TWENTY-THREE

This time is different from the others. It’s a much newer memory, and for the first time I’m playing myself.

I’m sitting in a chair, but I can’t move anything below my neck. Magic restraints. Cassius sits next to me in a similar chair, and I can tell by his posture that he’s in the same situation. We’re in some sort of cave, with torches flickering on the walls.

Standing in front of us is Ahaseurus.

He studies me coolly, with that undertaker’s face of his: long, bony, hawk nosed. “One of the fascinating things about an extended lifespan—as I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Cassius—is watching certain patterns arise and take root. Clichés, for example. When a particular phrase, persona, or event becomes popular to the point of overuse, it’s not, as some people claim, due to creative laziness, or even a cultural tendency to conform. No, such patterns repeat themselves for the same reason a particular configuration of DNA does: because it’s successful. A catchphrase is no different from a stubborn species of fungus that grows upon a boulder and refuses to die.”

“Not sure if you’re comparing yourself to a fungus or a cliché,” I growl, “but either one works for me.”

He continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “For instance, the antagonist of a drama explaining his master plan to the protagonist when he has her captive. A tiresome device, no? Always leading to this information being used against him at the climax, after her inevitable escape. Why does he do it? Hasn’t he ever seen a spy movie?”

He smiles and shakes his head. “I know why, because I have been doing this very same thing for a very long time—long before it ever became a cliché. In fact, I may have been the one who started this particular phenomenon … except that none of my captives have ever escaped to use this knowledge against me. Not ever.”

“Chassinda did,” I say.

Chassinda was the first woman Ahaseurus ever killed. He enjoyed the experience so much that he brought her back to life as a zombie, then kept her around as an undead trophy for hundreds of years. But even though he’d sewn her lips shut, Chassinda found a way to give me vital information—information I used to defeat her owner.

Ahaseurus is still smiling, but his eyes are cold. “You mean the escape of the grave? I stand corrected. If that is your definition, then all of my captives have found freedom. All … except you.”

“Yeah, I’m not much of a follower.”

“Ah, but you followed me, did you not? Seeking to rescue your lover, you came all the way to the Dark Continent … where, despite the assistance of the African Queen, all three of you wound up my prisoners.”

He sees the look on my face and chuckles. “Yes, I captured her as well. No last-minute rescues for you. Now, where was I … oh, yes, clichés. The reason the antagonist reveals his machinations to the protagonist is simple: because it provides him with a great deal of enjoyment. It allows him to demonstrate how clever he is. To preen and strut before his possession. To see the hope die in her eyes as she realizes—as she truly knows, for the first time—that these are the last moments of her life. It’s this moment that those who take life live for, not the act itself. I could no more deny myself this pleasure than I could deny myself breath.”

“Good,” I say “That’s my job.”

“Not for much longer. You’re about to enter a new profession—one that you won’t enjoy very much, I’m afraid I, however, will get a great deal of satisfaction out of it.”

“You know, I just made a decision,” I say. “I’m going to end you. Up until now I thought I’d just have to capture you, because you’re the only one who can send me home without me turning into an old homeless woman—but fuck that. I’m just going to kill you, the first chance I get.” I let out what’s supposed to be a melodramatic sigh of relief, but it feels more real than I expected. “Whew. That’s going to make things so much simpler.”

“Oh, but I’m going to make them simpler still. You see, there’s yet another reason I can divulge my plans to you: You aren’t going to remember them. In fact, you aren’t going to remember who you are, or what you do, or the fact that I even exist. You’re going to be my plaything, in a very special place I put together just for you.”

That scares me, worse than any threat of physical torture. The sharpest weapon I own is my mind, and he’s just told me he’s going to blunt it. It makes me feel sick, and angrier than I’ve ever been.

Cassius has been silent until now. He doesn’t believe in threats or posturing—I know he’s been spending the time studying the situation, evaluating every aspect and considering possible courses of action. “I have taken precautions in the event of my death,” he says to Ahaseurus. “I presume this is not a surprise to you.”

Ahaseurus favors him with a cold smile. “Of course not. It’s what I would do.”

“Then you don’t intend to kill me.”

“Not unless I have to.”

“Then know this. The price of tampering with Jace’s mind is your own soul.” He says this in a flat, matter-of-fact voice; it’s not a threat, simply a reminder.

