And that was why I did the same. It was a blood memory, an instinct. I had admired her all this time, not even remembering Salvagem or that we had been so close once, true sisters and fighters.

  I rose with her. “Are you going to kill Julia Sparkle?”

  Ananda finished dressing, pulling on jeans, tall boots, a white blouse and a black leather jacket. “If I have to,” she said in an unnervingly placid voice. “I’ll do what I have to, Isa.”

  “She was your ally. She was the resistance’s ally.”

  “I thought so. But if I was wrong, then I was wrong.”

  “Ana,” I said, “we know now the OtherX was never airborne. What if she needed me to make it so?”

  She paused. “What are you talking about?”

  “I made the counteragent airborne. OtherXF. All she has to do is reverse-engineer it.” I crossed to the doorway and leaned into it, the full weight of this potential reality settling over me. The water plant. She had taken me to the water plant to show me where she would release the OtherXF.

  But what if it wasn’t the OtherXF she was planning to release into the water system?

  “If she’s behind all this,” I said, “then I’ve made things worse. I’ve given her exactly what she needed.”

  Ananda slid Salvagem into the lip of her boot. “That’s why I’m going to see her.”

  “I’m coming.”

  She scoffed, moved toward the doorway. “You’re pregnant, Isa. And you won’t do what needs to be done.”

  I stepped in front of her. “I’m the one who understands the pathogen. I manufactured the counteragent. You need me there.”

  She raised her eyes to me. “It’s too dangerous. Move aside.” She tried to push past me, but I grabbed her wrist.

  And once more, I glimpsed the future.

  We stood in a lavish office, a wide, shuttered window backing a tall chair set behind a desk. Around me, all the trappings of wealth—a very particular kind of wealth. Ms. Sparkle’s kind of wealth.

  A hot-pink settee in one corner, two rhinestone-encrusted pillows atop it. A framed portrait of Edward the bichon frise on the wall. The wide swath of desk glittering with a purple gemstone facade.

  And in the center of it all, I saw me.

  I saw my small back and my blonde hair sweeping down it as I straddled someone. A pair of purple-clad legs jutted out from beneath me, the feet tucked into kitten heels.

  Kitten heels.

  Ms. Sparkle.

  I was straddling Ms. Sparkle, who writhed to be free of me. But I was overpowering her, getting the better of her.

  This had happened to me twice before. The first time with Serena Russo, and the second time with Daiski, her super soldier. Both times I had seen the future through their eyes.

  Which meant I was seeing myself through Ananda’s eyes.

  ↔

  I never got to find out what happened next, because as quickly as the vision had come on, it departed. The glimpse into the future was gone, and I wasn’t able to see all I needed to see.

  We were back in Ananda’s apartment, her wrist still in my grip. Her fingers shook. But instead of pulling away, she remained there, frozen. Staring at me.

  I released her hand and stepped back. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know which part I was apologizing for, but it felt like the right thing to say. It felt like I had violated my sister’s mind. And—possibly worse—her future.

  “What the hell was that, Isa?” she whispered. “I saw …” But she didn’t finish. She looked thoroughly shook.

  “You saw me in Ms. Sparkle’s office,” I finally said. “Straddling her.”

  She nodded once, her eyes glazing. “I felt my own heartbeat, heard the blood in my ears. It was as real as you and me standing here right now.”

  “It’s … it’s the oracle’s power,” I said. “I don’t know how it works, but”—I lifted my left hand—“I told you this arm was spliced with the Oracle of Delphi’s DNA. The World Army did this to me.”

  Ananda gazed at the arm. “And you didn’t think to mention what would happen if you touched me?”

  “I should have.” That was another thing I was sorry for. “There was so much else going on. The killings, the OtherX, my pregnancy.”

  “And what does that mean, you having oracle DNA?” She studied my face, her eyes flicking between mine. “What just happened between us? Why were you inside my head?”

  “I think we saw a future.”

  “A future? Not the future?”

