I nodded, the knowledge seeping into my gut like frigid water. Whatever reservations I still held toward Hermes were being replaced by the horror of having to confront a being of Typhon’s stature and malice.

  “But where does Cronus come in?” was all I could think to stammer.

  “I believe there was a battle for dominion over Tartarus, and Typhon emerged victorious. But Persephone, even corrupted, would never have joined forces with him. Have you seen him?” He stuck his tongue out and made a face. “So Typhon put Cronus foreword as his front man, a more palatable choice. And once Persephone releases Cronus, Typhon will slither out in his wake and consume him.”

  “Claiming all of his power,” I said in grim understanding.

  Meaning there would be no second Titanochamy. Cronus may have been a tyrannical ruler, but Typhon was a destroyer. He would simply wipe everyone and everything off the face of the earth.

  “We have Persephone’s actual scepter,” I said urgently. “By applying the bonding potion, we can destroy them both in the next thirty minutes. I get your concern, but this is too damned important.” If recent events at City Hall Park were any indication, the energy buildup in the shadow realm was approaching Typhon-freeing proportions.

  But Hermes simply shook his head. “You have your future to worry about, and I have mine. If we destroy the scepter in such a way, that connection between Persephone and Typhon will persist and seep into the cosmos. Hardly the retirement I was looking forward to. But I have a plan.” Taking a final bite of cake, he pushed his plate away and leveled his green eyes at me. “One I can’t do without you.”

  “Where have I heard that before?”

  “Join forces with me, one last time, and we’ll both get what we want. Peace for ourselves and our loved ones.”

  As his gaze pressed into mine, I considered the Doideag’s prophecy. Upper Bay, a tidal estuary of the Atlantic, had boiled. And when I’d first looked at the drone feed of City Hall Park, the erupting zombies had made it look as though the land was running. War seemed imminent, but could I trust him?

  “Come, Everson,” he urged. “What say you?”

  42

  Ever since confirming Hermes’s true nature—an amoral trickster—I’d considered whether I could outmaneuver him. In the end, it was a fool’s errand. After all, how did you outmaneuver a divine being who embodied the very essence of trickery? Answer: you couldn’t.

  But I could still strike a deal.

  “I’ll only consider joining you under a binding agreement.”

  “Oh, we’re back to this?” He circled his hand playfully. “And what are the terms?”

  “If I help you, we’ll see the plan through to the end. No backing out this time, no playing me as a coin flip. And after we repel Typhon, you’ll forfeit your immortality here. You’ll allow me to open the box, freeing Alec. And then you, Persephone, and the other beings will head out to the cosmos, never to interfere in our world again.”

  “I’ve already said I would do as much.”

  “But keeping your word isn’t exactly something you’re known for, is it?” I said, throwing his own admission back in his face. “There’s a reason you’re referred to as mercurial. Ha ha,” I added flatly.

  He grinned. “Well played, Everson, but what are you prepared to give if you fail to carry out your part? And failure would include destroying Persephone’s scepter without my say-so, which I don’t intend on giving.”

  The scepter had been my ripcord for if things went sideways and I needed to take out Persephone before she did the same to me. I’d even assured my wife as much. But Hermes was yanking that off the table. On the other hand, he was giving me his guarantee that I could safely open the box when this was over.

  “Oh, and remember,” he added, “it must be a sacrifice in league with what you’re asking of me. Nothing less will suffice.”

  I held his arrogant gaze. “My life.”

  He blinked. “You don’t say?” He’d been expecting me to lowball him, but I had my reasons for overbidding. He drummed his fingers against his chin in thought, then nodded. “We have a deal, Everson Croft.”

  He extended his hand. When I shook it, I felt the agreement take hold between us. With each of us pledging our lives, the binding was especially powerful. There was no turning back now. For either of us.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  “Come, let’s take a walk.”

