Eloise didn’t want to let go of me as we wandered through Smith’s fancy townhouse and into the backyard, and she stared around her at all the knickknacks and other bits and pieces all over the house as we went. “I always kind of thought he’d live in a cave. Or the forest.”

“Why?” I glanced at her and tried not to think of where Nick had gone with the witch. What if they got started without us?

“I don’t know.” She shrugged and ignored Benedict’s grumpy snort, and the gorgon looked back at where they’d come. “Who was the dark-haired chick with Nick?”

“The witch,” I said. “She’s going to go into the be-whatever to free Smith.”

“And the genie,” she said. “And the BadCreek dude. And they’re all just going to fall out of the sky in the middle of the backyard?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I refused to look for Nick. I knew we had to talk, because I didn’t want us to part company on those terms. I didn’t know what I was going to do about him, but maybe inspiration would strike.

When everyone was in the backyard, watching the witch as she approached the massive oak tree, Benedict stood near Ruby and Meadow while Carter and Rafe prowled the perimeter. Nick hung back, not exactly nervous but definitely on edge, and my hyena started to tense as well. She wanted to be closer to him, so we could fight together. We were stronger together.

Eloise stuck by my side, even when I tried to get her to back up so she could paralyze people from a distance, and fiddled with her sunglasses. “Babe, this is freaky as hell.”

“I know.” I rested my arm on her shoulder, frowning as I watched the witch pace and mumble, occasionally raising and lowering her arms as she went. “Never thought witches existed.”

“No kidding.” She looked up at the sky where the new moon hid behind some branches and more clouds. “The kids would be beside themselves excited. Anais is into a wiccan witch phase thing, drawing runes on everything and repeating weird shit. Like being a medusa isn’t bad enough.”

“I’m not that kind of witch,” Deirdre said. She didn’t pause in her pacing. “But there’s a bookstore on Fifth she should visit, if she’s interested.”

“Thanks,” Eloise said, though I couldn’t tell from her expression or tone whether she meant it or not. Her cousin was hell on wheels even without the possibility of hexing people, so maybe Eloise would be forbidding Anais from getting anywhere near Fifth.

When Deirdre went back to her mumbling, I leaned closer to Eloise so I could keep my voice down and avoid bothering the witch. “Where’s the rest of the pride?”

“They’re closing in on the compound. Ruby will give the signal and then they’ll go in after everyone.” Eloise glanced at her watch, then back at the sky. “I’m glad the moon won’t expose them. I suppose this magic shit works better under a new moon?”

I shrugged, about to hazard my own guess, but stopped short when Deirdre started to glow. The oak tree, too, was bathed in a golden light that radiated from deep inside, spraying out in soft rays from every surface of the tree. I blinked, taking a step back. Well, shit.

Deirdre faced all of us, kindly ignoring our gaping looks and disbelieving mutters, and folded her hands at her waist. She looked about twelve but had the presence of an ancient queen. I wondered if she’d ever spilled soup on her shirt, or tripped on her shoelaces, or had her heart broken by a wide-eyed boy in high school. She didn’t look like she’d even been to high school, much less had to deal with acne and awkwardness and worrying about tampons. She looked exactly how a hyena queen or a wolf alpha should have looked—unflappable, pristine, unbothered by mundane bullshit. Damn. I’d have paid money to see her lose her shit on someone else, just to know it was possible.

A hint of a smile curled her lips up at the corners as she glanced at me, and my face went hot. Maybe witches could read minds. But Deirdre only inclined her head at all of us, her attention drifting to Nick. “So. It begins. I am there only to undo the binding that keeps Smith bound to that realm. The one who bound him there, who is also caught, will also be released. I cannot control what they do upon release, and I will not intervene once they have left the Betwixt.”

“Where will they land?” I asked, when it became clear no one else would talk. How could they not have questions? How could they not want to know every little detail of what she was going to do? It was magic. “Will they be conscious? Will Smith still be sane? What about the djinn?”

Those perfect eyebrows arched and she blinked startling green eyes. “They will be brought back here, through the locus in the tree. Beyond that, I do not know. I will get out of your way. Do as you will with them.”

“So that’s it?” Nick stepped forward, lines gathering around his eyes as he watched her. “You bust the binding on them and then let us figure it out? With a djinn and one more wish?”

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug that spoke volumes more than I’d ever seen. “It seems like that is your problem, not mine. Unless you wish to owe me a great deal more than you already do, Nikolai, perhaps it will remain your problem. And not mine.”

Nick’s eyes flashed gold and he bristled, but the girl didn’t react. She waited. And—miracle of miracles—he got control of himself and backed down. His teeth still gleamed and looked too big for his mouth, making him lisp just a little as he gestured at the tree. “Fine. But be prepared to defend yourself, witch. There’s no telling what Ray will do when he is freed. He’s kept children captive and killed them to make designer shifter babies, and experimented on others to make super soldiers. I hate to see what he would do if he knew witch magic existed.”

A shadow crossed her expression but she only turned back to the tree. “Your warning is noted.”

