I produced a plastic-lidded cup. “Picked one up for you in the lobby.”

  He accepted the coffee with a grunt, took a sip, and gave a grudging nod. The coffee here tasted like water wrung from a dish rag, but it was good enough for Hoffman.

  “The twerps from the DA’s office haven’t come sniffing yet,” he said, “so you caught a break.”

  I nodded toward the nearer cell, one of two I’d prepped to hold supernatural beings. “How’s our friend doing?”

  Hoffman jerked his head. “Come see for yourself.”

  He ambled over, still in an orthopedic boot from driving his foot into a filing cabinet three weeks earlier. I’d offered to heal the fracture several times, but though he’d come around to the idea of magic, subjecting himself to it remained a bridge too far.

  He parked beside the cell door window, and I followed his scornful gaze through the reinforced glass.

  Inside, the portly god with dark, greasy hair and a glum face was clutching a fistful of papers as he paced the cell. He read one and scribbled on it with a pencil stub. Then he shook his head and tossed it to the floor, where it joined other discarded pages. As Arimanius consulted the next one, Hoffman signaled to the desk to flip on the speaker.

  Arimanius cleared his throat. “‘My wife and I were happy for about twenty years,’” he read. “‘Then we met.’”

  That’s actually pretty good, I thought before realizing it wasn’t his joke. Arimanius repeated the punchline several times and appeared to underline it.

  “Why is meeting his wife funny?” he complained in his high voice. “Why does that make people laugh? ‘Then we met…’ ‘Then we met…’” He repeated it as though he were pondering a riddle, then let out a beleaguered cry. The piece of paper fell to the floor, joining the others, and he moved on to the next one. Each one must have held a joke or stand-up bit he’d heard, and now he was laboring to dissect them.

  “Still trying to grasp comedy, huh?” I said to Hoffman.

  “Yeah, and failing miserably. Is your space ready for him?”

  “Pretty much,” I said, thinking of the hasty additions I’d made to the basement’s wards. “I can tweak as needed.”

  “Well, I hope your neighbors have earplugs.” Hoffman rapped the door with a knuckle. “Time’s up, buddy. We’re moving you.”

  Arimanius looked over at us, the bags under his grave eyes damp with frustration. His commitment to comedy remained a puzzle given that he was a god of darkness who commanded rats. Even more puzzling was why Hermes thought he’d be an asset in any upcoming war with Persephone.

  “Set down everything you’re holding,” Hoffman continued, “and face the back wall.”

  Sighing heavily, Arimanius let the pencil and remaining papers fall to the floor as he lumbered around in a half circle. Members of the Sup Squad arrived and covered the door. Hoffman passed me a set of cuffs I’d designed for holding supernaturals.

  “Can you handle him?”

  “Sure,” I said, taking the cuffs.

  “Hey, Mr. Funny,” I said, entering the warded space and stepping through the cast-off pieces of paper. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Everson Croft. We talked a couple weeks ago?”

  “I remember,” he said quietly.

  “We’re going to get you out of here. I’m taking you to my place, in fact.”

  “You don’t need those,” he said somberly as I placed the cuffs around his wrists. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m a hack, a worthless waste of space. I’ll never cut it on a stage. I might as well not even exist.”

  Man, this guy was depressing.

  “Well… give it time. Sometimes comedy just clicks.”

  It was tepid reassurance, and he moaned in response. I finished cuffing him, Hoffman patted him down, and we escorted him from the Basement into the back of a waiting transport van. We joined the driver in front. As the van pulled into traffic, Hoffman glanced over at me.

  “Hey, I appreciate you taking this guy off our hands. Any idea when you’re gonna hear from Hermes?”

  I sighed. “I trust he’ll deign to speak to me at some point.”

  But would he? It had already been a week, and he hadn’t so much as cleared his throat.

  “You’re a wizard. Can’t you just, I don’t know, wiggle your fingers and make him talk?”

  “I’ve been tempted, but it’s not that easy.”