  “The oracle once told me that there are thousands of futures. They all branch off from our choices.” I paused. “But the few times this happened before …”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “In each case, what I saw became the future.”

  She exhaled hard, looked around like she was trying to find something. Then she passed by me and went into the kitchen, where she opened the mini-fridge. “I need a drink.”

  “Is that really the best thing right now?”

  She took a long swig of white wine from a bottle. “You bet your ass it is.” She set the bottle down on the counter. “How does it work, this power? You just grab someone?”

  “Sometimes, I guess. It doesn’t happen all the time … just when my emotions are high.”

  Three sharp knocks sounded on the front door. My spine went ruler-straight, but then Cupid’s voice rang out. “Open up. It’s the po-po.”

  Ananda rolled her eyes as she crossed to the peephole in the living room. “Is he always like that?”

  “Just about.”

  She let Cupid, Justin and Hercules into the apartment.

  “We’ve accomplished our labor,” Hercules said, wiping his hands together.

  “Labor?” I asked.

  “Herc buddy, don’t say labor when you mean task or goal—it’s super confusing.” Cupid turned to me and Ananda. “That means we took the killer to the police. Well, more like Hercules tossed him in the lobby and yelled out that he had captured the Other killer.”

  “And we told them what we’d witnessed,” Justin said. “Apparently some eyewitness accounts corroborated that we had all tackled him in the middle of the street, so we’re heroes. They didn’t even notice that I also happened to be a suspected arsonist, thank the GoneGods.”

  Hercules set his fingers to his chest. “I, for one, have always been a hero.”

  “That’s great.” Ananda grabbed the car keys off the table. “Enjoy your heroism as you protect my sister. I’m off to see about a drug lady.”

  I started after her. “Wait. We need to talk about what just happened. What we just saw.”

  She glanced over at me. “No we don’t. If you aren’t with me, what we saw is not a potential future. Problem solved.”

  “You saw something?” Justin asked.

  I cringed; I didn’t want to tell Justin about the vision I’d had. Nor did I want to tell Cupid or Hercules—none of them would agree to me going to this meeting. Not after they found out about what I’d seen.

  But I had seen myself with the upper hand. Ananda needed me there.

  In her purse, Ananda’s phone began ringing. We all watched as she lifted it out and stared at the screen. She made a face as she answered. “Hello, Julia.”

  My breath caught. The rest of us crowded around Ananda like her ducklings, listening in.

  “Ananda dear, we’ve got an emergency,” Ms. Sparkle said over the line. “I need to meet with you in my office.”

  Ananda’s eyebrows rose. “Funny thing. I was just about to come see you.”

  “Perfect.” Ms. Sparkle sounded completely unsurprised. “Please come immediately. And be sure to bring Isabella.”

  Ananda froze, her eyes flicking to me. “Why?”

  “The emergency has to do with the OtherXF. We’ve encountered a major issue that only she can deal with.”

  I nodded hard at my sister. I wanted to be there—needed to be at that meeting with Ms. Sparkle. Because, despite what Mark Risotto had told us about Julia Sparkle being the source of the OtherX killings, I sensed that if I wasn’t there with Ananda, all of this would turn out very badly.

  I had begun to realize something about the visions: they were guideposts. Directions. I needed to make that vision happen. It was the right path forward—maybe the only true path—even if that meant I would have to fight Ms. Sparkle.

  Say yes, I mouthed. Trust me. Trust me, Ananda.

  And despite the hundreds of years of ups and downs between us—despite Enzo, and the future we’d just seen, when one of us asked the other to trust her, we did it. Because we were sisters. We always had been, and we always would be.

  “All right,” Ananda said slowly. “We’ll be there. Both of us.”

  Chapter 19

  Somehow, all of us managed to cram into the blue sports car. Well, that wasn’t true—Cupid had to ride on the roof. “Won’t be the first time,” he said as he flew up and sat cross-legged.

  When they’d found out I was accompanying Ananda to Julia Sparkle’s office, Justin, Hercules and Cupid had insisted on coming. In fact, Justin had refused to let me go unless he could be there.

