“What?” Jonathan asked, turning to look at me.
“Inside your manlikans,” I said, a little louder. “Those are Ancient Horrors, aren’t they??
?
He nodded. “Some of them. We pulled them back from the borders to protect the city. Wait until you see what they can do—”
I’d already seen it, I thought, feeling Billy moving inside his necklace. I really hoped he took a moment to figure out the currents swirling around us. Because if he came out at the wrong time—
But he didn’t. I didn’t know if he’d been listening, or if we just got lucky. But the next moment, I felt a familiar spirit slide from the necklace he haunted into my body, so that we could speak silently to each other.
Jonathan was nattering on about his cool new army, while I clutched Billy in a mental hug that I never wanted to end. But it had to. I needed a favor, possibly the biggest I’d ever asked from him.
And although I expected an argument; I didn’t get it.
“My fucking pleasure,” he assured me viciously.
“Are you certain? Billy . . . if it doesn’t work—”
“My risk, my choice. Just tell me when.”
I looked at Jonathan, which also gave me a side eye view of the lineup. The librarian was solid again, her old-fashioned gown puddled around her knees, her eyes wide and staring. But not for long. She flickered, and then abruptly went ghostly, and I gave Billy a mental shout: “Now!
He tore out of me, surging across the courtyard between me and Rhea, moving like a silver bullet until he slammed straight into my acolyte.
And disappeared.
He’d made the transition in record time, before the currents had a chance to change again. Although whether that would matter I didn’t know, because Rhea could absolutely throw him out again. It was her body; he was an interloping spirit; she could toss him out on his ghostly ass any second now and just might.
Because she literally looked like she’d been shot.
She was clutching her chest, her eyes wild and her mouth working, although no sounds were coming out. I saw her shiver all over, because possession is no joke if you’ve never done it before, and then go completely still. Before looking across at me, although I couldn’t tell if she was trying to mouth anything, because I couldn’t risk looking directly at her.
But since no stunned cowboy hit the dirt, only to get stabbed full of holes by the fey, I assumed that they must have come to some kind of understanding.
Yet it was already too late. A flash of light seared across my retinas from the direction of the portal. And when I turned my head, I saw—
“Oh, good!” Jonathan clapped his hands like an excited schoolboy. “Oh, here we go!”
No, I thought, staring in horror. At a line of brilliant yellow that had just slashed across the sky, almost the length of the valley. Out of it was pouring our army, which had looked vast in the pieces of it I’d seen over the last month, massing at HQ or training on the vampire consul’s estate. But now . . .
It looked pretty paltry now.
The ley line was spewing out vamps and mages alike, along with some heavy equipment that I recognized from all those late-night planning sessions. They were ward breakers, intended to cut through the magic that guarded Aeslinn’s fortress far better than stone walls ever could. And his wards were up, looking like a huge dome of frosted ice over the castle and surrounding town, because Aeslinn was taking no chances.
I didn’t think he needed to worry. Because the ward breakers were broken themselves inside of seconds, and the army was assaulted by a wave of defenders, often while it was still trying to exit the line. I couldn’t see how bad things were, even from this angle, because Aeslinn’s forces were so huge that they basically blocked out everything else.
But then, I didn’t think I wanted to.
We were getting slaughtered.
The only positive note was that Jonathan was whooping and pumping his fist in the air, and completely ignoring anything else. Even the fey were watching the war play out rather than paying attention to their prisoners. But that wasn’t going to help us in a minute, because Billy was having a problem.
He’d emerged from Rhea and was trying to make his way back to me, but he’d just gotten tackled—by the damned librarian. She had been freaking out this entire time, but hadn’t been doing anything about it. But seeing another ghost with a sense of purpose had galvanized her, and when he tore past, she latched on for the ride.
That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Billy had timed his transition to match up with a stream of earth energy cutting through the fey stuff swirling out of the portal, and she’d just knocked him out of it. And she’d knocked him hard. As a result, two all-too-human bodies tumbled out of nowhere, right in front of a line of fey guards, and to make bad matters worse, one of them was screaming.
Shit!