They stood in the way, recovering from the attack far faster than most people would. We were dealing with Hades magical people now, and they were no strangers to having spirit used against them.

Lightning rained down from the ceiling, striking each of them in the head. Three screamed. The other two didn’t get a chance before all five started convulsing, electrocution not a fast or pretty death. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about the things I could do.

The lightning slid along the ceiling and crawled down the wall like a live thing. It seeped into the carpet, leaving scorch marks in its wake. The hall smelled like burned skin and hair, and I needed a second to stare in shock and keep from retching.

“Well, what are you waiting for? A red carpet?” Frank said, jerking me out of my daze. “Get moving.”

“That was gross,” I said, pausing at the landing.

“That was gross.” Bria nodded. “Poor Jerry isn’t going to like that one bit.”

“Lightning isn’t always pretty,” Dylan said.

“Which way?” I asked.

Bria took the map from Red, who was quickly cleaning weapons and tucking them away. “He’s on the third floor at the other end of the building. If we go this way”—she pointed down the hall—“we’ll pass that weird stuffed-animal asylum and maybe I can get some of them active, eh? Just need to find a Necromancer. Too bad they usually hide from the action.”

We started jogging, passing lower-level staff hiding behind plants, in doorways, and one crouched behind a potted plant half her size.

A roar shook the foundation of the building. It echoed down the corridor we’d chosen and tumbled across the floor above us.

“Thane has gone Berserk,” Bria said. “Watch for him, Lexi. Do not cross his path.”

“You’re talking to me like I don’t know what he’s capable of. Two ahead, high level three.”

Mordecai loped ahead of us, and I didn’t try to stop him. I couldn’t hold him back forever—I’d save that for when the enemy was more powerful than a level three.

He snarled as he leapt on the first of the crew, the sound competing with another of Thane’s roars. Daisy darted ahead of us with a burst of speed. She threw a knife mid-stride. It flew, end over end, and dug into the chest of the second interloper, a woman dressed in spandex. She stopped and clutched at the knife hilt, looking down in confusion. Mordecai slammed her to the ground.

Zorn’s soul popped onto my radar, on the same level but at the other side of the building. Henry ran with him.

“That way,” I said, pointing before jumping over the newly downed enemy and racing through the hall beyond her. Suits of armor lined one side, each in its own glass case. Along the other were elaborate dresses of the same time period, and I sure wished we’d strolled through this room yesterday instead of the nightmare stuffed-animal room.

We burst out the other side, directly into a throng of people running down the corridor toward Zorn and Henry. A roar ripped through the air, and something heavy fell on the floor above us. The sound of it banging and then rolling filled the air.

Red stabbed a guy and ripped him to the ground before he knew he was being attacked. A woman cracked Red over the shoulder with a steel pipe, and Red turned, gun suddenly in hand, and shot steel-pipe woman in the face. Crimson sprayed those behind her.

I grabbed the spirit boxes of anyone I didn’t recognize while yelling, “Zorn! Over here, Zorn!”

“Sure, yeah, alert the whole world.” Bria bent and scooped up the dropped pipe. She turned and thwacked a woman in the face with it before clunking a man in the forehead.

A woman appeared at my side and reached for me. I startled, immediately reaching for her soul.

An arm wrapped around my middle and yanked me back against a strong chest. Dylan. He brought his other arm around in front of me, stretching it forward. Lightning ran from his elbow, down to his hand, and then out through his fingertips. It blasted into the woman’s middle, flinging her back. She hit the wall and started to sink.

Dylan released me, and I grabbed the soul as it left her body then shoved it right back in. Power pumped through my blood. The wobbles in my knees were mostly gone. Time to use the full gamut of my magic.

And not a moment too soon.

“She’s coming,” Zorn said as he reached us. He hacked down on a man’s shoulder with a machete, of all things. Zorn definitely did not fuck around. “She’s weakened, but she’s still too strong for you, Alexis. We need to hide you.”

The cats ran around him in their eagerness to get to me. They rubbed up against my legs, sleeker and less pushy than dogs of their size. Done with their greeting, they took their places at my sides, battle cats. My life kept getting weirder, somehow.

“How are you going to hide me?” I shoved another soul in a body and sent the two commandeered minions running in the direction Zorn had come. They wouldn’t last long, but they’d be a small distraction. “She can find me in spirit and send people to my location. Or just ask the staff. We can’t run, either. No one is just going to hand us cars. We have to fight, Zorn.”

“She’s a Demigod, and Henry and I are strangely weakened. Neither of us ate or drank anything provided, but we’re still sluggish. We can’t take her.”

Lydia must’ve unleashed the spirits on them to harvest their energy. That was probably why they’d been kept in a different room, out of sight of Kieran. He would’ve been able to see the spirits hanging around, if nothing else.

“We cannot win,” Zorn said above the din, the crashes and screams from upstairs now farther away. Thane was moving around.

“We have to try,” I said, my heart breaking at the thought of what would happen if we failed. “We have to try to get to Kieran. If we can hold them off until he wakes—”

“We have no idea when that’ll be,” Henry said, shoving in. Sweat and blood coated the side of his face. Desperation clouded his eyes. “We have to hide you.”

But there would be no hiding me, and we all knew it.

I pushed them away and held my head high. I would fight, and if I lost, then my only hope was that Kieran would see me again someday, recognize the mark, connect that with the feeling in his soul, and we’d find a way to be together again. I had to hope.

31

Alexis

“Well, well, well.” Lydia stopped fifty feet down the corridor, each side of her face sporting bloody claw marks, and the space opening at her back into a hall. She could dive out of harm’s way if she needed. That wasn’t ideal.

My team fanned out around me, Zorn and Henry flanking the cats and everyone else behind, surrounding the kids.

“My little plan worked, in the end.” Lydia’s smile pulled at her wounds.

“There’s more to winning than the acquisition of assets,” I said, having heard that from Kieran at one point. “You’ll never pull this off.”

“What do you know, girl?” Lydia sneered, walking toward me. “Have respect for myself, isn’t that what you said?” Even from this distance, I could tell she was looking me up and down. “Look at you. Your ridiculous clothes, your plain face—getting attention from the servants made you uncomfortable yesterday, didn’t it? I knew then that you could never sit at my table in your present state. You’ll welcome my attentions, trust me. I’ll teach you how to be a lady, how to treat those lesser than you, and how to be so much more than this blunt tool Kieran brought me. And in return, I’ll let you play with the baby Kieran puts inside me.”