Ahaseurus’s bushy eyebrows go up. He appears to be slightly taken aback. “I don’t think that’s a claim you can—”

“It’s not a claim, it’s a vow,” Cassius says. His voice has gotten softer, almost casual. “I don’t undertake them lightly. In two thousand years I’ve only made such a thing once before. It remains unbroken. Beings such as you and I tend to view mortals as ephemeral, not worth serious consideration. They simply don’t endure, do they? But hatred does.”

His voice has an edge to it now, one I’ve never heard before. An amused, bitter tone. “Pledging another’s destruction can give purpose, direction, to a life that stretches across the long, dusty years. You know this all too well. So do I. And I’m telling you that, should you violate Jace’s mind, you will become my purpose. My direction. My reason for continuing to exist. All the many, many years I have spent learning to survive, everything I know of war, every bit of knowledge I possess concerning the profession of tracking, hunting, and destroying other beings—all of it will be brought to bear on ending your extremely long life.”

Ahaseurus stares at him. So do I. It’s an all-or-nothing declaration, one with only two possible outcomes: Either the wizard lets us go, or he kills Cassius.

And he’s not going to let us go.

After a moment Ahaseurus lets out a rueful little chuckle. “So be it,” he says softly. “But you will not perish just yet. You have a role to play in my little drama, a very important one. You will be the father of a new race of vampires, Cassius. Your blood will unleash them on a world where they are only stories, and the African Queen will do the same for thropes. There will be no slow assimilation, no gradual decline of the human race this time; it will be fast and brutal and relentless, driven by a war between the two supernatural species that will demand each propagates as quickly as it can. You will both watch this happen, helpless to stop it, and only when you are drowning in guilt and despair will you finally die.”

I shake my head. “Why? You’d murder a whole planet, just to make me suffer? Talk about overcompensation—I mean, honestly, after the first million casualties or so, I’m going to be done. Anything past that is just make-work.”

He turns back to me. “Oh, it’s not just about you. Or even the one Earth. That’s the problem with you mortals: you have such tiny, limited perspectives. An immortal such as myself thinks on a far grander scale; using genocide as a psychological weapon against an individual is simply one gambit.” I didn’t think it was possible to utter a line like that without irony, but, all I hear in Ahaseurus’s voice is arrogance.

“I find it hard to believe even you could top that,” I growl. It’s a lie, but I need to know what else he’s planning; it’s the sunshiny optimist in me beaming through.

“I recently discovered a very interesting alternate Earth, with the unique quality of being a sort of natural gateway; it’s much, much easier to cross the dimensional divide to any number of alternities from there, though getting to it in the first place is proportionally more difficult. I’m in the process of solving that problem, though, with the help of my new lieutenant. He’s a collector of negative forces—forces I’m using to break down the barrier between this world and the reality I just mentioned. Once he’s established an entry point under my control, I believe his world will make a fine capital for my empire.”

His empire. A network of realities, all of them under Ahaseurus’s thumb. It won’t be just the sorcerer jumping from world to world anymore, it’ll be him and a supernatural army.…

Which is when I start to laugh.

Ahaseurus watches me, smiling indulgently. He thinks this is a ploy—maybe I’m stalling, maybe I’m just trying to provoke a reaction. But he’s wrong. This is real, genuine enjoyment.

I get myself under control. “You’ve been out of touch, haven’t you? Sure, holing up in another dimension means you’re hard to find, but it also means you’re out of the loop. Haven’t been able to check your e-mail lately.”

“There’s nothing I need to check—”

“You were putting together an army of damned souls—actually, you subcontracted the job, since you were busy with your transdimensional shortcut project. Well, guess what, Sparky? Before I came here, I stumbled across your little project … and oops, clumsy me, I sorta broke it.”

The look on his face tells me he thinks I’m guessing. I grin and start firing details at him. It may be the last chance I ever get to piss him off.

It takes all of thirty seconds before he lets loose a roar of pure fury. His eyes flood with an unearthly blue light, and he points a hand crackling with the same energy at me.

The world fills with lightning, then disappears.

*   *   *

Reality, such as it is, swims back into focus. I immediately look over at the paunchy albino I knew by the name Damon Eisfanger.

He’s perched on the edge of the recliner, his back straight, his shoulders squared. His features haven’t changed physically, but he’s wearing an alert, focused expression that’s light-years away from Eisfanger’s eager cheerfulness. He considers his own pale, pudgy hand.

“I see,” he says.

