“Madeline, I am so—”

“Don’t apologize,” I said, and jerked my thumb at the silvery apparition floating in the air. “It was her fault. You’re some piece of work—you know that?”

Amarantha smirked at me. “I may have failed in this instance, but you will never know when I will strike again.”

I stood up, rubbing my throat. “Whose magic did you steal to be able to do that?”

“I stole nothing,” Amarantha said, miffed. “Your useless brother left his cupboard of toys behind when he was beheaded. There are many useful things in there.”

Greenwitch’s magic. She’d been an exceptional witch, and since Antares had no magic of his own she had bequeathed him a collection of magical objects to help him. I’d noticed the cupboard in the cave in the Forbidden Lands where I’d killed Antares, but once the mountain came down on the cavern I’d assumed nothing could survive.

Somehow Amarantha had ferreted out Antares’ goodies. Before, she’d just been an annoying ghost. A closetful of magic suddenly made her a lot more dangerous. That meant I would have to find her stash and destroy it before she could do any more damage to me and mine.

Amarantha smiled like she knew what I was thinking. “You will never discover it, Agent. You will be forever looking over your shoulder for me.”

She rose up, her tinkling-bell laugh just as irritating in death as it had been in life. She threw her arms wide. “But first, a gift for you.”

The vampires came slithering over the fence from the alley, dozens of them. Behind them clambered humans with blank eyes, and I realized that Amarantha had somehow ensnared these humans with other ghosts, just as she had possessed Nathaniel. It was a crafty move, since she knew that I wouldn’t deliberately harm a bunch of innocents. And because it severely limited my brand of blast-and-burn magic.

“I guess we know who was working with Therion,” I muttered, drawing my sword. Nathaniel and I moved so that we were back-to-back. “Don’t hurt the humans. They’re not responsible for what they do.”

The vampires surrounded us, snarling. They descended on us, and so commenced the hacking and the slashing.

The vampires were hopelessly outmatched. I’m not sure why they bothered, really. The hardest part for me was making sure that I didn’t accidentally behead any humans in the close quarters.

“Why are we bothering to engage them?” Nathaniel said as he sent a blast of nightfire directly into the chest of nearby vamp. “There is no need. We could fly away.”

“Yeah, but then the vampires would eat the neighbors,” I said. “And I think they just got home after the last vampire crisis.”

The vampires were dispatched fairly quickly. The humans were another problem. They surrounded us with their blank and staring eyes, their hands outstretched.

“This is a lot like being in a George Romero movie,” I said. “Except that I don’t have a shotgun.”

We both lifted off from the ground at the same time, floating above the yard. The possessed humans milled around for a minute, confused.

“Now, where did that bitch Amarantha go?” I said.

“Here,” J.B.’s voice said behind me.

18

AMARANTHA GLARED AT ME THROUGH J.B.’S EYES. SHE pointed her finger at me and shot a blast of red light at me. I dodged it narrowly and pointed my sword at her.

“Let him go,” I said. “Hasn’t he suffered enough abuse at your hands?”

“You won’t hurt this body,” Amarantha said confidently. It was disturbing to hear her speaking with J.B.’s voice. “I can do whatever I like with you and you cannot defend yourself.”

She blasted at me again. I was lucky her aim was crappy, because otherwise that blast would have hit me square in the chest.

“We have to get her out of J.B.,” I said to Nathaniel.

“Yes,” he said. “But we have another problem.”

He pointed toward the east. A vanguard of Agents was flying toward us, led by Bryson, and carrying weapons. Apparently Bryson just wasn’t scared enough by my little performance on the bridge a few days before.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, exasperated. Amarantha tried knocking me out of the sky again, and I avoided it once more. “Sokolov really has a lot of time on his hands.”

“I will take care of the Agents,” Nathaniel said.

“Don’t kill them,” I warned.

“Bryson would kill you in an instant,” Nathaniel said.

“Don’t kill them,” I said. “They’re following orders.”

I turned my attention on Amarantha. I was pretty sure I could get her out of J.B.’s body if I could just get ahold of her. But she was right. I wouldn’t willingly hurt him, so I couldn’t just blast her out.

I flew toward her, building up speed. Her eyes widened. I don’t think she expected me to charge her.

But she acted exactly as I hoped she would. She ran. Amarantha had never been one to stand and fight on her own. She hid behind monsters, behind underlings, behind protocol and politics. She had never engaged me in battle, although legend had it that she led an army once. If so, there was nothing left of that woman when I met her. Amarantha was not a warrior.