I held my breath as I looked at Nick, and found his eyes already on me. My heart thumped against my chest, and not just because of the rising static in the air as the witch raised her arms. No, my heart raced because of him. At least we were there together. When I didn’t look away from him, Nick smiled. It even reached his eyes, softening his expression. It took away some of the ghosts that lurked around him, and I opened my mouth to say something. To tell him how I felt, that I’d been a fool, that he’d been an asshole but I almost didn’t mind.

But something cracked, loud as a gunshot, and a black crevice opened in the tree trunk.

The witch’s body flickered and wavered, a watermark of her real self, and I held my breath as more darkness gathered around the tree, around her, around the whole backyard.

Ruby clicked a radio and murmured into it, “We’re starting.”

Something garbled came back, and I held my breath, watching the tree and the constellation of sparks that swirled around the witch.

Pressure built all around us, crushing against my chest, until I couldn’t breathe. It felt like gravity doubled and then tripled, trying to crush us into the ground as we strained away from it. I staggered, holding on to Eloise, and my ears popped until my head split and rang and I wondered if my brain broke.

It had to end. It couldn’t go on forever.

The witch made a strange noise, a grinding kind of cry that I’d never heard from a living being. Rafe shielded Meadow as waves pushed out of the black hole in the tree, rippling out, and nausea built in my guts with the eerie ripple in the world around us.

Ruby leaned in, trying to get closer to the tree, but Nick hauled her back with a shouted warning.

For the first time, I thought maybe the witch wouldn’t succeed. I’d always thought we could die after Smith and the djinn were freed, or that Ray’s last wish would end us in blood and fire, but it never occurred to me that the witch would kill us. My throat closed as my eyes narrowed to block out the wind stirred up by the waves and the suddenly shaking tree. Leaves cascaded down around us and the witch made that strangled sound again, bringing her hands down from where they’d been over her head. Like she was signaling the start of a race or something.

The hysterical laughter that bubbled up in my chest would have no doubt discomfited Eloise, but she used the sunglasses to shield her eyes and turned enough to shout at me, “Should I end it?”

“No,” I shouted back, though a wind whipped out of the tree and tore the word from my mouth. I linked my arm through hers and started to pray it ended soon.

It had to end.

Even the moon had disappeared into the spreading darkness of the oak tree’s insides, and pressure built in my ears until I wanted to scream and my ears refused to pop and I couldn’t see and—and—

Rusty metal grated on rusty metal and then something roared through the backyard like a train, clobbering all of us and sending us spinning.

The witch collapsed and the black hole of the tree sealed itself into nothing and nothing else moved.

Rafe fell to his knees in the grass from the sudden disappearance of the wind, and everyone else staggered to try and keep their balance. I looked around, wild with worry. “Where’s Smith? Where’s the djinn? Where’s Ray?”

“I can’t smell anything,” Ruby said, her voice rough and hoarse. “I can’t…What the fuck was that?”

The witch remained motionless next to the tree, though I thought I saw her back move as she breathed.

Nick strode through the yard, searching, and even pulled himself onto a low-hanging branch of the oak tree to check the upper limbs for any hidden passengers. Nothing. He dropped back to the ground and stood over the witch. “What the hell, Deirdre? Where are they? What happened?”

She groaned and held her head. But she said nothing, explained nothing. Nothing. My nerves clanged and I stormed up to the tree so I could punch the trunk. “Where is he?”

“He comes,” Deirdre whispered. Her fingers dug into the dirt as she tried to pull herself away from the tree. The color drained from her face and she looked suddenly like a scared teenager, trying desperately to get away. I caught her arms and hauled her away from there, dropping her in a heap behind a retaining wall near the house, and she caught my ankle before I could get away. Her green eyes were huge in her pale, heart-shaped face. “He comes. He is... angry.”

“Who?” I crouched next to her, glancing over at Nick as he continued to prowl around the tree. “Who is angry? Ray? The djinn?”

Her only answer was another groan, then her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out.

I shoved to my feet and faced the tree. “Someone is coming out. She doesn’t know who. Get ready.”

So we were all watching the tree as the trunk split. The crack widened and a shriek like fighting cats ripped free as well. It echoed around in my head until I couldn’t remember any other sound. I clapped my hands over my ears to block as much as I could, but it didn’t help. The sound was inside my head. I screamed back, terrified and in pain and desperate. Desperate.

We needed Smith. We needed him back, sane and whole.

The oak tree split completely and each side fell apart, smashing into the yards of the adjacent townhouses, destroying half the block in a thunderous crash. Smoke filled the air, and far away, a wolf howled.

A dark figure climbed out of the tree, still roaring, and I braced for the worst. It looked mostly human, the figure, but for the horns growing out of its head and the eerie green cast to its skin and the animal skins and pelts and leather that clung to it. Moss and leaves and branches seemed to grow out of the figure, and eyes glinted silver and slit-pupiled in a face that was all feral. Inhuman. Enraged and insane.

Even Meadow sucked in a terrified breath, whimpering, and my heart stilled in my chest as the figure’s eyes landed on me. I didn’t know if it was Smith or something that had been Smith and wasn’t anymore, or if maybe the Betwixt had changed Ray into something even more terrifying.

But I strode forward to face him, because I was Lacey fucking Szdoka, queen of hyenas and badass chick.

Savannah would have been proud.