Panic flashed across Solace’s face. “No! I wasn’t even his aide back then!”

  Anne shrugged. “Well, you can die anyway.”

  Solace dived for cover, sliding behind a desk just a hair ahead of Anne’s death spell. With her concentration broken, her shield wavered; I pushed with the fateweaver, aimed with my 1911, fired. The bullet found a chink in the shield and blew Solace’s brains into a red mist.

  “Kill-stealer,” Anne called at me, then whirled to face Richard. He’d been coming up behind her, but Anne met him with a storm of magical death. Richard fell back to cover, and Anne jumped lightly thirty feet into the air, landing on the far gantry. “Well, got to run,” she shouted across at me. “Catch you later.”

  “Wait!” I called back at her, but Anne was already running, flitting into the shadows.

  A control console blew out in a shower of sparks. I’d lost track of Rachel in the fighting, and the only people left in the room were me and Richard. We stared at each other across the burning room. The electrical fires were spreading and the air was filling with a haze.

  “You have no idea what you have done.” Richard’s voice was tight; he’d regained his self-control, but anger was clear on his face.

  I looked back at Richard. There was a surge of magic from somewhere against the far wall, and from outside, I felt the stasis barrier go down. In only minutes, reinforcements were going to come pouring in, and whether they were on Richard’s side or Sal Sarque’s, I didn’t want to meet them.

  I turned and ran. Futures flickered in which I had to dodge an attack, but Richard didn’t take the shot. Starbreeze, I called out through the dreamstone. Pickup for two.

  Ooh, Starbreeze said with interest. That was you?

  Meredith was hiding in an alcove; she flinched as she saw me. “We’re leaving,” I told her.

  “Leaving where? There are—”

  I silenced her with a motion. Anne. Where are you?

  There was no answer, but I had a sense of distant laughter. I cursed; I could try to chase her, but Richard was in the way and reinforcements were coming fast. Besides, I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I caught up.

  Then Starbreeze was there. Meredith gave a yelp as she was turned into air; I ground my teeth and surrendered to it. Starbreeze shot out down the corridors at blinding speed. I had a confused impression of faces turning up to look at us, then we were out into the night air and soaring, rising up and up into the sky.

  The moon was above us, the island below. Sal Sarque’s fortress shrank as we climbed and began angling west. There was no more fire coming from the rooftop: the survivors seemed to be disengaging. In only seconds we were above the cloud cover, and the fortress vanished from sight.

  * * *

  Starbreeze got bored a few minutes into the journey back, and dropped us in some godforsaken spot in the highlands of Scotland. She was obviously done with being a ferry service. I’d have to be sparing asking her for lifts in the future.

  The gate stone took Meredith and me back to her garden, the air changing from the chill of Scotland to the warmth of Argentina. I let out a breath and closed my eyes as the gate closed, feeling a little of the tension go out of my muscles.

  I opened my eyes to see that Meredith was watching me. “Well?” she said. “I did it, didn’t I?”

  “You did.” I smiled slightly. “You know, it’s interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “Back when I met you, I used to get lifts from Starbreeze all the time,” I told her. “I only stopped when you betrayed me to Belthas and I had to blow up my calling focus getting away. But because you did that, it forced me to stop relying on her, which meant all of my enemies got used to the idea that I couldn’t rely on her. And so when I finally figured out a way to call her again, Richard and Caldera and Onyx weren’t prepared for it at all. If it hadn’t been for you, I never could have used her so effectively now. Funny how things work out.”

  Meredith didn’t answer. It was hard to make out her expression in the shadows, but it didn’t look like she thought it was very funny at all.

  “Give me your hand,” I ordered, walking towards her. Meredith hesitated, then lifted her right arm, shrinking back slightly as I took her hand and pulled up her sleeve. The light of the house windows revealed the black metal of the death bracelet, the same one that Selene had been wearing. I took the focus from my pocket, touched it to the metal, and channelled. The bracelet clicked open and fell to the grass below.

  Meredith tried to pull away but I didn’t let go. “Tell me something,” I said. “If I’d acted this way back when we’d first met, would you still have betrayed me?”

  Meredith held very still. I felt the futures flicker. “I didn’t—”

  “The truth, Meredith.”

  Meredith flinched. “No,” she said at last, quietly.

  “Good,” I said, and leant in close to her. Meredith looked up at me, only inches away, and I could see the fear in her beautiful dark eyes. “Now one last question. More than anything else, what do you want from me right now?”

  I saw Meredith struggle to keep herself under control. She’d never been brave: she could fight if she had to, but only if she was afraid of something worse. I was close enough to smell her perfume, feel the pulse beating at her wrist, and as I looked at her I noticed that under her makeup, there were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Time hadn’t changed Meredith as it had me, but she hadn’t escaped it.

  “I want . . .” Meredith took a breath, swallowed. “I want you to leave me alone.”

  I looked down into Meredith’s eyes for a long moment, then smiled slightly. “Suits me.” I let go of her wrist. “Go away, Meredith. Go back to your house and your boyfriends and your life in the sun. But make sure I don’t catch you working for my enemies again.”

