“Plus they could just burn the whole thing down around us,” Magog said, her voice strangely bored at the idea. “That’s what happened to the other Brighton Pier, you know. Burned up, right into the sea.”

I gulped. I hadn’t thought about that.

“Stop arguing,” Blondie said. “What’s done is done. At least we’re not going to Morrigan’s estate.”

I didn’t tell them how I’d almost said yes to that idea. I had no idea why on earth I would have said yes—it was obviously the stupidest idea possible.

“We’ll get Hiral back,” I said instead.

Blondie sighed. “How the hell did he get captured, anyway? I’ve seen him walk through enemy camps, whistling, without being seen. Something’s not right.”

“Do you think he betrayed us, Cyntaf?” Gog said, his tattooed face sad at that thought, but also resigned, as if betrayal was something he took to be part of life.

“No. Hiral would never join the Alfar… any Alfar. But something still isn’t right… however, none of this matters. What matters is figuring out a plan. A good plan. A plan that won’t get us all killed.”

She paused, picking up a saltshaker that stood on the table in front of us.

“This is Jane,” she said, placing it in the center of the table.

I gulped, as she put other objects around the saltshaker after naming them. But the saltshaker that was me remained at the center.

“Um,” I asked, when it became apparent that she wasn’t moving me out of the way. “Why am I at the center, again?”

“Because you’re who she wants to talk to, Jane. Plus, where’s this shitshow going to go down?” she asked.

“Brighton Pier,” I said, wanting to scream. “I know it was a bad choice, I get that already, but…”

Blondie cut me off with a look.

“But nothing. You picked a pier, babycakes. And you’re our only Water Elemental.”

I sighed, suddenly hating my own idea with the strength of a thousand suns.

It was May, but in Great Britain that didn’t mean it was spring. The wind whipping over the pier was vicious, shot through with a razor’s edge of cold that even I felt, despite my selkie blood. Not wanting to waste energy on keeping myself warm magically, I pulled my hoodie tighter around me, wishing for the thousandth time that I’d brought a proper jacket. I envied the night watchman we’d glamoured to sleep in his warm little booth, looping his CCTV cameras so they’d show the same ten seconds of nothingness for however long it took us to face Morrigan.

Other than the sleeping guard and the trespassing, we hadn’t gone to much trouble to disguise ourselves. We didn’t figure we’d get out of tonight’s meeting without a fight, but we also didn’t figure that was such a bad thing.

We had some of our best soldiers—mostly the ones Gog had brought in from London—watching the front of the pier, so that Morrigan’s peoples couldn’t drive up a truck loaded with explosives or anything. And I’d spent the previous few hours setting various water snares around the perimeter of the pier, so nothing was getting to us that way.

The way we figured it, without cheating we were an equal match for Morrigan and her people. As long as they didn’t come with an entire army, we might as well meet them and see what they wanted. If it was a fight they wanted, that’d be all right by us too.

So although I was front and center, I knew that at my back stood my friends and our new allies. Plus, with Anyan and Blondie standing directly behind me, I couldn’t help but feel confident.

We’d decided to meet Blondie at the very back of the pier, where it was more open air and had more of a carnival atmosphere, with a roller coaster and everything. The front and middle parts of the pier were mostly made up by a covered market, which would have been no good for fighting.

Wrapped up in my own thoughts, I flinched when a mage ball suddenly winged its way from far above my head to land with a sparking thud at my feet, but only a little. It wasn’t an enemy’s missile, after all, but Magog’s. The raven was perched far overhead on top of the roller coaster, keeping a sharp watch for our guests. The mage ball at my feet was her signal they’d arrived.

A large wolf came streaking up to me before changing into a man, breathing hard from his sprint. Anyan and Blondie moved forward to hear our nahual scout’s report.

“It’s her,” he said, through his panting. “It’s only her, with Hiral on a lead, and five other guards.”

