I was only in it for Frankie."

Tears filled her eyes, threatening to overflow onto her cheeks, but she answered me. "Mary's okay."

"Thank God," I breathed, hoping that was what her solo arrival meant.

The spell must have been harder for Matty to break than I expected if he was too weak to come for me. Truth be told, I was grateful for it. I didn't want either of them anywhere near this. Whatever this was.

"What is that?" She threw the question at me like a lifeline. "The dybbuk thing?" Her eyes flashed a verdant green. "It's not Armie."

"Lyle is the dybbuk. Or he was." I kept a wary eye on the struggle between him and Harrow. "It's complicated."

"Mary," she said softly, pleading with me to make it better, to make it go away.

"This is Ankou." I wished I could wipe the anguish from her eyes. "Armie wasn't real."

"Okay." She shut her eyes, drew in a breath, and opened them with fresh determination and a resilience that made me proud to be her sister. "Who's the bird?"

A rush of protectiveness took me by surprise. "Kierce."

"You sure can pick 'em." She wiped her cheeks with the hem of her shirt. "Not that I have room to talk."

A rustling noise drew my attention to where vines writhed across the ground, slithering like snakes. They struck Ankou, binding him, but something was wrong. It was too easy. He wasn't even fighting back.

Amusement bright in his eyes, he whistled a short tune then settled in, unbothered by the bindings.

"No," Harrow bellowed, doing his best to restrain a frenzied Lyle without hurting him.

This was getting ridiculous. Lyle was treating Harrow like a chew toy. He might not want my help, but he was getting it.

Impact sent me flying forward, tossing me face-first into rotting leaves and dirt. I screamed when a slight weight hit my spine, a bony knee digging into my hip. Sharp nails scraped across my scalp, fisting my hair, and yanking my head back to stare up into…

"No," I breathed, setting eyes first on Carter's face then on the hat she wore. The dark fabric wept blood in rivulets down her cheeks and forehead. The scent of fresh pennies overwhelmed me, and I gagged on the foul aroma cloaking her like a shroud. "This isn't you. You don't want to do this. Carter, please."

"Your blood smells sweet." Her eyes were frenzied. "Powerful." She wet her lips. "Delicious."

"What did you do to her?" Harrow flung Lyle away, but he scrambled right back, attacking with a ferocity Harrow lacked when battling the man who raised him. "Answer me, Ankou."

"I gave her a taste." He twitched his shoulders, causing Josie's vines to tighten. "She won't—she can't—stop now."

Kierce was down. Harrow was fighting for his life. Josie was straining to keep Ankou bound.

There was only one avenue open to me, one way we might all survive, but it would cost me.

Each pant whistling through my teeth expelled a frosted breath. Ice spiked my veins, turning my blood to sludge. Frigid certainty settled over me like an icy mantle, and I reached beyond myself.

Into Bonaventure.

Into the silent graves.

Into the darkest parts of my talent.

I clutched a spirit in my mind, ripped him from his bed, and thrust him into Carter.

I hadn't forced a spirit on someone since the night the sentinel came for me and I acted in self-defense.

Clamping her hands over her ears, she screamed, rattling my eardrums. She fell back, kicking and hitting at nothing, growling swears and pleas while foaming at the mouth. As soon as I was clear, I got my knees under me, picked the scab on my palm, and marked her forehead with my blood. A bitter chant filled my mouth until I spat it out, and more words clawed their way up my throat. I pitted my will against hers, an ugly battle that cost her an undefinable something, and then her body went slack.

"Mija?"Carter blinked a few times as Pedro settled into her skin. "Where am I?"

"Hey, Pedro." I clasped hands with her—him—and helped him stand. "I'm so sorry."

"Hush, now." He cupped my cheeks. "Anything for you." He kissed my forehead. "You know that."

A howl ripped from Lyle's throat as he scented the presence of a spirit, and he ditched Harrow to lunge for me. He landed on my chest, shoving me away, then bared his teeth at Carter's body.

"Pedro," Josie screamed, turning her back on Ankou, ready to tackle Lyle.

A single gunshot rang out in the night, and Harrow dropped to his knees, the weapon limp in his fingers.

"Pedro?" Josie rolled Lyle off Pedro and sat next to him. "You okay?"

Behind her, Ankou scrubbed away the vines now that she was no longer controlling them.

"Who was that?" Pedro didn't try to sit up this time. "That man?"

"I'll explain later." I fished around on his belt. "I need to handcuff your loaner, then I'll send you home."

"Are you sure you don't need me?" His gaze strayed past my shoulder. "What are those things?"

"I would never forgive myself if you got hurt." I let Josie help him to his feet again. "Hug that skinny tree for me." I waited until his fingers touched before snapping on the handcuffs, testing them to be sure they would hold. "See you soon." I squeezed his shoulder. "And again, I'm sorry."

