The scepter was far too important for him to play tricks or flake out like this. Had something happened to him?

  I returned to the wall I’d just walked along, recalling a peculiarity I’d noted. On one of the leaning canvases, a line of dust had been thumbed away, exposing the model’s crazy green eyes.

  A message?

  I tipped the canvas forward. Sure enough, tucked between the canvas and frame was a folded piece of paper I recognized as having come from Alec’s sketchpad. I opened it to find a single printed word:

  Park

  “Is he freaking kidding me?”

  After everything I’d gone through to steal the scepter, my nerves were shot. And now he was tacking on an extra step? But there was a reason he’d changed venues as well as why he couldn’t carry me there himself.

  I drew several steadying breaths.

  By “Park” he meant Dewitt Clinton Park, his preferred transport point. Did he plan on taking us back to the actual present after all? I’d find out when I got there, but it was thirty blocks uptown—a mission unto itself, especially without my casting implements. Then I remembered the stomach rune.

  Wait a sec, I can transport there…

  But that was assuming Hermes had drawn me another destination symbol. If not, I could end up in limbo. Worse, I could get caught up in Persephone’s distortion field and be thrown down to Hades. My hope deflated like a leaky tire. I’d trusted him to this point, and he’d delivered, but we hadn’t discussed a backup plan. Transporting now would require a very large, very blind leap of faith.

  Need to consult my magic.

  Closing my eyes, I exhaled and sank into myself. Deep tides eddied around me before seeming to resolve into a back and forth motion: no. That was a first when it came to Hermes, and as I emerged again, the entire enterprise felt shakier than ever.

  If transporting was out, I’d have to leg it. I downed a stealth potion and chased it with one for cloaking, a booster to keep me hidden from the whip’s essence. I then took Hermes’s note and tucked it into my jacket’s inside pocket.

  As a hazy field spread over me for the second time that morning, I found a staircase that led to a back exit. Rain continued to fall in a ruthless slant. I shed my tie, popped up my jacket collar, and, using the surrounding buildings for reference, set off north along the alleyway, Persephone’s scepter clenched in my swinging grip.

  As rain matted my hair and soaked through my shirt, I recalled the goddess’s scream from the bath chamber, her wrathful appearance in the doorway. She would deploy everyone and everything in her command to get this back. With helicopters sounding in the distance, I shook my head bitterly.

  What in the hell happened, Hermes? We were almost—

  The crack and flash registered a moment after I was down, my pursed lips burbling in a puddle of water. The heat that skewered my chest arrived an instant later. Sputtering, I tried to turn my head.

  The blunt toe of an engineer-style boot stepped into view. I squinted up a pair of thick denim-clad legs to where wraparound shades framed a busted nose. A burly red beard dripped rainwater. The leader of the Street Keepers curled his lip as he smacked a tactical whip against his gloved hand.

  “Welcome back, Everson.”

  17

  Red Beard advanced until he was standing directly over me. “Told you we’d hunt you down.”

  I squinted to where more of his motorcycle gang were rolling in. It didn’t take rotating my head to know the rest were blocking the other end of the alleyway. Dammit. The cloaking potion I’d prepared from the whip’s essence clearly wasn’t as effective as I’d thought.

  The only bright spot, if you could call it that, was that these weren’t Persephone’s people. They answered to another authority.

  Red Beard grabbed the scruff of my jacket and lifted me until I was dangling in front of him.

  Through the bulging shoulder of his black shirt, a skull wreathed in angel wings shimmered with protective power. His Street Keeper tattoo.

  Maybe it was time to tap into my own tattoo, the Hermes symbol, and take that leap of faith. The only problem was I’d lost my grip on the scepter when I’d eaten asphalt. I couldn’t see the scepter, had no idea where it had landed, but surely Hermes could speed over and recover it now that it was out of City Hall.

  Not that we had a choice. It was either leap now or die shortly. Assuming I had the power.

  As Red Beard regarded me coldly, I concentrated past my lingering pain. To my surprise, energy began crowding my mental prism. The whip had put me down, hard, but the effects weren’t as enduring as the last time. My cloaking potion may not have been a total dud after all.

