Chloe threw herself past him onto the bed and bounced across it. As she hoped, the Viking ran around the bed rather than through it.

  And left the foot of the bed clear.

  Chloe bounced onto it again, using it to land right on Ramses as the Viking’s hands whooshed over her head.

  Ramses collapsed into her as if falling into her arms, but as soon as he possessed her, being frozen in place no longer mattered. He flipped their shared body, somersaulting toward the bathroom before pushing to his feet.

  Chloe had managed to keep hold of the rowan ring, and Ramses waved it like a bullfighter. The Viking paused, clearly very confused and probably getting angrier by the second.

  “I’m so sorry I salted you,” Chloe said in their mind. “And cayenne-d you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “So amateur.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “If we die, I’m so damned sorry.”

  “You’re not going to die, and I’m already dead.”

  Chloe forced herself to focus. The Viking stepped around the bed, blocking the way out again, but Chloe doubted Ramses would have escaped even if they could. He was always loath to leave an enemy once the fight was on, but without the baggie or the nails—

  “Wait. We have a vial of iron filings,” she said. “It’s for fey, but they might work against a ghost, especially one as newly summoned as this guy, and it’s sure as shit not just window dressing.” She directed Ramses to the right pocket, and he pulled the plastic vial and popped the cork off with his thumb.

  When the Viking hesitated again, eyeing the vial, Ramses gestured him forward. “Come on, you son of a pig. Or will you be a coward and shame your family?”

  Confusion or not, that seemed to get through. With another battle roar, the Viking charged, hands out for Chloe’s neck.

  Ramses ducked and managed to turn while bending sideways, bringing his arm up to throw the iron filings in the Viking’s face. The roars cut off mid-bellow, and the Viking fell, clawing at his eyes as if blinded, too interested in protecting his face, even though it wasn’t nearly as vulnerable to a ghost.

  Pity and the Viking’s strangled coughs turned Chloe’s stomach. “Hurry, Ramses.”

  He grabbed the baggie and tossed a handful of salt and cayenne onto the Viking, freezing him in place before stepping out of Chloe’s body. She didn’t know what might happen if he was actually possessing her while she did a banishing, and she didn’t want to find out.

  “I don’t have the nails,” she said, shrugging off twinges from muscles that weren’t used to moving the way Ramses forced them to.

  “Mostly window dressing, remember?”

  Right. She went through the motions with the rowan ring anyway, saying the words and feeling the power building in herself where she’d thought it was the tools before. The power stuttered a few times, and she made herself fall back into the ritual, using that to prop up her self-confidence.

  When the Viking finally faded, his eyes seemed grateful. It made her life that much more worthwhile.

  “You okay?” she and Ramses asked at the same time before they both chuckled.

  “Let’s go see if Helen’s kicked Tabitha’s ass yet,” Chloe said. She paused on the walkway outside. A haze stretched in front of her before bending through half the rooms on either side of theirs and arcing overhead. It glistened iridescently, as if she stood inside a giant soap bubble.

  “It’s magical,” Ramses said.

  “No shit.”

  He grumbled, no doubt something about trying to be helpful, but a gleam from the parking lot caught Chloe’s eye, and her insides froze solid.

  Helen’s kladenet lay on the ground, winking at her in the glow of the halogen lights.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  It had all gone swimmingly in Helen’s imagination. She’d run out of the room and seen Tabitha kneeling in the back of a pickup amidst several glowing kerosene lamps. Her head had jerked up, red curls framing her pale, wide-eyed face. It should have been simplicity itself to close the distance, leap onto the open tailgate, and either stab Tabitha or punch her into unconsciousness.

  Should have been.

  After a step, Helen had passed through some force field that felt like a mass of cobwebs, but it had yielded easily, and all the chirps and croaks and trills of an evening in the country had surrounded her. That should have been a clue that more magic than a simple summoning was in play.

  But it took another few steps to realize there was a second force field, this one as solid as stone.

  Pain, shock, stumbling back, her head ringing and on fire: those were easy to remember now as her vision went in and out. Air rushed past her as if she was flying, taking a jaunt on Pegasus yet again, perhaps, until something else squeezed her, a vise-like feeling she’d experienced recently, but she was having such a hard time focusing.

  How could she have been so stupid? The rough tautness of rope bit into her wrists behind her back. She strained to snap them but couldn’t. Was she falling? Darkness surrounded her, but another jolt to her body turned her mind off again.

  Awake, she was lying down now. With Chloe? No, the surface beneath her face was hard, rough, and filled her nose with the scent of mustiness and earth, the smell of time itself. When she lifted her head, it throbbed, and something sticky trailed from her cheek to the floor. She tasted more metal. A bloody nose, maybe worse.

  Voices.

  Tabitha was one. But where were they?

  She had to get loose. Chloe was counting on her. Helen had to at least slow Tabitha down, both to save Chloe the worry and to get her revenge.

  But more fucking carefully this time, or the Sphinx would never forgive her.

  Her wits came back in fits and starts. She rolled onto her shoulder. Dim light came from behind her, turning the wall from a mass of shadows to a row of shelves, all filled to the brim with stone or pottery or boxes with bundles of straw and packing materials cascading down the front. Her feet were free, and she managed to roll over slowly. Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to breathe through the pain and dizziness and called for her godhood.

