She used to have a crude saying: "You always use your mind as a weapon. My fist and my vagina are far better weapons.”

  I hated when she said that. But it was also true.

  Ananda was doing her job. My job was the least I could do—for her. For my child. For all the Others.

  So I went back inside the last place I wanted to be. I took off my dress again, cleansed in the shower, put on a new pair of scrubs and came back into the lab just as Lux was exiting the bathroom.

  She stared at me. “Where did you go?”

  “To get some sun,” I said with a shrug.

  She didn’t believe that for a minute—I could tell by the way she rolled her eyes—but she also didn’t say anything else. I didn’t know why she just flew straight back to her work. But I was grateful she hadn’t pressed the matter.

  I went back to my station and I got started on my work. The work that would someday make my child proud.

  ↔

  As I climbed on the bus that evening, my brain felt like it was on fire.

  It was a familiar feeling, one I’d experienced many times as I conducted my research at McGill. But right now it was tinged with something that amped the “fire” part up a few notches.

  Pure, potent anxiety.

  About my baby, yes. But also about my boyfriend, my sister and the two demigods. The whole time I’d been working in the lab, I hadn’t heard a peep. Not a text, not a phone call. For all I knew, Ananda had been attacked by the MEOA guy and had burned away all her magic.

  I’d sent Justin, Cupid and Ananda a slew of texts and called them a few times, but they hadn’t replied. Not any of them. I felt completely cut off, and it was strange. Isolating. Not to mention, Lux the pixie wasn’t exactly talkative. She only conversed with me when I did something she found annoying.

  “Don’t mind me,” I whispered to myself as the bus slid through Vegas, “I’m just over here saving Otherdom with science.”

  Across from me, an older woman glanced up. We met eyes, and I forced a smile. What do you say when strangers notice you talking to yourself? You smile and try not to make insane eyes.

  I noticed her holding a newspaper with a headline about the quadruple Other suicide outside the Las Vegas police station. It included the words: “going out in flames of glory,” like they were proud of dying that way.

  If she only knew the truth.

  Thirty minutes later, the bus dropped me off outside the Bellagio. When I went into the lobby, a brightly-colored Cupid met me there, and some of my anxiety dissipated. “Hey,” he said, grabbing my hand. “This way.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Duh, we’ve been watching the security cameras. In a place this fancy, they’ve got them mounted everywhere.”

  I allowed him to guide me. “You didn’t reply to any of my texts.”

  “We’ve been busy. Super busy.”

  I surveyed him as we passed into a hallway. “Do you have to wear that every day?”

  He didn’t even turn his head. “Don’t go there, Isa.”

  I reached out to touch the lace. “Does it always have to be pink, or—”

  Cupid stopped hard and swatted my hand away. His face came close to mine. “Any more comments on my cover and you don’t get to be part of the stakeout.”

  I cocked my head. “I don’t think you get to decide who’s in.”

  Ahead of us, a door opened. Justin’s face appeared. “Come on in.”

  As we came into the small security room and Cupid shut the door behind us, I found Hercules and Ananda sitting in front of a whole array of monitors. They were surrounded by vending machine junk food—well, mostly empty junk food wrappers—and sodas.

  Justin grabbed a Twinkie, tossed it to me. “Welcome to the clubhouse.”

  I’d been worried about them all day, and they’d been having a sleepover. I wanted to be annoyed, but I was mostly relieved. “Where’s the actual security guard?”

  Ananda spun on her stool toward me. “I offered him a night he’ll never forget in exchange for a few days in the camera room, no questions asked.” Surely that had worked like a charm; I hadn’t ever seen a man turn Ananda down. “How close are you to developing the counteragent?” she asked.

  I stared at the Twinkie and resisted tearing off the wrapper and shoving it straight into my mouth. It was my favorite junk food. “I’m making progress finding the section of DNA that interacts with magic. Today I started with a shortcut by breaking the genome down into about 150,000 likely pairs—”

  “OK, Miss Scientist, I don’t need to hear the deets,” Ananda said. “Just tell me how much longer.”