He clenches his hand and stares at it. The flesh begins to shiver, then blur into translucence, revealing another, firmer fist beneath it. He moves his gaze along the arm, the effect traveling with it; it’s as if he has some sort of Reveal Vision, invisible beams from his eyes burning off the illusion wrapped around his body.

I know that’s not it, though. It’s just sheer willpower, focused by an experienced shaman, peeling off a layer of decaying magic like a sunburn victim stripping dead skin. I wonder what he’s going to do when he gets to his face.

He asks for a mirror, of course. As a vampire, Cassius doesn’t show up in it, but the illusion does—for a second or so, anyway. Then it just dissolves, leaving him staring at his nonexistent reflection.

He puts the mirror down. Glances at Charlie. “Jace. Charlie?”

“Got it in one, boss.”

He nods. “Good to see both of you. Sitrep.”

That’s op-speak for situation report, the kind of shorthand you use in the field when you don’t have time for multiple syllables. I break it down for him, as quickly and succinctly as I can; right now, we’re not lovers, we’re two professionals in a very bad and dangerous place.

But even while I’m running down the insane events of the last few days, I can’t help noticing that I’m suddenly feeling a lot better.

He asks one or two relevant questions, but otherwise doesn’t interrupt. When I’m finished, he thinks for all of three or four seconds, then says, “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. However, you needn’t worry about my going feral. I can feel the primal power of this reality—it’s similar to that of Azura’s world, though not as strong—but my memories weren’t supplemented with artificial hatred the way the African Queen’s were. Once her own memory implants degrade, she should be able to regain control as well.”

“Good to know,” I say. “Maybe we should go check on her. We could use another ally.”

Cassius is already headed for the door. “After which we should proceed to the highway site. We need to get through it as soon as we can; it’s our ticket home, and with Ahaseurus dead it won’t stay open forever.”

I hesitate. “Are you sure we should run? Ahaseurus’s plan—”

“Was to overrun this world with pire and thropes, yes. You’ve taken care of the thrope problem, and my status as the so-called “master” vampire should give me a psychic link to any other pires created from my blood. I don’t sense any; whomever my doppelgänger turned, they must have been destroyed.”

Well, that’s good news, I guess, though I’m starting to feel sorry for the townspeople caught up in this. Okay, a lot of them belonged to an evil cult, but some of them were probably innocents victimized by Ahaseurus, hapless extras suddenly cast as players from my past.

I shake off the surge of guilt. Wrong time, wrong place. I’ll revisit the feeling later, with a good bottle of scotch, some solitude, and a very dark room. Right now, we have to move.

We march out to the car. There’s something in the rear window that catches my eye, though it takes me a second to recognize it: fluffy white stuffing from the back seat.

“She’s free!” I shout, pulling my gun. Charlie has the shotgun up and ready, while Cassius spins around and looks back at the house—which, it turns out, is exactly where she is, perched on the edge of the eaves. She launches herself straight at Cassius, knocking him over with her momentum.

“Go!” Cassius yells as they grapple. “I’ll meet you there!”

And then they’re tumbling across the street, Shaka doing her best to claw his head off, Cassius cooly and methodically using kicks, punches, elbows, and knees to inflict as much damage as he can. Our guns are useless; there’s too big a risk of hitting the wrong target.

I swear, then jump in the front seat of the car. Charlie joins me. I start it up, gun the engine, and swerve onto the road. I have to trust Cassius; as long as he protects his neck and keeps Shaka from getting her paws on anything pointy and wooden, he’ll be okay. By the same estimation, he probably can’t kill her—not unless he finds some silver or manages to decapitate her. Fighting her is a strategic move, designed to stall her while we get away; he’ll disengage as soon as he can, follow our trail out of town—

Something smashes onto the roof of the car.

For a second I think we’ve been hit by a falling tree or a meteorite—hey, in this town either one is possible—but then a pale hand gropes over the windshield from above. “Keep going!” Cassius yells.

I glance in the rearview. An extremely pissed-off werewolf is loping after us. Through cunning or dumb luck—and knowing Cassius, I’m pretty sure it’s the former—he’s gotten his opponent to throw him at us. Or maybe she just hit him so hard it launched him like a missile in the right direction.

Either way, I’m not going to look a gift pire in the fangs. I stomp on the accelerator, wondering if it’s possible to outrun her.

The answer is: yes and no. In town, where I have to contend with corners, I can’t get up enough speed; she’s gaining on us steadily. On the highway I’ll stand a chance, but I have to get there first.

