He folded straight to her, but by then she was gone.

Endelle turned around. “What just happened?” She was scowling as well.

“I think Rith just took Fiona.”

“Aw, fuck,” Endelle muttered.

* * *

Fiona faced her enemy. She stood in a garden she knew very, very well, a place where she had lived for decades. She smelled garlic and turmeric, and her stomach turned.

Rith looked as he always did, fully in control.

“Did Greaves let you off your leash?”

“I have foreseen this, that you would come back to me, and we would begin again.” He gestured with his hand in the direction of the sky. “Look up?”

She knew what he wanted her to see, but she feared taking her eyes off him. She took several steps back and glanced in the direction of the sky. “Oh, my God,” she murmured.

Three layers of mist this time, the inside an exquisite shimmering gold.

“I had to do something to put everything back the way it was.”

She looked back at him and frowned slightly. “Greaves doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”

He shook his head, his straight black hair swaying against his ears and neck. “Greaves was finished with me. I was to be laid on the altar of his ambitions, so you mustn’t blame him for this. He didn’t know that I would be able to escape from Prague.”

“Then you weren’t at Dark Spectacle?”

“Yes, of course I was there, looking for you, watching, waiting for my opportunity. And most fortunately, I got swept up in the mass fold to Scottsdale Two.”

“Who set the explosives then?”

Rith shrugged. “I don’t know, but Greaves has an entire army who serves him without question, just as I once did.”

He seemed strangely despondent.

“He held you captive, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not pleasant, is it, to live without freedom?”

“I never cared about freedom.”

She understood then. Whether or not Rith and Greaves were lovers, she was looking at a broken heart. The man he loved had betrayed him.

Of course, she might have felt a little more sympathy for him if he hadn’t been her jailer for over a hundred years. “Are you keeping a new set of blood slaves here?”

“I intend to keep only one.” His lips curved faintly. “I always admired you, Fiona. You outlived them all, but I also think you kept many of the women alive far beyond normal expectancy. Your compassion had a good effect. Yes, I confess that I admired and respected you.”

Fiona frowned. “So you’re not setting up another facility?”

“Of course not. There is no reason to now. I only did so to please Greaves. Actually, I have something different in mind for you and me. Because of your emerging powers, your dying blood will mean my salvation.”

“But … you don’t take dying blood.”

He sighed. His black eyes took on a distant expression. “My only hope for survival now is to become a death vampire, but I won’t drink just anyone’s blood. Yours is the blood I want. It will add to my powers considerably with each taking, and as I said before, I respect and admire you. Your blood is acceptable to me, and I know from past experience that you have the ability to thrive, even in captivity.

“I should also add that I understand the limitations of your obsidian abilities—that you can only channel power, not express it yourself. At least that is what I have observed.”

Fiona stared at a madman, one who had chosen her as the vessel of his transformation, and the ongoing nourishment by which he intended to grow strong enough to sustain his own life in the face of Greaves’s intention that he should die.

She was appalled and disgusted, but this was the least of her concerns. She could be properly outraged later. Right now, she had her own survival to consider.

“You do understand that I have only begun to explore my obsidian power.”

“Yes, of course. I’m counting on the breadth of that power to push me beyond even Greaves’s achievements.”

She took deep breaths and relaxed her shoulders. She knew that the three layers of mist would undoubtedly keep her from reaching out to anyone else for help. Her only hope of defeating the powerful vampire in front of her would have to come from within herself.

* * *

Jean-Pierre tried to follow Fiona’s golden trail only once. When he was kicked back to the same spot where she had dematerialized, he knew who the adversary was and he also knew that he needed help.

Endelle still levitated ten or so yards away, answering questions from her High Administrators.

Thorne materialized beside him. Jean-Pierre was so overwrought, he had his sword in hand ready to take his enemy’s head off and just barely kept himself from decapitating Thorne.

“What the fuck happened?” Thorne asked.

“Rith took her … again.”

Thorne drove a hand through his hair. “Aw, shit.”

But Jean-Pierre stared at him … hard. “I think I know what we can do, the way we can maneuver around Rith in this situation.”

“How?”

“We need your woman. We need Marguerite. She prevented a complete annihilation at the outdoor chapel in Prescott Two because she saw into the future streams. She warned Fiona about the explosion at the arena and the women have a strong connection. If she uses her Seer ability to search for Fiona, I think we might be able to find her.”