  Meredith fled, opening the French windows and stepping inside before closing them. She gave me a last quick glance from behind the glass, then pulled the blinds closed, disappearing from view.

  I looked at the house for a moment longer, feeling as though a very old piece of unfinished business had just come to an end. Then I picked up the bracelet and walked away into the night.

  chapter 15

  “I can’t believe you actually made that work,” Luna told me.

  “I can,” I said. It was the next day, and we were walking in the Hollow, the woods alive with the sounds of the summer morning. I’d just finished filling Luna in on the events of last night.

  “If I’d told you I was going to do something like that, you’d have said I was suicidal.”

  “I figured my chances were around two in three. Maybe a little more.”

  Luna gave me a sceptical look. “How?”

  “So it all started with Richard,” I said. It was a relief to be able to talk like this, walking with Luna without any immediate dangers to worry about. “Back when Anne and I visited him in his mansion two years ago, I looked into the futures to see what would happen if I attacked him. And it was close, really close. I couldn’t see who was going to win.”

  “Okay.”

  “Except that it shouldn’t have been,” I said. “I mean, even if I didn’t believe the rumours, I saw what Richard could do later that year, in the Vault. There was no way I could have taken him in a fight. Once I noticed that, I started trying to figure out how my divination could have been so wrong. And the most obvious answer I could come up with was that Richard had some kind of ability that worked against it. Like a shroud that worked in the future instead of the past, letting him project false futures. And the most natural way he’d be able to do that was if he was some kind of diviner himself. The aftermath of the Vault fight fit with that as well. The one time I landed a punch on him, it was when I acted on impulse without giving him the time to see it coming.”

  “But we already talked about whether Richard might be a diviner,” Luna said. “Lots of times. You were the one who said it didn’t feel right.”

  I nodded. “Because it didn’t. He was too confident, as though no one could touch him. It didn’t fit with someone whose only ability was seeing the future. It wasn’t until I realised that he had a jinn as well that it made sense. A jinn’s power, mixed with a diviner’s knowledge. I couldn’t test it, not without tipping my hand, but I was sure. The thing is, it also made me realise just how screwed I was. He could do everything I could do, plus he could counter what I could do, and if somehow that wasn’t enough, he had the jinn to fall back on as well.”

  “That was before you had the fateweaver.”

  “The fateweaver was big, but it wasn’t enough,” I said. “Sure, it’s powerful, but Richard’s gone up against plenty of people with raw power and come out ahead. I knew I needed something more. So I turned things around. I started thinking about how I’d beat myself. I thought back over all the times that my divination hadn’t worked, and looked at all the things they had in common. And there were three. Sometimes I couldn’t predict someone’s actions at all, either because they were deciding on the spur of the moment or because they were just too unstable. Sometimes I could predict what was happening, but didn’t have the power to do anything about it. And finally, there were times when I was caught out looking in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “So which one did you go for?” Luna asked.

  “All of them at once,” I said. “I got Richard to focus on me when he should have been watching Rachel and Meredith. Once Rachel took her shot, I used the fateweaver to make sure it’d hit. And Richard wasn’t able to see it coming far enough away, because it was Rachel. She’s always been a nightmare for me to predict because she’s so crazy.”

  “So that was what that dragon was getting at with that prophecy.”

  I nodded. “With anyone else, it wouldn’t have worked. Either they wouldn’t have been unstable enough to snap the way she did, or Richard wouldn’t have trusted them enough to turn his back on them. Rachel was just the right combination of close enough and unbalanced enough. And with Meredith’s magic, they couldn’t see what was happening until it was too late.”

  “Can’t believe she was actually useful.” Luna thought for a moment. “I’m still not sure if we won. I mean, on one level, I guess you did. You finally did what the Council’s been failing at for years. You screwed up Richard’s plans. He’s been working towards getting Anne on his side for God knows how long, and when he finally does it, you break her free.”

  “But?”

  “But . . .” Luna trailed off. “I don’t know. I know it’s silly, but I guess I was hoping that once Richard’s control was gone, she’d come back.”

  I didn’t answer. A part of me had been hoping the same thing.

  “How did you know you’d have so much time?” Luna said, returning to her original question. “I mean, the only reason it worked was because Richard let you stand there and talk.”

  “Actually, that was the one thing I wasn’t worried about. I knew he was going to hear me out.”

  “But he had to know you had some kind of agenda.”

  “Of course he did,” I said. “I was being careful not to tell any blatant lies, and I was keeping my surface thoughts focused so Crystal couldn’t get wind of what I was doing. But there was no way Richard was going to trust me. He knew I was playing some sort of game.”

  “So why did he let you do it?” Luna said.

  “Because he was sure he was going to win,” I said. “Because he’d always won before. When someone loses to you nineteen times in a row, then comes back and sits down at the table yet again, you don’t chase him off. You laugh and get ready to take his money for the twentieth time. Every single time I’d tried to outsmart Richard, I’d lost. Except this one.”

  “I don’t think I’d have had the nerve,” Luna admitted.

