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For an instant, I didn’t know what had happened, because my hearing had just cut out, too. It was only a second or two, but it felt like forever, and then I was staring at a wash of dirt and cobblestones pelting Pritkin’s shields. One that just went on and on.
I shifted us to the flat roof of a nearby building. It was no safer—nothing was safe now—but it got us off the street. What was left of it.
There was a big smoking crater where we’d just been, which is probably why Pritkin staggered and went down to one knee. Because, yeah. Everyone has their limits, and it looked like he’d just reached his.
I knelt and held him while he heaved and shuddered and gripped me like he thought—well, like he thought we’d both almost died, which we had. We couldn’t handle this, I thought again, this playground of horrors that Jo had somehow conjured up. And there’s only one way to stop a spell you don’t understand.
But Pritkin already knew that; he just couldn’t face it.
“When I was lost,” he said hoarsely, after a moment, “I didn’t know what was happening to me. Adramelech’s spell was . . . shocking, disorienting. I fell, for what felt like years, not knowing where I was, or even who. But every once in a while I would surface, like a drowning man clawing at the air, and every time that happened—every time—it was because of you.”
“I . . . don’t understand.”
“You were my lodestone, the only thing I saw that made sense. I didn’t know who you were for a long time, but you were important. You were the only thing that was. And now you want me to let you—”
“I’ll be all right,” I whispered, because there was something in my throat. But it came out so low that I wasn’t sure he’d heard. Until the green eyes were blazing into mine, furious—and terrified.
And I realized that the fear I’d seen cross his face before hadn’t been for him.
It had been for me.
“You won’t,” he told me flatly. “You’ve seen what she can do, how much power she can channel. You’re already tired; what do you think you’re going to do against that?”
“I don’t know, but I have to try. If—”
And then I got cut off—again—by a commotion from below.
We’d ended up near the roofline, overlooking the front of the house, where a young war mage had just run up to the gate protecting a small garden area. He tried to get in, but either the gate was locked or he was too panicked to figure out how it worked. He finally grabbed on to it and shook it, screaming, until Pritkin barked out an order.
The man—or boy, because he looked about sixteen—started and stared upward. For a moment, his face froze in a look of pure shock. And then it crumpled in a combination of terror and relief and shame and hope, with the latter finally winning out.
“Sir! Sir! What do we do?”
“Stay there until I tell you!” Pritkin snapped, which seemed a little harsh to me. But the boy abruptly straightened up and even managed a salute. But Pritkin didn’t see the snappy response, having already turned back to me.
“I have to go,” I told him.
But he wasn’t listening—and he wasn’t letting go. His hands were clamped on my arms, and he knew—he knew—it was hard as hell to shift that way and not take him with me. But he couldn’t help me with this.
“She’s sending every curse London ever suffered at once!” I told him desperately. “She’ll kill thousands of people—and destroy the timeline!”
“Yes, she will.” Gertie said, stepping out of the night. She did it as seamlessly and gracefully as her acolytes had back at court—all of them seemed to be with her.
I’d never been so happy to see anybody in my life.
“I can’t shift in time,” I told her quickly. “I don’t know why. But if you can send me back, we can catch Jo before she has a chance to do anything—”
“She’s already done it,” Gertie said briskly. “Shredding the timeline this way has made temporal shifting impossible until it’s fixed.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“You can’t go back in time until you kill her!” Agnes said, looking at me in disgust. “You did this! You destroy everything you touch! Who the hell was stupid enough to make you Pythia?”
You were, I didn’t say—not because I was being diplomatic. But because Gertie was talking again. “She put a lot of thought and planning into this for mere revenge—why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what’s going on!”
Agnes snorted.
