Mick stood over us, his eyes dragon black, but with an un-Mick-like arrogance.

I felt sick. Once upon a time, a witch had enslaved Mick and forced him to try to kill me. I remembered my heartbreak when I’d seen the man I loved become someone else, turn on me, do his best to destroy me.

This situation was different—the witch had brought out the cold dragon part of Mick, the magical beast of old who’d cared for nothing but its own power. This time, only Mick’s voice changed, his lips moving but his eyes holding Mick’s rage.

“Yes, this one is strong,” the entity said. “Better than the other. Dragons were the best of my creations.”

The dragon slayer started to laugh. “Be careful what you wish for,” he told us.

Gabrielle kicked him. The dragon slayer made an oof noise but didn’t cease his quiet laughter.

“You wanted to speak to me.” Mick spread his hands in a gesture so like his own it twisted pain through me. “You probably want to ask how you kill me, or banish me, or otherwise rid the world of me. The answer is, you don’t. I am the Earth. Kill me and all else vanishes.”

Fury danced my Beneath magic awake inside me. I wanted to slice it into Mick and burn the entity out, though I knew logically that would only kill Mick.

“I don’t believe you,” Gabrielle said before I could answer. “The Earth existed before you did. It made you.”

“Is that what that disgusting coyote god told you? Doesn’t matter. I’m so entwined in the Earth, so much a part of it, that you’ll never separate us.”

Gabrielle folded her arms. “If that’s true, why aren’t you here all the time? You said you disappear for centuries at a stretch and can’t believe what happens to the world in the meantime. And why are Beneath magic creatures still around? Why didn’t they go extinct when you last manifested and cleansed everything? Skinwalkers are everywhere these days. So are the old gods. Seems like your apocalypses aren’t working.”

Don’t taunt the evil being, Gabrielle, I wanted to say. But I didn’t trust myself to speak—I was busy keeping my Beneath magic in check.

Mick flexed and balled his hands, as though his body struggled to expel its intruder. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and the dragon tatts on his arms began to sluggishly swirl.

“I oversleep,” the entity said. “Evil spawns so rapidly I can’t keep up with it. Look at you. And you.” Mick’s eyes swiveled from Gabrielle to me. “A goddess nearly destroyed you, and still you didn’t kill her. What were you thinking?”

I answered, my jaw tight. “We were thinking she couldn’t get out of her realm and do any more harm. She’s sealed off from this world. Why are you so worried about her?”

“Oh, good point,” Gabrielle said. “You seem to be fixated on Beneath goddesses.”

“Please. You are nothing to me. The Earth will crush you.” He pinned Mick’s dark gaze on me. “It is already crushing you, half-Beneath, half-Earth creature, inside your own body. You know this.”

Gabrielle cut in. “But you can’t wait to mess with me. You’ve been after me since day one. Why?” She took a step closer to him. “Why do I scare you so much?”

Did I detect a flicker of unease? Mick’s eyes didn’t waver as he returned his focus to her.

“You will be dead, Abomination.”

“Why am I not I already? You’ve attacked me a couple times now, and here I am.” Gabrielle spread her arms.

Seriously, don’t taunt the evil entity, I thought in exasperation.

“Yes, you are resilient.” It sounded puzzled, and then the resoluteness returned to its voice. “I will simply have to crush you harder.”

Gabrielle didn’t move. “I’m waiting.”

Mick’s lips twitched into a mean smile. “You won’t have to wait much longer.” He looked around the basement and then up at the ceiling. The smile widened. “So many sitting ducks.”

My alarm grew as he made a sudden turn on Mick’s swift feet and headed out of the room, fire flaring in his hands.

Gabrielle and I leapt after him. Gabrielle, in front of me, reached Mick first. He casually swatted her aside, and Gabrielle let out a shriek as his fire bit into her.

I sensed her Beneath magic welling up in response as she clutched her seared arm. If she let it fly, she’d stop the entity all right but kill Mick in the process.

I thrust my left hand into the air, touched the ring on my third finger, and whispered the musical notes of Mick’s true name.

He turned around, his eyes changing from black to deep blue, then to black again. The entity within him snarled.

Mick closed his hands around his fire, his face streaked with sweat. “Again,” he whispered in his own voice.

I sang the syllables Mick had taught me, the words that weren’t words but music made manifest. His name, the one thing no other being could break, the power he had entrusted to me. No one knew a dragon’s true name, not even other dragons.

Another snarl and a wash of cold air blasted past me. Mick staggered and fell against the wall.

I was next to him in an instant. “Mick! You all right?”

He drew a long breath, his eyes shifting once more to dark blue. “Thank you, Janet.” The words were low, hoarse, and came from his heart.

