We only had maybe half a dozen yards to the shop, but we weren’t going to make it, were we? We were about to be overrun—
And then we were, when a stampede of impossible blue and silver creatures burst out of the shop, roaring and trumpeting and growling as they thundered past. And over, clearing us with the grace of leaping tigers. Which some of them were, I realized, blinking at the herd of Augustine’s little origami animals sailing by overhead. Although they weren’t so little anymore, being life-sized and savage-looking—
And utterly harmless, because they were still made out of freaking wrapping paper!
But the mages, who had just been decimated by the hound from hell, didn’t know that. They abruptly shifted their target from us to the horde, which exploded in bursts of silver and blue confetti—also harmless. But there was a crap ton of it and it was everywhere and totally unexpected. And the reflective foil took on the colors of the offensive spells being lobbed around and—
And we had a couple seconds, didn’t we? I realized.
“Pull back!” I yelled, trying to crawl and rip my collar open at the same time. “Pull back!”
I didn’t know that anyone even heard. Panic had set in, and people were running everywhere, and plaster and glass were raining down, and the sprinkler system had come on and was further confusing the issue. Along with whatever Mircea was doing, because he was doing something. I could still see parts of that other room, along with a glimpse of glowing amber eyes—
Because he was trying to see through mine, I realized. And maybe he could, but I couldn’t. Like I could barely move because two minds can’t control one body.
“Cut the connection!” I yelled, choking on water and plaster dust. “Cut the connection. I can’t see!”
And I guess he did, because the room suddenly snapped back into focus, and control of my body came with it. I stared around, still half-blind because of the plaster mask mixing on my face, my hands tearing at the damn collar. And finally grabbing the ugly necklace inside just as a blur of blue ran past.
It was Carla, freaking out like everyone else, but who stopped when I snagged her arm. “Do you have any microphones?”
“What?”
I slipped in the slush on the floor as I staggered back to my feet, only her hand on my arm keeping me standing. “The flying things—the microphones! Do you have any more?”
“What? Yes—I—yes.” She stared at me like I was crazy. “Why?”
“Send one to the Graeae. Tell them to pull back to defend the shop—”
“But the tourists—”
“The mages aren’t interested in tourists—they’re interested in me.” It wasn’t a guess; fully half those spells had been aimed my way. Looked like the hound had made an impression. “Keep them that way. We only need ten minutes—”
“But, Lizzie, your court—”
“They can’t reach Lizzie if they’re busy trying to kill me! Pull everyone back behind Augustine’s wards, have the Graeae defend you if they break, and make sure you keep my body in view—”
“Your body?”
“—and try to find a way out through the floor, the back, whatever. But do not take me out until you absolutely have to. They have to see me. They have to stay focused on me—”
But she wasn’t focused, and who could blame her?
“What do you mean, your body?” She grabbed me. “Are you hit?”
“I’m all right!” I said, at the same time that a ghostly cowboy finally decided to join the party. “It’s showtime,” I told him.
Billy Joe, my ghostly companion for years now, yawned. “You know, I really hate it when you— Holy shit!”
The reporter was fumbling around in my clothes, looking for some terrible wound I didn’t have instead of listening. But I saw Françoise staring at us from the shop opening, where she’d managed to drag Rhea. “Did you get all that?”
She nodded, handed Rhea off to a young man, and sent a huge fireball at a couple of mages who had just jumped back to their feet. It blew them backward, almost to the opening in the ward, where they crashed into some of their buddies on the way in. The flames hitting off multiple sets of shields all at once sent mad red flashes over the crowd.
And finally snapped the reporter out of her panic.
She snatched her purse off her back and started throwing things out of it, and I looked at Billy. “You’ve got babysitting duty.”
“What?” He had been staring around, mouth open, hand holding on to the cowboy hat he’d been wearing for the last century and a half. But at that his head swiveled back to me. “Wait!”
But there was no time to wait.
“Get everyone back to the shop and get that ward up,” I told the reporter as our desperate SOS took flight.
“And what are you going to do?”
“Buy ten minutes,” I said, and closed my eyes.
Chapter Ten
Suddenly, everything was easier.
I gave a sigh of pure relief as the pain from a dozen wounds fell away, like my body behind me. Until Billy caught it, halfway to the floor. I felt him step inside my skin as I broke free, a warm, comforting presence who might not know what was going on, but who knew the routine.
Because we’d done this before.
When I first started shifting, I hadn’t known what I was doing, but I had known that body − soul = corpse. So when I found out that Pythias often shifted in spirit form—easier and we didn’t pick up any nasty plagues that way—I’d had some issues with it. Like possessing someone in another time, which I’d never learned to enjoy, and like returning to a dead body afterward.
I’d eventually realized that every other Pythia managed it by using time travel to return to their bodies at almost the same moment they left, making the interval away too short to do any damage. But in the beginning, I hadn’t known that. So I’d handled it the only way I knew how: by leaving another soul behind in my place.
And since the only soul I trusted—more or less—was Billy Joe, he got the nod.
And to be fair, the only damage my body had encountered as a result was a hangover, because Billy took his pay in beer. I traveled mostly in the flesh now, but those early lessons hadn’t been for nothing. Because I’d learned a thing or two about possession.
Like the fact that it didn’t have to be voluntary.
And right now taking control of the dark mage leader, even for a few moments, was the only way I saw us surviving this. But that required finding him. And after Enyo’s initial assault, he’d pulled back behind his men and I hadn’t seen him since.
And I wasn’t going to this way, I realized.
The war mages’ coats rose around me as I pressed through the ward, thick and black and suffocating. Worse, they had spells woven through them to provide an added layer of protection. And all those spells altogether left me feeling like I was sinking in a swamp of dark magic, one that had me choking and blind, with zero chance of finding anyone.
And I didn’t have a lot of time.
Sooner or later, somebody was going to realize the obvious: that all they had to do to beat us was to organize themselves into a unit again. And stop trying to fit through the narrow opening that was restricting their numbers and allowing us to defend a small area. And just take out the rest of the ward—
And then somebody did.
I was still trying to see through the crowd when all of a sudden, I didn’t need to. The leader jumped up on a barrel in front of the shops on the other side of the drag, putting him head and shoulders above everyone else. And grabbed a post so he could hang off the side, yelling and waving an arm.
“Form up! Form up! Damn you—form up!”
And shit.
I tried pushing forward, but nothing worked. There were so many bodies, and so much magic being slung around, I could barely tell where forward was. And then it got worse, as the gridlock around the “gate” started to pull back into formation. I ended up on the floor, getting trampled by boots that stomped right through me and coats that slung in my face and dark magic that weighed me down, like a heavy blanket—
Until the surreal moment when I pushed off from the floor, just desperate to get away, to get up—