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She didn’t have to overcome me to win, I realized. She just had to stall me. And she was doing a damned good job, because, as I kept telling everybody, I wasn’t my mother.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to be.
I threw a final spell, deflected the response, then stumbled, letting Jo think she had an advantage. She dove; I held position, letting her get as close as I could, to the point that all I could see was a glittering wall of white. Then I shifted—to Rhea.
I grabbed my courageous, idiotic, suicidal acolyte and shifted again, this time to the rooftop where the other acolytes had congregated, I guess to maintain their slow time spell.
It looked like it was wearing on them—good.
“Drop it,” I gasped.
“What?” Hilde stared at me, apparently having trouble keeping up.
“Drop it, drop the spell, do it, do it now!”
They dropped the spell, finally releasing Jo’s huge ghost army.
Who promptly rang the dinner bell, one last time.
Epilogue
“Now, this is what I call a party!” Billy Joe yelled.
He’d somehow talked Hilde and poor, gullible Emilio into using Chimera to conjure him up a temporary body—I strongly suspected by playing up his part in saving the world. As a result, he was currently a curly-haired vamp clone, who’d been belting back margaritas for the past hour. He was, he had informed me gleefully, intending to get very, very drunk.
I wondered how long it would take him to figure out that vamps are basically immune to alcohol.
But at least he was enjoying himself. I just wished I could say the same. But the kitchen was so crowded that I could barely move, and so loud that I couldn’t hear myself think. There were eight blenders all going full blast, and the sound of crushing ice drowned out pretty much everything else.
I tried to ask Tami a question, but found a tray of glasses shoved into my chest before I could.
She looked a little crazed, maybe because this was the first party we’d had in the new digs. It was supposed to be a simple housewarming/glad-we’re-all-still-alive kind of thing, but the guest list had gotten a little out of hand. Which was why she was in the kitchen, supervising the guys, who had sleeves rolled up and aprons on and were valiantly trying to make enough drinks and hors d’oeuvres to go around.
“Go!” she yelled, pushing me at the door. “Circulate!”
I went.
I didn’t think the guy I was looking for was in there anyway.
The rest of the suite was just as crowded. I made my way over to where Mircea, Marlowe, and the consul were standing, off to one side of the huge living room. The consul was one of the chief reasons we were so jam-packed, since +1 wasn’t a concept she understood. It was more like +200, but at least she’d opted for a killer LBD instead of the usual slithering sheath.
Baby steps.
“Refill?” I bellowed, because the older initiates had taken over the stereo and appeared to be techno fans.
The sound abruptly cut out, probably because Marlowe had just thrown a little device on the ground. It created a bubble of peace, an oasis of tranquility in all the noise. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” Mircea said. “But I have not finished this one yet. It has an . . . unusual . . . flavor.”
I checked out his glass. “It’s chocolate. Fred was experimenting.”
“About Fred,” Marlowe began, trying to look charming.
“Don’t even.”
The charm evaporated. “He’s my best man!”
“Something you should have thought about before you sent him to spy on me.”