  Which, despite the whole not-having-free-will aspect, I found endearing. He felt protective of me—just as I did of him.

  When we pulled up in front of Sparkle Nails at sunset, it looked just as Cupid had described: an enormous nail sticking up toward the sky in all its glittery, phallic glory.

  “Ugh,” Cupid said as he floated down to the sidewalk. “Like I said, so gauche.”

  We all came into the nail salon, whose pale, pink overhead lights were still lit, nail technicians working away into the evening. Not a single one lifted her eyes as we came in, which was strange.

  What was stranger was that Lux the pixie floated straight down the center of the aisle, past all the pedicure chairs and the manicure tables and right to me.

  “It’s you,” I said.

  Justin glanced at me. “You know her?”

  “That’s Lux. She’s, uh …” I didn’t want to tell them her occupation—not in semi-public.

  Lux shot me a don’t go there look. “I’m Ms. Sparkle’s assistant,” she finished in her ornery, high-pitched voice as she surveyed the lot of us. “She asked me to bring the two of you back.” She pointed a finger at me, then at Ananda. “Not you three.” By which she meant Justin, Hercules and Cupid.

  Justin stepped forward. “We’re not leaving their sides.”

  “You can remain in the waiting area,” Lux said with a small, haughty exhale. “Otherwise, we’ll have you removed.”

  “I guess that’ll have to do,” Hercules said. I could hear the wariness in his voice; he didn’t like this one bit. I didn’t like it, either. In fact, a predictable anxiety had been growing in me ever since we’d left Ananda’s apartment. Was I right to believe the vision I’d seen was the path forward?

  I wished the oracle was still alive. And not just because I needed her help. I just missed Pythia. With some people, the world felt solid, manageable. Graspable. She was one of them—like a brief and encompassing mother to me.

  But a part of her was with me now. Would always be with me.

  I turned toward the other three. “We’ll be OK. You stay in the waiting area.”

  Justin looked deeply uncomfortable, but he nodded.

  “So are we decided?” Lux folded her arms, looking eminently bored.

  “Take us back,” said Ananda.

  The pixie spun around, gestured with one finger over her shoulder for us to follow. Ananda took the lead, I followed her, and Justin, Hercules and Cupid came in order behind us.

  The five of us struck a line through the center of the pedicure chairs, from which the workers and the patrons—all humans—never looked up. They just kept filing, kept reading their magazines.

  I’d like to say that their casualness made me feel better. Less worried. But the fact that they’d been privy to our entire conversation and didn’t even look up only heightened my anxieties.

  Perhaps this was normal to these workers, these patrons. And that was truly scary.

  We passed through a curtain. I’d expected to enter a small back office, but as it turned out, the curtain was only the portal into the true depths of Sparkle Nails. Beyond, the real operation began.

  Lux led us down a long, bare hallway, off which windowless doors promised nothing but unanswered questions. They bore no indication of what lay inside, although behind each I imagined another Mark Rissetto, a waterboarding room, dead Others.

  My imagination had always been impossibly vivid. Chalk it up to hundreds of years of coddling by a mother goddess. Often, it’s those who have the least experience who imagine it most ardently.

  At the end of the hallway, Lux set one tiny thumb to a reader beside the doorknob. This pixie dealt in much more than meth. The thought occurred to me: had she been planted by Ms. Sparkle to keep an eye on me in the lab? To give me the necessary piece to the puzzle I’d found in the morgue? Because her privileges greatly exceeded that of a low-level cook.

  When the reader blinked green, Lux pointed at Hercules. “You. Open the door.”

  Hercules stepped forward, turned the knob.

  “What’s that about?” Cupid whispered to Justin.

  “It’s about doorknobs not being sized for pixie hands,” Lux shot back. “You try turning a knob the size of your entire body and tell me you don’t feel like you’ve had a two-hour workout.”

  “I like her,” Cupid whispered even more quietly to me. “What did she say her name was?”

  “Lux,” the pixie threw over her shoulder as we passed into a room clearly designed for waiting. And when I say waiting, I mean Ms. Sparkle-style.

