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“Uhm, so Zee wants⁠—”

Zee stole the phone out my hand. “Hey, Agent Fae, in case you didn’t know, we’re kinda fucked. Adam has a big bad brother and—” He lowered the phone, staring at it. “It cut me off.” Huffing, he shook his head. “You waffled on for too long.”

“Redial. But you explain it all this time.”

“Okay, fine.” He flicked his hair, redialed, and crossed his legs, jangling a foot as he waited for the answering service to pick up again. “Yeah, so, hey again,” he sang, and examined his nails. “It’s Zee. Obviously. So, Adam has a psycho brother who wants to eat the world.” He sang that in a jovial tone too. “You should run far, far away. If you’re screaming, you’re probably not dying. But if you’re dead, I guess you won’t get this message⁠—”

“Zee!” I stole the phone back and muffled the microphone with a hand. “You can’t say that.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“It sounds bad.”

“It is fuckin’ bad.”

“No, I mean it sounds like we’re threatening Leomaris.”

“But it’s true.”

I raised the phone to try and better explain, but the line had died again. This was terrible. We couldn’t keep leaving messed-up messages. Leomaris would think we were crazy . . . well, more crazy than usual. I set the phone down on the table and stared at it. “Victor would know what to say.”

“Call Madame Matase at the hotel.”

“Right, yeah.” Scooping up the phone, I dialed the SOS Hotel’s front desk number. Even if we couldn’t explain everything to Leomaris right now, we could at least warn Tom Collins and the others that the Adam with them was a fake. The line rang once, and Tom Collins’s straightforward recorded voice told me that he was the head of customer relations and to call back later. The recorded voice also said if I didn’t call back then I obviously didn’t want to stay at the SOS Hotel anyway, so good riddance. Then the line died. “Did you know Tom’s in charge of customer relations?”

“What?” Zee snorted. “If anyone should be in charge of relationships with customers, it’s me.” Zee frowned again. “Why didn’t you leave a message?”

“There wasn’t that option. Maybe they’re all busy?”

“When has the hotel ever been that busy?”

That was true. Madame Matase never left the front desk unattended. My heart sank, and kept right on sinking through the floor, through the bedrock, deeper and deeper. “What if something terrible has happened? What if it’s burned down? What if my brother has already eaten everyone? Zee! What do we do?!” The SOS Hotel was our home, our sanctuary. My heart hammered, breaths coming fast.

Zee scooted over to squish into my chair with me. His arm crushed me close. “That’s not what’s happened. They’re fine. Everyone is fine.”

“How do you know that?” I wheezed.

“I do . . . I just do.” He patted my head, which turned out to be oddly comforting. “I feel it, like I know you’re right here and you’re okay.” He tipped my chin up. “Trust the Fucking God.”

I snorted. “That’s the name you decided on?”

A commotion, then the sounds of a glass shattering drew our gazes. Across the dining area, three beefy trolls were muscling their way over, with Kat looking distraught, trying to block them. He poofed next to us, raining pink sparks. “I tried to hold them up.”

“It’s alright,” I told him, rising to my feet.

Zee stood, tail swishing. “We can take ’em.”

“Not here.” I really did not want to bring any trouble down on Kat. He’d worked too hard to make this place safe and I knew what that felt like. “It’s time we went back to Victor anyway.”

“You guys be careful, huh?” Kat said, his eyes sheepish and sad. He wanted to help, to do more.

Zee bristled when one of the trolls tried to grab for his arm. “Hey, hands off the merchandise! I’m fuckin’ expensive.”

Kat caught my wrist and pulled me aside. “Look out for Lycian, he’s one of the last good ones.”

“I know. I will.” I squeezed Kat’s hand, then followed the surprisingly big trolls’ directions to leave the club. A black pickup waited outside, and in we climbed.

One look at Zee’s serious expression, and it was clear fun time was over.