I swallowed, trying to decide if that was a trick question, but my brain wasn’t up to it. I could only hope the truth was something he wanted to hear. “Yes?”
The shotgun slung across his back was suddenly in his hand, and ratcheting. “What can I do for you?”
I stared at him, so relieved I could barely speak. “Fuck shit up?”
He looked at me silently for a second, and then turned and shot the two mages nearest him, who were still firing at Billy. And who I guessed were the owners of the other golems. Because their control crystals shattered and burned as soon as the men hit the floor.
“One moment,” the first golem said to them as their eyes began to glow. “We have a small job to do first.”
“Oh yes. Oh yes, indeed,” a sibilant voice whispered, from inside the nearest one.
The other just nodded.
The first golem looked at me. “Consider it fucked.”
His body started to vibrate, and chunks of clay began cracking and falling off. But not as fast as the second guy, the one with the creepy voice. Who erupted from his shell in a glowing nimbus of power and then spread out across the space above us, like a massive, iridescent jellyfish.
I stared at it, mesmerized. It was beautiful. The silvery white strands glimmered, shot through with every color of the rainbow, riding on currents only it could see. . . .
It was beautiful.
“Fuck me,” Billy whispered, back in ghostly form at my side.
“Get back to your body, small one,” the first golem told me, still in its clay form. “And get your friends far from this place. Or the scouring may take them as well.”
“What? No! Not them!” Billy said, because I was still staring stupidly upward. “And not the hotel! Just the bad guys!”
“We will contain it as well as may be,” the golem told him. “But this space you call the drag is not safe. Get them out.”
“But we can’t get them out,” Billy said furiously. “You don’t understand! We need—”
But we didn’t have a chance to say what we needed. Because one of the jellyfish tentacles reached out and brushed us—
And the next second, we were flying.
Billy caught me; I felt his arm go around me in a warm embrace, felt him pull me close, felt his anger when he said: “Demons! I really hope you know what you’re doing, Cass. You just made a deal with the devil!”
Three of them, I thought, staring down at the drag as it blurred beneath us: dark and neon bright, spells flying, fires burning, artificial rain pelting down onto the black-coated half circle surging at Augustine’s tiny shop. It was strangely beautiful, too.
I closed my eyes, just for a moment, so tired. . . .
“Cass! Don’t you do this to me! Don’t you fucking do this!”
I heard Billy’s voice, but it was so far away, so far. And this darkness wasn’t like the other. It was warm, and welcoming, and peaceful. . . .
“Goddamn it, I said no!” Billy said, and the next moment, I felt him everywhere, all around me, all through me. He engulfed the rapidly dissipating strands of whatever part of me was still left, merging it with the more solid brilliance of his own spirit.
And then we moved, like we’d been shot out of a cannon. Rocketing back down to ground level, zooming past and then through the bodies of the jostling, straining men, sizzling along with the overstrained ward, while blast after blast of spell power buffeted us, strong enough collectively to be felt even in the spirit world. And then we were through, bursting into the middle of the ruined little shop—
And the next second, I was choking to death on the messy, bloody, trash-strewn floor of Augustine’s.
Everything slammed into me at once: pain—God, so much pain—almost indescribable exhaustion, shock and the confusion of crashing into yet another body, and the fact that it was my own didn’t seem to make that much difference.
Realizing that I couldn’t breathe.
After a second it dawned on me that the sprinkler system was still going off, resulting in pools of stagnant water everywhere—including the one I was facedown in. It looked like I’d been propped up against the back wall of the shop, but I’d fallen over, probably after Billy left. And of course I’d fallen facedown.
I rolled over, gasping and choking, and finally heaving up a bunch of nasty-tasting water while trying to roll to my hands and knees—