Charlie smashes out his window with the butt of the shotgun, leans out, and blasts away in the African Queen’s general direction. I guess he must have tagged her, because she starts to zig and zag, bounding off mailboxes and vehicles more like an ape than a canine.

It buys me enough time to get to the main road, the one that connects to the highway. I floor the gas pedal and Shaka finally falls behind in the rearview mirror.

And then I see what’s waiting for me, just outside of town.

The road is lined on either side with bizarre, stunted trees shaped like giant candy canes. Each is about eight feet high, composed of different-colored strands wound around each other; the strands start out thick at the base and grow increasingly slender, the whole structure curving over at the top and tapering to maybe half an inch in diameter—the thickness of a piece of rope.

Rope that ends in a hangman’s noose.

A body sways from the curved tip of every tree. I recognize Zev first, not from his distorted features so much as the clothes he’s wearing. His toes almost brush the ground, creating the illusion that he’s standing on his tiptoes, maybe about to do a pirouette.

But he’s only the first. I see Don Prince, the owner of the hardware store.

Brad Varney, my transvestite mailman.

Mayor Leo.

And many, many others … people I knew or thought I did, all the familiar faces you see day after day in a small town. Men, women, children. My paperboy. The guy who drives the snowplow. That plump woman with the five kids. The old couple who always smile when they pass me on the street and apparently don’t know a word of English.

All dead. All dangling at the end of rope-trees that apparently sprouted overnight: bastard hybrids composed of roots, underground wires, telephone cable, garden hoses, bright orange extension cords. Strangled by the mundane, by the sinews and tendons that hold together modern existence. Crimson lightning dances overhead, now the only source of illumination in a black sky. I feel like I’m driving into hell.

But I’m not. I’m driving out of it. I keep telling myself that as I check the rearview mirror nervously. The African Queen is barely visible behind us, now in full wolf form and tearing after us as fast as she can. I assume Cassius is still on the roof, though I can’t really tell.

There’s a single traffic barrier across the road ahead, a yellow and black–striped sawhorse with a blinking orange light mounted on it. It looks absurd and out of place, like a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES sign on the Pearly Gates. Beyond the barricade is … nothing. No bulldozers, no backhoes, just a vast, yawning pit that the storm seems to be belching out of like smoke from an active volcano.

I screech to a halt, grab the spell books and jump out of the car. Cassius leaps down from the roof and joins me; it takes Charlie a few seconds longer with his bad leg. We’ve got maybe thirty seconds before the furious werewolf catches up with us; I toss the spell books at Cassius, then brace my gun arm on the hood of the car and aim down the road. “Read fast.”

Charlie is right there beside me, the shotgun snugged to his shoulder. “Scattergun will work best if I try to take out her legs,” he says. “You’ve got the pistol; aim for her center mass.”

I narrow my eyes and flick a glance at him. “That’s awfully knowledgeable for someone who just learned how to handle a gun.” Charlie, like everyone on Thropirelem, doesn’t know squat about guns.

“I’m a quick study.”

“Not that quick. Some of Allen’s memories must be bleeding through—maybe because the magic around here is unraveling.”

He hesitates. “Could be.”

I know my partner. I know when he’s not telling me something. And at times like this—all my senses heightened by adrenaline, my instincts going full throttle in sheer survival mode—I know a lot more. Without really thinking about it, I realize exactly what it is he’s hiding from me.

“You love me,” I say.

He doesn’t meet my eyes, doesn’t so much as twitch. He could be made of stone.

“Charlie Allen, I mean. He loves me. He loves me and you can tell and you’re not mocking me.” I say this last phrase in total disbelief, because it implies a whole world—a whole universe—of consequences that I am simply not prepared to think about at this point in time.

“Maybe later,” Charlie manages. “If we’re both, you know, still alive.”

Cassius intones three words, none of which I can spell or even pronounce. There’s a noise behind me like a rope snapping taut. I risk a glance.

Twenty feet away, the Gallowsman hangs suspended over the pit, the rope around his neck extending straight up into the storm itself. He looks much as I imagined him, a long, lean figure dressed in rags, but his head is erect instead of lolling to the side. The noose is sunk deeply into his flesh, and every inch of skin above it is a horrible mottled green and purple, as if his entire face were a single bruise. His eyes bulge from their sockets and his lips are grotesquely thick and distended, like blisters about to pop. His hair is long and black and greasy.

“Thank God,” I say wearily. “I thought you were going to look like my fifth-grade math teacher or something.”

