That was when I chased the bandit down and killed him. That was when I took vengeance for my sister. Then my memories were wiped, and I forgot about Ananda in the farmhouse.

  Weeks later, I saw her by the river and she would not speak to me. I didn’t know why, because Yemoja took it all away. She took away our closeness, our pain, every memory I had of Enzo and their love.

  And now the memories were all back, but Yemoja was gone.

  Immortality was gone.

  My sister would die.

  It felt like an inviolable law had been violated. For all her talk of living fast and leaving a beautiful corpse, it hadn’t seemed possible. She could not die, and the sky could not fall. She could not die, and the Earth could not stop spinning.

  But she would.

  As the blood spread across her white shirt, everything was different. She lay on her back just as she had then, but it wasn’t the same. Not at all. She would die.

  The only thing I wanted to do was to be by her side. But Julia Sparkle had a gun. She had a gun pointed at Ananda.

  “Dolphin bitches,” Ms. Sparkle spat, swinging the gun around.

  Toward me. She was angling it toward me.

  I pushed myself up, threw my body at the older woman with a scream. I hit her arm with all my force, and the gun flew aside, slid to the wall. I lunged after it and hit the wall myself, knocking my head and sending every loose gem in the room tinkling.

  From somewhere, Ananda groaned. In my periphery I thought I saw pink blood spreading, but I was too dazed from hitting my head to see clearly.

  I felt cold metal in my hand. Somehow I had managed to grab the handgun when I hit the wall, and now found it in my grip. At least I had managed that much. But before I could raise it, a growl echoed through the room and a piercing pain shot up from my ankle.

  Edward the bichon frise had attached himself to my leg, all his tiny teeth sunk into my skin.

  I swung my leg, but he wouldn’t let go. GoneGodDamn, tiny dogs were the worst.

  No … it wasn’t that the dog was too strong. It was that I was too weak. I was losing strength, and not only that …

  “Good boy,” Ms. Sparkle crooned through her bloody teeth. “Hold her there a little while.”

  As I lifted my eyes to Ms. Sparkle, I lost my grip on the handgun. It clattered to the floor as, between us, a white haze appeared.

  A haze of magic.

  My magic.

  It was escaping through my skin.

  The flask. To my right, Ananda began to convulse as her body was also enveloped in magic, her face most of all. She began to pass through illusions, one and then the next, fast and faster, burning her magic away.

  How?

  “It’s in her now,” Ms. Sparkle whispered. “And it works so fast.”

  Before me, the older woman gazed at Ananda with anticipation, and I understood with a twist of the gut. The tumbler. The drink.

  Julia Sparkle had poisoned the flask with OtherX. And because she wasn’t an Other herself, it had no effect on her. Just Ananda.

  “Congratulations, dear.” She pushed herself to her feet, wiping blood from her mouth. “You’ve successfully helped OtherX go airborne. By the looks of you, it works wonderfully.”

  I lifted my eyes to her, but a wrenching in my stomach forced my head down. I had inhaled the OtherX, and it was in my system now.

  “That’s the awful irony, isn’t it?” Julia Sparkle murmured from somewhere far, far above me. “Dying to your own creation. Not what any of us wanted, but you did try to kill me, after all.”

  Any of us? Of who? But I didn’t have time to consider her words.

  Something deep, deep inside me began to move on its own. It felt like a long-dormant creature had twitched to life, and its eyes were finally opening. And that creature’s name was Magic.

  For the first time, I wasn’t in control of my magic. It was in control of me.

  Goddess Yemoja, this pathogen was a cruel mistress.

  ↔

  So this was the power of OtherX. I had seen its capabilities, even watched an Other die to it, but I had never imagined this. This helplessness, this pain.

  Shifting from one illusion to another involved a certain reconfiguring of my skin, my muscles, even my bones. Each time I had to make myself shorter or taller, change my entire frame, my makeup.

  In my heyday, I might shift from one illusion to another in a few seconds. I had once passed alongside a house as a black-haired young woman, emerged from behind it as a blonde. But one illusion had always completed before the next began. Always. It was a necessary part of shifting.