  My stomach burned now, but not from the channeled energy gathering around the symbol. It was the sting of road rash. I’d been running when Red Beard cracked me, and I must have skidded when I fell, the friction of alley on skin chewing away enough symbol to render it inoperable. I angled my eyes down to find blood soaking through the front of my shirt in pink camo-like patterns.

  It just keeps getting better.

  “First we’ve got some business to settle,” Red Beard grunted. “This is for my nose…”

  His knuckles smashed into the center of my face, throwing me back to two weeks earlier when I’d swung my cane into him with a shouted force invocation. The blow had cracked him between the eyes and sent him flying from the back of his motorcycle. My own collision with the asphalt shocked me back to the present.

  “This is for my bike…”

  He lifted me under my shoulders and legs as if I were a large sack of garden mulch. I went airborne for a moment and then his knee rammed into the center of my back. As I splashed to the alley, my mind flashed back to his motorcycle veering riderless over the seawall and into the East River.

  I gripped my low back—possibly cracked—and held my throbbing nose—definitely broken—and struggled to get up. But my legs only locked in a sharp spasm.

  “And this,” Red Beard finished, “is for being a general pain in the ass.”

  He gripped my foot at the ankle and swung me. I went flying into a graffiti-smeared wall and landed in a heap of soggy cardboard boxes. More things hurt, but I was too battered to say what and where exactly.

  I squinted at where a very blurry looking Red Beard was drawing the tactical whip from the back of his pants. The rest of the Street Keepers sat astride their idling bikes to both sides. It struck me now that none of them had whooped or cheered during my beatdown. Their brooding silence boded worse, somehow.

  “I wish you wouldn’t have made this personal,” Red Beard said.

  I spit out a ribbon of blood and found a garbled ghost of my voice. “Pardon me for not wanting to be killed.”

  “We’re just upholding our oaths.”

  I released a painful snort. “Oh, in that case…”

  “You shouldn’t exist, Everson. You’re an aberration.”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  There was something about dire situations that brought out my inner smartass, but I was also jockeying for time. As I spoke, I was silently calling to the collective: the Order’s repository of raw magic. Assistance was never guaranteed. It required a degree of surrender I hadn’t fully mastered. And even if the magic arrived, it would be on its own terms. This wasn’t streaming on demand.

  “We have a mandate,” Red Beard said importantly.

  “By whom?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I just thought we could sort this out over brunch.”

  He responded by curling his lip and lashing the whip. The cord branched into a lightning-like configuration, just as it had in my lab. I braced for the brutal crack, but the tendrils wrapped me like barbed wire and clenched. Sizzling white energy seized every nerve, sending me into a jumping, writhing fit.

  As Red Beard looked on with the grim visage of an executioner, I dipped in and out of consciousness. Somewhere beyond my wrecked body and the fragments of my panicked, pain-torn thoughts, a detached part of me mused that this could be the end. The accompanying sadness was overpowering, more so because I wasn’t fighting. How would I explain that to Ricki…? Our daughter…?

  And then the tendrils retracted.

  I looked over blearily. Beyond the smoke drifting from my body, Red Beard was regarding his whip in confusion. The attack should have finished me, but it hadn’t. My cloaking potion? It was suddenly sprinting laps throughout my system.

  Though maybe that extra kick was coming from the power of the collective, because fresh energy was pouring into me like God’s breath itself. In my near death, I must have surrendered.

  Red Beard cocked the whip back, but I’d already raised a hand. “Vigore!” I rasped.

  Energy branched from my outstretched fingers, battering his halo of protection and sending him into a drunken dance. He tripped and became entangled in a destroyed shopping cart. With another Word, I twisted my hand and crushed the cart around him, trapping him.

  Could I stand?

  With wincing effort, I gained a knee and wobbled to my feet. The collective was not only supercharging my cloaking potion but repairing my broken parts. I stumbled forward as the rain fell harder. The tide had turned so fast, the Street Keepers struggled to engage kickstands and bring firearms into position.

