“She’s an ally,” I finished, bracing myself on the wall. I thought of the times I’d met with her, what she’d said to me about being a good person. Had she meant any of that? Hercules had to be mistaken. “He’s lying,” I said. “Mark must be lying.”

  “Oh no,” Hercules said. “I always get the truth.”

  Cupid peeked in the door. “And there’s not a scratch on him. Remarkable.”

  I spun on Ananda, who hadn’t spoken. Her face had gone pale, and she stared at the opposite door like she could divine some greater truth from it. “Ana?”

  She didn’t respond, but her chin quivered. I couldn’t recall ever seeing her chin quiver.

  “Ananda,” Justin said, “how did you meet Ms. Sparkle?”

  Ananda still didn’t respond. Not even with her eyes. She seemed shocked beyond comprehension.

  I stepped in front of her, set both hands on her shoulders. “Ana. We need your help right now. If Ms. Sparkle is behind all this, that means she’s got OtherX. She’s been using it to kill Others.”

  Her eyes finally focused on me. “It can’t be her.” Her voice sounded like sand over a dry plain. “I’ve known her for years.”

  I nodded. “I believe you. Mark could be lying.” My eyes flicked to Justin before I said what I didn’t want to say next. “But I think we need to go talk to her about this.”

  Ananda shook her head. “It’ll insult her. Do you know what it means to insult Julia Sparkle?” Her chin quivered again.

  I had never seen my sister afraid like this. Never.

  “I just delivered her an airborne counteragent to OtherX,” I said, “effectively saving every Other in this city from going up in magical flames. The very least she can do is answer a few questions.”

  Ananda didn’t answer. I saw her pulse distend the skin in her neck, though.

  “Where can we find her, Ananda?” Justin asked.

  “Man,” I heard Cupid murmur to Hercules, “and I thought things were spicy enough in Vegas.”

  “We always meet at the restaurant,” Ananda whispered. “But she told me I could meet her in her office whenever I want.”

  “Her office?” I said. “Do you know where that is?”

  Ananda nodded once, slowly. She pulled a pastel-colored business card out of her purse and handed it to me.

  Justin and I read it.

  “Sparkle Nails?” he said.

  “Oh my GoneGods.” Cupid rose into the air. “That nail place with the big glittery fingernail sticking up from the roof? So gaudy.”

  “ ‘A family-run business,’ ” Justin read off. “That’s sweet.”

  “That’s exactly what Julia Sparkle isn’t.” Ananda finally seemed to have regained herself. She swiped the business card back from me. “But it’s a great facade.” She stalked down the hallway toward the entrance Hercules and I had come in by.

  “Ana!” I called after her. “Where are you going?”

  “To prepare,” she called back. “We’re going to get some answers vis-a-vis this string of dead Others.”

  “So we’re going to see her?”

  “You bet your mer-ass we are.”

  “What should we do with Mark Rissetto?” Hercules asked. “I wouldn’t mind squeezing his head like a grape, after what he did to the penanggalan.”

  “We’re not murdering anyone,” Cupid said. “But if anyone’s head deserves to splatter like a grape, it’s his.”

  Meanwhile, the killer had somehow sensed that Ananda was departing, and was banging on the door of the security room to be let out. “My sweet lady,” he crooned. “I miss your dulcet tones.”

  Justin made a face at Cupid. “Do your arrows make everyone so corny?”

  “It’s all about what’s on the inside,” Cupid said. “That cheese you’re hearing? It was just waiting to come out of him.”

  “Ananda Ananda, sweetie sweetie pea,” Mark Risetto sang through the door. “Have you got a kiss for me?”

  “I’m going to turn him over to the police,” Justin said over the noise. “I’ll say we caught him sneaking into the hotel.”

  I hovered in the hallway, gazing at my boyfriend. I wanted to say so many things to him, but I didn’t know which one to start with. “Hey Justin,” I murmured.

  His hand was already on the doorknob when he turned to me. “Go with your sister. I’ll meet you back at the apartment.”

