“Kat used to do that sometimes,” Justin said.

  I glanced back at him, found him gazing at my hands. I was rubbing my fingers together without thinking about it. “It’s a nervous habit.”

  “She never would admit she was nervous about anything. It was always hidden under layers of sarcasm.”

  My gaze settled on him. “Did you hear from her recently?”

  He shook his head. “Not since we left Montreal.”

  “But you’re thinking about her.” I wasn’t jealous of her. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. If I knew that Justin was completely over her, then I wouldn’t be jealous of her. But I didn’t know.

  And he confirmed my fears by rubbing his own fingers together. “I’m worried about her.”

  I reached out to touch his hand. “I’m sure she’s taking care of herself.”

  Normally he reciprocated my touch, but this time he didn’t. He only met my eyes with a certain distance. “She and I … One of our issues was that she didn’t tell me everything I needed to know. She kept things from me sometimes.”

  Now I understood what I was seeing on his face. It was distrust. “Something’s happened.”

  “I talked to Ananda.” He paused, eyes flicking to my abdomen and back up. “Can you guess what I talked to her about?”

  So Ananda had told him about my pregnancy. Why had she told him? I swallowed. “Justin …”

  “Is it true?” He shook his head. “I mean, I thought she was being crazy at first. Others can’t get pregnant.”

  “It’s true,” I whispered.

  “How?”

  So I explained to him what had happened to me while we were in the World Army facility in the desert. What Serena Russo had done to my DNA that had somehow allowed a pregnancy to take. When I was finished, I went silent with my hands folded in my lap. I had no idea how he would react.

  As it was, he just stared at me with liquid eyes, his lips parted a few degrees. He looked like he’d seen an apparition. But he was just staring at me. This wasn’t how I’d hoped he would react when I told him.

  “I’m the father,” he finally said, but his tone made it into a half-question.

  “I …”

  “You?” he pressed.

  “I think so.”

  His eyes darted left across the parking lot, then back to me. “You think so? Do you think Russo did something—inseminated you?”

  “No. I mean, I checked myself out down there afterward, and I didn’t find anything.”

  “So why do you only think so?”

  I tried not to look at Hercules sleeping on the sofa some eight feet away. “That night when the Cupids had their fight ...”

  Justin waited for me to finish. But when I didn’t continue, he said, “I remember.”

  “I got hit with one of Cupid’s arrows.”

  “Our Cupid.”

  “Our Cupid. Cupid of Eros.”

  “So you were consumed with lust.”

  “That’s right. And I went looking for you in the sleeping car.”

  “You found me, Isa.” He hesitated. “Don’t you remember?”

  My blood rushed in my ears. “Sort of. It was all a blur.”

  His gaze darkened. “So maybe you found other men, too.”

  I couldn’t lie to him. Not after what he’d just told me about Kat. Not after the deception that had kicked our entire relationship off. I had pretended to be his girlfriend, and he had forgiven me for that. I had promised myself I would never deceive him again.

  “Maybe,” I breathed.

  “Maybe you found a demigod.”

  I reached out for him. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He accepted my hand this time, but he stared down at it. “Why did I have to find this out from your sister? Why not you?”

  “I would have told you.”

  His face lifted. “Everything’s different now that this has happened. You’re pregnant, Isa.”

  “Is that why you miss Kat? Because things were simpler then?”

  “Maybe.” His gaze didn’t waver. “Maybe I miss her because I loved her, and I’m twenty years old, and things are supposed to be simple. I mean, didn’t you ever wonder why I wasn’t more upset about you deceiving me? How easily I slid into a relationship with you after Kat?”

  And because I loved him, that stung. I wanted him to feel the way I did about my pregnancy … not like this. And especially not missing Kat because of it. That part really stung.

  It used to be that if a lover said something cutting to me, I would take that cut like an incision right to the artery. I might cry, or I might get angry. But I would definitely get up and walk away for a time. I would remove myself from the source of pain.

  But that wasn’t what happened. The rational thought eased into my head: I don’t get to choose how he feels. He does.

  It seemed pregnancy had changed me.

  I squeezed his hand. “I tried not to think about it. I guess I just thought you were forgiving. Easygoing.”

  “You had sex with me,” he said, “while you were pretending to be Kat. That’s a big deal.”

  I swallowed. All of this had been there for the past six months, and it had taken this moment—Ananda telling him about my pregnancy—to bring his simmering resentments to a boil. It finally occurred to me that Justin wasn’t big on conflict. He wanted to be strong, to be powerful, yes, but mostly because he was afraid.

  He was terrified of confrontation. Of powerlessness and failure.

  I could see that fear in his eyes, even now as he was justifiably angry at me over what I had done six months ago, and what I had done a few days ago, too.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. And I meant it. “For pretending to be Kat. For not considering your feelings more when you and she broke up. For not telling you about the pregnancy.” I rose from my chair. “I know you’re upset and feeling confused. I want you here, and I’m willing to talk about all of it, but I’ll understand if you want something else.”

  Then, like the absolute boss of feelings that I wasn’t, I left Justin on the balcony. It was only when I got into the bathroom that I allowed myself to feel that incision.

