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“Xavi, please!” I shouted. “It’s me, Echo, your best friend. Remember? You have to fight this!”
Barely a twitch of understanding in his eyes, zero reaction. How was I supposed to knock him out of it? I’d dispelled Morrow’s entrancement by invoking his beloved Carly Rae Jepsen. I briefly considered grabbing Houston and doing something filthy to him, but how would making an already enraged Xavi jealous bring him back to his senses?
And then Houston opened fire.
I flinched at every shot. Translucent bullets zinged through the air, the hexed ammunition designed to strip away bits of a target’s spirit until they were too exhausted to keep fighting. But something feral had taken over Xavi’s body, his instincts and reflexes far speedier than I thought possible.
His clenched jaw, the dedicated fury in his eyes, how he flitted so effortlessly from side to side and dodged every bullet. — it was frankly a miracle. Paralumen’s magpies and their fucking miracles.
Houston cried out when Xavi took a final springing leap straight toward him. Their bodies crashed together, Houston’s revolvers clattering uselessly away. Pinned to the ground and vulnerable, all he could do was fight off Xavi’s fists.
Morrow and I fell upon Xavi, struggling to pull him off. He was so strong, far stronger than he had any right to be, veins and muscles bulging in his neck. An incantation ripped in a guttural burst from his throat. It was that one spell again. Despair choked my throat as I repeated the words to myself. I didn’t want to hurt Xavi, but I couldn’t let him kill Houston, either.
Xavi’s fingertips glowed again as he reached for Houston’s head. I raised my hand, my fingernails burning bright. Where could I strike? Where could I jolt him with enough pain without leaving permanent damage? But as Xavi moved to grab Houston’s temples, Houston did the same, grabbing the back of Xavi’s head. He lurched upward, their mouths crashing together.
My jaw dropped. The spell faded from Xavi’s fingers just as it faded from mine. The hateful growling in his chest turned into a low purr of satisfaction, his hands tangling in Houston’s hair as the two of them kissed torridly right there on the floor of the tunnel.
I thought back to how Morrow had tried to choke me to death under Paralumen’s spell, how I’d considered kissing his face off to bring him back to sanity. My insides burned with annoyance. He watched Houston and Xavi make out for a moment, then turned to me with bright red cheeks. His embarrassed expression fell for a second, turning to concern as he met my scowl.
“Now what the hell did I do?” Morrow asked.
“Nothing,” I snapped. “Absolutely nothing.”
CHAPTER 17
Isank halfway into the sofa, my muscles like gelatin. My bones felt so heavy, weighing me down and pinning me to the cushions. I thought I might never get up again. Part of me was okay with that. This was probably what people meant when they talked about being bone tired.
The battle with Paralumen had taken us completely unawares. But did we really have an excuse anymore? Even Morrow hadn’t exactly loaded up on scrolls like he usually would. But who would have thought that the Goddess of the Valley would strike in a portal tunnel, of all places? Fucking up a thoroughfare, fucking things up for everybody else in the process, like dropping a piano on a highway.
But again, no excuses. Paralumen was on the prowl, and while Loki hadn’t exactly tried to squish us like bugs outright, we knew that he was dangerous. Lesson learned. Morrow and I needed to be armed to the teeth from now on. Spatial awareness. Always on the alert. If you stay ready, you don’t gotta get —
The doorbell rang. I shifted among the cushions, my body somehow sinking even deeper into the sofa. That was lunch, but even the promise of delicious food couldn’t lure me out of my plush little pillow fortress. I hated knowing that it wasn’t just exhaustion dragging me down.
It was hard to ignore the despair, so thick and heavy in my chest. The awful understanding that Paralumen could claw her way so easily into our minds — into Xavi’s, of all people? Xavi who was probably somewhere getting comfort-fucked by Houston. Good for them. At least someone was getting some.
Plates clattered in the kitchen, then the faucet squeaked as it twisted shut. I hadn’t even noticed that Morrow was doing the dishes.
“I’ll get it,” he said, no doubt just as tired as I was, no doubt judging me for transforming into a puddle of jelly.
The front door clicked open, then shut, the rustle of plastic and waxed takeout boxes almost tempting me out of my lair. Plastic rustled again as Morrow opened everything and laid it all out on my tiny dining table.
He came over to nudge me with one socked foot. When I grunted in response, he nudged hard enough to push me onto the other half of the sofa. I glared up at him.
“If you really think I’m going to come over and spoon-feed you, you’ve got another thing coming.”
I let him drag me over to the table, the smell of steaming-hot ramen, crisp tempura, and perfectly seared gyoza finally reenergizing me, at least enough to shove portions of it all into my mouth. Morrow ate quietly beside me, chewing like a civilized human being as I all but snarfed and snorted my way through my share of the Japanese lunch that he’d so generously put on the company card.
He set down his chopsticks, watching me deliberately as he swallowed his last mouthful of teriyaki chicken and rice. Ugh. I’d been holding off on discussing the events at the Black Market, but we had to.
“So,” Morrow started. “That was a whole thing.”
“Tell me about it.”
“This is bad,” he said. “The fact that she was able to pull that off, first of all, but also how brazen the attack was. That she’s so willing to destroy infrastructure and put people in the underground in danger? This is a whole new level of villainy.”
“Shouldn’t we tell someone about the damage in the portal?” I asked. “It’s like she blew a hole in a tunnel, except the tunnel feels like a hose and the passengers are water. Oh, god. Won’t people get sucked out through the breach? Like a hole in an airplane. Won’t they get randomly tossed into different dimensions?”
“Don’t underestimate the Black Market. I can’t begin to explain how it works, but the climate in there, the time of day — it’s all under the dimension’s control. You know how they have a sun? That’s not our sun. The dimension’s going to be fine. I’m sure the powers that be have rerouted energy toward repairing the tear already.”