I frowned. Five other guards? That wasn’t a lot. We had at least twenty people stationed throughout this pier, and five more guarding the foot of the pier. We also had Anyan Barghest, the fiercest living warrior of the time, and an actual Original, whose power easily rivaled that of an Alfar monarch.

I know Morrigan’s arrogant, I thought, but she’s not crazy. Blondie’s right—something’s not right.

Anyan was obviously with me on that one, because he made a series of quick gestures that sent most of our soldiers melting into the darkness around us. If Morrigan was planning a surprise, we may as well hide some of our own aces along with our sleeves, for good measure.

Magog flapped down from her position on top of the roller coaster to join me, and I took a moment to admire her natural form. Her wings spread out in an enormous inky spread. She was wearing leather pants and a thin leather breastplate, and I saw that her feet were the scaly black feet of a bird, long toes and all. But it didn’t make her any less beautiful.

As if to counter Magog’s raven beauty, I saw movement from the corner of my eye and I faced forward to find the equally beautiful, but golden Morrigan striding to us. She was wearing a lovely cream pants suit, with towering high heels and her long hair pulled up into an enormous, supremely sexy twist. Her emerald eyes shone with curiosity as she strode forward, hips moving like those of a catwalk model. It was only when she was a bit closer I could see her dragging Hiral behind her. He was on a dog’s leash, with a collar around his neck, and he looked about as pissed off as I’d ever seen his always pissy little face.

I would be angry too, however, if I were being dragged around like a recalcitrant puppy.

“Jane,” Morrigan said warmly. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”

For a moment I thought she was going to come up and hug me, but she stopped a few yards away. I marveled at my own disappointment.

You want to punch her in the eye! I reminded myself angrily. Still, I watched her with rapt attention as she looked around at my friends.

“You’ve brought your little buddies. Anyan,” Morrigan said, nodding to the barghest whose bristling presence I could feel only a few feet behind me. “And Cyntaf. Always a pleasure to see you, Original.”

It was only in her greeting to Blondie that Morrigan’s carefully friendly facade slipped, and for a second we saw the venomous creature lurking under her skin.

Of all the people here, I wondered, why does she hate Blondie the most?

It felt strange, not being the one hated most by the Alfar in the room.

But a second later Morrigan had slapped her party face back on and was waving into the shadows.

“And hallo out there! To all you little hiding monkeys! I see you, you silly things.”

Laughing warmly, as if we were all in on her joke, she turned again to face me.

“Well, Jane, you came. Just as I asked. Here’s your naughty pet,” she said, holding forth Hiral’s leash. I raised an eyebrow.

“That’s it? You’re just giving him to us?”

“Of course, silly!” she exclaimed, as if I were obviously crazy to mistrust her. “I said I would, didn’t I. Now come take his lead.” Morrigan’s accent had suddenly gone British, another mystery. She’d always spoken with a flat, American accent, but now she sounded like the Upstairs part of Upstairs, Downstairs.

I inched forward, hearing Anyan growl behind me as I did so. But I went anyway, carefully erecting my most powerful shields. It wasn’t hard with all the water saturating the ocean air.

To my surprise, Morrigan did nothing but calmly hand me Hiral’s leash when I walked forward. I dropped to one knee, undoing the collar as quickly as I could, and then let him run away behind me towards our friends.

“Now why on earth would you let that smelly thing run free?” Morrigan mused. “Oh well. You have what you wanted. Now do we get to talk?”

“Sure, Morrigan. Now we can talk,” I said, refusing to let my voice betray just how much I wanted to talk to her. “But no funny business. And I can’t imagine what you have to say to me.”

“Me?” She asked, her gorgeous gemlike eyes huge and innocent. Except that now, upon being closer to her, I realized that those emerald eyes were slit, like a cat’s.

And didn’t they used to be blue? I remembered, suddenly.

Who cares, my libido purred. They’re beautiful…

“Of course I won’t pull anything funny. I only want to talk,” she said. “In private.”

And with that her hand closed on my wrist and everything went black.