  I blinked. “How do you know she’s going to the apartment?”

  “You haven’t noticed?” Cupid said. “She goes to her apartment to primp before absolutely everything. Doesn’t matter if she’s working or chasing bad guys.”

  I stared at the cherub, not fully comprehending. Then I thought back over the past week, and I realized that was true. “You’re right.”

  She hadn’t used to do that back when we were immortal. A strange pang of sadness hit me; I didn’t fully know her anymore. After four years, she had habits I didn’t know about. An entire life.

  Even if we’d been at odds for decades, we were still the only two encantado in Vegas from the same matriarchal cluster. My only sister. I loved her, after everything.

  “Go with her. We’ll meet you there after we’ve disposed of Mark Rissetto,” Hercules said with steel in his voice. “And we’ll be by your side when you go to meet with this Julia Sparkle.”

  I beamed at the three of them with gratitude. But mostly I felt it toward Justin, who, despite his cold feet about potentially being the father to the only Other-baby in the world, was still here, too.

  “All right.” I backed down the hallway after Ananda. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

  “Let’s give Mr. Screw Off a nice little send-off,” I heard Cupid say with a tinge of deviousness as I ran down the hall after my sister.

  Chapter 17

  I followed Ananda through the Bellagio’s doorway, bursting into the bright light of the afternoon. She had already slipped into the driver’s seat of the blue sports car. She started the engine, but I ran out in front of the car before she could hit the gas. I threw my hands on the hood and met her eyes through the windshield.

  She stared at me for a second. Then she gestured for me to get in.

  I climbed in, and the car started into motion before I had even shut my door. She careened through the parking lot, taking us onto the Strip, and we rode in silence toward her apartment.

  When we squealed into the lot across from the apartment and came to a jerking stop, I turned toward her. “Ana …”

  But she was already stepping out of the car, closing the door behind her.

  I followed her out and across the street. “Ana!”

  She didn’t respond; she just kept walking. Together we clanged up the metal staircase to the second story, and her keys jingled as she pulled them out of her purse. When we came into the empty apartment, she tossed her purse on the sofa and stalked toward the bedroom.

  “ANA!” I yelled as the door slammed behind me.

  She turned around just before the doorway. “Speak.”

  “We need to talk about what’s happening here. We need to think about this before we go barging into Ms. Sparkle’s office to interrogate her.”

  She let a long sigh. “Talk, talk, talk. Think, think, think. That’s how you ended up with fifty years of memories gone.”

  I stepped forward. “Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted my memories sealed away if you hadn’t told me to throw a man in a river.”

  She scoffed. “Really, Isa? That’s what you think?” She pointed at me. “That man you threw in the river was how you assuaged your guilt. He was what came after.”

  I went stock still. Something was pressing at my head, and whatever it was felt grave. Terrifying. I didn’t want it. “My guilt?”

  “Seems you didn’t unlock all your memories,” she spat. “At least, not the most important one.” She turned, disappeared into the kitchen. I heard a metallic clang, and then the click-click of her heels as she passed into the bedroom.

  I remained in the living room, gazing at the spot where she’d been.

  The most important memory. The most important.

  That thing still pressed, still wanted to be seen and heard. It sought my attention—my full attention. But I sensed if I gave it that, I would not be able to do what needed to be done.

  Right now, I needed to walk into the bedroom and talk to my sister.

  When I stepped into the bedroom doorway, she was using a butcher’s knife to cut open her mattress. Its insides puffed out like guts, and she reached past them, pressing her arm deep inside the mattress.

  “Ana,” I whispered.

  “Save it.” She removed her arm from the mattress, and with it came a ferocious little blade, the point of it arrowhead-sharp. All at once, I remembered the overhand grip with which she held it. I recognized the gleaming tip of it cutting a horizontal swath through the air.

  I knew that blade.

  “Salvagem,” I whispered.

  She rose, stepped around the disemboweled mattress toward the closet. “Ah, so you remember some things.” She pulled off her dress, the porcelain swath of her body coming into view, and I automatically averted my eyes to the window.