“I am not your nightmare,” he hisses. “I am everyone’s.”

The sound of Charlie’s shotgun going off interrupts our witty banter. I snap my head around just in time to see the black, lupine form of the African Queen hurtling straight at us. She springs—not for Cassius or me or Charlie, but over our heads and at the Gallowsman himself.

She never makes it.

From my perspective, it’s like she leaped into an invisible wind tunnel, a blast of air so powerful that it not only makes every strand of fur on her body stream backward, it also stops her in mid-leap.

The Gallowsman is pointing a single, outstretched arm at her; scarlet electricity crackles down the rope from the storm above, dancing around his neck like a second noose.

The Queen’s fur isn’t streaming backward anymore; now it’s all pointing straight up, like an angry black cat plugged into a wall socket. Fur is nothing but tiny little strings, after all, and that’s what the Gallowsman controls. He’s got her by the short hairs, the long hairs, and all the hairs in between.

She snarls, writhing and twisting in midair, and I can see huge tufts of fur pulling right out of her flesh, some of them still attached to patches of skin. Must hurt like hell, but it won’t kill her; she might even have a shot at freeing herself. I make a silent vow never to complain about waxing my legs again.

Cassius is chanting now in a low, sonorous voice. The Gallowsman gestures with his other hand, and I hear something ripping itself free under the hood of the car. A multicolored rope made of fan belts, electrical harness wiring, and brake cables snakes its way from beneath the vehicle and slithers toward Cassius. I shoot at it, but it’s hard to hit.

The African Queen is ripping free of her own pelt in a frenzy, spattering blood everywhere. I shield my mouth and eyes; a previous thrope experience may have left me with an immunity to the virus that lives on werewolf claws, but I still have to watch out for other modes of infection.

The fur that’s no longer attached to the Queen isn’t just dropping to the ground—it’s weaving itself into a long, thick black rope in midair. At the same moment that it loops around the thrope’s neck, the autoconda wriggles up Cassius’s body and around his throat. Both yank tight; Cassius’s incantation stops.

“You fight a war for no purpose,” the Gallowsman intones. “He who summoned me is gone. I care not for his plans. You may go.”

He flicks his wrist. The African Queen, her body now covered in more blood than fur, falls to earth. The black rope begins to haul her toward the edge of the pit; she fights it every step of the way.

I can’t worry about her, though, not when Cassius is being throttled. I know a sharp blade can sever a pire’s head from his body, but I’m unclear on the rules about garroting. Cassius doesn’t need air to breathe, only to speak—but a cord can cut through a neck, too, given the application of a strong enough force, and the Gallowsman seems to have plenty of that.

I snap a scythe open as I sprint. Cassius isn’t even trying to free himself, just focusing on the spell book and the graphic novel; he’s got one open in each hand, and his lips are still moving.

I get the point of a scythe between the cable and his neck and cut through the strands. They immediately reweave themselves, and I have to cut through them again—this time, I yank the cable free and pull it as far as I can from Cassius’s neck; it wriggles and squirms, trying to get back to its objective. It’s like wrestling satanic kudzu.

I hear a howl of anger and desperation behind me, one that quickly fades away to silence. I look back. The African Queen is gone.

I chop at the cable-snake. It reforms again and again, but I’m buying Cassius time. Charlie fires the shotgun, putting round after round into the Gallowsman’s chest. Cassius resumes chanting, but I can’t hear him over the roar of ordnance.

Which doesn’t seem to be affecting its target at all. More crimson lighting arcs and crackles down the rope that leads from the Gallowsman to the storm, and I realize what’s going on: Ahaseurus turned the Gallowsman into a battery for mystic energy, but with the sorcerer gone he’s started tapping into that energy for himself. He may not have the kind of world-conquering ambition the Big A had, but he’s now just as powerful … and he’s plugged into a dimensional nexus that will let him travel to any number of alternate worlds.

Where he’ll do what? Why, the same thing he’s always done, but on a bigger scale. He thrives on bad luck and despair, so the more there is the more powerful he becomes. I have a brief, intense vision of the President of the United States, weeping in suicidal remorse as he enters the nuclear activation codes.…

“You,” the Gallowsman says, turning his attention to Charlie. “Puppet man. I see the strings that run from you, that stretch across the dimensional divide. They are here.” He reaches out, makes a grasping motion in the air—then yanks.