  A lover’s rejection was always arterial and bloody.

  ↔

  Justin and I didn’t speak for the next two days.

  We inhabited Ananda’s apartment, but I slept in the bedroom with my sister, and he slept in the living room with Hercules and Cupid. The four of them went to the Bellagio every day, and I went to the lab. And while it killed me not to talk to my own boyfriend, I got it.

  He was dealing with a lot more than a twenty-year-old should have to deal with.

  But I did have a bone to pick with my sister. The first night, I confronted Ananda in the bedroom about telling Justin my secret. Except she’d looked at me like she always did: with a certain infuriating amusement. She always thought I took things too seriously.

  She folded her arms. “Were you going to tell him yourself?”

  I lowered my toothbrush. “Yes.”

  “That’s not true.” She stepped around the bed. “When?”

  “Once we’d dealt with everything in Vegas.”

  “Bullshit. I know you, Isa.”

  I thrust the toothbrush at her. “What does that mean?”

  “You were scared he’d reject you if you told him the truth.” Then, “Regardless, you do know that this is kind of a life-or-death situation, don’t you? I mean, a guy deserves to know if he’s a baby daddy before he dies.”

  “I was going to tell him,” I growled. “After things calmed down.”

  She made a face. “Go spit. The inside of your mouth looks like you just took Hercules’s—“

  “GODDESS YEMOJA!” I yelled as I stalked into the bathroom. I spat in the sink and turned. “Can’t you just apologize for anything? Anything at all? You always have to make it out like I’m being oversensitive.”

  “All right.” Ananda leaned against the doorway. “I’m sorry for not correcting you before. It’s actually GoneGoddess Yemoja.”

  And that was how I ended up sleeping in Ananda’s bathtub for two nights.

  On the other hand … those two days brought a significant upside. I worked like a demon in the lab, spending all my waking hours there. And by the end of those two days, I had created OtherXF.

  The F stood for “flight.”

  After I’d created the injectable counteragent, making it airborne was the easy part. It took me forty-eight hours of—admittedly backbreaking—work to make it fly. But when I did, I knew it was bombproof.

  That afternoon, when I delivered it to Ms. Sparkle in the back of her black sedan, I could almost see tears in her eyes. “You’ve done it.” Her glossy eyes lifted to me. “How is it administered?”

  “Any way you like. Inject it directly, or take it up in a crop sprayer plane—it won’t have an effect on humans, but it will protect Others. But it has to go out before the OtherX, or it won’t be as effective. Think of it like a vaccine.”

  She turned the stoppered bottle before her face. “I don’t believe anyone else could have done this.”

  Naturally, I deflected. “I doubt that’s true. I’m just a—”

  She looked past the bottle to me. “You’re a good person. A passionate one. You want to save lives.”

  “If that’s true, then my sister is a good person, too. Even more than me.”

  “She doesn’t have your mind.” Ms. Sparkle lowered the bottle. “But most importantly, nobody—Ananda included—knows Other DNA like you do. It took you to find that needle in the haystack.”

  I blinked. “The needle?”

  “The exact segment of DNA that interacts with magic. That was the only way to fight OtherX—to find that needle.” She paused. “You’re special, Isabella. Don’t forget it.”

  Warmth crept up my neck. “What will you do with it?”

  “The counteragent? You want to see?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, at the very least you deserve to see where we’ll release OtherXF.” She lowered the glass between us and the driver. “Take us to the plant.”

  As we started into motion away from the office building, I looked out the window. “I need to meet up with my sister at the Bellagio in an hour.” Now that I had resolved our imminent OtherX problem, I was ready to spend my evenings with the others at the Bellagio, waiting for MEOA guy to show his face again. A thrill went through me as I imagined his reaction to his syringe full of OtherX having absolutely zero effect.

  Of course, considering I hadn’t spoken to Justin in two days, going to the Bellagio was awkward. But I wanted to show solidarity. Justin, Cupid and Hercules were all here because of me, after all.

  “Don’t worry—I’ll drop you off at the hotel,” Ms. Sparkle said. “And this won’t take an hour.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we stood outside the municipal water supply plant for central Las Vegas. Even in the late afternoon, the building swam in the mid-summer heat.

  I stared at the expanse of it. “You’re going to release OtherXF into the water supply,” I said slowly.

  Ms. Sparkle held Edward in her arms. “That’s right. We’re going to mass-produce what you’ve created and release it tomorrow night, well ahead of the extinction event.”

  The counteragent would quickly siphon through the entire supply. It wouldn’t just hit every household and office in Vegas, but also all the public water fountains.

  It was quick, efficient, and universal.

  I turned toward her. “That’s brilliant.”

  She shook her head. “You offered the brilliance. I just know how to run a good production line.”

  “As a human, why are you doing this for Others? I mean, really?”

  She and Edward looked over at me at the same time. “Are you asking me what the center of my onion contains?”

  “I … I guess I am.”

  “Like I said to you the first time we met, we only share the center of ourselves with the people we love.” She winked. “But I will tell you something.”

  My breath caught. A brief fluttering started inside me, like I was standing before a fount of wisdom. I had felt the same way every time I’d seen the goddess Yemoja, and when I’d been in the Oracle of Delphi’s presence.

