“Wish me luck?” I breathed, when I could breathe properly again. “You aren’t going to help?”
“It is not my place,” Hades said. “I wish you good fortune, and will hope that you triumph. But even if we yet lived in the age where my will could guide the course of destiny, it is not for the Lord of Death to take sides in this struggle. The fate of the weapons you have found must be decided by those who found them.”
“But you’ve already helped me,” I said. “Just by pointing out what was going on.”
Hades didn’t smile, but the corner of his eyes wrinkled. “All I did was ask you a few questions. Are you ready?”
“I have one more question,” I said.
“Mortals generally do.”
“What will happen to Deirdre?”
Hades drew in his breath. His face became expressionless. For a long moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “Relatively few new shades come into my realm these days. Foremost amongst them are those who perish in the gates—particularly at the Gate of Blood. She will remain in my keeping.”
“The things she’s done,” I said quietly. “The people she’s hurt. And she gets to skate justice?”
My host’s eyes became hard, flat, like pieces of coal.
“This is my realm,” he said, and there was a note in his voice like the grinding of tectonic plates.
Behind him, Spot let out a warning growl. Magnified by three throats and rumbling in that huge chest, it sounded like machinery in a slaughterhouse.
I didn’t answer. At least I had enough brains to pull my foot out of my mouth and stop talking. I bowed my head, as meekly as I knew how.
Hades’ voice smoothed out again, and at a gesture of his hand, Spot quieted down. “Should you survive the hour, consider your classics again, Sir Harry. And revisit the question in your thoughts.”
I nodded, and thought of others in the Underworld. Tantalus. Sisyphus. Vultures tearing out livers, water that could be carried only in sieves, and ever-spinning wheels of fire, punishments tailored specifically to the soul in question.
I didn’t know what was going to happen to Deirdre—but she wasn’t going to get off light.
“I understand,” I said quietly.
Hades nodded. “You will return to the same moment in which I slowed time,” he said, “and in the same position. Are you prepared?”
I drew a slow, deep breath. “I guess I’d better be.”
His eyes flickered and he gave me a brief nod, maybe of approval.
Then black fire swallowed me again.
Forty-two
“If there’s any kind of device built into this thing, I can’t see it,” Valmont reported in a near whisper, and rose from behind the altar.
I looked around a bit wildly, my eyes taking a second or three to adjust to the dimmer light. I was, just as Hades had said, right back where I’d been a few objective fractions of a second before.
Five artifacts. Mab had promised Nicodemus that I would help him recover the Grail. She hadn’t said a damned thing about any of the others. So that meant that there were four things I could keep away from him, right here, right now. Nick hadn’t seen them yet, so he couldn’t know for certain that they were here. I had to recover them if I could, but keep them away from him at all costs. That meant getting them out of sight and splitting them up as best I could.
But it meant more than that. It meant winning the game Mab had set up for me.
Or, now that I thought about it, the game Mab had rigged for me. Mab had arranged to give me a target I couldn’t miss if I tried. It wasn’t a very appetizing target, but not every job I’d ever done was clean and enjoyable.
I knew how to win the game to Mab’s satisfaction. The trick was going to be both winning the game and surviving it.
Mentally, I went over those cards that I’d been holding close to my chest.
Yeah. If I played them properly, I thought I had a winning hand.
“Right,” I said quietly. I stepped up to the altar and started seizing holy objects. The placard. The crown.
“Take these,” I said in a whisper, passing them to Valmont. “Get out of sight. Stow them in your pack if you can. Hide them somewhere else if you can’t.”
Valmont stared at me with her eyes wide. “Why?”
“They can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands,” I said.
“Dresden,” she said, “I’m in this for the money, and revenge if I get a chance at it. I’m not here for a cause.”
I clenched my jaw for a second, and then regarded her frankly. “Anna,” I said, “when have I ever done wrong by you? I need your help. Who do you trust more to get you out of here? Nicodemus? Or me?”
She stared at me hard for only a fraction of a second before she gave me a curt nod, and took them. She started stuffing them into her pack. She hadn’t filled even half of it with diamonds, and was able to slide them in. “Hey, is that the Shroud?”
“This one looks older and shabbier than the one you stole from the Church,” I said, rolling up the old cloth and stuffing it into my duster’s pocket. It was thin stuff, terribly thin, and made a smaller bundle than you’d think. “Hell, maybe that investigative panel was right. Maybe the Church does have a knockoff.”
“But I thought that one had power?” she asked.