  According to Arianna, the leader of my Order, it was important that I let Hermes come to me. You’re dealing with a god essence, she’d said, and they’re often capricious. Few more than Hermes. He was also using Alec as a vessel, and I didn’t want to attempt anything that might harm the boy.

  “Well, for your sake, I hope it’s soon.” Hoffman gestured with his coffee toward a dashboard monitor. It showed Arimanius strapped into a seat in the van’s warded hold. He was talking to himself and breaking down into sobs, still confounded by his utter inability to comprehend comedy.

  As I nodded in agreement, the driver’s radio crackled. “All available Squad members requested to Twelfth and Fifty-second in Midtown. A major ten-fifty spilling out of a storage facility. Police on the scene, but it’s beyond their control. I repeat, all available Squad members to Twelfth and Fifty-second.”

  Hoffman snickered. “Good thing we’re not available.”

  “What’s a ten-fifty again?” I asked.

  “Catchall for a disturbance.”

  “If they’re radioing the Squad, then it’s supernatural in nature,” I pointed out.

  “Aw, c’mon, Croft. I just pulled an all-nighter. It’s probably just a newly turned vamp going out of his head. The Squad can handle it.”

  I pulled up a mental map of the city. “Take us there,” I told the driver.

  Hoffman sputtered his next sip of coffee onto his lap. “What in the hell for?” he demanded, wiping his mouth with a jacket sleeve as he held out his dripping cup. “We’ve gotta deliver this joker to your place.”

  “I know what Hermes has been up to.”

  We arrived by way of Twelfth Avenue to find a police cordon rerouting traffic east down Forty-eighth Street. We’d received fragments of info regarding the incident en route, but it was scattered and inconsistent. The van pulled onto the sidewalk, and a police officer hustled up to Hoffman and me as we climbed down.

  “What’s going on?” Hoffman asked, showing his badge.

  “Major brawl four blocks north of here,” the large officer said in a New York accent. “Half-a-dozen participants. Wouldn’t answer to police commands and shrugged off our attempts at crowd control. Gas, rubber bullets, sound—nothing fazed them. When officers started getting flung, we got orders to pull back and seal the area, wait for the Squad. I’m not sure those things are human.” His official delivery was at odds with his anxious eyes. They bounced between me and Hoffman as if pleading for us to believe him.

  “How do you wanna handle this?” Hoffman asked me.

  “I’ll check it out. When the Squad arrives, have them move in behind me. Salt rounds, but no shooting unless I say so.”

  Hoffman radioed the instructions, then said, “How are you so sure this is Hermes’s doing?”

  I finished cinching my coat to keep my potions and spell implements from jostling too much. “I’ll be happy to explain it on the way, provided you can keep up.”

  “It’s alright to leave Mr. Funny in there?” he asked.

  “Even if the van wasn’t warded, he’s too depressed to make a break for it.”

  Hoffman hesitated, the prospect of exercise souring his face, but he handed off his coffee to the officer. I rounded the police cordon and broke into a fast walk. Four empty lanes stretched north. Far ahead, I could just make out an assortment of scuffling figures. Hoffman limped up beside me on his ortho boot, already wheezing.

  “Hermes mentioned collecting gods for a possible war,” I explained. “He’s farther along than I thought.”

  “How do you know this is them?”

  “Because the location is right across the street from Dewitt Clinton Park. Alec’s been using the park to cross in and out of the shadow present, which means Hermes has, too. He’s bringing gods here, to the actual present, to stash. I don’t think it’s any accident we’re going to a storage facility.”

  “Where do these gods come from?” he panted. “Don’t imagine they just show up at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.”

  “It goes back to the group that worshipped this version of Hermes. They were a thieves guild, and Hermes was a patron of thieves. Border crossings, too. Through worship of Hermes, and with the help of magic, the guild developed the ability to cross in and out of the shadow present. That’s where they’d stash their loot. They eventually hid a powerful box there, one that held Hermes’s essence. But then the group was wiped out, and the tablet got stuck over there. Over time, its power awakened other objects from the Greek world, drew them to the shadow city. That’s where the gods are coming from.”

