It was like dealing with a demon, I sensed you had to say it just right with a god or your soul would wing off to the wrong party.

“-and-” I was about to say “canine,” but those oddball attack hyenas might still be around to confuse things since they were a muddled breed and gender already “-so that all foreign human and lupine souls may return to the Land of the Living for their natural, or supernatural, spans.”

I almost said “Amen,” but bit my tongue.

My hand reached out to meet Ric’s. Then I just wished with all my freaking might on Shezmou’s double stars.

First came the distant thunder-like being under a major city subway system. Then a shrill whine whispered through the forest of pillars. I felt cold and Ric’s hand became ice. All the gold on Anubis’s ebony form glowed and then paled to silver.

I heard a roaring rush of water. The stones under my feet began pulsing. Water. Where would water rush?

Dropping Ric’s hand, I turned so fast I felt my silver headdress falling, then looping around my shoulders, light as air.

I turned back to the pit. The edges were crumbling and the people in the caves were sinking, but like feathers wafting down.

What had I done? I raced to the pit edge. A flash flood of silvery clear water was rushing through, rising higher, sweeping everything and everyone away.

The pit edges contracted, like a healing stone scar, sealing everything in, mummies and bodies and souls.

“Quicksilver!” What had I done?

I had no time to bewail anything more.

Shezmou grabbed one of my arms, Ric the other. They lifted me off my feet and hustled me into the now quivering pillars.

“Wait for me!” I heard Bez huffing and his quick running steps behind us. But no pattering Quicksilver claws.

The pillars were grinding now, toppling behind us like dominoes. A gray fog of black stone-dust enveloped everything and I had to shut my eyes. How could Ric and Shezmou keep running, except one of them was a god?

Then everything went silent.

RIC’S HAND WAS still squeezing my right arm but my left was free. I opened my gritty eyes to see a glint of sliver. The familiar had morphed into a Wonder Woman coronet-shaped wrist cuff. I blinked at Ric’s camouflaged face. The black streaks were now dusty gray.

He touched my bare forehead. “You lost your crown. What we saw down there and what you did were amazing.”

I looked around. Dim. Low-ceilinged. Abandoned except for some hulking bulls. No. SUVs.

“We’re in the Karnak parking garage,” I said. Croaked.

Ric nodded.

“Just us?”

Ric nodded.

“Quicksilver?”

He looked away.

“Shez and Bez?”

He looked back and shrugged.

My eyes were adapting to the low-level light. Three forlorn figures were leaning like dazed winos against a parked Jeep.

“And them?”

“Tourists with amnesia. I’ve called Kennedy Malloy to fetch them. We need to be long gone. Fast.”

I got it. My plan had worked. For a few freaking minutes, I’d been a goddess, or at least a femme fatale.

Now I was… just so damn sorry I’d failed to save another dog. I shook off Ric’s supporting hand. I could stand on my own, dammit. I always had.

“I’ll probably bruise,” I grumbled. “I could get a restraining order on you for that.”

He grinned at me. “Hey, Del. We’re alive and so are the tourists. Your invocation worked. So maybe that ‘lupine’ soul is still out there working his way home.”

“Or only half of him. I should have also said ‘canine’ back there, but hyenas are such a confusing breed.”

I was being such an ungrateful bitch. It was better than the alternative, and I figured Ric knew that.

“I CAN DRIVE in Vegas Strip traffic,” I told Ric.

“You’re upset.”

“That’s why I’ll drive.”

We were sitting in Dolly near the Karnak parking garage exit. Manny the demon had put such faith in our return he’d left the keys behind the visor.

The elevator that had whisked us down to People-eater Central was just a blank concrete block wall now. Kinda like my emotions. I suppose the Royal Twins had already disabled the route. They may be ancient and incestuous, but they owned and operated an up-to-the-minute hotel in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, which had always been more trendy and over-the-top than anywhere.

Where could we go but home? But this Dorothy didn’t want to leave Toto behind with some ghost of Elvira Gulch.

“Delilah,” Ric said, “I’ll do anything to get Quicksilver back for you. I can get a Homeland Security raid set up at the Karnak on the pretext of illegal Middle Eastern nationals. Something. I can pull strings in Washington.”

I believed that last part. But…

“It’s all gone to never-never land, Ric. You saw it. The caverns, the pit, the pillars, the people. Everything tumbled down. Gone.”

“Never-never land was a whole new world, Del.”

“What? Like over the Rainbow Bridge? I don’t believe that shit. I’d believe almost anything of this crazy new world, but not that Rainbow Bridge fairy tale. Quicksilver is gone! You saw it.”

Ric stopped looking earnestly at me and stared ahead at the blare of daylight beyond the dark we idled in. “I understand I was pretty ‘gone’ myself at the Karnak.”

“And I didn’t give up on you when everybody said I should, when everybody said you were… you were-”

“Dead.”

“Well, just how dead are you now?”

“I don’t know. I almost wish I was so I didn’t have to see your heart breaking like this.”

“Don’t say that!” I was so vehement it scared me. Him too.

He put his hands over mine, which were colder than ice. The silver familiar had handcuffed me to Dolly’s super-sized steering wheel, as if sensing I’d run back into the garage’s maze to pound on the concrete walls until my blood ran down them and they’d turn into an elevator to take me back to where I’d lost Quick.

“Maybe the dog has nine lives,” Ric said, “like a cat. He’s paranormally talented, after all.”

“He was weakening, Ric. Didn’t you see it? That heart-broken howl he gave when he sensed the rotten royals and their minions coming? I could see it in his eyes. Something was wrong. He knew he wasn’t coming out of there alive.”

“So he stayed and fought and saved your life, Del. That’s the best he could do and he wanted to do it. You know how hard he fought.”

Well, now I was crying in front of someone like a stupid eight-year-old, which I’d never done when I really was eight.

“It’s all right,” Ric muttered into the hair over my ear. “He’s always been special. I’m sure he could have ridden a piece of flotsam out of that pit river.”

The silver handcuffs had melted away with the release of my tears. Maybe there was a reason people didn’t fight them like I did. My freed hands felt my chest and found a fine silver neck chain dangling a locket. I was afraid to find out what kind of hair it held now.

“First Dog of Underground Las Vegas, huh?”

“I can convince Captain Malloy to put an all-points bulletin out on him.”

“How? She likes you plenty; me not so much. Why would she help hunt my missing dog?”

“I’ll say he witnessed a crime. Attempted murder. Well, he did. The force has an animal psychic consultant now. Even one for CinSims. Gotta keep up with the Millennium Revelation times. I’ll still comb the city for him, Del, night and day. Whichever time it is now, out on the Strip.”

That’s right. We didn’t even know what time it was, except mourning time.

“Me, too,” I said, turning the ignition and putting Dolly into gear. “I’ll look everywhere.”

I didn’t say “forever” aloud.

RIC HATED LEAVING me alone in the Enchanted Cottage that night but it was well after midnight and I couldn’t tolerate either sex or comfort yet.