Charlie lurches forward like he was pushed—no, more like he was pulled. He drops the shotgun. He staggers, catches himself, then shakes his head. “What? What’s—what’s going on?” He looks around in utter confusion, and I realize that my partner just got kicked off this dimensional plane.

Down to me. I’ve got to keep Mr. Dangly there busy long enough for Cassius to finish the spell, or it’s all over. There’s only one thing I can think of to do, and it didn’t work out so well for the African Queen.

But I have an advantage that she didn’t. My pelt comes off a whole lot easier.

I skin out of my clothes as fast as I can and throw them as far away as I can manage. They don’t come to life and try to return, for which I’m thankful; either the Gallowsman hasn’t figured out what I’m up to or he doesn’t care.

Then I grab a scythe, clamp the handle between my teeth, and sprint for the edge of the precipice.

Everything seems to slow down as I run. My mind is perfectly clear, perfectly focused. Yes, I’m about to throw myself off a cliff, one that seems to be perched over a dimensional gulf. Yes, the being I’m aiming at has plenty of time to prepare and is vastly more powerful than I.

I launch myself into space, wondering if this is how I’m going to finally die: naked in midair, a silver-bladed, monster-killing weapon between my teeth.…

Nah. Not bizarre enough.

It’s a long jump, but I’ve got momentum, adrenaline, and desperation on my side; it looks like I’ll be able to reach him, barely—

My head comes to an abrupt halt. He’s mystically latched on to my hair, yanking it back the way he did the African Queen’s fur. But the rest of my body keeps going, just like I knew it would; my legs swing up, on either side of the Gallowsman’s body, and wrap around his torso. It feels like clamping my legs onto a cold, damp burlap sack filled with bones.

I reach up and grab the handle of my scythe. My eyes are no more than a foot from the Gallowsman’s, which are very dark and very dead. This isn’t a person; this is an elemental force given human form. It can’t be reasoned with, it has no pity or mercy or compassion. It just is. The reason it was summoned was simple: to collect despair, and dump it into me. To make me suffer.

But not to kill me.

I see a look of consternation cross his face as the scythe begins its arc, not toward his neck but toward the rope above his head. He wants to strangle me, or maybe drop me into the pit the way he did the Queen, but something’s stopping him. The rope around his neck isn’t just a noose; it’s a leash, one Ahaseurus placed there to ensure his attack dog didn’t go too far. Killing me was a pleasure the wizard had reserved for himself.

It’s also the conduit the Gallowsman’s using to channel energy from the storm.

Sorry, baby. Time to cut the cord.

The blade bites into and through the strands. There’s a brilliant flash of crimson, but I was expecting that. With my other hand, I lunge for the end of the rope I just severed.

My hand closes on it. Cut off from the mystic maelstrom that was feeding him, the Gallowsman drops straight down without a sound. In a second he’s vanished into the darkness of the pit beneath us.

I put the scythe back in my mouth and grab the rope with my other hand. Twenty feet away, Cassius has stopped chanting and is now studying me quizzically.

“Libble helb?” I manage.

*   *   *

Rescuing me turns out to be easy; the storm, and the portal beneath it, are now under Cassius’s control. He directs the dangling rope to move, and it deposits me on the edge of the cliff before zipping up into the clouds and disappearing. Whichever reality the Gallowsman disappeared into, he’s no longer connected to a storehouse of mystic energy.

Charlie Allen looks the other way as I get dressed. Cassius doesn’t.

“Okay,” I say. “Now what?”

Cassius doesn’t reply for a moment. When he does answer me, he sounds hesitant. “That’s up to you, Jace.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“When he brought you here, Ahaseurus eliminated the condition that would have prematurely aged you if you tried to return to your own reality. You’ve captured Stoker, fulfilling the terms of your contract. There’s nothing to stop you from going home—and I can send you there from here.”

I blink. The evil witch is dead, I’ve reached the end of the Yellow Brick Road, and I can finally get the hell out of Oz—or in this case, Kansas.

But do I want to?

I glance over at Charlie Allen. He stares back at me with a guarded expression I know too well. He’s not worrying about himself, he’s worrying about me. I know he’s not my Charlie, but …

But he could be.

I look back at Cassius. His face, by contrast, isn’t guarded at all; it’s just sad. He thinks he knows what I’m going to choose, and he’s getting ready to say goodbye.

I think about home—the one I was born and raised on, the one without thropes or pires or golems. The one that has butterscotch ice cream and shooting ranges and the house I grew up in.

I take a deep, deep breath.

And then I tell them what I’m going to do.