With a final grunt of effort, Ankou freed himself and stepped clear of the limp and broken vines.

"There's nothing to forgive," Pedro said as I pressed the heel of my palm to his forehead.

A softer chant flowed through me, releasing him from Carter, and I smudged the blood off her forehead.

"Huh." Ankou dusted leaves off his arms. "Lyle was right to worry." He stared at Harrow, at the gun in his hand, at his thousand-yard stare. "He still loves you."

Refusing to rise to the bait, I tucked Josie behind me. "Lyle is dead. Your bargain is void. You should go."

Limp in the cage of bone, Kierce didn't make a sound, and my gut twisted at his stillness.

Harrow, shaking off his grief, pointed the gun at Ankou. "You heard her."

"I have to finish what I start." He pointed at the sky. "Otherwise, He won't be happy with me."

"You've been in our lives for a year." I caught Josie's eye and prayed she read my plea in them. "Why wait to act until now?"

"I can't kill you myself." He strode over to me and tapped the end of my nose. "Boop."

Thinking of Lyle and Carter, how he had tempted them with their hearts' desires, I experienced an ugly epiphany. "You influence people to do your bidding."

"I illuminate the darkest nooks and crannies of the soul. I give people what they want." His mouth pulled to one side as he took in Lyle's crumpled body in a you win some, you lose some kind of way. "If not always how they want it." He flicked his gaze up to me. "And, make no mistake, they have to want it with every depraved fiber of their black-hearted being to draw my attention. There are no takebacks once a bargain has been struck."

Nudging Josie back with my fingertips, I kept my focus on Ankou. "What do you mean?"

"Do you really think Lyle ‘I Hate Magic' Harrow knew what a dybbuk was? That he had any idea to ask for that specific power? That he even suspected he had necromancer blood?" His eyes, once so familiar, twinkled with malice. "He wanted to live long enough to ensure you couldn't sink your hooks into his nephew. But he didn't care how—his words, not mine—as long as you died before him."

"How did he know to come to you?" I wet my lips. "When did he come to you?"

"I might have intercepted his prayers. He was full of them—loud ones—after his diagnosis. I had trained myself to skim for your name, and once I heard it, I went to him. Good thing too. His god has that whole benevolence persona going for him, which is cool if you're into that kind of thing, but Lyle was never going to have his rather bloodthirsty wishes granted without some redirection from yours truly."

Random gods and their PAs could eavesdrop on your prayers and intercept them? Snatch them right out of the ether and add them to their to-do lists? The revelation only confirmed my conviction that no belief was the safest approach to religion. To learn Lyle hadn't summoned him, but that Ankou had answered all the same carved me hollow and then filled that chasm with guilt.

Had Ankou not lit a spark within him, Lyle would have died with his hatred and not taken out so many in a blaze of glory with him. And Harrow… He wouldn't blame me. He was too good for that. But Lyle had his wish, in a way. He would always stand between Harrow and me. Even in death. Maybe especially in death. "Carter wouldn't have gone to you." I pictured her manic cheddar puff consumption and finally grasped the true reason behind it. She was trading one addiction for another. "You went to her."

"All I had to do was buy a bag of cheddar puffs and lace her favorite snack with dried blood flakes from where you cut yourself in the shop. I resealed the bag with Josie's flatiron then paid a maid to hide it in your hotel room where it wouldn't be noticed for a while. Then it was a matter of waiting for her to take a bite and see how long she could resist before your blood sent her into a murderous rage." He dragged a knuckle down my cheek, his flesh paper-thin. "She's so hungry. You can't imagine how her stomach gnaws on her. But she wants to be good. To atone. To forget she only feels real pleasure when blood fills her mouth and death bends a knee."

Quick as a whip, a vine looped around Ankou's throat. The brown rope wrapped tighter and tighter, until the same dark light I saw at the hospital entered his eyes. His breaths turned short, but he didn't scratch at his neck. He let it happen.

"Really, Josie?" Blood vessels burst in his eyes. "I thought…we had…moved beyond this."

"You want my sister dead," she snarled over my shoulder. "There is no moving beyond this."

"She can be…so…much more." He reached for me again, but a sapling tree caught his wrist. "Death is…"

Fresh chills rose in me, and I welcomed the bite of the grave on my skin. "Not an option."

"You know what you have to do." Josie strained to keep Ankou bound. "There's no choice, Frankie."

"There's no choice, Frankie."

"No choice, Frankie."

"Frankie."

The past superimposed itself over the present, lowering my heart rate, forcing an eerie calm on me.

For the second time in my life, I tossed aside my morals, I forgot ethics, and I embraced my full power.

With Ankou's chest wrapped tight, I had to settle for placing my hand on his cheek.

Trusting Josie to watch my back, I shut my eyes, blocking out what remained of Armie.

