Aphrodite clued Z in, saying, “The cafeteria is full of humans. Loud, nervous, stress-eating, annoying humans.”

“All righty, then, let’s make it the professors’ dining hall instead,” Z said.

“Oooooh! I’ve never been up there! Are you sure it’s okay?” Stevie Rae chirped.

“I’m sure it is,” Zoey said before Aphrodite could answer her.

Aphrodite raised one brow, stepped aside, and motioned for Z to take over. “Well, then, lead on with your big girl panties.”

And Zoey did.

Zoey

A long, shocked silence followed Aphrodite’s retelling of everything the Witherspoon woman had reported.

Shaylin brushed a trembling hand over her face and said, “Dead Fish Eyes—that isn’t just the color of Neferet’s aura; it’s what she really is—dead inside.”

“All those people,” Damien said in a hushed voice. “She’s going to kill them all eventually.”

Aphrodite nodded. “When Lynette described everything that had happened, the puzzle pieces fell into place from my last vision. Goddess, I hate figurative language.” She looked at me and raised her brow. “You were too busy being a raving bitch, so I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but a pain-in-the-ass poem was my bonus prize.” She closed her eyes and recited:

With great power comes great responsibilities

Weigh the pleasure of leadership and luxury with the sword Damocles

When she believes the ancient is the key to all her needs

Then is when all will tumble down; then is when Light bleeds and bleeds.

Aphrodite opened her eyes and met my gaze. “I thought it was talking about you.” She held up her fingers, ticking off her points. “First, you have way more power than makes sense. Second, you sometimes do actually act like a leader, and we do actually follow you, which means you have access to all of this—” Aphrodite paused and gestured at the beautiful dining hall. “Then there’s the end part about ‘she’ believing the ancient is the key and Light bleeding because of it. Well, that sounds like you using your Seer Stone and messing up the balance of Light and Darkness.”

“That analysis does sound reasonable,” Damien said.

“Thank you, Queen Damien. Reasonable, yes. Correct, apparently not. I skipped the whole sword Damocles part because I didn’t want to look it up and because I seriously hate trying to figure out symbolism. But then we found out you didn’t kill those men, and Neferet slaughtered a shit ton of people and proclaimed the Mayo her Temple and herself Goddess. So I read the stupid story of Damocles.”

“That’s about, like, waiting for something awful to happen, right?” Stevie Rae said.

“Most people think so,” Damien said in his teacher voice. “Actually, the story is an ancient parable. Damocles was a courtier whose job was, basically, to do nothing but lie around and amuse and flatter his king. One day Damocles made some comment about how fabulous it would be to be king. Basically, his king said, ‘Hey, if you think it’s so great to be king, then go ahead, try out my throne.’ Naturally, Damocles took him up on the offer. He was having a gay old time—” Here Damien stopped to giggle and say, “Gay! Heehees!”

“Oh, for shit’s sake, tell the rest of the story or I will,” Aphrodite said.

Damien got himself under control and continued. “Anyway, Damocles was having such a good time that it took him awhile to notice it, but hanging above him, on a thread as thin as a horse hair, was a sword. All of a sudden being king didn’t seem so awesome to Damocles and he begged the king to let him go back to his own life.”

“Oh, so the moral isn’t that doom and gloom is lurking,” I said as my mental lightbulb lit up. “It’s that you should be happy with what you’ve been given.”

“Yeah, and—as the guy in the NPR story explained so that I could effing understand the metaphor—not covet what you haven’t been given because that other oh-so-awesome life has it’s own bad shit, usually in proportion to how much responsibility and luxury you have. In conclusion, I think the prophecy was more about Neferet than you,” Aphrodite finished.

“Which means we’re super screwed because it’s not Zoey,” Shaylin said.

“Huh?” I said.

“Zoey, if it was about you, you’d listen to the warning,” she continued. “You really already have. You know Old Magick is important, but you realize the key to that power is you and your intent, and not just hooking into the power. Right?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, and my mental lightbulb got brighter. “Oh, I get it! It is a warning about what Neferet is up to. She’s messed up the balance of Light and Darkness by waking up Old Magick.”

“And she’s not going to stop,” Damien said.

“True,” I said. “So the answer is simple. We’re going to have to stop her. For good.”

“I’m hoping you have a plan for that,” Aphrodite said.

“Thanks to you guys, I have the beginning of one. We need to find Neferet’s Damocles sword,” I said.

Kalona

“At least the protective wall contains her.” Darius was the first to speak after Kalona had explained to him, Stark, Aurox, and the detective the full extent of the macabre charade Neferet was playing out in her “Temple.”

“Only temporarily,” Aurox said.

Marx nodded. “Yeah, Thanatos and Shaunee are giving it all they’ve got, but it’s taking a terrible toll on them. Even they don’t have any idea how long they can keep the spell going—especially since it’s not confined just to the Mayo. It’s got all of Tulsa in a protective bubble.”

“You realize that’s good, right?” Stark said. When the detective looked at him questioningly, the boy continued. “The last thing we need right now is national involvement. Look at it like this—the fewer people who actually witness Neferet’s insanity, the easier our cleanup is going to be once we stop her.”

“Do you still believe she can be stopped?” Marx asked.

“I do,” Kalona said, and he did believe it. “I fought Darkness in one form or another for eons in the Otherworld. The war against it was never won because there must be Darkness as long as there is also Light. But Light does win individual battles. Neferet is simply another individual battle in which Light must vanquish this one particularly tenacious and evil form of Darkness.”

“But the whole balance and battle versus war thing means that you lost sometimes, too,” Marx said.

“I did,” Kalona said grimly. “But the biggest losses I experienced were internal. I allowed Darkness to corrupt something that was pure and honest and true, and when that happened, Darkness won a battle.”

“What makes you think Darkness won’t get to you again and you’ll lose another battle? This time at our expense,” Stark said.

“You’ve lost a battle to Darkness yourself, boy,” Kalona shot at the arrogant youth. “What makes you think Darkness won’t get to you again and you’ll lose another battle?”

Stark bristled, but he answered with no hesitation, “Because I love Zoey and I’ve pledged myself to the path of Nyx.”

“And that is how I can assure you, and myself, that I will not lose this battle—because of love and because of the oath I have given. I know what it’s like to be forsworn. I will not do that again. Ever,” Kalona said. He ran his hand across his brow. It was still damp with sweat, the only outward evidence he couldn’t control that showed the wounds he’d received the night before had not yet fully healed and continued to pain him. I need to climb high—perhaps to the roof of Nyx’s Temple. There the immortal magick in my blood can call healing to it—I must make time … I must make time.

“Hey, big guy, are you sure you don’t need some rest?” Marx was asking him.

Kalona waved away his inquiry, avoiding the question with one of his own. “Detective, I’d like to ask a favor of you.”