“She’ll listen to me.” It sounded certain.
“How do you know?”
She shot me a look. “She’s my sister.”
And then she and Daisy were gone, too.
“I knew she reminded me of someone,” Billy said, but I barely heard him. I was too busy watching the forecast change.
My new helpers were tearing a swath through the trees, shifting here, there, and everywhere. Causing Pythias and acolytes to peel off after them—and the images flipping in front of my eyes to continually rewrite themselves. Until, finally, I saw a slender path opening up ahead.
But not for both of us. Not when Rosier was wearing bright crimson, I guess to celebrate being back to normal, and because God forbid he dress like a commoner. Or make any effort to blend in.
I grabbed him. “We’re going to have to split up.”
“Split up? We can’t split up! Emrys doesn’t even know me in this—”
“We have to!” I shook him a little, when he looked like he was about to protest again. “Get to the city. Find Pritkin. Stick to him like glue—”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Get you there,” I breathed as someone shifted in, almost on top of us.
Rosier took off—no one ever had to tell him twice—and I shifted an acolyte into two others, who had just appeared through the trees. The trio went down, but there were more right behind them, their dainty dresses in marked contrast to their expressions. Like the first girl, who was already jumping back up, a snarl on her face.
I thought of the group I’d stumbled across last time, and wondered where all that useful timidity went. And then I threw a slow time bubble behind me, at a warning from Billy Joe. And caught a Pythia who had just shifted in, her power signature markedly stronger than the girls’.
Oh, I thought.
That’s where.
And then I fled. A quick succession of jumps in the opposite direction from Rosier left my head reeling and my stomach queasy. And my hands shaking from effort, because yeah.
Not going to be doing this much longer.
“Options,” I breathed, but that was the problem—my power was already showing them to me, and they all sucked. There were four Pythias zeroing in on the power of my last spell, and no way could I take four.
“Billy—”
“For the record, I think this is a really bad—”
“Billy—”
“Maybe we could talk to them, try to explain—”
“They don’t want explanations. They want my head!”
“And a bunch of hungry ghosts don’t? You don’t want to go back there!”
“Well, I don’t want to stay here!” I said shrilly as a tree exploded beside us.
“Shit!” Billy said, and shifted.
But the weird, formless vault of nontime was a lot less formless this go-round. “What did you do?” I asked, staring at the X-ray landscape around us.
The forest was still there, in chalky off-white sketches, like an architect’s drawing. I put out a hand, and the exploding bits of wood from the tree passed right through it, twisting slowly in the air but weightless, like they weren’t even there. Because they weren’t—or, rather, I wasn’t.
But I wasn’t in the Badlands, either, at least not entirely.
“What did you do?” I asked again as a figure appeared through the trees.
“I . . . don’t think I totally committed,” Billy said, looking as spooked as I was.
“What does that mean?”
“I think it means we’re sort of . . . on the fringes,” he said. “Like what Lizzie did to you. You’re not at the party, but you’ve got your nose pressed to a window.”
I didn’t answer. I was busy watching a familiar-looking Pythia stalk me through the brush. One with big dark eyes and long, dark curls and cheap little tinsel earrings—and a power signature that almost knocked me down, because she was unbelievably strong.
Or had a hell of a lot of acolytes with her, I thought grimly, as she walked right through me.
And paused.
Eudoxia, my brain supplied as she whirled, her usually pleasant face vicious.
“Billy—”
“We’re skimming along the surface of time,” he told me quickly. “She can’t see us, but she can probably feel us—”
“Then take us farther out!”
“I can’t take us farther out, or we’re gonna be ghost fodder! Plus, I only have so much power. Every time I transition, I get weaker, and that little demon bastard’s not here to top me up!”
“So what would you suggest?”
“Athenais! Lydia! Gwenore!” the woman called.
“Run!” Billy said.
“Over here!”
We ran.
It was surreal, not bothering to dodge the trees, just pelting straight through them. And straight through the three hazy figures suddenly appearing out of nowhere, right in my path. One of them, Gertie’s mentor, Lydia, stopped in her tracks and spun around as I passed, her black, witchy garments flowing about her.
And slashed her walking stick through my X-ray body.
I swear, for a second, I felt it—or felt something, like a rush of wind.
One that packed a punch great enough to send me staggering.
“Here!” she called. “She’s phasing!”
“So much for that idea,” Billy said as I recovered, which would have been easier if I hadn’t tripped over a tree root.
A tree root that was suddenly normal colored, and solid. Like the patch of ground all around it. Like my foot—
For a second, until Billy jerked me back—physically and into nontime—just as Lydia’s stick jabbed down where I’d been standing.
“Cass! Be careful! If they touch you—”
“Got it,” I gasped, ducking as that damn stick slashed through the air again, just over my head.
And then I was tearing toward the tree line.
“Options!” I breathed, because the river was coming up. “Good options,” I clarified, which didn’t seem to help.
And then I saw—
“What are you doing?” Billy asked as I broke out of the trees onto a rocky beach—and kept on going.
Onto the water.
It was no less solid under my feet than the land, despite the fact that my brain kept telling me it should be. It was more than a little trippy, though; the skies were overcast, and the wind was surging, sending waves rolling all around me. Like the ones slapping the ghostly outline of ships along the opposite shore, making them bob at their anchors . . .
“Billy?” I said, looking down, because I’d just realized my feet were wet.
And then we were under.
“Sorry! Sorry!” he said, jerking my soggy form back into nontime. “It’s a learning curve!” he yelled as I coughed out a lungful of water.
And then froze, a hand over my mouth, as two shadows splashed across my body.
I looked up to see two Pythias walking through the waves just overhead, as if on a glass ceiling above me. One had her face turned away, but the other . . . was Isabeau. She looked older now, with a few crow’s-feet around the big gray eyes, and strands of gray in the abundant auburn hair. But it was definitely her.
And her companion, I saw a second later, was Eudoxia.