in her blood, as well as the terrifying velocity of her vast world as it ground its relentless way around the tiny spark of light and warmth that kept it alive in the never-ending blackness of space. Her mind kept on expanding, out beyond the galaxies and down through the microcosm, too.
Faint but luminous perspective lines bled out from Lia’s imagination and into the real world, stretching away toward all horizons. Their bright point of convergence was her third eye, her Ajna chakra, right in the center of her forehead. The lightlines undulated all around her, as if stirred by deep currents in the imaginal sea. Faint auras also faded in, one around Lia’s body, and another, brighter circle around her head.
Hannah wouldn’t have been able to see these effects if she’d been looking on (although she would’ve readily sensed and respected Lia’s deep state of meditative focus). Still, seeing more than consensus reality allowed for was mostly a matter of experience, in Lia’s opinion. A skill, not a power. After Black Tom, it was the ritualistic nature of her work with the plant life at the Yard that had taught her the fundamental trick of looking at the world around her, moment by moment, and knowing it for the work of art that it was.
She was never less than grateful for her unique perspective, even if it did set her apart from other people.
Out beyond her and Tom, unseen by anyone else, an imposing ring of silent, jointly-imagined flames licked up toward the sky, from all around the Yard’s furthest boundaries.
Lia wondered if her collection of improvised wards would do the job. She truly wasn’t sure. But she swore that if this all went wrong tonight, it wasn’t going to be because she hadn’t done every single thing she could think of to do in the name of defending her home.
She let her thoughts uncouple from her brain and rise up, into the indigo twilight. She knew the sun was on the verge of setting, and that lights were starting to come on across the Valley floor. She could envision it easily, as though she were physically flying.
Potter’s Yard blazed bright down below, with her imaginal effects visible across the worlds for one brief flash-right before it all went completely dark.
Chapter Eleven
Three identical points of light that might have been cold, distant stars appeared in the eternally gray sky that hung over the land of the dead and dropped down from it, like phosphorescent spiders descending on unseen webs. Smoky, wispy skeletons on the ground scattered like herds of cattle spooked by aircraft as the falling stars converged upon the mountainous step pyramid that was always visible on Mictlan’s horizon. The Temple of Mictlantecuhtli. The trio of swift sparks funneled themselves into the squat, square structure that topped the pyramid, shooting in under its doorway’s carved limestone lintel.
Lyssa and Nyx were waiting inside. They were amongst the King’s elite creatures, conscripted from one of the all-but-forgotten pantheons he’d conquered in his campaigns. Each of them was intimidating to look upon, with curling tresses, full red lips, and a haughty expression on her exquisite, angular face. They were each clad in sleek, dark, twenty-first century business attire, and Nyx wore an enormous pair of black butterfly sunglasses over her eyes. Lyssa was sprawled across what now appeared to be a mahogany desk, even though it normally looked like a large stone altar.
As soon as the three formless Tzitzimime arrived via the doorway from Mictlan it disappeared behind them, becoming a plate glass window-wall that offered up a kingly view of the Angels’ City. LA’s clumped-together business towers draped elongated shadows over traffic arteries that glinted and sparkled in a wash of warm, westering light. The panorama and the executive office were both illusions arranged for the group by their King: images he’d laid over the inner sanctum’s flickering torchlight and bloodsoaked stone as an example of the era he wished them to go out into and hunt. The door between his Chambers had been left aligned with the very moment in time they saw mirrored in the office’s big glass wall.
Insects began to crawl from the illusory woodwork as soon as the realworld’s sun began to set. Then they boiled out, pouring from the walls and dropping from unseen cracks in the ceiling. The bugs lumped up around the floating points of light into three semi-feminine clouds that writhed and churned as they worked to solidify (although they wouldn’t be able to manage it until after the realworld’s night had fallen).
Nyx took off her eyewear as soon as the sun’s upper arc dipped below the horizon, revealing eyes as black as the night she embodied. They were all pupil, devoid of either whites or irises. She looked over at the others. “It’s time,” she said.
Lyssa sat up from the desk and nodded her assent; then she, Nyx, and the incomplete Bugwomen headed for the exit door,
As they crossed into the outer office, passing through the barrier between the worlds of life and death, they changed. Everything that passed through there did, in one way or another. The two chambers were something like an air-lock between realities, one room in either realm.
Nyx became a flattened, two-dimensional outline of herself that filled up with stars and swirling galaxies when she stepped through the portal, while Lyssa changed into a similar silhouette containing only mad static and twitchy silver flickerings. The unfinished bugwomen finally came together into their distinct, hard-shelled, long- limbed avatars: a Wasp, a Mantis, and an Ant.
Nyx threw open the door to the wider world-the door that read ‘Miguel Caradura’ on the outside-and the surreal quintet strode down the hall, toward the elevators, looking like danger and glamour personified.
Chapter Twelve
Lia, done meditating upon the now-active and empowered symbols she’d set up to defend her home, opened her eyes. It was just after sunset at Potter’s Yard. The sky was a pool of blue ink above, flecked with a first dusting of tiny silver stars. The trees were black silhouettes set against a backdrop of luminous twilight. Lia’s expression remained blissfully serene and untroubled for one instant, until she remembered something, and frowned.
“Hannah,” she said to herself, then leapt to her feet and hurried off toward the front of the Yard.
Tom followed, after resuming control and stretching the muscles of his waiting catbody.
Hannah picked up a paper plate with a piece of withered fruit on it that was lying on the ground inside the Yard’s front gate. She dumped the old fruit into a green plastic trash bin, then set the plate back down and fanned a newly-sliced apple out onto it. Lia had left her in charge of this one final task.
Within seconds, the apple wedges withered, browned, and visibly began to mold. Hannah watched the accelerated process of decay in total mystification.
“What makes that happen?” she asked, looking up when she realized Lia had emerged from the foliage behind her, with her tomcat close at her heels.
“Crouchers,” Lia told her. “Doorway demons. You buy their loyalty with snacks. That’s why I had you do this.”
“So there’s something there… eating it?” Hannah said, eyeing the sliced fruit uneasily.
Lia shrugged. “The part that counts, yeah.” Then, before Hannah could pose a follow-up question, she said: “Listen, Han, you’ve gotta get out of here, okay?”
“What, now?” Hannah asked, looking bewildered. “But I thought-”
“We’ve done everything I know how to do,” Lia told her. “But I’ve got no way of knowing if it’s gonna be enough.”
She knew it scared Hannah to see the worry in her eyes, but she also knew Han really believed what she said when she spoke so nakedly.
“I couldn’t live if something happened to you,” she said, her voice tightening up as she forced one of her worst fears into words. “And I might not be able to keep my guard up properly if I’ve got too much on my mind.”
Hannah stared at her for a long moment, unsure of what to do. Unsure of everything, it looked like. “Okay. I