  “When I was a little girl,” Ms. Sparkle began, “my mother died at the age of six. My father quickly developed a gambling problem, and he took it all out on me. It was a lonely time, and I hated to go home.” She paused, stroking Edward’s head. “When we ran out of money, we became homeless. Do you know what it’s like to be homeless at the age of nine?”

  I shook my head. I really didn’t.

  “It makes you … different, Isabella. You don’t look at life the same way again. Especially not after you come back into society.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To survive in this world, you have to climb a ladder. Get an education, find a job, save your money. But when you’ve been outside society, you realize that there are multiple ways to climb that ladder.” She locked eyes with me. “Some of them are legal. Some aren’t. But legal and illegal are just a two-letter difference to a homeless girl.”

  A chill swept over me, despite the heat. “Ms. Sparkle ...”

  “Julia,” she interrupted. “My name’s Julia. And you’re going to be late to meet with your sister.”

  Before I could finish my meaningless platitude, she had opened the door and gotten back into the car, leaving me standing alone outside with everything she had just told me about her life. Her philosophy. Her onion.

  That’s the center of her, I thought as I climbed in after her.

  For whatever reason, Ms. Sparkle had told me what was at the center of her onion.

  Chapter 15

  Twenty minutes later we pulled up to the Bellagio, and Ms. Sparkle looked over at me. “You’ve been coming here some evenings after your work.”

  I paused in my scoot toward the car’s door. “How did you know that?”

  “My dear, I run a massive operation, and you’ve been working in my lab. Don’t you think it prudent for me to have kept tabs?”

  And all at once, I remembered: Julia Sparkle was a drug lady. Probably one of the biggest in Las Vegas. Of course she’d keep a KGB-like eye on me. “I’ve been trying to help Ananda find the guy who’s been attacking Others with OtherX.”

  “The guy?” Ms. Sparkle repeated.

  “A guy wearing a MEOA hat. We saw him last week during the quadruple-OtherX homicide.”

  One of her manicured eyebrows went up. She pointed out the window. “Like that?”

  I turned in that direction. Outside, a group of MEOA hat-wearers walked by. All men, all of the same general appearance as our guy. I sighed. “Yeah, like that.”

  “I wish you luck,” she said. “Though after we deploy your OtherXF, my hope is that we won’t need it.”

  I offered her a smile. “Me too.”

  When I stepped onto the sidewalk, I turned in the direction the MEOA group had gone. Blocks down the street, hundreds of them all headed in the same direction. They looked like a bunch of unlit, bobbing match heads. And I felt all right about thinking as much, because I knew what they were there for.

  Another Otherist rally.

  It was a frustrating sight, not least because of the hitch it would put in our attempts to find the one bobbing match head who was actually a psychopathic murderer.

  I approached the Bellagio’s lobby, expecting another night of awkwardness and watching black-and-white cameras. What I didn’t expect was Hercules to come barreling through one of the glass panes. The entire thing shattered in a waterfall of shards as his enormous, muscular body burst through the glass like it was paper.

  In the next second, Justin sprinted out through the sliding glass doors, dodging a big group of Japanese tourists who had stopped to stare after Hercules.

  I had done the same as the tourists. I turned and watched as a guy who’d been seated on a nearby bench rose and booked it down the sidewalk toward the rally. His MEOA hat sat in his lap, and he wiped at his sweating forehead.

  Short, chubby, an inexplicably good runner—

  I pointed. “That’s our guy!”

  “We know!” came Ananda’s voice as she tore out of the hotel. She grabbed my arm and pulled me into motion. And somehow she ran with even more inexplicable finesse in her heels. “Come on. We’re taking a shortcut.”

  We took a different route than Hercules and Justin, who’d gone down the main avenue. Ananda led me onto a narrow side-path that ran parallel to the road, her heels clicking.

  “There’s an MEOA rally,” I breathed as we ran. “A huge one.”

  Ananda groaned. “Shit. We’ve got to cut him off.”

  As we ran, Cupid flew up alongside us in his cloud. “I’ve got this.” And then he raced past us down the path, veering left around the corner of a building with his bow and a nocked arrow at the ready.

  “GoneGodDamn flying Others,” Ananda growled. She and I ran as fast as we could, but precious, uncertain seconds passed before we too came around the side of the building and into view of the intersection Cupid was now careening toward.

  There at the corner, a scream erupted.

  First it was a single scream. Then it was a second, and a third, as all the tourists and pedestrians processed that a penanggalan—a vampire-like Other whose entrails (naturally) dragged behind her—had been taken hostage in the middle of the street.

  And a syringe was poised right over her heart. Our guy was holding it.

  Cupid came to a halt, his bow raised. “Let the Other go,” he yelled.

  People weren’t panicking, but they also weren’t moving. Most had gone completely still, staring at the scene unfolding before them. Some had even pulled out their phones and raised them aloft. An indictment of the state of the GoneGodWorld, if there ever was one.

  Ananda and I pushed past pedestrians, trying to keep a clear view of Cupid and the killer. When we finally got close, Justin and Hercules burst into view from the other street.