  “It’s a lot easier to face your fears once you’ve got something you care about more than yourself.” I glanced through the futures. “We should get moving.”

  We changed direction, angling through the woods until the trees parted before us to reveal the clearing with Karyos’s cocoon. “How long?” Luna asked.

  “More than two minutes, less than ten,” I said. “But there’s no violence. Whatever kind of state she’s going to be in, she’ll be willing to talk at least.”

  “I wish Vari could be here.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I said. Variam had been almost completely out of contact since last night. “They just had a member of the Senior Council killed in a straight-up attack. I don’t think that’s happened since the Gate Rune War. They’re going to be in full-on emergency mode, and once they figure out I had something to do with it—which they will—then they’ll come after me twice as hard. I don’t think Vari’s going to be able to come back here anytime soon.”

  “It feels wrong,” Luna said. “Vari was here when we won this shadow realm. He ought to be here for the end.”

  “I think it’s going to be more and more dangerous for Vari to have anything to do with me,” I said. “For him to keep seeing you will be hard enough.”

  Luna made a face. “No Arachne, no Anne, no Vari. Starting to feel a bit lonely around here.”

  There was a cracking sound from the cocoon. We both turned to look.

  A fracture had appeared in the curved surface, and as we watched there was another crack and the fracture widened. Although the cocoon was wood, the way it broke made me think of an egg. The cracks spread across its surface, and the top near the trunk began to peel away. A hand appeared, then Karyos stood up, the cocoon unfolding like the petals of a flower.

  She didn’t look like a hamadryad. She looked like an eight-year-old girl. Maybe her skin was a shade of gold not quite natural for a human, and maybe her brown hair had a suggestion of bark, but there was no trace of the monstrosity of roots and thorns that we’d fought in the Hollow on our first meeting. She swayed on unsteady legs, and had to catch the cocoon to stop herself from falling.

  “Welcome back, Karyos,” I said. “Can you understand us?”

  Karyos looked at us both uncertainly. “Who are you?” she asked in slow, accented English.

  “I’m Luna,” Luna said with a friendly smile and a wave. “Hey.”

  “And I’m Alex,” I said. “We’re your . . . well, guardians, I guess. At least for now.”

  Karyos looked around, turning her head as if searching for something. “Is something wrong?” Luna asked.

  “There was . . . someone else,” Karyos said haltingly. “I felt her. When I was growing.”

  Luna started to reply, then looked at me. I hesitated a moment before answering. “She’s not here anymore.”

  * * *

  Hampstead Heath was warm in the afternoon sun. Carried on the wind, I could hear the sounds of people talking, children playing, the barking of dogs. It felt like a different world.

  The ravine where Arachne had lived was cordoned off with blue-and-white tape marked POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, swaying gently in the breeze. I ducked under the tape and climbed down into the ravine. The entrance to Arachne’s cave gaped open with more tape blocking it.

  The tunnel felt cool and gloomy after the bright daylight outside. I walked blind down the slope, my feet falling automatically into the old familiar path. My footsteps echoed as I came out into the cavern. Guided by my magic, I walked to one of the walls, touched one of the sphere lights, and channelled.

  Light bloomed, revealing devastation. Arachne’s lair had been torn apart, bolts of cloth shaken out and trampled, cushions cut open, furniture overturned and splintered. Everything valuable had been looted, and the debris scattered. I walked slowly through the wreckage until I found the sofa where I used to sit. It had been knocked over, the bottom slashed open with the stuffing pulled out. I bent down and righted it, then sat down in my old place. The springs sagged.

  I looked around sadly. After the old Arcana Emporium had been destroyed, Arachne’s cave had been the one place I’d felt at home. It had been the last remnant of my old life, back when I’d wake up in the morning knowing that the biggest problem I’d be likely to face would be someone wanting me to sell them a love potion. Now it was gone.

  I sat waiting for ten minutes, the light behind me flickering occasionally. My right arm itched and I pulled up the sleeve of my coat to look.

  The white streaks of the fateweaver reached halfway from my wrist to my elbow. Back when Klara had examined me, I’d had the feeling they were spreading, but I hadn’t been sure. There was no room for doubt now. I scratched but the itch didn’t go away.

  Footsteps sounded from the tunnel. I pulled my sleeve down and turned towards the entrance.

  A faint green light showed from the tunnel mouth, then winked out. A moment later Anne stepped out, looking in my direction. “I had a feeling it was you.”

  The black aura surrounding Anne was gone: to a casual glance, she looked a normal girl. “I would have given you a lift if you’d asked.”

  “What, so you can drop me in some prison until you figure out how to change me back? No thanks.” Anne walked across the cavern, kicking aside bits of wreckage. “Nice job with the dreamstone. I knew Deleo was a nutcase, but I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “Well, I don’t really care how it works so long as it works.” Anne glanced across at me. “Weird-looking hand. What is it?”

  She doesn’t know. It was a surprise, but as I thought about it, it made sense. Anne was a life mage, not a diviner. She could tell everything there was to know about someone’s physiology, but that wouldn’t tell her what the fateweaver did.