  I sighed. “It’s hard to know exactly. Where human DNA has two strands, we have three. That means the Other genome has approximately 5 billion pairs.”

  Ananda took a long, loud sip of cola as if she hadn’t heard me, then lowered the can. “We need it faster.”

  “I’m going as fast as I can.”

  “You don’t know how fast you can go,” she said, “until your mettle is tested.”

  I gritted my teeth. How could she even know—

  Cupid pointed at a monitor. “There’s a hat guy.”

  We all crowded around the monitor he was pointing to. On screen, a guy in a MEOA hat wandered the casino. “Nah,” Justin said. “Not chubby enough.”

  “How many of these hat guys have you seen today?” I asked.

  “So very many,” Hercules said around the three beef jerky sticks he’d just pressed into his mouth. “I tried to give them wallops when I’d see them, but Justin and Cupid of Eros stopped me. Apparently these ‘monitors’ are just renderings of the person.”

  Cupid groaned. “Can I just retract that whole statement about walloping?”

  Hercules shook his head. “A man must think carefully before he speaks, and then he must stand by his words. Retractions are for cowards.”

  Cupid fluffed his tutu. “Dude, I’m the only one here brave enough to wear this frou-frou getup. Meanwhile, you get to be Mr. Muscle in your button-down.”

  Hercules beamed at me. “The Bellagio didn’t even require me to speak before they chose my services.”

  I glanced over at Justin, who wore a black uniform. “How’s it going over there?”

  “It’s like stirring molasses,” he said, still staring at the monitors. “After this, I’m never going to find drunk people entertaining again.”

  Ananda stood, fluffed her blonde hair. “I’ll make another circuit.”

  Cupid gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Another circuit?” I felt so out of the loop.

  “She’s trying to draw the attacker out,” Cupid explained. “He knows her face.”

  I stopped her before she reached the door. “Ana, I have a strange request.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I’m five hundred years old. I doubt anything you request will seem strange to me.”

  Well, let’s see how she took this one. “I need to get into the morgue to see your exes’ corpses.”

  Her perfectly groomed eyebrows went straight up. “All right. I’ll give it to you: that one is pretty friggin’ strange.” She folded her arms. “Why?”

  “They were killed by OtherX. If I can get a blood sample, it’ll help me develop the counteragent.”

  She considered this for a moment. “Didn’t Ms. Sparkle provide you with a sample in the lab?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but that’s undiluted. If I can see how it’s interacting with the cells in your exes’ blood, I might be able to figure out where it’s interacting with the DNA.”

  She shrugged. “All right. Tomorrow morning before work, we go together.”

  “Together?”

  “Yeah. You and me.” She winked as she stepped around me. “It’ll be like old times.”

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, an unfamiliar face appeared over me in the predawn darkness. “Ready?” came the low voice.

  I tried to bolt off Ananda’s couch—my sleeping spot—but a hand shot out and gripped my wrist. “Don’t wake the others,” she rasped. “It’s just me.”

  I blinked. “Ana? Why are you so …”

  She half-smirked, the nasolabial lines around her mouth deepening. “Unattractive? Is that what you’re too polite to say?”

  “No.” I rose from the couch and followed her into the kitchen. “Older.”

  Coffee was brewing on the counter. Ananda filled a mug and passed it to me; I could see the tendons sticking out on the back of her hand from natural loss of fat. She had shifted into a woman in her forties. “Drink. It’s going to be a long day.”

  “Are we still going to the morgue?”

  She folded her arms. “Why do you think I burned two months off my life to take on this illusion? For shits and gigs?”

  Two months of life. In the grand scheme of our new life spans—probably sixty or seventy years—it didn’t seem like a lot. But just imagine, with every new illusion we took on, we burned another two months. Another two months. Another two months.

