“Nanna nanna boo boo. You can’t get me, and I’m gonna wipe the floor with you,” she sings with a childlike tone before she sticks her tongue out at the cage.

“Surrender yourselves,” the collection of creepy voices chimes.

“Surrender this,” Paca volleys, flipping them all off.

I’m not sure what else Harold expected from the day, but Paca seems weirder than usual. Or maybe not. It’s sometimes hard to tell.

“We’ll have to find another way to deal with the tar,” Paca carries on, as Fluffy seems to slowly relax.

“The only other way to combat the tar is to avoid it. And you can’t avoid it, so—”

“Let me work that out. I’m sure some of my own new tricks were gathered in preparation for all I could possibly face. The old me was super diligent in predicting and planning. Did they tell you about Ninety-eight Degrees?”

Harold turns, but Jude waves him off. “Don’t ask,” Gage adds, rolling his eyes.

“What? That was amazing! I never get any gratitude,” Paca prattles on, the way she often does when she’s deliberately trying to distract us…

“What are you up to, hell-spawn?” I ask, my gaze raking over her in suspicion.

“I don’t want to unveil my plans while it is listening,” she says, shooting me an are-you-an-idiot look.

Right.

That makes sense.

Fucking hell. Now I really do feel like an idiot.

Bristling, I return my attention to Gage, who is looking away from Paca, a concerned expression etching his features. He looks slightly confused and worried at the same time, but I don’t get to ask questions, because she’s right about the fact we need to limit what we say right now.

Later.

We’ll discuss it later.

Or at least we’d better.

Still, as I survey Paca, her lips turned up in a smile, her eyes darkened with concentration, I notice her subtly catch another drop of blood that falls from her nose.

She’s working hard to pretend to not be serious right now, but her nose only bleeds when she’s so serious that it gives her a migraine. She flashes that smile toward me, wiggling her eyebrows.

“When we’re done here, I want you to be my favorite,” she tells me.

Like a stupid fuck, I almost fall off my horse, and her smile turns more genuine as I fumble to stay atop it.

I really have gone and lost my balls to her purse by this point. No wonder Jude is really freaked out about the love thing.

“I can’t help but wonder if you can make them war,” she muses idly, glancing over her shoulder.

“Not through that cage. And I thought you wouldn’t give away your plan in front of prying ears,” I say quietly.

“It already knows you’re War. It’s the things it doesn’t know that will give us the edge,” she says in such a muted whisper I almost miss it.

“It already knows their individual horsemen powers will have little to no effect, as I’ve heard you already discovered,” Harold butts in, rolling his eyes. “There’s more to see, but it seems as though Jahl is holding back today as well,” Harold says on a tired sigh, glancing up at the sky. “And time is coming to a close for our visiting window. We’ll have to start the trek back soo—”

A thunderous roar vibrates the ground, and we all jerk our attention behind us as the tar sprays into the air, the puppets bursting into liquid to join the spew. Steam rises, proving it’s as hot as hellfire in there, as it all twists and turns.

For miles.

And miles.

And motherfucking miles.

This thing can be everywhere at once with more reach than we prepared for. It’ll take more than just one blast of power to trim back the front lines of its defense.

Tension ratchets up as it sprays higher and higher into the air, an intimidating show of power as puppets start raining down, spears forming in their hands, much like the one that split through Jude.

Death’s jaw grinds as he moves closer to the barrier, watching as they all throw the spears. The spears simply glance the transparent cage, bouncing back with a lot of force, but that doesn’t stop them from continuing to heave them at us, as the spray intensifies within the cage.

I refuse to swallow against the lump in my throat, and I remind myself we’ve leveled up since Jude took that spear to the gut.

I’ve never been afraid of much. It seemed we could take on anything with each other, or face death without fear, should it come for us. But now, more than ever, it feels as though we have a lot more to lose.

My eyes flick to Paca, just as she discreetly wipes more blood away from her nose, her eyes measuring the power display.