  Or so I’d thought.

  As the pathogen filled my body, took control of me, the OtherX hastened that process to almost blinding speed. I was a passenger in my body; I watched as my skin changed color, felt each bone snap and grow, the muscles shrink and twist, everything in a constant process of permutation and reconfiguration.

  The accompanying pain was almost incomprehensible. I had never experienced anything like it. I felt as though I was being snapped like twigs, again and again.

  And all I could think in my frenetic, spasming brain was that my baby would die. It would never survive this.

  I had failed her.

  I had failed the little girl inside me.

  How could I have known it was a girl? I couldn’t, but the feeling of her coalesced inside me, and I felt a certainty in the way some people look into a clear sky and predict rain.

  My baby was a girl. She had been, until she was poisoned by Julia Sparkle.

  Meanwhile, the bichon frise held onto my leg.

  “Down, boy.” Ms. Sparkle snapped her fingers; Edward let go at once and trotted to her side. “She’s done.”

  I watched through half-lidded eyes, slumped against the wall, as she turned toward her desk, reached for something on its surface. It was purple and studded—an old-fashioned phone.

  She was calling someone.

  She was calling someone as we died, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t want her to be my last sight.

  I tried to think of the people I loved. Hinata, my best friend. Aimee. Ananda. A face arose in my vision—one I hadn’t expected. A chiseled face, a comforting one.

  I loved that face? So I did.

  At the same time, something changed inside me. The pain had felt like it would never end—as agonizing pain always did—until it didn’t.

  A tiny bloom began in my stomach, a balm. It started there, where the magic had activated. And it stayed, issuing its way through my core with slow, soothing tendrils.

  I focused on that. I focused on where it didn’t hurt.

  It was what allowed me to stand, even as my magic forced me into illusion after illusion, smoke hissing from my skin. I was losing months—maybe years—off my life, but I had control.

  Julia Sparkle’s long nail clicked as she touched the buttons on her phone, the receiver set to her ear. She pressed them slowly, deliberately, without any concern.

  Through the receiver, I heard a ringing. And then a female voice answered.

  “It’s me,” Ms. Sparkle said. “I have them both here in my office.”

  When I took a step toward her, she turned. “Oh,” she said, her eyes widening. The phone lowered from her ear.

  It may have been the magic, or it may have just been me. But my hands folded, and Julia Sparkle appeared smaller and smaller. Her chin lifted higher and higher as she gazed up at me, and it only occurred to her to swing the phone at me after I had become so tall my head brushed the chandelier.

  This was the last thing Ms. Sparkle would ever see—a giantess. It was what my sister would have wanted.

  “You killed her,” I whispered. And I didn’t know whether I meant Ananda or my unborn child—maybe both. But the effect on me was just the same.

  Julia Sparkle didn’t have time to scream before my fist swept around and knocked her over the desk. She slid across it, hit the tiled floor at an angle so odd her head seemed momentarily to join with her shoulder.

  Then she lay still.

  Chapter 22

  Ananda was alive.

  Barely. Just barely.

  The moment Ms. Sparkle hit the floor, I dropped to my sister’s side. I shrank as I knelt, that balm now greater than the pain inside me. I shifted to the elfin-featured blonde, the young woman my sister had known me as all week long. The woman she had fought her exes with. The woman she had snuck into the morgue with.

  The woman who would stay by her side until the end.

  I grabbed what remained of my jacket from where it had fallen when I shifted, pulled a syringe from the pocket and injected it straight into her heart, next to the gunshot wound. Her mouth opened in a silent gasp, eyes widening.

  “It’s the counteragent,” I whispered. “It’ll stop the poison.”

  The office door opened, and I heard the voices of Lux, Justin, Hercules and Cupid all speaking in turns, or maybe all at once. I wasn’t sure, because I didn’t look up.

  I removed the syringe with a faint wisp hope in me. But the OtherX had already burned through decades, and she only had a little life left. Even then, the counteragent needed time to work.