  It only took six new illusions to burn a year. And given how much we loved shapeshifting, six illusions were nothing. But a year to take on six new faces? A year felt pivotal. It felt like inviting death.

  That human saying—her saying—floated into my mind again. “Live fast and leave a beautiful corpse.”

  I wondered how many times she’d burned two months off the end of her life in the four years since we’d become mortal. I really had no way of telling, but I did know one thing.

  It was a big deal that she had done this for me. It meant she considered this trip to the morgue important. Really important.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For taking on that illusion.”

  “Don’t thank me.” She passed me a little milk container for my coffee. “It had to be done.”

  I poured the milk, surveying her as I did. I didn’t even know she owned clothes like that: loose-fitted, covering all her limbs, shoes without heels. “Who are you supposed to be?”

  “Johnny’s first wife.”

  I lowered the milk container and mug to the table. “You know what she looks like?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “I slept over at his place a few times. The poor minotaur hadn’t gotten over her—all he did was tip the framed portraits on their faces when I came over.”

  “That must have been hard for ...”

  She raised a finger to stop me. If there was one thing Ananda hated, it was hollow sympathy. “Drink. We’re leaving in fifteen.” Then, “Oh, and you need a different face.”

  A different face. “About that.” I paused, breathing deep. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  She stopped mid-pour into her own mug. She set the coffee pot down and turned. “Please don’t stop with the vague ominousness.”

  I came forward. “Ananda, I’m pregnant.”

  Her dark eyes flitted from my face down to my belly and back up in one instant. She couldn’t help her grin. “OK, I deserve that one.”

  “You deserve …?”

  She turned back around, waved her hand through the air. “I’ve been kind of a bitch to you since you came to Vegas, always harping on you being the golden child. I got you bitten by rats, attacked by a minotaur and I slapped you a good one. I get it.”

  I stepped up to the counter, right beside her. My hand went to her arm. “It’s not a joke. I swear to Yemoja.”

  If there was one thing all encantado took seriously, it was swearing to Yemoja. Even if she was gone.

  Ananda went still. Seconds elapsed, and she only stared down at the coffee in her mug. Finally her eyes raised with aching slowness to meet mine. “What?” she breathed.

  “I know it sounds impossible. It’s a long, long story.” I leaned against the counter. “But I tested myself at Ms. Sparkle’s lab yesterday. I’m sure it’s true.”

  “It is impossible.” She looked almost afraid of me. “No encantado has ever been pregnant.”

  “The GoneGod World has brought a lot of changes,” I said. “One of them is modern science. It’s possible now, Ana.”

  No thanks to the gods, I thought but didn’t say. This had been possible thanks to my work. Thanks to Serena’s work, for as much as she had done to make my life a misery.

  Tears filled Ananda’s eyes, and she pulled me into a hug. The force of her grip blurred my own eyes, and a small sound emerged from my throat. It felt so good to be held by her. Comforting. Unexpected. “I believe you,” she said by my ear. “And I won’t even chide you for not using protection.”

  That raised another, louder noise from my throat—something between a sob and a laugh.

  When we parted, she set both hands on my shoulders. “How far along are you?”

  “I can’t be more than a few weeks.”

  “Who’s the father?”

  I glanced toward the living room. “That’s a good question.”

  Surprise colored her face. “Just say it isn’t Cupid.”

  “Oh my GoneGods, Ana.” I shook my head. “That’s four kinds of wrong.”

  “So it’s either Justin or Hercules.”

  I raised both hands, palms up. “It happened on the train. I got hit with one of Cupid’s arrows, and then … I was with someone. Or multiple someones. It was all kind of a blur.”

  She was nodding. “I’m going to have to see about borrowing one of those arrows someday.” Then, “In the meantime, you can’t take on another face. It would be too risky.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “So you’ll be this little blonde for a while.” She stroked a tendril of my hair, which sent a shiver through me. I’d rarely seen her so gentle, and I relished it.

