attention to her. She had only seconds to make him stop.
Atreus wheeled, unable to resist her new strength, and missed his footing. He stepped onto thin air. His mouth opened as if to speak, his eyes holding Constance’s in a blank stare Of surprise. Another time, he could have saved himself, but all his power was in the storm.
All his power was bent on killing.
She had to stop him. But maybe she already had, deep in her heart. She didn’t reach for him, couldn’t bring herself to grab his hand.
He had reached out to her, but only so that she could free him to massacre the men below. Enough was enough.
In that instant, Atreus’s power speared downward and dragged Atreus with it. He fell like a wind-tossed scrap of paper, drifting, spinning down through the stone cavern to the cruel rock below.
Magic was hanging all around Mac, like fog. Part of him had been aware it had been there all along, growing stronger as he’d been fighting. Now it clogged his mind. Memories from the past few hours flickered, but refused to coalesce. Lightning. Blood. Fire. Pain.
He shook his head to clear it. It helped a little. Enough to notice where he was.
He was sitting in the front row of one of the balconies, looking down at the chaos below. He seemed okay. Unhurt. Even his clothes were clean and unwrinkled.
For some reason that made him afraid.
“Thank you for putting me back.”
He whipped his head around, half jumping to his feet.
A woman was sitting next to him, her legs crossed casually under long skirts made of some gauzy rainbow- colored fabric. Mac’s first thoughts were of Renaissance fairies and organic gardening. She looked the tofu type, with one of those ageless faces and long, long straight hair.
She seemed familiar.
He looked harder. There was something about her that was hard to see, as if his eyes kept trying to shift away. He had to force himself to study her face. Black eyes. Hair so pale it looked silver. And then it clicked. She had Sylvius’s features.
“You’re back in the Castle,” Mac said.
“I am the Castle,” she replied. Her voice was husky and low. She folded her hands in her lap. The bangles on her wrists—gold, silver, copper, and metals he couldn’t name— jingled as she moved. “You see me as Atreus made me, but in truth I have no physical form.”
It made sense. Witches built sentient houses. The Castle was just a big house, conscious in much the same way. The Avatar was its sentience. More complex, more powerful, but the principle was the same.
“Very good,” she said, even though he hadn’t spoken a word.
“If you’re here, is Sylvius all right?”
“He will be fine.”
Mac didn’t want to look away from the Avatar, but he looked down over the balcony railing, anyway. He wanted to check on Connie, but couldn’t find her in the milling crowd below.
“She is unhurt,” the Avatar said.
Mac looked up, mildly irritated. He felt a beat behind the conversation.
“You want to know why you were involved in this battle,” the Avatar said, making it a statement.
“That would be nice.”
“It is a very mortal need. Why is so important to the short-lived. The simple answer is that I needed your strength.”
“And the longer and more satisfying answer?”
The Avatar shifted, her bracelets making a clinking sound. “The Castle—I—was failing. Sylvius had just come into his powers and was old enough to release me without suffering harm himself. You were there, and your demon was in a mutable state.”
“So it was you who changed me?”
“I took your dormant infection and made it active again. I switched you from a soul eater to a fire demon. Fire demons are much more useful for raising power, and I needed power to complete the spell.”
Mac’s mood went black. “So the time was right and I was convenient. That’s it.”
The Avatar gave a half smile. “I knew you were the one the moment you spared Bran’s life, right before you met Constance. There is a line you will not cross, one that keeps you from surrendering to darkness. You are someone who has a will to help others. You held on to that despite how the demon changed you. No other demon would risk death to save a teenage incubus from a roomful of guardsmen and sorcerers. Everything you are or ever have been destined you to save me and those who dwell here.”
That sounded a lot like the hellhounds’ prophecy. Lore had been right. “You mean I was just a pawn of destiny?” he said dryly.
“There is always free will. You could have not saved us. You could have let us all perish.”
“But instead I did my bit.”
“And I appreciate it,” she added.
“Good to know. So you got your spell. Can I go home now?”
She looked perplexed. “Home? You’re a wandering spirit.”
Mac began to feel sick. “Spirit?”
“You gave your life so that I could be free.”
A wave of desperation surged through him. He was dead. He couldn’t be dead. He slapped a hand to his chest, but he felt real enough. The bench felt hard and uncomfortable beneath him.
“You feel what you expect to feel,” said the Avatar. “Just as you see me because your mind needs an image to talk to.”
Mac licked his lips. Or thought he did. Whatever. “You said Sylvius is all right. How come he got to live and I didn’t?”
“Sylvius was two beings in one. Me, and his father’s son. There’s only one of you.”
Mac looked over the railing again, trying to catch a glimpse of the kid. He caught sight of Connie instead. She was leaning on Caravelli, starting to sob.
“But you can’t.” The Avatar sounded vaguely perplexed, as if he were being slow. She didn’t look so relaxed now.
Mac swiveled to face her. “Look, you turned me into a monster. A killing machine. I did terrible things to fulfill your spell. Soul-destroying things.”
“That’s true.” She didn’t sound very worried about it.
“You owe me for that. You turned me into a murderous monster.”
She leaned forward, not exactly angry but definitely intense. “Yes, as part of the spell to restore me, you killed a great many guardsmen. You paid for those deaths with your own life. Isn’t that atonement enough? And wasn’t it in a good cause?”
Mac didn’t say anything more.
The Avatar put a hand on his knee. It felt cold, heavier than a woman’s hand should have been. “Very well. You died in my service. I acknowledge my debt to you. What would you have me do? Do you wish to return to your human life?”
Mac lifted his head.
“Can you do that?” Mac heard the hope in his voice. Hope for everything he’d lost—his job, his family, his friends. He could see himself back at his desk, dirty coffee cup and files and more work than was humanly possible to accomplish stacked before him. It looked like heaven.
And there was more. He could keep October mornings. The smell of coffee. Dogs. Going for a run in the rain. He wouldn’t have to die, a wisp of nothing fading into the dark.
The Avatar gave an apologetic smile. “It is difficult to remove a demon symbiont from its host. It is harder still to keep that infection from returning. I would have to set safeguards in place to limit your contact with the supernatural world. If you were human again, my doors would be closed to you. You would find the supernatural
