“Pancakes,” Daisy said longingly. “I used to love pancakes.”
“Who the hell is she?”
“She’s a package deal with D—with Roger Palmer,” I said while the damn man glared at me from the corner.
“Roger who?”
“Palmer,” Dad and I said together, and Billy’s eyes got big.
“Palmer? The Roger Palmer, like Roger Palmer, your—”
I clapped my hand over his mouth, and look.
It did work.
“Can we just get out of here?” I asked. “Please?”
“I have no idea,” Billy said as Rosier’s body thump, thumped through him again. “Nobody goes to the Badlands. Nobody sane, anyway. I sure as hell have never—”
“I can help you,” Daisy said brightly. “It’s easy. Look, I’ll show you—”
“No!” everybody screamed as she started for the wall.
“What?”
“There’s thousands of ravenous ghosts out there!” I told her, incredulous.
“There are?” Her eyes got big. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Rosier said, running my body like a hamster on a wheel, in order to keep up with the barrel rolls. “We can shift out of this, but only out there”—he nodded at the wall—“in the midst of a bunch of predatory ghosts who plan to eat us?”
“Yes.”
“And our ride doesn’t even know how this process works, because he’s never been here before?”
“Yes.”
“And the only one who has experience is her.” He hiked my thumb at Daisy. “Who is quite possibly mad?”
“I’m not mad,” she said. “But you could have said something. I might have been killed!”
I looked at Roger. “Is there an alternative?”
He shook his head. “As far as I know, there’s only two ways out of the Badlands. One, have a Pythia open a portal from our world, where her power works, allowing her to bring people in and out.”
“And the other is to piggyback off a ghost,” I finished for him.
“As long as they have the energy. You’re going to have to feed yours.”
“I can’t. There’s something I have to do, and it takes power—a lot of it. I’ve been taking a potion to enhance my stamina—”
“So take more!”
“I don’t have any more. And even if I did, you can’t enhance what isn’t there. If I drain myself too low, it won’t work—”
“Then you’re shit out of luck, aren’t you?”
I looked at Billy, but he was already shaking his head. “No way, Cass. I don’t even have to know what’s going on. I got nothing.”
“You could feed him,” I said to Roger, even knowing what the answer was going to be.
“I need my strength to feed my own ghost. She’s not quite there—thanks to you, I might add. Shining like a lighthouse and luring every damn spirit in the place!”
I stared at him. I’d never gotten much affection from my parents, who’d died when I was four. I’d spent my childhood dreaming about them, sneaking around, trying to find out any scrap of information I could. Which hadn’t been much, since my old guardian had instructed people not to talk to me. But I’d always wondered. . . .
And then I’d become Pythia, and gone back in time, to seek help from my mother in dealing with the demon council. Help she’d given, sort of. But there’d been no affection with it, no tear-filled reunions, no anything. Just grudging assistance and a swift push out the door.
And now my father was refusing even that, basically telling me to stay here and die for all he cared. I didn’t know why it hurt after so long, and after plenty of other indications of how he felt, but it did. It hurt so goddamn much, even though I hadn’t been born yet from his perspective, even though he had no way to know who I was.
Because it hadn’t made a difference when he did.
“That’s not going to help,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “I told you, I can’t—”
“But I can,” Rosier said, his voice harsh. I looked at him, and found him scowling at my father. “Get back in here,” he told me. “And get ready!”
I saw my face go slack as he stepped out of my skin. A second later I was stepping in, feeling the weight of my body hit me, pulling me the rest of the way to the floor. And to the rocks underneath, which bruised my palms when I abruptly hit down.
Because the wards were almost gone.
I hadn’t noticed, floating in the air, because the walls still looked the same. But they weren’t the same, maybe because nobody had expected them to have to put up with this kind of abuse. “The wards—” I gasped, looking up.
And was almost blinded by Billy Joe, shining like a searchlight.
And then everything happened at once: Billy grabbing me and me grabbing Rosier; Daisy jerking a surprised-looking Roger off the floor, and all of us falling through the collapsing wards. Which left us behind on the ground the next time the cell rolled over, where we were metaphysically trampled by a crowd of ghosts. Who’d gotten so into the rush to destroy the cell that they didn’t immediately notice we were gone.
I lay there for a second, watching the mighty throng surge ahead, the remains of the small cell being tossed in front of them like a bouncy ball. And then we were up and running, dodging through the crowd of stragglers, who stared at us in surprise. For about a second.
Until their faces started to melt.
“Daisy!” Roger shouted as the spirits turned into nightmare fuel.
“Trying!”
“Try harder!”
“They’re too close,” she panted. “I’ll take some of them with us!”
“Then take them!” he yelled, sending spells and ghosts flying. But that wouldn’t work in a second, when the main crowd realized that their prey was trying to flee. “Daisy! Do it now!”
And she did. Or she did something as pain lanced through me, as Billy Joe snarled and threw a couple of clinging spirits off my back, as we pelted forward. And while the X-ray landscape changed all around us. A river swelled and declined, trees grew and fell, armies marched and fires raged and walls rose around us, new ones, familiar ones, like the stairs being built under our feet, lifting us along with them— “Daisy, now!” Roger screamed as something latched on to the back of his neck. “Now! Now! Now!”
“Now what?” she asked, looking confused.
Billy Joe cursed, and jerked, a mighty heave that had me feeling like I’d left some of my bones behind— But a second later we were tumbling into the real world—literally, because we’d just crashed through the railing on the second floor of the Pythian Court.
“Well, shit,” Rosier said, right before we hit the floor, the very hard, very marble floor of the foyer, which would have hurt more, but I’d fallen on someone.
Someone who I guessed was Roger, because he was cursing underneath me.