“Dead, Jericho. I said you should be dead.”

I waited for her to crack a smile or something else to show me that she was pulling my leg. Her steady, unblinking stare made it clear that wasn’t going to happen. I snorted at her.

“Well, obviously, I’m not.”

“That’s the part that has me worried,” she said and pushed herself off the bed.

She teetered on her feet for a moment before using a wall to steady her. She shook her head a few times like she meant to clear water out of her ears before giving me a searching look.

“What?” I demanded.

“I wasn’t kidding. You should be dead. Kaput. No longer enjoying metabolic function. If I didn’t know you had no good reason to do it, I’d think you were lying to me.”

I ground my teeth in frustration. “You keep saying that I should be dead, but why do you keep saying it?”

“You really don’t know,” she said. “You honestly don’t grasp the enormity of what you’re shrugging off.”

I rolled my eyes. “It was just a spell. Like a hundred other spells I’ve used a hundred other times.”

“Would you listen to yourself? I bent reality and it almost killed me. You rewrote reality and it didn’t even make you sleepy.”

I shook my head. “You’re blowing it out of proportion. I didn’t rewrite reality. I just tricked it for a little while.”

“Oh, so all the data that blinked out of all those servers, all the camera footage, all the memories of us that you poofed out of existence, that’s all back in place now?”

“Well,” I hedged.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” she said before rubbing her eyes. “God, my head hurts. Listen, we’ve got bigger issues to deal with right now, may all the gods help us, but this conversation isn’t over.”

“Jessie, I don’t even understand what this conversation is about.”

“It’s about you doing something that is impossible. Like I said, though, bigger problems to deal with at the moment. Did you really tell Annie to take me and leave?”

I nodded. “You’re damn right I did.”

“Why?”

“Really? You actually need to ask that?”

Jessie narrowed her eyes at me.

“Okay,” I said. “First reason is that you were unconscious and helpless at the time. Second reason is that this was never your fight. I wasn’t about to have you get killed because you decided to tag along for my stupidity.”

“So, you thought it’d be better for Carter to track us down one by one, where we each put up a brave fight and die tragically?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I hadn’t considered that. “Well, uh.”

“After which, he’d stand completely unopposed to unleash epic awfulness on the world.”

“I guess that,” I started to say.

“And, having achieved that goal, he’d be in a position to hunt down and destroy everyone and everything any of us have ever loved. That seemed like sound planning to you, did it?”

“I was just trying to do the right thing,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Oh my god, Jericho, save doing the right thing for helping old ladies cross the street. From now on, try doing the smart thing that doesn’t end with us all dead.”

“That was a great motivational speech, Jessie. Honestly, it got me right here,” I said, thumping my chest. “Inspiring.”

Jessie affected a ridiculous southern accent and said, “One does what one can.”

“The fact of the matter is that we don’t know that we’re any better off as a group than we would be going our separate ways.”

“Now that really is stupidity. Strength in numbers isn’t just some cliché. There’s a reason that countries have armies. Working as a group lets us each focus on what we’re good at. It also means we can relieve each other. We all need to sleep, to eat, to go to the damn bathroom. You can’t be on high alert every minute of every day. When you try, you start making mistakes. That’s when you get killed.”

A deep voice boomed from the doorway. “Couldn’t have said it any better myself, young lady. Well, no, I probably could have, but she hit the highlights.”

Jessie and I turned our heads in unison to regard a burly figure in a leather jacket who stood in the doorway. With his neatly trimmed beard and absolute self-confidence, William Brace was the sort of man who could pass himself off as almost anything from a biker to CEO. I knew that because he’d done it on numerous occasions when the work required it of him. He took a step into the room, and I saw the slight tightening around his eye as he put weight on his right leg. He saw me noticing and offered me a wolfish smile.

“Totally worth it,” he said.

I smiled back at him, a little. “I hear tell that the Raven’s Council has been getting some of your special attention as of late.”

He shook his head. “There is no Raven’s Council. Not anymore. Incidentally, we’ve come into some money that needs redistribution. You’re good at finding worthwhile charities. If you wouldn’t mind.”

I let it hang in the air for a second, acutely aware that the man standing there had lied to me almost ceaselessly for years, but I nodded. There were always places that made a difference that could use a boost. I wouldn’t let my family squabble get in the way of that.

“You got them all?” Jessie asked.

Uncle Bill frowned. “No, I’m sorry to say. One of them hopped a jet to Europe before I could catch up with her.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know who?”

“Victoria Ambrosia, or so she calls herself. I thought strippers gave up the name when they quit.”

I snorted. “That’s what I said to her. She didn’t take it kindly. I’m surprised you didn’t follow her. Europe is old hat for you.”

He gave me a level look. “I got word that my presence here might be more beneficial.”

“Gran called,” I said.

He nodded. Jessie looked back and forth between us, made a correct intuition or two, and took the greater part of valor.

“I’m going to go find my sister,” she said, all but fleeing the room.

Bill’s eyes never left me. “I believe she thinks there’s about to be some violence.”

“She’s smart. I expect a mercenary like her gets a sixth sense about those kinds of things.”

“I expect that’s true. You sure about this? Might not be the best move, all things considered.”

I stared at the man, trying to peel the lies away from the truth with pure will. “Can you give me a single, solitary goddamn reason why I shouldn’t?”

Bill considered the question. “There’s the small fact that you’re alive right now. You’re not wallowing in black magic and all the sacrifice of the innocents that entails. You’ve been given a skill set that lets you do good in the world. Plus, we both know you’ll lose the fight. Aside from that, no, I can’t think of any reasons.”

“You lied to me! You withheld knowledge that I might have needed. Knowledge that I did need!”

“Yes, I did. I withheld knowledge from you, but it’s not the knowledge you think I withheld. There’s not a magical thing under the sun that you couldn’t have figured out if you put your mind to it. You know it and so do I. If you don’t know how to do something, it’s only because you didn’t think it mattered enough. What I’ve kept from you, I kept back because you weren’t ready for it. I hope to God that you’ll never be ready for it.”

“Fine. What is it then? What do you know that I’m not ready for?”

“I know who your parents are.”