“Surrender yourselves. You will not defeat me. You cannot.”

We all stare on as it continues to spray into the air. This is just a demonstration. It’s still not the full amount of power this thing has. It’s playing with us. Showing off. Toying with our heads.

It’s working.

Already, I find destroying the world to be a safer plan for all the souls, us, and all three planes. If this thing gets loose, it’ll likely be the end of all.

“Will all of the upstairs suffer if it’s freed, or will there just be a new universe created?” I ask quietly.

Harold is silent, either hesitant to answer, or unable to do so. When I glance in his direction, I see him staring blankly ahead.

“The pure can’t fight this thing. We had the misfortune of belatedly learning the righteous is damned upon touching it, and even with a magnificent amount of joined power, the corruption would be staggering. Angels would fall almost instantly upon facing it, balances shifting and destroying themselves in an effort to fight against it. Sin with no heart or reason is simply a monster at its very core. There is no way for us to defeat it. To the rest of your question…I don’t have an answer. I’m a fallen angel. Not even the archangels would be privy to such information. I couldn’t even hazard a guess, for I know not what lies ahead.”

It’s the most non-committal, non-answer I’ve ever heard.

“Your rides will escort you out. Don’t waste much time, or you’ll be sealed in until the battle, when the next window is available,” Harold concludes before he blurs away, racing so fast I almost lose sight of him immediately.

Paca studies the thing a little while longer, brow furrowed in concentration as she taps her chin.

“Think it’d suddenly behave better if I fed it some popcorn?” she asks, even as another drop of blood drips from her nose. “I know the pain of desperately wanting some of that light, buttery goodness and being unable to have it. The entire world could be saved if we—”

“Harold’s gone. You can stop playing pretend,” I interrupt.

“We should go. I want to peruse the nineties room after I spend some time with my favorite,” she chirps, winking at me again.

My eyes automatically dip to the very tempting blonde before me. Fucking shit, I just want her all to myself for hours on end. Maybe I’d be okay with sharing. Possibly. Since we have such little time left before this fight, I suppose it’d be selfish to keep her to myself for too long.

While I’m stuck debating time-shares in my head, Paca takes off on Fluffy, hooves pounding the ground as she heads off.

Jude rides up on my right, Gage comes up on my left, and Kai stops next to him. Lined in a row, we watch her back as she rides toward the gray horizon.

“She’s hiding something,” I note aloud.

“We’ll discuss it once that thing isn’t listening to us,” Kai states as he bolts in her direction, unable to siphon out of this section, forced to ride horses like a full-on cliché.

My own steed kicks off without waiting for my command, following behind him, and the other two ride up until we’re in a row again, striding at an even, fast pace.

Paca’s too far ahead to catch up, because Fluffy may be massive, but she’s a hell of a lot faster than she looks.

We barely catch a glimpse of her with Lamar at the edge of the no-go area, before they both disappear from sight.

“That dick,” I gripe.

“He whisks her away when she’s keeping fucking secrets,” Kai grinds out.

Idly, I spot Harold waiting off to the side.

“I don’t know what the point of bringing us out here even was,” I tell him as we slow to a stop just in front of him.

I’m still not sure how I feel about him. We wouldn’t have made it without him this long, and I hate that I feel indebted to the man who helped end our first lives by taking the one thing we all must have really fucking treasured.

“I’m not sure either. Jahl did more of a demonstration than usual, though. It’s doing its best to intimidate her,” Harold says in a nonchalant way.

I don’t want to admit the demonstration was certainly intimidating. He can create puppets even without souls.

“What do you mean you’re not sure?” Jude asks him, barely getting the words out.

It looks like he’s struggling to decide how he feels about Harold as well.

“In the days before Paca...” He lets the words trail off, visibly hesitating, as he takes a step back and keeps a wary eye on us. “The old Paca spent her final days visiting that cage during every window available for approach,” he says, changing his phrasing.