  He sprang up, dropped several bills on the table, and mimed a chef’s kiss to the waitress. I caught up to him as he hurried up Bowery. To the south, a halo of spotlights glowed over City Hall Park.

  “There’s a way to extract Typhon’s influence from Persephone’s scepter,” Hermes said. “But not in the way you’re thinking, in a laboratory with potions and unbinding magics. No, no, that would risk destroying her too, and then we’re back to the problem of Persephone being stuck to Typhon for all time.”

  “What does that leave?”

  “Convincing Persephone to exorcise him herself.”

  “I thought you already tried that. Isn’t that what your summit at City Hall was about?”

  “I tried to persuade her to call off her war against the Olympic order, but that was before I understood the dynamics at work. As I mentioned, I used your time in captivity as a diversion to poke around. Also, the siphon sigil I designed for Persephone wasn’t an entirely selfless gift. It’s given me some eavesdropping abilities among other things. You met the mayor over there, I understand?”

  “Oh, yeah. Budge.”

  “Typhon is acting through him.”

  I pulled up in surprise. That explained a lot, including his preternatural ability to persuade. But it didn’t explain his nervousness. “Are you sure? He acted like he was having to tiptoe around her.”

  “As he should.” He motioned for me to keep walking. “Typhon’s yet to emerge, so he’s nowhere close to his full strength. Persephone can still overpower him—and that’s exactly what we need her to do. The problem is that the mayor sticks close to her side, coaxing her with his multiplicity of forked tongues. He’s charged you with destroying my tablet, not because of any number of lies he may have told you, but because he knows I’m his biggest threat. I delivered Persephone from the darkness once. I can do so again.”

  “How do you plan to get past her defensive field?”

  “That’s where you come in. You’re friends with the mayor here, yes?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘friends.’” Especially after the crap he’d pulled with our missing persons taskforce. “But, yeah, I know him.”

  “Let’s play that to our advantage.”

  I saw where he was going with this. “You mean send him over?”

  “With your potions and my runes, I’ll be able to anchor myself to him. And with a little coaching, he’ll be able to create that opening I need, the one that will take me straight to Persephone’s heart.”

  As I considered the proposal, Hermes squinted at a set of approaching headlights.

  “Ahh, how fortuitous,” he said. “I believe this is the good mayor now.”

  The headlights belonged to an SUV. If it was the mayor’s, his security detail was probably taking him from his uptown mansion to City Hall to survey the aftermath of the attack. Hermes must have known this, explaining his hurry to bring me to this spot. But I needed no more convincing. I was on board.

  Calling light to the opal inset in my cane, I stepped into the street and waved it overhead. The SUV braked hard and idled a half block away. I pictured Budge leaning forward for a better look.

  A moment later, my phone buzzed.

  “Hi, Mayor,” I answered without looking.

  “Everson? What the hell are you doing out in the street?”

  “Remember that help you offered me the other day?”

  He hesitated. “Yeah?”

  “I’m calling it in.”

  43

  “Okay, hold on a sec.” Budge wiped his cowlick from his shiny brow as he paced another circle around my basement lab. “So what’s gonna happen to me here?”

  He’d removed his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves, but now that it was go time, he was stalling. Hermes and I had spent the last two hours going over everything with him. He knew what to do. I’d also promised that this would square us. He no longer had to worry about me telling the world how he’d fudged the missing persons data and cost his city lives. To his credit, this was still a big ask.

  “You’ll sleep,” I repeated.

  “And over there, I’ll be me, just another version?”

  “That’s right.”

  He peered over at the closed door. His security detail was posted outside, and for a moment I thought he was going to shout for them to take him out of there. But with a final swipe at his cowlick, he nodded and extended a pudgy hand.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s have it.”

  The tube I passed him held a bonding potion coupled with a second potion that would buffer him from Typhon’s influence. As he regarded the still-steaming tube, he licked his lips nervously. Once again, I thought he was going to back out.

