“What?” came an incredulous voice from the crowd. “You think you’re a what?”

I turned to that voice, identified the speaker through my link to the banner, and strode directly toward him. People got out of my way. He was a skinny guy, late thirties, holding a hunting rifle. He drew back half a pace, apprehensively, as I approached.

“What’s your name, man?” I asked.

“Uh . . . it’s Randy.”

“Okay, Randy. I’m only going to do this once.”

I dropped my staff on the ground, held up my hands in front of me, palms facing each other, drew in a whisper of will, and murmured, “Eggus Chennus.”

Green-gold lightning, not a ton of it, exploded from my palms, forming a current of energy that snapped and crackled in the sultry summer air, contained within the space between my hands.

I had thought through the spell before, but I’d never really tried it. It worked pretty well—except that rather than just going away, the power was cycling up one arm, around my shoulders, down the other arm, and then out between my hands again. It was a cycle that fed upon itself, and between that and the power-laden air of the terrified city, the energy built a whole hell of a lot faster than I would have liked. It had to go somewhere.

I picked a tree and unleashed a stroke of green lightning that smashed into the trunk about five feet up and brought the tree crashing down. It started burning with green flame, green flame—all hell was breaking loose. I could only attribute that to the breakdown in reality that Bob had warned me about.

My volunteers had fallen silent.

Randy looked like he’d swallowed multiple bugs.

“Wizard,” I reiterated. “Any questions?”

“Are you on our side?” Randy asked.

“If you’re here to defend the innocent, damned skippy I’m on your side,” I said. I grabbed his shoulder and squeezed a little. Then I turned to look at everyone else.

“The monsters are coming,” I said. “And they’ll kill everyone in this town if they can. Unless we kill them first.”

The crowd let out a sound that was a lot like a hungry growl.

I found myself smiling, more and more widely. Yeah, the world was full of monsters and demons. But it was a human world. It was our world because we were the cleverest, most resourceful, and most dangerous things in it. Maybe my little army wasn’t the most martial representation of humanity, but people fighting for their homes had, historically, done incredible things.

Time for history to repeat itself.

“Sanya, raise your hand.”

He did.

“This is Sanya. He’s a Knight. He fights monsters for a living and he knows what he’s talking about. Sanya is your commander. Sanya . . . hey, where the hell did you get a freaking Kalashnikov?”

Sanya shouldered his rifle by its strap, grinning. “Found it.”

I waved a hand at him. “Whatever. Take charge, man.”

“Da,” Sanya said, and raised his voice to a bellow. “Hello. First of all, da, I am Russian. Cope. Second, you see these men and women in uniforms? Easy to recognize even in haze, da? They are your officers. I will make groups of about thirty. Each group get one officer. Officer tell you what to do, you do it.”

Sanya turned to the uniformed men and women. “You guys get to give one of three orders. Stand, retreat, and follow me. Keep it simple. Communications in battle are hard, even for professionals.”

There was a round of nods. The military folks looked grim. They knew what a clusterfuck they were about to march into. And I knew about how hard it is to convey even simple ideas in a fight. We’d be lucky if the volunteers could follow even those limited orders reliably.

Sanya turned back to the crowd. “Everywhere we go tonight, assume that you have orders to kill the enemy on sight. If standing, and enemy comes, kill enemy. If retreating, kill enemy. If following officer and enemy comes, kill enemy.” Sanya considered. “Basically tonight we are always killing enemy.”

Another laugh at that. But he was playing to an easy room. People who are scared need to laugh, and the scarier things are, the more they need it.

“Okay!” Sanya called. “Officers will divide you into groups! Everyone keep quiet so you can hear them!”

Sanya and his officers started getting them sorted out.

I shivered a little and stepped over to one side, where I could close my eyes for a second and try to process everything that was happening.

I felt Murphy come up behind me and then lean against me. I leaned back.

“This is going to be ugly, isn’t it,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” Murphy said simply. “Just remember whose fault it is.”

There was a horrible shrieking sound, and the haze flared red. This time, I could hear the building falling again.

Ethniu was walking straight down Lake Shore, knocking down buildings like a kid kicking over anthills. She was coming for Mab.

Who was in essence using herself as bait to keep the Titan from noticing me.

I found Murphy’s hand and squeezed gently. “What’s going to happen after this, do you think?”

“I don’t,” she said. “Because I’m doing today first.”

I snorted quietly.

Murphy squeezed back. “Harry. You can’t fix tomorrow until it gets here.”

“Which is weird, because you can screw it up from decades away.”

I heard her laugh gently. “I got used to weird. It’s not so bad.”

“Flattery is unworthy of you,” I said.

“It’s definitely unworthy of one of us.”

I opened my mouth to fire back like Sir Benedic would have wanted me to, but instead I had to deal with a sudden harsh, twisting feline voice radiating through my skull.

Sir Knight, mewled the unsettling voice of a malk, this is Grimalkin.

Right. Grimalkin was Mab’s . . . personal aide, in some ways. He was an Elder of the malks, which meant he was bigger and stronger and meaner than most, and had access to a number of powers, foremost of which was the ability to creep me out with his damned weird voice.

The enemy comes from the north, Sir Knight. I am also advised, by this irritating pixie, to inform you that there is a still-occupied child-care center in its path with a number of young mortals inside.

I clenched my jaw so hard that I chipped a tooth.

I looked around. Sanya was ordering the volunteers, but it would take time for him to get it done. If I shouted, “Follow me!” and started moving, I’d probably just walk them into a meat grinder. Sanya needed more time to get the volunteers organized.