  That graveness pressed at my mind again with clawing force. The blade was part of the memory. It was the blade Ananda had used that day I’d killed a man. For her part, she had killed ten men.

  But not in time. Not in time to save him.

  All at once the memory bloomed, unfolded, came into clarity.

  Enzo was a simple man, a farmer. He wasn’t terribly handsome, his skin dark and callused from the sun and his labor. He was in his thirties when Ananda met him. But she loved him. She loved him like she’d loved no one else before or after.

  Because love didn’t know the difference between simplicity or complexity. It saw beauty where it wanted to, and in her case, it lay in Enzo’s belly-laugh. It lay in the way he set his hand to her cheek and called her his swan.

  Those ten years, she was different. We had been fighters together for forty years until she met him. Then she became softer, kinder, less scathing in speech and action. In lieu of cutting men down with Salvagem, she learned to plant simple vegetables. She went to live with him on his farm for years, a different life than she’d ever known. Hard, back-breaking, full of uncertainty and prayer for rain.

  But she had never been happier.

  I was happy for her. She and I had been close, yes. We had been fighters, yes. But I had only fought half-heartedly. She had always been the spitfire, the one who killed.

  I’d just wanted to be close to her. I had adored her that much.

  The afternoon the bandits came, the three of us were seated around the table in the farmhouse. I had come to visit—I came every week—and we had just finished eating.

  When the door opened, they didn’t hesitate. They shot Ananda first, right through the center of her chest. She fell over backward in her chair, hit her head so hard it might have fractured. Then they shot me through the shoulder, and I spun to the floor, landed on my belly. That was where I stayed as they dragged Enzo outside.

  It seemed he’d gotten the better end of things. They hadn’t shot him, after all. But of course, we were immortal. He was the one in true danger.

  Ana’s voice came to me through the darkness. “Isa,” she rasped.

  When my eyes opened, I realized I had been unconscious. For how long? I still heard the bandits outside, heard them whipping Enzo.

  “Help him,” Ananda breathed. “Save him.”

  I crawled to her, found her with a gaping hole in her chest. We were immortal, yes, but we could still be wounded. We weren’t invincible. A wound like she’d sustained would heal, but it would take weeks to fully close.

  And Enzo didn’t have weeks.

  Outside, one of the bandits said, “He lays with the creatures. He’s poisoned with their evil.”

  They knew what we were. And if there was one truth throughout my five hundred years of life, it was that humans feared encantado. And human fear easily twisted into hate.

  Her eyes flicked down to her leg, where Salvagem lay sheathed at her calf. “Kill them all.”

  I nodded, reached out for the blade with my unhurt arm. It was the first time I’d ever held it, and the metal sent a chill through me. I’d always fought with my fists, my feet. Never a weapon.

  I’d never killed.

  I dragged myself up from the floor, staggered through the doorway. The sunlight nearly blinded me before my eyes adjusted to the sight.

  “Ah,” said one of the bandits. “You see? They bleed pink.”

  Ten men stood around Enzo, who sat on his knees. A smear of blood ran down the side of his face. “Run, Isa,” he said.

  The bandit beside him slapped him across the face. “No … she’s staying right where she is.”

  Ana had told me to kill them all. All ten. It had been years since I’d fought, and it had always been by her side. Never alone. I wasn’t a killer. I didn’t know if I could take them all.

  But only one amongst them had a pistol. The others had crude weapons—belts, blunt clubs, machetes. Even with one arm dangling by my side, I had Salvagem, and I had my secret illusion.

  When they approached, they didn’t expect to fight a giantess.

  I grew so fast that by the time they reached me, I knocked the first man on his back with my fist. The second tried to slash at my arm, but I shoulder-checked him into the dirt. Two others struck at me with clubs, but given my size, I hardly felt the blows.

  They, too, hit the dirt.

  The rest ran, tearing off across the farmland. Except for one. The one with the pistol.