  “I’m putting a lot of faith in you, Everson.” He downed the potion with a grimace. “God, that’s horrible.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  I then passed a stoppered tube to Hermes. It contained a neutralizing potion for him to soak my ashes in, negating the bonding potion. A little insurance in case things didn’t go according to plan.

  “As good as done,” Hermes said, stuffing the tube into the pocket of Alec’s gray hoodie.

  I nodded, even though I knew how much his word was worth. But our binding agreement would hold him to what mattered most: freeing Alec and removing himself and the rest of the beings from our world.

  With a grunt, Budge got down on the floor beside my lab table where I’d arranged a foam sleeping pad. Hermes sat behind him, legs crossed, and placed a rolled-up towel under his head. Budge lay his short arms along his sides, then laced his fingers across his belly before dropping them to his sides again.

  “Comfortable?” Hermes asked.

  Budge snorted dryly. “Not really, but if you say this is going to save a lot of lives, I’m okay with a little discomfort. Whether there or here, these are New Yorkers we’re talking about. My people.” But he couldn’t stop himself from angling his head toward me. “And we’ll be good on everything?”

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  The plan was premised on something we’d learned about the actual and shadow realities. If you existed in one and not the other, you traveled back and forth as you were. That was Alec’s and my situation. However, if you existed in both, you shifted from one form to the other, as Budge was preparing to do.

  He was about to very literally become our inside man, arranging the pivotal meeting between Persephone and Hermes. Of course by agreeing to be bonded, he was accepting that whatever happened to him there would happen to him here, too. Getting killed, for example. Like I said, a big ask.

  Budge adjusted his body and swallowed. “All right. I’m ready.”

  As much of a political animal as he may have been, he was showing some impressive brass. “Good luck, guys,” I told them.

  Hermes placed his hands on Budge’s temples and closed his own eyes. “Be back shortly.”

  In a flash of green light, he disappeared. Budge went slack, his consciousness gone from my basement and transported to his slimmer, slicker self in the shadow present.

  My contribution may have amounted to a couple potions, but I felt like a major stakeholder. By removing Typhon from Persephone’s ear, Hermes was confident he could compel her to end the war. As I watched Budge, my original relief at not accompanying them was soon outweighed by the anxiety of not being able to follow what was happening. Everything depended on them getting this right.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Yeah?” I called over a shoulder.

  “You have a visitor,” one of Budge’s bodyguards answered. “Someone named Bree… bark?”

  “Yark.”

  “He’s safe,” I said.

  Before opening the door, I positioned myself to ensure the bodyguards wouldn’t be able to see past me to Budge’s unconscious body. I waved Bree-yark inside, who was carrying Tabitha over his shoulder for some reason. I nodded at the guard that we were good and quickly closed the door again.

  “What’s up?” I asked Bree-yark.

  “I was tossing and turning,” he panted. “Couldn’t sleep, so I cooked up some eggs and sausages. The smell roused Tabby, and we got to talking. But the things she started telling me… Oh, boy. I told her to save it for you. I came down here so fast those goons nearly ventilated us.”

  “Yeah, now may not be the best time.” I glanced over at the mayor.

  “Nah, you’ll wanna hear this.” He set Tabitha on the lab table, where she promptly sagged into an orange pile, fast asleep. Bree-yark prodded her. “Tabs, wake up. Tell Everson what you were telling me.”

  “What?” she moaned irritably.

  “Tell Everson what you just told me.”

  Eyes closed, she smacked her mouth. “Is he here? Oh, never mind, there’s his body odor.”

  That she was well enough to pick up where she’d left off was a blessing, but I was far too preoccupied with Hermes and Budge’s mission right now. “If now’s not good for you, I can catch you upstairs later,” I told her.

  “Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll tell you.”

  Dangling information was no fun for her when I had no interest in leaping for it. She slitted her eyes open. Realizing she was in my lab, her expression turned to alarm and her gaze shot around the room.