  A glance told me most of that had gone straight over Hoffman’s head, but he grasped the important part.

  “So it’s Mr. Funny all over again?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “Only there are more this time.”

  He swore and hawked a loogie. “Just what I need.”

  4

  The officer was right—the combatants weren’t human. Hardly crack police work, though. Even from more than a block away, I could see that.

  A giant woman traded impressive blows with a centaur, while a pair of what looked like girls grappled with a dwarfish man. Another man stumbled around in confusion, perhaps from too many shots to the head.

  In a flash of light, the dwarf was flung into the front of a building, sending out a plume of dust. He reappeared a moment later, shook himself off, and waddled forward to rejoin the battle. The combatants were all screaming at one another, but amid the booms of colliding blows and magic I couldn’t make out a word.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Hoffman panted.

  I pointed to a light pole. “Wait here for the Sup Squad.”

  Heaving from exertion, he could only nod his sweat-soaked head. He staggered to a stop and leaned an arm against the pole.

  After only three blocks? I thought in disbelief, but dropping him off lightened my load.

  Drawing my cane into sword and staff, I sped into a run. The brawl was moving toward the border of Dewitt Clinton Park. A streetlight fell and the corner of a building crumbled in a cascade of masonry. Trees shook. The NYPD had blocked the roads, but had they bothered to clear the park?

  Pushing power into my wizard’s voice, I shouted, “Stop! Go back inside!”

  Predictably, the combatants didn’t so much as look over. It had been worth a shot.

  Veering around debris and fresh troughs in the asphalt, I passed the building from which they’d reportedly emerged. Rizo’s Storage featured a row of gaudy Greek columns rendered in cement, topped by a triangular pediment. The entrance itself, a set of steel doors, had been blown out. But the Greek theme removed any doubt for me that these were pawns in Hermes’s plan and he’d stashed them inside.

  Probably thought he was being clever.

  I reached the park, hurdled a flattened section of iron fencing, and hurried up a flight of steps littered with torn vines. At the top, I teetered back. I’d arrived at the park’s playground, and the Greek beings were a stone’s toss away.

  The giant woman, an Amazon with tied-back hair and wearing a green tracksuit, had entangled the centaur in the chains of a swing set and was treating him like a punching bag. Meanwhile, beyond the ruins of a jungle gym, the dwarf had one of the girl’s in a headlock. The other girl pounded his thick back. Though her fists were tiny, each blow sent out a flash of light followed by a shockwave that shook the potions in my pockets. The other being looked on slack-jawed, as though not sure who he was supposed to attack.

  “Stop!” I shouted again, waving my arms overhead. “By order of Hermes!”

  I needed to get them off the streets and back inside, ideally without entering the fray myself. I’d already faced a shadowy minotaur and a Cerberus, and they’d been hell to put down. Parts of my body still ached from those encounters. Plus, Hermes apparently had plans for these particular beings.

  Sharing those plans would’ve been nice, I thought bitterly. Controlling these guys, even nicer.

  In a burst of chains, the centaur kicked free from the swing set. His rear hooves met the Amazon’s stomach and sent her over an eruption of boulders. She crashed through the fencing of a baseball diamond and tumbled to a stop near the pitcher’s mound.

  With a furious cry, she shook her head, sending her thick brunette hair tumbling to her waist. A group of teenage boys broke from the dugout.

  Crap, the park wasn’t clear.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “This way!”

  I waved them toward the ruined section of fencing—the shortest path to escape—but they were already scattering toward the outfield, where there were no gates. The Amazon tracked them with narrowed eyes as she thrust herself to her feet. Then, like a predator heeding its chase instinct, she launched after them.

  Aiming my staff toward the shallow outfield, I shouted, “Protezione!”

  The atmosphere crackled, and the air ahead of the Amazon hardened into a wall. She met it at full speed. The impact of mass on magic nearly knocked me to my knees, but I held the barrier. The Amazon rebounded a good five yards and released another savage cry. The boys reached the outfield fence and began scaling it.