  I had made a crucial error. I had forgotten Ananda’s teaching: always go after the most dangerous opponent first.

  Men with guns always have an overabundance of pride. Of belief. Of reckless menace. The last man had pulled Enzo to his feet, stood behind him with the pistol to his temple. “If you come one step closer, I’ll shoot him.”

  I didn’t move. I could have swept in and thrown him aside in one motion, but I didn’t.

  Even with how fast I was, a bullet was faster.

  “Let him go,” I whispered.

  “KILL HIM, ISA!” came a sickening yell from behind me. “KILL HIM NOW!”

  The bandit took one step back, then another, dragging Enzo with him.

  I still had Salvagem in my hand. I could have thrown it, maybe struck the bandit in the center of his forehead before he had time to pull the trigger. It might have worked.

  Instead, I hoped he would let Enzo go once he’d gotten far enough away.

  “Just release him,” I said. “Release him and I won’t hurt you.”

  He took another two steps—he was outside my range now. “OK,” he said. But before he turned and ran, he shot Enzo through the temple.

  I had never heard a scream from Ananda like the one that followed. I think if she weren’t immortal, she would have died right there in that doorway. She would have screamed until her lungs closed up forever.

  The sound of that scream was why I chased the bandit down and threw him into the river.

  The sound of that scream was why I had begged the goddess Yemoja to take my memories away.

  Chapter 18

  My sister had loved once. Ananda had loved someone.

  “Enzo,” I whispered.

  Ananda spun toward me with a hiss, Salvagem still in her hand. “What did you say?”

  “Enzo. He was your love. Your only love.”

  She took two steps toward me. “You don’t have the right to say his name. You, of all people.”

  I felt so heartbroken for her—for what I’d done—I wanted the goddess to come take my memories away again. I understood now why Yemoja had done what she’d done.

  I had failed my sister in the worst way.

  “Ana,” I said, “I’m so sorry about Enzo.”

  She stared at me so long I saw tears enter her eyes. Just as they grew glassy, she reached out and slapped me across the face. This time stung worse. “How dare you say his name. I should kill you now. I should have done it then.”

  Her fingers burned on my cheek long after they had slipped away. I raised my eyes through the veil of my hair. “I killed him. I killed the bandit who shot him.”

  “Not soon enough,” she growled. All at once, a tremor of emotion overcame her, and she slumped onto the edge of the bed, hands at her face.

  I couldn’t remember seeing her cry. Not once. Well, that wasn’t true … I had seen her cry on that day outside the farmhouse. Never before, and never after.

  At the risk of another slap, I approached the bed. I sat wordlessly next to her, our thighs touching. She didn’t reject me, so I set a hand on her back as she allowed herself this moment of vulnerability.

  When her sobs trailed away, she looked up at me. “I hated you for so long. I spent decades hating you. Even when you showed up in Vegas.”

  That pierced like a knife, but I nodded. “I understand.”

  “But after a few days ...” She reached out, flounced my hair. “I just couldn’t any longer. You were my sister. You always have been.”

  “But you never fully forgave me,” I whispered.

  “I resented your weakness. I hated that the goddess had taken the memories from you, and I had to live with them. For a hundred years I’ve remembered the day Enzo died with crystalline clarity, but you got off scot-free.”

  “I don’t know why she favored me.”

  “I do.” Ananda stared at the dagger in her hands. “You were softer, sweeter. Yemoja couldn’t stand to see you suffer, precious child that you were.”

  “That’s not true.” But even as I said it, I knew it was. I hated to acknowledge that the goddess favored me. It felt so arbitrary, so unearned.

  “Bullshit. You know it is.” Ananda wiped her face and rose.

  I stared up at her. “What are you going to do with Salvagem, Ana?”

  “I’m going to keep it in my boot.”

  In her boot. That was where I kept El Lobizon’s claw, the dagger I had carried with me since I’d left Montreal. That was what she had always done, back then. She had carried Salvagem in a makeshift sheath around her calf, just as she did that day at the farmhouse.