  Time she didn’t have.

  My two hands took hold of one of hers—so small, so wrinkled with sudden age—as the last of her magic rose from her like a soft fog.

  After five hundred years, my time with Ananda was down to seconds. And I wouldn’t waste even one.

  She gazed up at me, the OtherX forcing her eyes to shift colors—blue to brown to green to violet. It was mesmerizing, horrifying. Around her, only gray hair now splayed around her head. Within a moment, the gray shifted to white. And then her hair receded completely into what became the bare orb of her scalp.

  I brought her hand to touch my chest. “I’m so sorry. I should have done as you—”

  She interrupted me with a small squeeze of the hand. Her mouth opened, and a thin stream of air escaped. Along with it, words so quiet I had to lean close to hear. “You finally grew up.”

  That was the last of her air. And that was the last of her. Her hand shriveled in mine, still gripping me, as her magic sapped completely. Her eyes unfocused, and she curled in on herself like a wilting flower.

  A sob sounded, and I realized it had come from my own throat.

  Not like this. She wasn’t supposed to die like this.

  Not because of me.

  I gathered the remnants of her into my arms and held her as I would a child, close and tight. And it might as well have just been the two of us alone together, because the room had gone silent except for the wailing that, like my magic, had taken control of me.

  When my sobs finally ebbed away, a small hand touched my shoulder. Cupid stood before me, and as I lifted my face, he set a gentle finger on my chin to help it rise.

  “What happened?” he said.

  The words came out slowly, in a tiny voice. “She sacrificed herself for me. The OtherX—” My eyes widened, focusing on Cupid and then Hercules and Lux in the doorway. “You three can’t be in here.”

  Lux’s arms folded over her chest. “After all that work to get in, you want us out?”

  I didn’t know why Lux was suddenly on our side, but I didn’t have time to question it. “Julia Sparkle threw a glass of OtherX at my sister. It’s airborne. You all need to get outside, immediately.” I paused, reaching into my jacket for the syringes I had stashed away, which I tossed in turn to Cupid, Hercules and Lux. “All of you need to inject yourself with this.”

  Justin crossed to me, knelt as Hercules and Lux passed back down the hallway. “We need to get you out of here, too.”

  I clutched Ananda’s remains closer to my chest, as though he would try to take them from me. “I’m fine. It’s already gone through my system.”

  He surveyed me with one flick of the eyes. “But …”

  “I injected myself with the counteragent,” I said. “Yesterday afternoon.”

  Cupid had already inserted the needle’s point into his chubby arm. He grimaced as he pressed the stopper.

  Justin gazed down at Ananda. I knew what he was thinking—what he would never say. Why not Ananda? Why didn’t you give the counteragent to Ananda before this?

  My heart squeezed as I followed his gaze. I didn’t have a good answer—it was an oversight, a forgetting in the rush of her dervish whirl from place to place. In her anger, in the way she’d slapped my face. In her tears and talk of Enzo.

  I just didn’t think of it.

  My throat threatened to close over my words. “I failed her. I failed her in so many ways.” I looked up at Justin. “She knew. She knew she was a goner, and she took a bullet for me because of it.”

  “Maybe,” said Cupid. “Or maybe she took a bullet because she loved you.”

  I gazed at the demigod. “How could she? You don’t know what’s happened between us. She hated me for decades.”

  Cupid shook his head. “Whatever happened between you, all I know is what’s here in this room. You know it, too, Isa. She died for you. It was an act of pure love.”

  Some part of me didn’t want to believe what Cupid had said. It was a punishing, degraded part of me that loathed who I was, the choices I had made in my life. It said, You don’t deserve her love. You aren’t worthy.

  But another part of me knew what Cupid had said was true. In the end, everything came down to what was here in this room. And here in this room, my sister had pushed me out of the way of a bullet. She’d taken it through her heart, and in the end, she had squeezed my hand and looked me in the eye.

  She had forgiven me. And maybe, just maybe, she loved me after all.

  I was about to thank Cupid when the phone rang.