  Nothing.

  She nodded weakly. More magic at work. It must have been why she couldn’t just snap the ropes, why her injuries weren’t already healing the way they should have been. When she opened her eyes again, a beautiful face was smiling down at her.

  The Lamia. At last. But was it the real one this time?

  And why was her hair a startling shade of red rather than her usual dark blue?

  “Awake, are we? That was quick, especially without your god powers.” The voice was a little different but still throaty, seductive.

  Helen breathed a laugh. “You don’t even have the voice or the hair right. Pathetic, demon.”

  The faux-Lamia laughed where a demon might have bristled at the insult. What kind of creature was this?

  Helen cried out as she was lifted upright, her head throbbing and the world spinning. The faux-Lamia placed her in a wooden folding chair as if she weighed nothing. When she managed to open her eyes again, the faux-Lamia had backed off a few steps, letting Helen take in the red-and-black striped tail of her lower half and the ochre skin of her upper. She wore as little as the real Lamia, and their faces and figures were nearly identical, but this one’s necklace and belt and bangles were all silver, and she didn’t wear the magical imprisoning cuff Helen had put on the real Lamia all those years ago.

  “Who are you?” Helen asked, breathing through the pain.

  “I’m the Lamia, of course.” She held up a hand with long scarlet nails. “Not the one you’re used to. That’s my sister.”

  “Mmm-hmm, sure.” Helen tried to feign nonchalance while looking around the room. Tabitha bent over a table behind the faux-Lamia, busily sorting through a box on a table lit by an electric lamp. Beyond her stood more shelves and double doors. The walls and floor were concrete. No one had bothered to turn on the overhead lights. Would the motel have a storeroom like this? “You can pretend all you want if it amuses you.”

  The faux-Lamia laughed again and leaned back on the table, biting her lip playfully with one fang. “You don’t have to take my word for it.” She put a hand to the side of her mouth. “Sis? You busy?”

  A creature who looked much more like the real Lamia slithered through the double doors, the colors right with her blue hair, green skin, and black, iridescent tail. But her mocking, eternal-teenager energy had been replaced by a scowl. And her left arm ended in a bandage instead of a hand. “It’ll take forever for this to grow back,” she said petulantly, seeming to aim the comment at both her “sister” and Helen.

  Helen frowned. If the Lamia had to chop off her hand to remove the cuff, then was this the real Lamia? She fought to stay quiet, to let them reveal whatever they wanted to, but she couldn’t help saying, “But you’re the Lamia.”

  “Yes.” The blue one gestured back and forth between herself and her sister. “The Lamia.”

  “Twins,” her sister said, linking their arms.

  “That’s not how the works,” Helen snapped, beyond tired of whatever nonsense was going on here.

  The Lamias gave the same elegant shrug.

  No, it couldn’t possibly be true.

  Could it?

  “I didn’t know you were going to take her,” the blue Lamia said. She didn’t look happy as she tilted her chin at Helen.

  “I wasn’t, but she’ll work marvelously as long as her magic lasts.” The red Lamia gave Helen an appraising glance. “Mind you, that might not be too long. She’s fairly used up.”

  “And sitting right here, thank you,” Helen said. Rude.

  The Lamias ignored her. “It would have been better if she’d been asleep for centuries like Charybdis, but…” The red Lamia shrugged again. “She’ll last longer than the wyvern, at least.”

  “What are you talking about?” Helen said, getting angrier by the moment. “That wyvern is old and tired and deserves a rest. And the others don’t deserve whatever it is you’re going to do to them, either.” She glared. “And if you’re the real Lamia,” she said to the blue one, “you should know that releasing Charybdis will do nothing but put the entire world in jeopardy, you included.”

  The blue Lamia narrowed her eyes. “Still thinking you know everything, same as always.”

  “We’re not going to let her go, hon,” the red Lamia said to Helen. “You don’t have to worry your pretty little head. In fact.” She slithered closer and walked her fingers up Helen’s chest as she spoke. “You don’t have to worry about anything until it’s your turn.” She ended with a light touch on her nose.

  It was almost worth the energy to try to bite her, but Helen needed to save it all for escaping.

  “All you have to do is sit there and be bait,” the red Lamia said as she backed away.

  “Don’t talk about your plans.” The blue Lamia crossed her arms, and Helen got the sense that she found her sister as irritating as everyone else found her. Served her right. “You’re not a Bond villain.”

  The red Lamia laughed delightedly and slithered for the doors. “All right, I’ll leave her to you. Make sure you keep enough of her left for our…” She shut her lips with a snap and winked. “Mysterious plans.” She snorted as she went through the doors. “Come, Tabitha.”

  With only a slight glare, no doubt at the summons, Tabitha scurried after her.

  Helen stared the Lamia down, something in her saying this was the real one, something she hadn’t felt in the presence of the imposter: centuries of animosity. “Well, are you going to get your revenge or what?”

  The Lamia sighed and sagged on the table far more resignedly than her sister had. “I don’t feel like having revenge.”