  “The whip’s packed away,” I assured her. “I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

  She relaxed slightly, but her lips drew into a spiteful scowl. “You mean that angel’s sadistic toy?”

  “Angel?” I repeated.

  “Why do you think he was so obsessed with destroying me?”

  “You’ve mentioned your bloodline a couple times,” Bree-yark stepped in. “Being descended from a big time saint and all that, so I thought you’d wanna hear this. I mean, what would an angel be attacking you for? Tabs I can understand. No offense,” he told her. “Being related to a demon and everything, you know?”

  “Yes, Everson reminds me daily,” she muttered.

  “But saints and angels are supposed to be on the same team, right?” Bree-yark said over her. “What kind of an angel goes around attacking the descendant of a saint? Especially someone like you, doin’ all this righteous stuff all the time?”

  “Certain angels might,” I said faintly. “But they no longer exist.”

  The Street Keeper tattoo was taking shape in my mind’s eye: a skull wreathed in angel wings. Was that the answer? An Avenging Angel?

  Had one returned to the shadow realm and regarded magic-use as an aberration on par with infernal activity? That would explain the absence of practitioners. An Avenging Angel was one of the few beings who could manage that kind of annihilation, even taking out Lich, the First Saint turned Death Mage.

  With a chill I recalled the looming figure I’d seen upon opening the whip’s protection.

  But how would an Avenging Angel even have come into the world over there? According to the stories, they were the Creator’s first response to the nine elemental demons. But they proved too violent. Fearful the Angels would devolve into demons themselves, the Creator swapped them for the kinder and wiser First Saints, the antitheses of the demons’ sins. But now that I thought about it, the stories never said exactly what became of the Angels.

  “Can you describe him?” I asked Tabitha.

  “Besides being a freakish zealot? I’m sorry, but I was too busy running for my life to pick out a more defining feature. I didn’t realize I’d be sitting through a fucking interrogation when I got back.”

  And if it was an Avenging Angel, what would that mean for Alec?

  “Well, how did you manage to get away?” I pressed. “Did you fight?”

  “See what I mean?” she said to Bree-yark. “No, I’m not dumb enough to fight an angel. But I haven’t forgotten how to mist. A power you denied me when you bonded me to this distended sac of hair. ”

  “It wasn’t distended when I bonded you to it,” I reminded her.

  “So I ran,” she said tiredly, “turned to mist, ran some more, turned to mist again, and so on and so forth. All the time he was chasing me through this horrific heaven-scape, trying to shock the literal hell out of me. And when I finally escaped, there you were, taking advantage of my defenseless body. I’m not sure which was worse.”

  “That was CPR,” I said thinly.

  She turned to Bree-yark. “You were there. What did it look like to you?”

  “Well, ah, you know…” He gave an embarrassed chuckle. “I couldn’t really see so well…”

  Friends with Tabitha, Bree-yark didn’t want to have to choose sides. I nodded at him that it was all right. The most important thing was that my stimulant, Claudius’s salve, and Tabitha’s survival instincts had done their jobs.

  “I’m just glad you’re back,” I told her. “Why don’t we talk about this some more later.”

  I was still monitoring the mayor, but my gaze was increasingly shifting toward my safe. If the whip was being powered by an Avenging Angel, it no longer felt secure in my reality, much less my lab space, warded or not. Twice now the whip had nearly killed me. The third time it could well succeed.

  Bree-yark must have seen the growing anxiety on my face. “C’mon, Tabs, let me take you back upstairs. Everson needs to finish his work down here. How’s it going, by the way?”

  I blew out a shaky breath. “I should know soon. Thanks for telling me. Both of you.”

  Bree-yark clapped my arm as he lifted Tabitha over his shoulder. With his goblin strength, he made it look easy. Tabitha only peered at me blandly before perching her head on his thick neck and murmuring something about getting out of there before I set another one of my angels on her.