And an area of clear floor up ahead that I shifted onto in a crouch, only to stare around in horror.
Smoke was billowing everywhere, and the scattered coals from the engine had started fires here and there, whenever they encountered something flammable. But the cars looked mostly intact, and there were stupefied faces starting to peek out of the mostly missing windows. I didn’t know how Pritkin had done it, but he’d held the shield long enough to make the disaster at least survivable.
But not right, I thought, looking around at a faux Old West town filled with shops and cafés, souvenir stands, and yard-long beers. And a taco-selling donkey cart that shouldn’t be here—none of this should—because it had all been a casualty of the war!
Before I could figure out what was going on, I was pushed to the side by hotel security, who had arrived in force and were trying to hold back crowds of screaming tourists and get to the others who were scattered across the ground. Because they hadn’t had shielding, had they? The drag looked like a battlefield—again—which is what I guessed it was, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on it. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything.
Until I spotted a used paper cup in the mess by an overturned trash can.
People were jostling, security was yelling, and—somewhere—Pritkin was calling my name. I barely heard. Because I’d zeroed in on that cup like a spriggan on a meat spear, and nothing was keeping me from fighting my way through the crowd and grabbing it.
And then just standing there in the midst of the huge, unruly mob, being jostled this way and that while an alarm bell rang inside my head. Which went up a couple hundred decibels when I turned the cup over and read the name printed in cheerful, leaping flames on the side: “Welcome to Diablo’s Hotel and Casino. Have a devilish good time!”
I staggered back and abruptly sat down.
Oh, I thought.
Holy shit.
Chapter Forty-three
Four hours later, I hit a wall.
Or, to be more accurate, I hit two.
I’d just shifted into the old Pythian Court in London with a couple more displaced train passengers. Getting everybody back where they belonged was stage one in repairing the timeline, but it was easier said than done. A lot easier.
I’d already decided that this was going to be my last trip of the day, even though I’d barely made a dent in the several hundred people the train had been carrying. But the leaps had been getting harder and harder, with this last one feeling like I was wading through cold molasses. I groaned with effort when we finally pushed past the last sticky filaments holding us back—
And popped into one of the parlors on the ground floor of the old Georgian mansion the court had once called home.
It was a small, cramped room where supplicants usually kicked their heels waiting for the current Pythia to see them. And since she had more visitors than she wanted, she hadn’t bothered to make it too pleasant: the dark, heavy furniture looked uncomfortable, and the fussy velvet drapes left it gloomy, even when it wasn’t night. But it had been working well enough as a landing pad.
At least, it had until now.
Something was wrong.
I staggered into a wall, one covered in beige wallpaper with tasteful burgundy ribbons, and also into one featuring unpainted drywall and food splatters above a plastic garbage can. My eyes kept trying to cross because I was seeing both at the same time and couldn’t seem to stop. Just as I couldn’t stop my legs from collapsing underneath me.
In my body, I hit the floor; in my head, I saw another Cassie. I had no idea what was happening, only that she seemed to have been left behind when I shifted, peeling off me like I suddenly had a twin. A very confused one.
But after a moment of standing in the middle of the drag, looking as blank as I felt, she moved toward one of the cafés. It was mostly intact, having just been clipped by the carnage. As a result, although the servers had been sent home
or pressed into service elsewhere, the emergency crews had been helping themselves to refreshments all afternoon.
While I was transitioning here, the other Cassie had followed suit, slipping behind the counter and into the kitchen, only to find that all the coffeepots were empty. Since there were about a thousand people trying to clean up the mess that one vengeful adept had made, she’d decided to start some more. But that wasn’t what had happened.
She ended up on the floor, too, coffee grounds scattered around her, the pot clutched in one hand that didn’t seem to want to let it go. I watched her smash it again and again into the wall, until there was glass everywhere and her hand and arm were cut and bleeding, but she still didn’t stop. A garden of bloody fist prints bloomed like roses on the drywall, her feet made garbage angels in the trash after she kicked over the can, and—and—and—
And now we were both convulsing, her in that other time and me in this one, my back arching like it would break before slamming itself against the hardwood floor.
The two train passengers I’d brought with me just stood there, staring straight ahead, their glassy eyes making them look like mannequins. They’d been mind-wiped by members of the War Mage Corps, which had been helping with the cleanup, and that left people pretty zoned out for a while. So they weren’t going to be calling for help.
And neither was I. My teeth were clenched hard enough to hurt, but something had started foaming out of my mouth onto the floor, like I’d been chewing on soap. I stared at it in horror, and not just because of me.
But because that other Cassie had started to choke.
I was on my back, too, but with my head rolled to one side; she was staring straight upward, at the stained tiles in the kitchen ceiling that were never changed, because no guests were supposed to be back there. One was missing, giving the whole lineup a gap-toothed smile, like the universe was laughing at us. Like Jo, I thought, seeing her hateful face again.