Hooking a finger under my chin, she wrenched my head up until my nose pointed at the ceiling, forcing me to stare into the empty sockets of her eyes. "You're lying to me, Mary Frances, and lying is a sin."

I was screaming before her smile revealed rows of serrated teeth with rotting meat stuck between them.

Terror burned hot in my gut while icy cold spread down my arms into my hands.

And I reached.

And reached.

And reached.

And reached.

Not with my hands but with every scrap of magic beneath my skin.

With a ripping noise, I tore my spirit from my body. I collided with hers and sank into her withered form.

I became light in her darkness. Hope amidst her despair. A sharp knife in the blackened wound of her soul.

Hooking my fingers into the throbbing darkness at her core, I ripped my arms back. I tore. I rent. I shredded. Until I held the pulsating mass where her heart should be in my hands. Golden power bathed me, set my soul thrumming, as her essence charred and flaked, incinerated by my touch.

"Mary." A hand clamped on my shoulder. "You can let go now."

"Mors tua,"I rasped, throat raw, "vita mea."

Your death, my life.

"Come on, Mary." A second hand mirrored the position of the first. "You can't stay there."

One person? Two people? I couldn't tell. I couldn't feel. Not really. Just impressions. On a body too far away to be mine. That couldn't be me. Right? Not way over there.

A familiar voice rumbled from nearby. "What happens if she does?"

"She dies with him," Josie—I think—mumbled. "We learned that when she almost died the last time."

"The last time?" Harrow—maybe?—demanded answers. "She's done this before?"

"She killed one of the sisters of St. Mary's," she confessed softly, "before the sister could kill me."

"That's how you ended up on the street. Frankie took you from there to protect you."

"All the Marys bullshit isn't bullshit to us." Her tone hardened. "Frankie saved me that night. It was Lent. The sisters decided we should fast. Not just Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, but the whole forty days."

Harrow sucked in a sharp breath, but it was our pain. Our past. I wasn't interested in sharing it. I was too busy trying to reach Josie, to comfort her, to remind her those days were past. But I couldn't surface yet.

"Four days in, I was so delirious from hunger that I crept into the kitchen and stole a stale breadcrust off the counter. It was a trap, and I was the dumb kid who fell for it. Frankie and I had no choice. We had to run away before the other sisters learned what she had done, but we stopped to say goodbye to Matty." She swallowed hard. "He had a bag packed. Like he knew our time was coming and wanted to be ready."

Memories cascaded through me of how thin he had been. Worse than even Josie. He lived in the dreams of others to escape his reality. His coping mechanism almost starved him to death, and it did atrophy his muscles. Had the sisters caught him sleeping for a third time instead of doing his chores…

"How old were you?"

"He was fifteen, she was fourteen, and I was thirteen."

"I knew it was bad, but she never told me."

"You never gave her much of a chance."

Warm arms embraced me, cradled me gently, and I gasped out of my fugue to find myself curled against Harrow's chest with my palms smeared in the black residue of an immolated soul.

Ankou's soul.

Armie'ssoul.

Vi would kill me when I confessed to breaking her no-astral-projection rule, but I would sweat that later. After I had time to digest that I had burnt the soul of a vassal of a death god to char smearing my hands.

"Samuel," I breathed, gulping air as my vision spun the world into midnight blurs.

"Right here." His rough fingers caressed my cheek. "I'm right here."

As my brain came back online, my heart leapt against my ribs. "Josie?"

"I'm here, Mary." She wiped away the hairs stuck to my forehead. "Everything is okay."

"Thank God." I kissed the top of her head, the movement tipping my line of sight. "Kierce."

Frantic, I broke free of her and Harrow and ran to the bone cage. I gripped two bars, certain I wouldn't be strong enough, but they snapped like peppermint sticks. As soon as they shattered, the rest dissolved into white dust sprinkling Kierce's still form.

"Kierce?" I checked for a pulse and found it thready. "Can you hear me?"

"I should…have known." He cracked one eye. "Ankou is chaos. This was…just his style."

That answered the question of whether he had realized another deity's PA was at work here.

"He's not going to hurt you again." I slid my fingers into his blood-slick ones. "How can I help?"

"I have to…go." He stroked my hand with his thumb. "I can't…heal…here."

"Go?" I cupped his cheek, his beak oddly warm. "Will you come back?"

"You see what I am." His dark eyes held anguish and the brittleness of hope. "How can you overlook it?"

"A mirror can't show your worth," I repeated his words back to him.

A soft laugh moved through him, and he winced from the ache. "Take care of Badb for me."

"She can't go with you?" A lump formed in my throat. "I've never had a pet bird."

"Not a bird." His form dispersed into black motes, and his voice faded away. "A friend."

The whirl of his spirit, his essence, whatever created him, spun up into the cloudless sky.

He was gone.

Not dead but gone.

Circling above me, her form black against the yellow moon, Badb cried out as if her heart was breaking.