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"Trsiel is right," the middle Fate said. "He cannot kill her."
We stood in the throne room. Kristof and I, that is. Trsiel stayed outside, probably having decided he was better off keeping away from Kris for a while.
"Fine," I said. "He can't kill an innocent. We get that, and so long as we still have a chance of stopping the Nix before she kills Paige or Lucas, I don't want Jaime hurt any more than you do."
The Fate shook her head. "I don't think you understand, Eve. Trsiel cannot kill her. Not now. Not ever...even as a last resort."
"What?"
"Hold on." Kris stepped forward, hands raised. "You mean to tell me that you'll let this Nix kill those kids, and you won't interfere? What kind of justice is that?"
The oldest Fate slid into her sister's place and fixed Kris with a glare. "Is her life worth less than theirs?"
"Yes. There's no question about that, is there? No disrespect to Jaime Vegas, but this is a woman who whores her--"
"Kristof--"
Kris met the Fate's gaze. "Whores her talents to the highest bidder, while Lucas and Paige are down there doing your work, fighting on your side. You cannot compare her to them."
The middle Fate took over. "It's not our place to judge the value of a human life, Kristof."
"Then whose is it? Because I want to talk to him."
"No one has that power...or that right."
Kristof shook his head in disgust. "Fine, then. Maybe you can't compare lives, but I'm sure you can count, and two lives lost plus one destroyed must be worth more than a single loss."
The youngest Fate appeared. "We can count, Kristof. Even me. It's you who needs a lesson. Not in math, but in English. We didn't say Trsiel may not kill the Nix while she's in Jaime's body, or that he will not. We said can not."
"You mean it's not possible," I said. "Because Jaime's innocent."
The Fate nodded. "The Sword of Judgment cannot bring to justice the soul of an innocent."
"But the soul isn't innocent," Kristof said. "The Nix--"
"The soul of the body still belongs to Jaime."
"So now what?" I said. "Where does that leave us?"
"Exactly where you were," the girl said. Then her lips twisted in a rueful semismile. "Only without the backup plan."
"Great."
The Fates called Trsiel in to join us then. The more brains we had working on this problem, the better.
The most obvious solution was to treat this as a normal case of spirit possession, and contact a few living necros to perform an exorcism. Problem was, as the Fates reminded us, this wasn't a normal case of spirit possession because the Nix wasn't a normal spirit. They were ninety-nine percent sure it would fail. By the time we tracked down and prepped a necromancer for the exorcism, if it didn't work, it would be too late to try something else.
As long as we stayed in the throne room, plotting, we were operating on the Fates' time, and only minutes would pass in the living world. But the moment we stepped into the living world, we were on our own, clock ticking.
"So we need to find a way to separate the Nix's spirit from the body of her living partner," I said. "And the only way to reliably do that is to use an angel's sword...which won't work in this case. So how the hell--?"
"There is another way," the child Fate said.
"What?"
The young Fate began to shimmer, her body lengthening and aging, morphing into her middle sister, but in slow motion, as if fighting the change. A split-second burst of light, and the child stood there again, her face a grim mask of childish determination.
"There's another way," she said, words spilling out almost too fast to understand. "It's been done before. The second seeker--"