  Julia Sparkle’s rhinestone-studded desk phone.

  ↔

  Justin, Cupid and I stared at each other as the phone rang.

  “Should we answer it?” Cupid asked.

  I nodded. I had a suspicion about who was on the other end. “I will. Help me set her down.”

  Together, Justin and I gently lowered Ananda’s body to the floor. We wrapped her in her jacket as the phone continued to ring. I reached for Salvagem, Ananda’s dagger. It had clattered to the wall and lay sad and alone on the tile floor.

  I lifted the dagger, held it in both hands. My sister had once told me that great weapons must always have an owner. If they didn’t, then like a person, the weapon’s history would be forgotten.

  “Salvagem,” I whispered, slotting the blade into my other boot. “You won’t be forgotten.”

  When I rose, I was already burning a little magic. After how much I had already burned this evening—all for no good reason—this felt like a gift. I had never appreciated so well having the choice to make this sacrifice.

  I stepped to the desk and picked up the phone’s receiver, which still swung on its cord. When I lifted it to my ear, I sighed. “So sorry about that. The dog got wound up in the cord again.”

  After a few moments, I heard a female voice. That voice. “Julia? What about the encantado? You said you had them both.” She sounded breathless. “What happened? Are the encantado still alive?”

  “Serena,” I said, my voice now low and aged, “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Ananda ran into an issue with the pathogen, but Isabella’s fine.”

  Around me, I sensed Justin and Cupid go rigid.

  Serena paused. “I’m sure I’ve told you many times how dangerous the chemical is around Others—even in its original form.” Many times. Which meant the pathogen hadn’t originated with Julia Sparkle. It had originated with Serena Russo and the World Army. “Was Isabella exposed to it?”

  “No,” I lied. My eyes flicked to Edward, who had settled next to the body of his mistress. His head rose, but I set a finger to my lips. He thankfully didn’t bark.

  Serena breathed her relief into the phone. “Wonderful. Be gentle with her until we arrive—we don’t want her to miscarry. There’s a significant bonus in it for you if she’s unharmed.”

  I set my hand to the desk for balance. A piece had clicked into place in my mind. So this was part of why Serena had let me leave the facility. The thing about encantado was this: we withered in captivity, much more so than most creatures. We are meant only to be free. If she had seen what I thought she had in the garden, did that mean Serena Russo had given me my freedom to allow my pregnancy to take?

  A shard entered my heart as I thought about my child. My pregnancy had taken. And now it might be over.

  But I pushed the thought away. Right now, I had to get as much information as I could out of Serena. How did she know Julia Sparkle? I thought back to what Ananda had told me when we’d first arrived in Las Vegas.

  The resistance had needed a biologist in the city. And Julia Sparkle had put out the call for that biologist. Julia Sparkle had procured the OtherX with incredible ease … because the World Army had given it to her.

  It was a sudden, urgent need that had brought us here instead of going to Phoenix. Which meant that, from the moment Serena Russo had allowed me to escape that facility in the desert, she had pulled the strings to bring me to Vegas.

  She had called Julia Sparkle.

  She had let me go free, but she was keeping me on a tight leash. It wasn’t freedom at all.

  But I needed to confirm. “I assume the terms are still the same, despite losing the second encantado.”

  “Yes, of course. I only need Isabella out of the city before the event. She cannot be harmed.”

  Of course they had agreed to terms. Julia Sparkle had planned to hand me over. But why now? Why this moment?

  I stared down at Julia Sparkle’s desk, surveying the lot of her useless post-it notes and paper clips … and her calendar. Today’s date was circled with a red X drawn in the center.

  The day of the extinction event had been moved up because I had solved the OtherX problem so quickly.

  It hit me: freeing me from the facility and sending me to Las Vegas had all worked perfectly for all parties involved. Because I had been free, I had continued my research and my pregnancy had taken. Because I had mapped the section of the DNA strand that interacted with magic, Serena Russo had received important information about Other DNA. Because I had made the counteragent fly, Julia Sparkle had gotten her airborne OtherX.