  Looks like they’re going to make it.

  The Amazon produced a massive spear.

  Oh, c’mon. Thrusting my sword forward, I bellowed, “Vigore!”

  But the spear was already out of her hand and hurtling toward the teens. I spread my force invocation into a broad cone. The edge caught enough of the spear to wobble it. The weapon cleaved the fence a foot from a boy’s torso, dropping diamond links in its wake and clattering to the asphalt beyond.

  “Thank God,” I breathed.

  But the relief was short-lived. Hoofbeats were approaching. I wheeled to find the centaur galloping in. I wasn’t excited at the prospect of their brawl rolling like a wrecking ball through the rest of Midtown, but at least he would divert the Amazon from the boys until I could figure out what to do.

  The centaur veered toward me.

  “Hey, whoa!” I called. “I thought we were on the same side!”

  I hit the turf and invoked a shield just as the centaur arrived in a thundering of hooves. “Respingere!” I cried.

  The energy encasing me contracted, then detonated in a bright pulse. The force caught the centaur’s muscular hindquarters as they trampled over me and sent him ass over end. The Amazon, who had produced another spear, turned toward us. Beyond her, the boys dropped over the outfield fence and ran away.

  The Amazon sneered. “Who’s this guy?”

  “No idea,” the centaur snorted, kicking himself upright. “But he’s about to enter a world of hurt.”

  Great, I’d succeeded in aligning them against me.

  The centaur took a messy swig from the wineskin hanging from his neck, then produced a long bow from seemingly nowhere. He nocked it and sent an arrow toward me. The projectile grazed my shield wide right.

  “Listen,” I said quickly. “I’m an associate of Hermes’s. He just wants you guys to settle down and go back inside.”

  Shouldering his bow, the centaur brought his pinkies to the corners of his bearded mouth and whistled sharply. “Hey, did you hear that?” he called. “This little twit works for Hermes.”

  Back on the playground, the dwarf released the girl from her headlock. The other girl, who could have been the first one’s twin, stopped beating the dwarf’s back. They were nymphs, I realized. I couldn’t place the dwarf or the slack-jawed man, but they were all looking at me in various degrees of contempt.

  “You’re the reason we’re in this hellhole?” the white-haired nymph asked.

  “No, no, it’s not like that. I didn’t even know you were here until just now. Hermes barely tells me anything.”

  The Amazon scoffed. “Sure, buddy.”

  “I’m serious. When did he bring you?”

  But they were done listening to what I had to say.

  “I’ve got an idea,” the dwarf said. “Let’s stomp him into jelly and spread him on toast.”

  I could think of few morning meals less appetizing, but he stalked toward me with a hungry grin. The nymphs, who just moments earlier had been intent on pulverizing him, moved into flanking positions. The slack-jawed man followed them like a confused dog, though even he was starting to look agitated.

  Back on the field, the centaur and Amazon were advancing, too.

  I turned in a circle. “Would it help to tell you I’m a big fan of your stories?”

  Apparently not. I spoke into my blade’s first rune, the one for banishment. Having already faced off against a few Greek beings, I’d discovered a weakness. Because they originated from the shadow present, they featured nether qualities. Banishment magic could hurt them, even destroy them.

  If that scuttles Hermes’s plans, so be it. It’s not like the dipshit left me a choice.

  As the blade’s banishment rune glowed to life, I said, “Stay back if you value your existence.”

  That didn’t stop them, either. I considered the challenge now of getting my blade into the six of them. As if in answer, Sup Squad personnel began arriving. They rushed into crouches around the playground’s perimeter, rifles aimed. Their salt rounds would disorganize the beings enough to let me work.

  I wet my dry lips, preparing to issue the “open fire” command, when a new voice sounded. “Well, isn’t this a sight.”

  I turned to find Alec strolling toward me. He was dressed in a gray hoodie, black jeans, and a pair of Converse Chucks, but his jaunty steps coupled with the glimmering green light in his eyes told me Hermes was in control.