  Surprise, lugnuts.

  I shoved my palms to both sides. My force blasts were typically just that—blasts. But what followed my next shouted Word was flash-flood strength. Twin forces slammed into the alleyway, tearing up chunks of asphalt and plowing through the Street Keepers. They disappeared from my sides in a tumbling torrent. The invocation rolled out, leaving behind a scatter of bikes and groaning bodies.

  Opposite me, Red Beard had managed to break free from the cart. With a grunt, he brought his whip down.

  I crouched and crossed my wrists overhead. “Protezione!”

  The energy shield that crackled into being was predictably messy. It shattered beneath the whip’s strike, but it also sent the branching cords wide. I stumbled back and sent another force blast into Red Beard. But with the flick of his wrist, the whip’s tendrils leapt up and scattered the invocation.

  Can’t keep going back and forth like this.

  The collective had restored me, but its power was leaving now, going back out to sea.

  Need an object to cast through…

  Something winked darkly from the storm drain opposite me. The scepter! It had rolled partway down and gotten stuck behind a sodden lump of garbage. When I stepped toward it, Red Beard readied another whip strike, but his angle was bad and I was too near. Dropping the whip, he charged into my path.

  I extended a hand and shouted, “Recuperare!”

  The scepter jiggled and launched toward me. I grabbed it from the air and swung it as Red Beard arrived. The scepter’s crown cracked off his temple and sent him staggering. For a transfixing moment, the skin above his ear blackened and began rotting away, revealing pale skull underneath. But it was already healing over, the protective power from his shoulder tattoo running white currents into the wound.

  He pressed his palm to the temple like someone suffering brain freeze and raised his other hand to keep me at bay.

  But I had stopped to study the scepter. I’d lost the buffering glove Hermes had given me, and the scepter’s raw power coursed through me like a potent drug. I wielded Death. Terrifying, tantalizing Death.

  As I fixed my grip on the twisted staff, I stared into the crown’s gems that had winked from the storm drain, calling to me. Red Beard was regarding the scepter from his defensive stoop, though much more warily.

  I grinned. “Aberrant enough for you?”

  He glanced over at his scattered crew. Only a few had managed to stagger upright. “You can’t keep running from your sentence, Everson.”

  “I’m not planning on it.”

  I drew the scepter back, poised to bring it down on his head, when red bursts stitched the alley between us. I staggered back as though I’d been shoved. But Red Beard stood defiantly, face tilted to the pounding rain.

  “Stop!” he roared, shaking a fist. “He’s mine, goddammit!”

  A helicopter had swept into view between the buildings, a shooter perched in the bay door. It was a soldier of the Iron Guard. More soldiers were arriving down the alleyway, cutting around the bikers.

  Persephone’s forces had found me.

  Shots cracked from weapons, sending preternatural rounds snapping past my head. I channeled energy through the scepter, and a dark, shimmering shield spread in front of me, reducing the arriving rounds to blood-red spatters. But I could still feel rain on my back. The scepter, however powerful, was not the natural fit of my grandfather’s cane. No matter how much power I pushed, I couldn’t seem to make the shield bigger. I wheeled to find more Iron Guard pouring into the alley’s other end.

  I would need to go on the offensive, an idea I suddenly relished.

  But as I readied the scepter, a round struck me in the shoulder, enveloping my head in a cloud of toxic red mist.

  The scepter clanged to the ground. A moment later, I followed.

  18

  I came to with a start and struck out at the darkness, certain I’d been buried.

  When my hand didn’t encounter an enclosure, I pressed it to my thudding chest. Not underground. Neither was I in an alleyway in the rain. I was on my back, breathing hard, my face damp with sweat.

  And I was alive.

  Swallowing, I thought back. It didn’t take long for the memory fragments to conjoin. The Iron Guard had shot me with an underworld round, explaining the claustrophobic nightmares. It also suggested my location.