  As evidence, a three-tiered fountain gurgled in the center of the room. Purple, overstuffed couches sat at either side of it against the walls, and a corner-to-corner painting of a field in bloom covered one entire swath of wall.

  In each corner, well-tended plants pressed toward the ceiling, which offered a chandelier dangling with delicate crystals and a diffuse light that made Ananda’s skin look poreless. Heck, it made us all look bedroom-sexy.

  Lux turned to Justin and the two demigods. “Water? Coffee?”

  Cupid half-turned his face with a simper. “How about your number?”

  Lux gave a bigger eye roll than I imagined a pixie was capable of. “I’m not interested in toddlers in loincloths.”

  Cupid raised a finger. “I’m not—”

  Justin cleared his throat, probably from discomfort over Cupid’s attempts to flirt. “Nothing for me.”

  “I’ll take three cups of your best brew, if they come in the miniature vessels you modern humans use,” Hercules said. “No cow’s milk, no sugar, none of the adornments you slather atop your drinks—just black.”

  Lux stared at him a beat. “So you want coffee,” she said in a deadpan. Then she flew off into an anteroom.

  “When do we get to see Julia?” Ananda called after her.

  “When she calls for you,” Lux shot back.

  “She said it was an emergency,” I called. And on our end, it was; I suspected Julia Sparkle was in the process of orchestrating something with the OtherX. Something big.

  “When she calls for you,” Lux repeated, a little edge to her voice.

  Ananda and I exchanged a glance. “ ‘An emergency’ my Brazilian ass,” she murmured as we all sat on the purple couches.

  ↔

  Five minutes later, Lux flitted out from the anteroom. “Hey,” she said. “Big guy in the faux-lion skin getup. You really expect me to lug all three cups over to you?”

  Hercules rose. “Absolutely not, my—“

  “Are you really about to ‘my lady’ me?” Lux cut in. “Because if so, I need to teach you a thing or two about modern culture.”

  A grin split Hercules’s face as he crossed toward her. “I would be honored if you were to teach me.”

  “For one thing,” she said as they disappeared through the doorway, “you need to learn the meaning of the phrase ‘nice guy.’ ”

  Cupid peered after Lux. “I really like her.”

  “I don’t think she likes you back, buddy,” Ananda said. “Sorry to tell you.”

  “Oh, she will.” Cupid sat back on the couch with his hands behind his head.

  Ananda scoffed. “What, are you going to bean her with an arrow?”

  Evidently that was the wrong thing to say. And when I say “wrong,” I mean she triggered the demigod—hard.

  Cupid flew up into the air in front of Ananda, both hands on his hips. “I would never do such a thing. That would be a complete violation of her free will, her rights.”

  Ananda looked completely unaffected. “But that’s what you do. That’s your schtick.”

  He threw his hands up in the air. “That’s the problem with this GoneGodWorld—everyone thinks everyone else has a ‘schtick.’ There’s no genuine vulnerability anymore, no belief in your fellow Other.” He glanced at Justin. “Or human, as it were.”

  “I believe in two things.” Ananda raised her pointer and middle finger in the air. “Lust and selfishness.”

  I shot her a glance. Was that really what she believed in? The starkness of it surprised me, but maybe it was how much it rang of truth. Maybe, in the end, it was the stark truth, stated without adornment, that shocked us the most.

  “Wow,” Cupid said. “That’s cynical.”

  “Or realistic,” Ananda said. “And your arrows perfectly serve those two beliefs. Hence, that’s your schtick.”

  Cupid took a long, calming breath. “All right, I can see you just need a little educating. That may have been true back when the gods were around. I was created to serve their will.” He leaned toward all of us to whisper, “Hera was particularly bossy about that. But don’t say her name around Herc—he’ll go berserk.”

  “She made his life miserable,” I said. “From beginning to end.”

  “That’s right,” Cupid said. “Many of the gods did. That’s why, after the gods left, me and my brothers swore to only use our arrows in times of great need.”