And she did. Or she did something as pain lanced through me, as Billy Joe snarled and threw a couple of clinging spirits off my back, as we pelted forward. And while the X-ray landscape changed all around us. A river swelled and declined, trees grew and fell, armies marched and fires raged and walls rose around us, new ones, familiar ones, like the stairs being built under our feet, lifting us along with them—
“Daisy, now!” Roger screamed as something latched on to the back of his neck. “Now! Now! Now!”
“Now what?” she asked, looking confused.
Billy Joe cursed, and jerked, a mighty heave that had me feeling like I’d left some of my bones behind—
But a second later we were tumbling into the real world—literally, because we’d just crashed through the railing on the second floor of the Pythian Court.
“Well, shit,” Rosier said, right before we hit the floor, the very hard, very marble floor of the foyer, which would have hurt more, but I’d fallen on someone.
Someone who I guessed was Roger, because he was cursing underneath me.
Of course, that might have had something to do with the half dozen hungry ghosts still clinging to him, like leeches, as he shoved me off. And staggered to his feet, slinging spells and stumbling into things, because some of the ghosts didn’t seem interested in leaving. And with the energy they’d stolen from us, they could afford to press the point.
I blinked and Agnes was there, looking years older than when I’d seen her in Wales, with a few more pounds and some crow’s-feet around her sharp blue eyes. But younger than when she and I went adventuring in the sixteenth century, and caught a time-traveling weirdo mucking about in a cellar. Because that hadn’t happened yet.
Billy had pulled us out too soon.
Her eyes focused on me, but there was no spark of recognition in them. Maybe because she hadn’t gotten a good look at me while on that damn wagon. Or because that whole thing had been decades ago from her perspective. Or because my hair was plastered to my skull and covered in dirt, like my face and my still-damp slave wear.
For once, looking like hell came in handy, I thought.
And then someone screamed.
“You!”
I looked up to find Roger back on his feet, and pointing a shaking finger at me. “Every time,” he gasped. “Every time!”
“What?”
“Every time I meet you, you ruin my life. This is your fault. This is all your fault!”
“What exactly is going on here?” Agnes asked, voice cold. She looked at me.
“He’s . . . a madman,” I told her, swallowing, and feeling like I’d just been kicked in the gut. “A Guild member and a . . . a necromancer. He was in prison in the Badlands, but he escaped—”
“No thanks to you!” he yelled, and lunged for me.
Only to find himself suspended in midair, probably courtesy of the house wards. Which only seemed to make him madder. He thrashed around, cursing, as ghosts fled the scene and Billy disappeared into my necklace.
“She’s a necromancer, too,” Roger yelled as a bunch of Circle guards joined the party, rushing in from all directions. “And a sorceress! She’s got a demon with her now!”
Agnes’ eyes returned to me, but Rosier was nowhere to be seen. And that was despite the fact that something small and heavy was clinging to my leg, like a limpet. It looked like my chameleon could hide him, after all.
“He was just here!” Roger shouted, furious. “They were both locked up together!”
“It’s a lie,” I said quickly. “I’m a Pythian heir, training in the Badlands. I was leaving when this man attacked me, having somehow escaped his cell—”
“Liar!”
“—and threw my, uh, my spell off,” I said, hoping there wasn’t a specific name for the portal. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“And the clothes?” Agnes asked, with a raised brow.
“I was sent on a mission immediately after returning from one,” I said, smiling weakly. “You know how that is.”
She didn’t smile back.