Eventually she went back inside. I hurried along the side of the neighbor’s house and onto the street a block away. Jimmy and I would only have to cut around one more corner and we’d be back at Murphy’s, where we’d left the car.
Quinn emerged from the shadows with his pants on. At least he was human enough to know that walking down the street naked would get him noticed.
“Thank you.” I held out my hand, and Quinn took it. I had a flash of fire on the ocean, ice bobbing in a sea of flames.
I tilted my head, and he smiled. “If I hurt her, feel free.”
I realized he’d just shown me the way to kill him, although I wasn’t sure how flames could dance on water and ice survived fire, but if he hurt her, I’d figure it out. That he’d shown me such a secret made me trust him even more.
I handed Quinn my cell phone number. “If you need help—”
He pocketed it and nodded.
“We should go,” I said.
Though we were alone on the street, we couldn’t hang around. Someone might glance out the window. A cop could come by. We might not resemble gang members, but we had no business loitering on a street corner in the middle of the night. Who did?
Max had always told me “nothing good happens after midnight,” and he’d been right. If I was still a cop and I saw us, I’d pull over and run every one of us through the system. We’d all be detained. Jimmy’s record was . . . colorful, mine newly blackened and Quinn’s . . . Lord only knew what would turn up.
With a nod to the gargoyle, I turned toward the car, and Jimmy followed. “We need to get to New Mexico.”
“Summer’s not dumb enough to go there,” he said.
“I don’t need her. Sawyer’s been around long enough to know what a dagda is and where to find one.”
“Dagda?” Quinn echoed, and I froze, even as Jimmy cursed.
“Do you know where to find one?” I asked.
“One?” His face creased in confusion. “There is only one.”
“Explain.”
“The Dagda. The good God.”
I stilled as icy dread skated up my back. “The Dagda is a god.”
“No. There is only one of those. Although many aspire.”
Whew.
“So the Dagda is on our side?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But he’s good.”
“Not good as in morally, but good as in all-powerful. Good at everything.”
Well, I had been searching for an über-fairy.
“Do you know where he is?”
“He isn’t anywhere.”
“Everyone’s somewhere, Quinn. Spill it.”
“The Dagda has immense power. He can kill many with a single blow of his club and resurrect them simply by tapping the lifeless bodies with the handle. His caldron contains magic beyond compare.”
“Just the guy I need to see.” I narrowed my eyes. “Now.”
“Those who approach the Dagda do not return the same.”
I glanced at Jimmy, who appeared fascinated by the descending moon. “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”
“What do you want of him?”
I didn’t care to explain the particulars of Summer’s sex spell—even if I’d known them—that kept Jimmy’s vampire nature dormant, unless there was a full moon, so I stuck to the facts.
“I need a spell reversed. He can do that, right?”
Quinn nodded, but still he hesitated. “The Dagda is both good and evil. He hasn’t yet chosen a side.”
“All the more reason to have a talk.” An all-powerful fairy god just might come in handy. “Point me in the right direction, Quinn, and I’ll do the rest.”
“There is no direction, mistress.” He cleared his throat when I gave him a narrow glare. “Liz,” he corrected. “The Dagda lives in the Otherworld, a land that exists parallel to this one.”
“Parallel,” I repeated.
He spread his hands. “Another realm that is beneath.”
“Beneath what?”
“The earth.”
“How far beneath? Tartarus level?”
His yellow-green eyes widened. “No! He isn’t a Grigori.”
“But he lives beneath.”
“The Dagda lives in the Otherworld because he does not care for this one.”
“Why not?”
“Do you?”
Actually, I did care for it, very much. Otherwise I wouldn’t be risking my life, love and the pursuit of all my happiness to save it. But explain that to a gargoyle.
“How do we get there?”
“I know the way.”
I shot a glance at Jimmy. He still stared at the sky. “Summer didn’t.”
“She wouldn’t. Until we chose a side—good or evil—we resided in the Otherworld. Summer chose right away.”
“Wow, she’s a saint,” I muttered.
“She may become one if the forces of light triumph. If the forces of darkness rule”—he shook his head—“I wouldn’t want to be her.”
If the forces of darkness ruled, I wasn’t going to want to be me. Hell, no one on our side was going to want to be us anymore if the demons ruled the world.
Which meant we had to move forward. Jimmy had to become again a darkness that was equal to my own. Ruthie had said that was the only way we could fight the Grigori that had been released and were even now repopulating the earth with a legion—that cursed word again—of Nephilim. We had to be as badass as they were.
“How do we get to the Otherworld?” I asked.