  “Can you get me into the morgue like this?” I asked.

  The ghost of a smile touched her lips. “What can’t I do?”

  Ah, that old cockiness. Right now I needed it. I needed her faith in herself, even if it wasn’t fully felt. Just the promise of it made me feel more confident, more capable.

  She pulled the mug from my hands. “No caffeine for the pregnant encantado.”

  I raised a finger to my lips. “Ixnay on the pregnancy talk, please. You’re the only one I’ve told.”

  She leaned closer, whispered, “And no more Twinkies, either.”

  My mouth dropped. “Hey now.”

  “Sister, if I had to venture a guess, you’re the only pregnant Other in the GoneGod World. We’re not compromising that with dough and cream.” She handed me a glass of water instead. “Drink that and get dressed. We’re going to see four dead Others.”

  ↔

  The morgue where Ananda’s four exes had been taken sat like a low, dark box on the Las Vegas North hospital grounds, the unwanted black sheep of the medical complex. Outside, well-manicured topiaries and a running fountain worked to belie what we found inside.

  In there, we discovered the most put-upon night shift orderly who’d ever worked a morgue. Fortunately, he was a young man. And even if his eyes began half-lidded and his shoulders curved in, when he saw me, that all changed.

  His brown eyes opened wide as he took me in. All at once, he sat ramrod straight on his stool.

  I stepped up to the counter and I did my thing. “Good morning.” Chin down, eyes up. How long do eyelashes have to be before they form a perfect, endearing veil? About one tenth of an inch. That’s a fact I doubt anyone but an encantado would know.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’m sorry, but we aren’t open to visitors until—”

  Ananda stepped up, her face a mess of mascara over puffy cheeks. “My Johnny. They said my husband’s here. Is he here?”

  The orderly noticed Ananda for the first time, and between the two of us, he looked completely out of his depth. “Johnny?”

  “Real name Asterion,” Ananda sobbed. “Born in the year 200 B.C.E., guarded the Labyrinth at Crete. Please, I have to see him. I have to know for sure.”

  “Of course,” the orderly said. When his eyes flicked back to me, I gave him my under-the-eyelashes look again. “And are you related, too?”

  Ananda gripped my arm. “She’s my daughter.”

  We stared at him with tears in our eyes.

  What else is a young man to do when two encantado forces of nature walk through your sliding doors at six in the morning?

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “This way.”

  As we followed him down the hallway, Ananda leaned toward me. “This takes me back to that time we snuck into the governor’s mansion in Manaus.”

  I hid my grin. I had completely forgotten about that; it was during the fifty-year span that Yemoja had sealed away my memories. Ananda and I had been close then—the closest we’d ever been. “We convinced both his sons to run away with us.”

  She gripped my hand. “The bastard deserved it. He wanted to cut into the rainforest for industry.”

  Of course—that was why we had done it. She and I were like vigilantes then, making right in our own way. That was before things had gone too far. That was before she’d started doling out lethal justice to bandits. And forcing me to take part.

  I pushed the darkness aside. Think of before. I gripped her hand as we passed through a door and into a freezer of a room.

  The orderly crossed to a bank of drawers, studying the name tags until he found the right one. He pulled on the handle, and out slid a large body under a sheet.

  When the orderly turned down the sheet, there lay a very dead Johnny the minotaur. His face had gone gray and sunken, and when I threw my hand over my mouth, it wasn’t an act.

  The OtherX had completely ravaged him.

  Ananda threw her hands up and burst into a guttural sob. “My Johnny!”

  The orderly raised a finger to his lips. “Please be quiet. I’m not supposed to have brought you back here.”

  Ananda nodded, wiping tears and mascara from her cheeks. “Of course. Of course.” She stepped toward him, her shaking fingers reaching out. “Johnny boy.”

  The orderly waited in an awkward way, hovering halfway between us and the door. When he and I met eyes, I whispered, “Could we have a few minutes alone with him?”