  As my vision rendered the darkness dim, I brought my head up. Dammit. Not only was I in City Hall, but I was in the room off Persephone’s bedchamber. Opposite me was the marble pool from which the zombies had emerged. The waters were still now, but too close for comfort.

  I struggled until I was sitting up on the edge of what turned out to be a dainty couch. I listened, picking up a faint whistle of wind as though through a crack somewhere. I started when a voice spoke.

  “I healed you.”

  The feminine voice belonged to a figure standing in the shadows near the lab area. She was holding a white flower to her chin. The radiant petals illuminated a large pair of eyes and pomegranate-colored lips.

  I stammered mutely, struck dumb by the goddess’s presence.

  But I no longer hurt, I realized. Not in my low back or my face or where the whip had ravaged me, which was everywhere. When I touched my nose, the contours felt straight. When I inhaled, my shirt and slacks smelled fresh.

  “Thank you,” I managed quietly.

  Already in enough trouble, I couldn’t risk insulting her.

  She set the flower off to the side and stepped forward. The room glowed with pale light from a large symbol on the floor around my couch. A circle trap? I summoned a quantum of power as a test. Sure enough, nothing happened. The trap isolated me from all forms of energy, killing my magic.

  “Everson Croft,” she said softly, as though testing the syllables.

  The light of my enclosure illuminated her approach. Burnt chestnut hair spilled past the shoulders of a pale gown, long-sleeved with delicate floral patterns. Questioning eyes dominated a startlingly soft face. Not the face of a calculating antagonist. And though she was beautiful—inconceivably beautiful—she didn’t squint or posture, wielding her appearance as a weapon.

  Even so, I remained on my guard.

  She stopped outside the circle trap and stared at me with the frankness of a child, as though waiting for me to explain myself. But the innocence in her eyes spanned a chilling abyss. I lowered my gaze. From a fold in her gown, she raised the scepter.

  “Why did you take this?”

  “Because you’re about to make a terrible mistake,” I replied carefully.

  “Oh?” She seemed genuinely curious.

  Had anyone actually tried reasoning with her?

  “If you summon Cronus, war will follow. And if he wins, the Olympic order will fall, yes, but think about the destruction. The unimaginable loss of life. Innocent life. I’ve read the poems honoring you, good Persephone. I know you cherish life, its essential beauty. You can’t want this.”

  “So you know my story?”

  When I’d had time this past week, I’d read up on Persephone. Now I recited from a hymn by Homer: “‘She stretched out both hands to pick the charming bloom, and a chasm opened. Out sprang Lord Hades on his immortal horses. Snatching the unwilling girl, he carried her off in his golden chariot as she cried and screamed, calling to her father, Zeus, son of Cronus, highest and best.’”

  “And do you know my father’s response?”

  “Silence.”

  “Worse than silence.” She turned away. “We learned it was he who granted Hades take me to his underworld. And though my mother searched and searched, exhausted with grief, he lied to her. Said he knew nothing of my whereabouts. ‘Highest and best,’” she repeated bitterly. “He isn’t worthy of either name.”

  “I’m truly sorry.” I waited the appropriate beat. “But there must be another way to put this right.”

  Her back stiffened. “Another way?” When she wheeled to face me, her eyes blazed beneath her slanting brows, and the whistling of the hidden wind grew in pitch. “There is no other way. This is how it must be done!”

  I showed my hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “What do you know? You’re just a stupid mortal! A thief!”

  I shuffled back. Though her tantrum sounded childish, the raw power coming off her shook my insides. And the power was growing. She raised the scepter, sending chaotic bands of energy from the gems. They circled the room in a growing storm, thrashing her hair and darkening her visage. Even her gown seemed to shift to something resembling a funeral dress, the flower patterns shriveling away.

  Fair Persephone, goddess of spring, was becoming dread Persephone, queen of the Underworld.

  When the water in the pool bubbled and blackened with mud, I made a break for the panel to her bedchamber. I was met by a full-body slap that sent me sprawling back onto the couch. The damned circle trap. Persephone stared down at me, eyes smoldering with wrath and the promise of death.