Thorne scowled and searched Jean-Pierre’s eyes. He glanced at Endelle, who was now arguing with one of her High Administrators. “What the hell is Endelle wearing? She’s about one fruit basket away from belonging in the Caribbean. Shit. Okay. I gotta take care of this … now. Shit.”

He whipped his warrior phone from the pocket of his kilt and thumbed the slick surface.

“Hey, Jeannie. Has Endelle asked for Marcus tonight?” He rolled his eyes. “That’s what I thought. You need to get him over here right away. Havily, too. This mess calls for administrators.” His gaze shifted to Endelle whose face was bright red as she told one of her High Administrators to take his goddam head out of his ass. He added, “Not profane Voodoo priestesses.”

He put his phone away then turned back to Jean-Pierre. “We have to get Endelle’s go-ahead. What we need to do will involve breaking a big law.”

A moment later Marcus and Havily arrived looking very tousled: hair not in the usual tidy order, clothes less than immaculate. Generally the couple could’ve come from the pages of GQ or Cosmo. Marcus thumbed a line of lipstick off Havily’s cheek then kissed her.

The scene was so tender, so intimate, that Jean-Pierre had to look away.

Thorne called them both over. “Did Jeannie give you the scoop?”

“The short version,” Marcus said. “Sorry. We were a little … tied up.”

Havily coughed behind her hand, but Jean-Pierre could see she was blushing.

Marcus’s gaze slid to Jean-Pierre. “Hear we’ve got one of our own missing.”

Jean-Pierre nodded, but said nothing more. His throat was far too tight and his eyes burned.

Thorne filled him in. Marcus, his eyebrows slashed low over his light brown eyes, listened intently. Every few seconds his gaze would take in the crowd, then Endelle, then back to Thorne.

Finally, Marcus stared at Havily. Her expression was serious as well. Jean-Pierre knew they were talking it over telepathically. After a long minute, Havily nodded.

“We’ve got this,” Marcus said. He then called out to Endelle, “Madame Supreme High Administrator, you have an important phone call. It’s urgent.”

Had to be some sort of code.

Endelle glared at him, her cheeks still rosy from the ongoing argument. At last she made her excuses and floated toward them. Her administrative style did not help her at all, but such a demonstration of levitation power—something most Second ascenders could not do—would be talked about for a very long time.

“What do you mean, a phone? Why the fuck did you disrupt my meeting?”

Marcus offered her a profound you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look, then spoke rapidly. He outlined a disembarkation procedure for the High Administrators. Havily was already on the phone, initiating some kind of preset emergency strategy.

Jean-Pierre wasn’t surprised when off to his left, and away from the group, Marcus’s team began to appear.

A moment later Marcus spoke with three senior members of his team then levitated and took over Endelle’s place among the High Administrators.

For a long moment, as Havily joined Marcus’s staff, Endelle stood with her back to Jean-Pierre. Her fingers plucked at the feathers of her calf-length pants. She watched and listened to Marcus for about thirty seconds. Jean-Pierre wanted to interrupt her, to press her over their current disaster, but Thorne shook his head.

Finally, Endelle shifted to face Jean-Pierre and Thorne. “Guess I should have called Marcus right away.”

Thorne nodded.

Jean-Pierre felt ready to jump out of his skin.

Thorne put a hand on her shoulder and very quietly said, “We need permission to break into the Superstition Fortress.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but Thorne filled her in on Fiona’s sudden abduction and Endelle listened.

Finally she turned to Jean-Pierre and said eloquently, “Well, shit motherfucker.”

“We will never find her,” Jean-Pierre said, “without the aid of Marguerite. Rith blocked his trace as he did in Toulouse. Please tell us we may go to the Superstitions and do this thing.”

Thunder drifted down the valley,

Only an echo now.

The last of the rain fell to earth.

She crawled into the safety of her bed

And slept.

—Collected Poems, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 20

Endelle turned and looked at the crowd that she and Fiona had saved, over twenty thousand people. If Fiona hadn’t come through in that moment, if she hadn’t grown into her obsidian flame abilities, if she hadn’t allowed Endelle to possess her so that together they forged sufficient power to move all these people through time and space as though they were slicing soft butter, not one of them would be alive.