  “Did she give you a personality transplant when she cut off your hand?”

  That earned her a smile. “Her lackeys did this.” She lifted her arm and scowled at it. “I put the bandage on. It didn’t seem right to leave it bare even if I don’t bleed.”

  “I didn’t know you could regrow limbs.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  Ah, the attitude Helen was far more familiar with. Maybe she could use it to get more information.

  Like the Lamia had ever given up any info for free.

  “If you can regrow your hand, why didn’t you chop the cuff off a long time ago?”

  The Lamia rolled her eyes. “Just because one can do a thing doesn’t mean that thing is pleasant.”

  “But for your freedom?”

  Another elegant shrug, but this one seemed half-hearted.

  “You didn’t really want to escape, did you? You just liked to bitch.” Helen expected some bristling, but the Lamia smiled, her gaze faraway. “You liked living in your crypt and playing your video games and being near Melusine’s sleeping body.”

  “They left her behind.” It was so soft, Helen nearly missed it.

  And her heart went out to the Lamia for once. Well, probably more than once. “The Sphinx won’t let anything happen to her.”

  The Lamia’s gaze snapped to hers. “Trying to butter me up?”

  “Do I need to?”

  Another smile, brighter this time. “You know, I’m actually going to miss sparring with you.”

  “Why should we stop?”

  The Lamia’s mouth opened before she shut it and smiled slyly. “Just like I’m not a Bond villain, you’re not Bond. I’m not revealing my sister’s dastardly plans.”

  “So she does have a dastardly plan?”

  “So you do acknowledge that she’s my sister?”

  And the tap dance continued. But not for much longer, it seemed, with whatever the red Lamia had planned for Helen and Charybdis and the others. “Used up,” she said, trying to think. “Power-wise?”

  “It’s certainly not your looks,” the Lamia said, winking lasciviously. “Your charm, maybe.”

  “Screw you.”

  The Lamia burst out laughing before a shadow passed over her face. She didn’t like her sister’s plans. Helen had been on the right track there.

  “She needs our power for something. Mine, Charybdis, those I understand. Even the hippogriff and the Pleiades and the dryad. But the sick old wyvern?”

  As usual, the Lamia’s face gave little away.

  “What could it do for you? What could the others really do? Was that all her lackeys could get their hands on? I’m assuming she didn’t free you just to use your power in some way.”

  “No, she’d never turn on me.”

  So whatever the red Lamia was going to do to Helen and the others, it wasn’t good. But she hadn’t really expected it to be. And the few who had been kidnapped from the sanctuary might have been all that the mercenaries could get at the time, but they hadn’t been the only supernatural creatures targeted for capture.

  There was Ramses.

  They wanted a powerful ghost, too.

  And Helen was the bait.

  She tried to force herself to remain calm, but something of her thoughts must have shown in her eyes because the Lamia studied her, head on one side.

  “You never should have gotten involved with another human,” the Lamia said softly.

  Helen fought to speak through her clenched jaw. “Would that have stopped this?”

  “No, but it might have hurt less.” She slithered out the door without a backward look.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  No way in hell was Chloe losing Helen after everything they’d been through.

  And before the actual nudity.

  She shook her head. No, after everything they’d been through sounded way more ethical, not to mention classier.

  “They can’t have gone far.” Ramses stepped through the bubble before they even had a chance to find out what it was.

  Chloe bit her tongue, relaxing only a fraction when nothing happened to him. In for a penny…

  The sounds of the outside world came rushing back as she passed through, startling her into wondering why she hadn’t missed them in the first place. It was some kind of silence bubble, maybe so no one in the motel would hear what had gone on. The door lying on the floor of the room would be a dead giveaway later.

  Ramses stood near the back of a pickup. “Over here.”

  Chloe hurried over, one hand on her bag. When she glanced at the lanterns and the figurine in the middle, she knew what this was: a summoning circle. She took the figurine of some Anglo-Saxon warrior and smashed it on the ground, just in case Tabitha came looking for it.

  There was more around it, a circle of beeswax, flecks of metal, and flower petals. In the light of her flashlight app, they looked like a mix of gladiolas and bluebells, flowers said to represent strength and resilience. Bluebells could also stand for hope, but Chloe doubted Tabitha meant that. They were clearly part of some strength spell for the ghost, maybe for Tabitha, too, maybe even for some kind of trap that Helen had run into.

  Chloe gnawed on her thumbnail. That sounded like some ancient spell. She’d never met anyone who could actually make such old magic work. “You don’t think Tabitha has a godhood, too, do you?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  But could he be sure? “This is old magic, Ramses. And she’s summoned at least three spirits that we know of, one that seemed pretty powerful. She’s pulling power from somewhere, and if she doesn’t have god blood, where’s it coming from?”

  He rubbed his chin and frowned, no doubt casting his mind back through the millennia. “Some kind of godly token? Or even a smaller god that she’s pulling power from?” He twisted his hands as if wringing a washcloth, and Chloe winced. Ouch. “A river god, something like that.”

  “Who’s still around after all this time and has the mojo to serve as her battery? Any god like that would put her on her ass, wouldn’t they?”