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I turned around to face Rosier, feeling somewhat calmer. Only to see pieces of the darkness peeling away from the floor, from the corners and from the walls, all along the corridor. I still couldn’t focus on any of them, but I got the feeling that Casanova had probably been right: I didn’t want to.
“Uh-oh,” the pixie said unhelpfully.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and Françoise broke into a rapid stream of French that I didn’t have the time or the ability to translate. “Radella!”
“We’ve been trying to get to the children.” She gestured toward the end of the hall. “That thing has half of them trapped in the kitchen.”
“Are they all right?”
“For now. The staff is protecting them, but they won’t hold. Not if those things attack.”
“But Fey magic works on demons!”
Radella zoomed in front of my face, her own furious. “Yes, and if I had warriors to work with instead of cooks, it might even be enough! As it is—”
“What are you saying? You can’t break through?”
“We stormed the back door. I managed to get past their forces, but the witch almost got herself killed. And I can’t do much alone.”
Billy Joe floated down through the ceiling. “We got another problem,” he said quickly, not even pausing to chew me out for leaving him with this mess. “Our buddy over there sent some of his boys upstairs. They’re there now, with the kids. And I have no power against demons, Cass.”
He, Françoise and Radella were all looking at me, and after a stunned second I realized that they were waiting for instructions. Like I was supposed to know how to get us out of this. And Agnes would have, I thought grimly. Maybe even Myra would have had a few ideas. But I had nothing.
“I have a proposition for you, pixie,” Rosier gasped. I looked up to see that he had worked Radella’s sword loose. What was left of it dropped to the ground with a clatter. It wasn’t much more than a hilt—the rest appeared to have been eaten away, like with acid. “Leave now and I will waive retribution for your misguided actions.”
“I may have a better offer,” I said quickly.
Radella looked from the remains of her sword to me. “It better be a good one, human!”
“How would you like to have the rune? Not just to cast, but permanently? It only takes a month to recharge after each use, so you could have as many children as you want. Your friends could even…”
I trailed off because she had gone motionless, as if all the bones had suddenly liquefied inside her skin. She looked for a minute like she’d had the air knocked out of her, but then she licked her lips, slow and precise, and looked at me with a drowning expression in those huge lavender eyes. “What do you want?” It came out as a whisper.
“Find a way to get the kids out and it’s yours.”
“Are you deaf? I already told you, there is no way!”
“Can the demons follow you into Faerie?”
“What? No! Or if they did, they wouldn’t last long,” she said with an evil smile. “But how does that—”
“Go back into the kitchen and summon the portal. Take the kids into Faerie, then return with them once it’s safe.”
“And how do I do that? Even assuming I could break through the lines again, I’d need a death to power the portal. And your ghost told me—”
/> “You’ll have it.”
“What?”
“No way, Cass. Stop right there.” For once Billy sounded deadly serious. Which meant he was quicker on the uptake than Radella.
“There will be a death,” I told her. One way or the other. “Does it matter which of us it is, me or that thing?”
The pixie was silent for a moment. “No. The spell won’t care.”
Françoise had been looking back and forth between the two of us, trying to keep up with the conversation. “What? What is this? What is ’appening?”
“In a minute. Radella, did you see a little girl in the kitchen—blond, brown eyes, about five?”
