“No one is tearing down my abbey. This evening,” Jada said. “Galway. Three miles east of town there is one of these anomalies much higher in the air. Bring Dancer. I’ll meet you there.”

“This evening, Chester’s,” Ryodan said flatly. “That’s where we’ll be. Unless you think you can save the world alone.”

Jada was motionless a moment then, “The map I saw—”

“The map Dani saw,” he corrected.

“—I assume you’ve continued tracking the anomalies.”

“Every bloody one. And there are more than there were. You’re missing information. I have it.”

“Tonight, then. Chester’s.” She turned and freeze-framed out.

—

Dawn was pressing at the edges of the drapes by the time Jada sought her private quarters to sleep for a few hours. It had been three days since she’d last rested, and she wanted to be sharp for the meeting tonight.

Working with a team was so much more complicated than working alone. But none of the things she’d learned Silverside had the least effect on the growing tears in the fabric of their reality. Closing the doors on Cruce had been difficult but doable. Not a single ward or spell she’d mastered affected the black holes. She’d tested them exhaustively on the smaller, isolated ones.

Long ago she’d have pursued her investigation alone, but she’d lost too much and was unwilling to lose more. The girl she’d once been was impulsive, to her own detriment. Jada had conditioned herself to pause before acting. She was uncomfortably aware that very pause might be why she’d failed to predict the Crimson Hag’s moves on the cliff. Intellect and gut were two vastly different things, with disparate strengths and weaknesses.

Imperfect as a child. Imperfect as a woman. But at least she could choose her imperfections.

The Dragon Lady’s library in the east wing was her domain, locked, warded, and spelled so nothing could get in or out unless she permitted it. Inside the ornate yet comfortable book-filled chambers was everything she needed to survive. And a few things she’d gathered for no discernible reason.

Seeing Dancer had been uncomfortable. The others she’d managed with nominal discomfort, reminding herself of one past incident or another, mortaring the wall between them.

Not Dancer. They’d had a single argument long ago about boundaries and friendship, about letting each other breathe, but it had steamed off like fog on a sunny morning.

He’d accepted her on first sight, had said, “Jada,” letting her know right off the bat they were fine, the same as his hand had always held easy, letting her stay or go. He’d said, “Welcome home,” and meant it, smiled, and it was genuine, with none of the rejection she saw in other people’s faces.

Mac, too, seemed different, but Jada had no desire to ponder it.

She moved into the second room of the chamber, draping various bits of shirts and towels and throws over lamps and sconces as she went, dimming the lights. Thanks to Cruce, all lights burned at all hours, and she hadn’t yet fathomed how to degrade that particular magic. She no longer feared Shades in the abbey. Her sidhe-seers had exterminated the last of them.

When she reached the bed, she rummaged beneath it and removed a small wooden box containing various items she’d collected upon her return to the city. She withdrew a folded piece of paper smudged with chocolate, sat on the bed, undid her hair, and ran her fingers through it.

Time. Both enemy and ally.

They thought she’d lost five and a half years of her life. She hadn’t. She’d lived them. They were the ones who’d lost five and a half years of her life. And held it against her.

Absurd.

She turned to gaze at handwritten words she knew by heart.

Kill the clocks, those time-thieving bastards

Haunting every mantel, wrist, and wall

Incessantly screaming our time is gone

Marching to war with us all

Kill the clocks they remind me of people

I once met in passing that pushed me aside

To rush to their train or plane or bus

Never seeing where the true enemy lie

Kill the clocks before they’ve seduced you

Into existing as they do, in shadows of the past

Counting the days as they slip by us

Boxed into a world where nothing ever lasts

Kill the clocks and live in the moment

No cogs or gears can steal our now

When you laugh with me, Mega, time stands still

In that moment, I’m perfect somehow

She touched the chocolate stain. It was a lifetime ago that Dancer had given her this poem, the same night he’d given her a bracelet she’d lost in the Silvers. Securely tied, it had been sacrifice that or her hand. At one point or another she’d sacrificed most everything.

“What a mess,” Shazam muttered crossly. He was sprawled in the middle of the bed, on a mound of pillows, peering over her arm. He yawned, baring enormous teeth and a curled-up black-tipped pink tongue. “Not a bit of it works. It should be ‘lay’ not ‘lie.’ What does manage to flow has been bastardized for the sake of the rhyme. Awkward.”

“Those who can’t, critique.”

“As if clocks can be killed, and even if they could I hardly think enlightenment would suddenly descend on such a primitive race, granting the ability to grasp complex temporal truths. Why do you insist on remaining with these three-dimensional people? There’s no question one of you will manage to destroy this world. Sooner rather than later. We should move on now. Did you bring me something to eat?” he said plaintively. “Something with blood and a heartbeat?” His whiskers trembled in anticipation.

“There are power bars—”

He sniffed. “A misnomer if I ever heard one. Not only don’t they confer any appreciable power, I’m quite certain they sap mine. They taste bad and make me depressed.” His violet eyes grew dewy.

“Everything makes you depressed. If you ever got out of bed—”

“What point is there in getting out of bed when you make me stay in these stuffy, dirty chambers?”

“I don’t make you do anything. I merely asked—”

“Your ‘asks,’ boulders around my neck,” he said woefully. “I’m as unseen as I was on Olean.”

“That makes two of us.” Refolding the poem along the creases, she tucked it back into the box, stretched out on the bed, sword at her side, and closed her eyes. She didn’t undress. She never undressed. Sleeping was dangerous enough. She’d had enough of waking up to battle nude. Although it had certain advantages—blood was much easier to wash off and it often disconcerted the hell out of a human male enemy—she preferred not to.

Shazam got up immediately, turned around three times, lay back down then bounded right back up, bristling so hard the mattress vibrated. “You smell bad. Like a predator. I’m not going to be able to sleep with you smelling up my air. Who touched you? Why did they?”

“I’m not taking a shower,” she said without opening her eyes. “I’m too tired. Besides, we’ve both smelled worse.”

“Fine. I’m not cuddling, then.”

“I didn’t ask you to cuddle. I never ask you to cuddle. I don’t even use that word.”

“You don’t have to. Your expects, bars on my cage.”

“I merely suggested in exchange for grooming, since you have all that fur and blaze like a small sun, you might keep me warm. Some of those worlds were cold.” And still, she often felt she had ice in her bones.