Mab floats high above, locked in combat with the glowing form of Oberos. He wields twin scimitars of liquid sunlight, she her whip that slices the sky in lashes of midnight. Every stroke of her whip sounds like thunder, every slash of his swords blinds like lightning. They are twin titans, and they are nearly impossible to see in the light of their fury. Lilith and I run past the pie cart, where a small huddle of our troupe is forming.
The Shifters are the first to leap into action. One girl drops to all fours and quivers. Scales erupt from her flesh, her entire body twists and contorts and grows, and leathery wings sprout from her spine. With a roar that sounds like every nightmare I’ve had come to life, she leaps into the air as an enormous red dragon, flames dripping from her maw like lava. The other Shifters follow suit, twisting themselves into every manner of mythical creature: three-headed chimera, twenty-foot-tall medusae, and a monstrous, lumbering cyclops that rips one of the telephone poles from the earth and wields it as a grisly club. I race under the body of a thirty-foot-tall tarantula that had once been a concessionaire, and notice a few other performers leaping into the fray, wielding powers I never knew they had.
Vanessa and Richard stand side by side, throwing daggers of ice that materialize from thin air. Maya, the tightrope walker, hovers a few feet above the ground. For a moment, she just floats there. Then her eyes glow blue and she lets out a scream that flings the approaching fey back a hundred yards. Lilith and I duck behind a trailer and lean against the side, panting. The sky is roiling above us and all I hear is screaming, the sounds of the dead or dying. We’re outmatched, there’s no question. We’re going to die. We’re all going to die.
Then something new comes crawling forth, something definitely not mortal and definitely not from the Summer Court. The shadows beneath the trailers quiver, ooze like oil. Then they change. Dark shapes pull themselves from underneath, their forms indescribable save for the terror they send reeling through my chest. One shadowy creature stretches out by my feet — a beast half-spider, half-man, with talons and fangs and hundreds of darting black eyes. I nearly scream. It stands and regards me, and I hear its voice hiss in my head:
Blood pounds in my ears as the old fight or flight response wells up inside of me. This time, though, there’s a new sensation, a tingling that makes my fingers ache. A power like an electrical surge races along my skin. My hands feel alive with energy. Lilith chatters at my side, barely comprehensible over the roar of fire and screams.
Our solace doesn’t last.
I’ve barely caught my breath when a group of Summer Fey appears at the end of the trailer. Half of them look like walking saplings, with sprig-like appendages and berries for eyes. The other half are more sinister: drowned-looking things with seaweed for hair and long, rusted scimitars. They spot us and rush forward, yelling a gibberish battle cry. Lilith drops to the ground in the fetal position with her hands over her head. There’s nothing around to use as a weapon, and as they run toward me I want to close my eyes and just let it happen, pray that it will be a quick death.
But then something takes over, something that I can’t control. The tingling in my fingers courses through my blood, fills my limbs. I crouch low as the fey approach, adopting some sort of battle stance, all the while screaming inside my head.
The first dryad reaches me, one clubbed arm raised to smash against my skull. Before it can splatter my brains across the trailer walls, I lunge forward, driven by a feral hunger that turns my world red.
I grab the creature’s arm and spin, snapping it in two and ripping the wooden appendage off entirely. The dryad screams, but not for long. As I rotate, I bring the severed arm up and over my head, shattering it against my attacker’s skull. The dryad explodes in a burst of leaves and butterflies, but my victory is short-lived. The others are upon me. I duck under the blade of a naiad and toss the dryad’s arm aside, sweep one leg out to knock over my opponent and smash my fist into another dryad coming in from the side. I grab the scimitar from one of the water-monsters and make to slash off another head, only to have my thrust blocked by a vine that bursts from the ground. More tendrils snake from the earth and twine themselves around my calves and wrists, pin me in a half- crouch. A naiad smiles at me, his waterlogged eyes red and bulging. He raises his scimitar over my bare neck.
The energy in my fingers turns to fire.
White light surrounds me, fills me, burns me with a thousand tiny suns. I see through half-closed eyes the vines disintegrating from my wrists and calves, see the shocked face of the naiad as he dissolves into nothing. Light fills me, blinds me, roars through me like the angry howl of a god. Bright, white, like a strobe illuminating the whole world, and then it’s gone.
I drop to my knees and shudder with newfound cold as the power leaves me. That’s when I realize that the mob of fey is gone. Only Lilith is still there, cowering in the alley between the trailers, arms wrapped around her head.
I stare at my hands. I swear I see faint traces of silver etched into the lines of my palm.
“What the fuck?” I whisper. Was this part of the contract as well?
I don’t have time to think. Another wave of Summer Fey bursts onto the scene, a new mix of dryads and will-o-wisps and creatures I have no name for. The bloodlust is gone. So is the tingling. I’m not about to test and find out if there’s enough power left over for round two. I reach down and grab Lilith by the shoulder, pull her up to standing, and duck into a trailer.
It’s not until I’ve slammed the door behind us that I realize where we’ve landed. Mab’s office.
It’s dark. The air has that cold, dry sensation of a cemetery on an autumn night. Lilith huddles at my side. I fully expect to hear the Summer Fey clanging against the aluminum door, but all is silent. Just the sound of me and Lilith breathing and the hammer of our hearts.
Then a light flares into being, and then another, cold blue candle flames that glimmer out of skull sconces. The office emerges from the dark like a beast surfacing from a midnight ocean — first the desk, then the chairs, then the bookshelves. And then another form appears in a wash of mist. We aren’t alone in Mab’s study.
Penelope.
She turns the moment she becomes visible, as though Lilith and I were the ones who just appeared from the gloom. In her hand is the book of contracts.
“Lilith,” she says. “I’d hoped Mab would send you here. Though I wasn’t expecting an escort.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my hands clenched at my sides. No tingling, this time, no power. And no chance of hurting her. She already saw to that.
“I could ask the same,” she says. “Though I’m pleased you’re here safe.”
“Auntie Mab won’t be happy,” Lilith says. She’s stroking Poe — I hadn’t even seen the cat get inside — with that distant tint to her voice. “She doesn’t like her book to be touched. No, no, not at all.”
Penelope shoots her a venomous glance.
“After this,” she says, “
I take a half step forward.
“
“I haven’t killed anyone,” she says. Her eyes go wild in that moment, as though I’m not the only one she’s trying to convince.
“You’re full of shit,” I say. “What about Sabina? And Roman? Hell, Melody’s probably dead now because of you!” The rage inside of me is growing, a white-hot anger I want to throw her way. But there’s still no power in my fingertips, no growing pulse of magic. Even if there was, I know there’d be no point. The very thought of harming Penelope is enough to make my chest constrict.
“I had no hand in their deaths,” she says. Her voice drops to a whisper. “My only task was to alter their contracts, to make them mortal again. I can only assume the Summer Court arranged for their execution. As for Melody, I have never touched her terms.”
“What about her illness, then? Why did she get so sick?”
She opens her mouth, but she doesn’t say anything. Not for a moment. “Melody’s fate is different from the