J.B.’s wings carried her over the rooftops, away from the sounds of battle and gunfire that were now coming from the air above my yard. I hoped that Nathaniel would be all right. I hoped that he would not have to kill any of the Agents and thus give Sokolov yet another excuse to come for me.

She headed toward the lake. The surface of the water churned, mysterious and dark, and I felt the presence of Alerian once more.

I sped up, grabbing J.B.’s ankle. Amarantha tried to shake me off, to blast me in the face with her magic. I turned J.B.’s body upside down and shook it, and several tokens fell from his pockets to the beach below.

“No!” she shrieked. I knew then that she couldn’t access J.B.’s own magic inside his body. She needed Greenwitch’s charms to perform a spell. I lowered to the sand, dropping J.B. somewhat unceremoniously.

I saw the charms a few feet away, scattered on the ground, visible in the light from the streetlamps that lit the lakefront path. Amarantha scrambled for them, but I did what I did best.

I set them on fire.

There was a small explosion, a puff of red smoke as the spells dissipated into the air.

Amarantha fell to her knees, pulling on J.B.’s hair. I walked up behind her, clapped my hands on his face, and sent my power inside him. I chased her screaming through his blood, all the way to his heart.

She paused there, and squeezed. I could sense her smile.

J.B. coughed, his hand going to his chest.

“Enough,” I said, and sent more power inside his body. I needed to be careful. I could blast J.B. apart with the force of my magic, even as I was trying to save him.

Amarantha was a black shade on his heart, wrapping herself around and around him, smothering him.

I heard J.B. gasping. Brute force wasn’t working. I couldn’t blast my way out of this one.

I tried to think. Amarantha was a ghost. What could destroy a ghost?

Nothing, I thought hopelessly. You cannot, by definition, kill something that is already dead.

But perhaps I didn’t need to. Once an Agent, always an Agent.

Instead of blasting Amarantha out of J.B.’s body, I called her name.

Amarantha.

I put the force of my will behind it, like I did when I was separating a soul from its body with my Agent’s magic.

Come to me, I said, and she uncoiled like a reptile, releasing J.B.’s heart. I was the charmer and she the snake. I kept my focus on her, drawing her on, drawing her out.

A silver mist rose from J.B.’s skin, and Amarantha emerged, spellbound.

J.B. fell forward in the sand. I let Amarantha go.

I came to my knees beside him, turned him over. “J.B.? J.B.?”

He lay so still.

“J.B.!” I shouted, shaking him.

He coughed once, twice, and opened his eyes. “I liked the way you woke me up the last time better.”

I laughed and wiped my eyes.

“Are you crying?” he asked, reaching up to stroke my cheek.

“Nah,” I said. “I got sand in my eyes.”

I didn’t say that when Amarantha was squeezing his heart, I’d felt my own heart about to burst from grief. I didn’t say that for a moment I thought I’d lost him, too, like I’d lost Gabriel.

I looked around, realized Amarantha had escaped.

“Dammit,” I said. “I wanted to follow her and find out where she’s keeping her hidey-hole. She’s been working with Therion. She’s probably the one who enspelled the hospital for the vampires. She found Antares’ stash of magical stuff from his mother.”

J.B. sat up, rubbing his head. “That explains a lot. She gave me one hell of a headache. Hey, you have wings again. Fancy shiny ones. How did you get those.”

“It’s a long story,” I said. One I would never tell. You do not tell a man who has proposed to you that you got brand-spanking-new powers by being intimate with another man on your dining room floor.

I helped J.B. to his feet. “Do you remember anything from when she possessed you? Maybe the location of her secret base?”

He shook his head, wincing. “No. The last thing I remember I was in my office, reading a memo from Sokolov about you…”

He trailed off, staring at me. “A memo that said you had taken a soul from the other side of the Door and returned it to the living.”

“Don’t lecture me,” I said. “I didn’t have any choice.”

“You know, I seem to recall Nathaniel saying something similar about his role in the rebellion. And you were very adamant that there’s always a choice. So I’m sure that you could have made a better one,” J.B. said angrily.

“Not if you’re Lucifer’s Hound of the Hunt,” I said. “You were standing right there when he gave me the second-crappiest job I’ve ever had in my life. This was my choice—I could either fetch Evangeline and their unborn child under my own power, or I could wait for him to compel me to do it.”