“What the hell?” Gabrielle stared from me to him. “What happened? How did you do that?”

No one could hear the name when I sang it except me and, fortunately, Mick. “I called him back to me,” I said softly.

Gabrielle’s brows drew down. “This is a lovey-dovey, dragony thing you’re not going to tell me about, isn’t it?”

“You might learn of it one day,” Mick said, giving her his warm look. “Let me see your arm. I’m sorry about that.”

Gabrielle winced as she held it out, her skin red and burned. Mick let his fingers hover over her as he whispered a word, and a gleam of healing magic trickled into her.

“I don’t blame you,” Gabrielle said, drawing a breath as her skin turned whole and bronzed again. “I blame that full-of-itself entity. Did he spill any secrets when he was inside you? What did you learn?”

“That I never want to do that again.” Mick brushed his thumb over Gabrielle’s wrist, imbibing her with a last glint of healing magic. “It’s powerful. More powerful than anything we’ve faced.”

“And yet, it can’t just show up.” I curled my hands, my relief at seeing Mick back to himself making me weak in the knees. “It needs to speak through someone, and it couldn’t do much when it was inside you. Otherwise, we’d all be dead.”

“Same thing happened in Vegas,” Gabrielle said, absently rubbing where she’d been burned. “It started to talk through Drake, didn’t like him, and went for Cornelius. I think when it looks for a ‘vessel’ it tries to find the weakest one it can. Because they’re easier to possess, maybe?”

“Now my ego’s taking a hit,” Mick said with a faint grin. “You’re saying I’m the weakest being in this basement? I didn’t let that thing into me willingly.”

“No, but it didn’t go for me or Janet,” Gabrielle pointed out. “You are connected to the slayer by the binding spell. The binding spell stymied it from going into the slayer, I’m guessing, and it traveled across the threads to the next best thing. I made it admit it’s fixated on Beneath magic wielders, which means it’s afraid of us.”

“But we knew that,” I said patiently. “It’s Earth magic, which hates Beneath magic.”

“Yes, but why?” Gabrielle persisted. “Most Beneath-magic creatures don’t like being on Earth, and stay near the vortexes. So why is it so worried about us? If you don’t poke at Beneath, it leaves you alone.”

“Sort of,” I said. “Skinwalkers and demons usually don’t need a reason to attack. Sometimes, neither do you.”

Gabrielle spread her hands. “What can I say? I have a short fuse. What I’m getting at is, this entity preys on the weak. You saw that it wanted to go upstairs and blast the witches and things gathered here. The hotel is less like a sanctuary and more like a trap.”

I shook my head. “Only if we let it come here. I can’t send all those people back home to wait to be picked off.”

“Exactly,” Gabrielle said with determination. “Which is why we need to choose the place and the time—us, not it—and finish this.”

She was right. My beautiful, crazy, baby sister was looking at me with serious eyes and speaking wisdom.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “And I think I know just the place.” I looked at Mick, and he nodded, guessing my thoughts.

“Yep.” Gabrielle held up her hand, high-fiving a now-grinning Mick. “Let’s go kick some Earth-entity ass. And then we finish the dragon slayer, and go out for pizza.”

---

The arena under the hotel in Las Vegas was quiet. Amos had let me off outside and now was having a meal upstairs with his friends while I wandered the arena. He’d loved the Crossroads and enjoyed camping out under the stars and singing songs with Fremont.

I walked the arena alone. Mick and Janet had stopped at the C to confab with Grandmother Begay and the dragons and Nash, while I’d gone on with Amos.

Well, that’s the official version. The truth is, I had sneaked away from the C when no one was looking and told Amos to drive me here.

I agreed with Janet that the arena was the logical place to meet the entity. It was far from the Crossroads and far enough from the C to ensure that Cornelius and my new friends on the staff would be safe, plus far enough underground to keep the violence away from the denizens of Las Vegas.

Janet and the dragons and I would meet the entity, destroy it, and save the world. Again.

Except that I knew we couldn’t.

We couldn’t fight an unfightable creature, one with no substance, who could bury me alive while I was above ground. It didn’t like Beneath magic—fine, but how to use that to snuff it out forever?

Or would we only be able to banish it, where it would bide its time before breaking out and endangering future generations of Stormwalkers and Beneath-magic wielders?

I could think best about the problem alone, where I wasn’t confused by the feelings my friends and family had recently brought out in me: confusion, anger, need, love, the desire for acceptance.

I was a three-year-old child all over again, trying to figure out what I’d done to make my parents not like me.

Answer—I existed.

When I’d met Janet and her family—okay, so it was more like I tracked her down—same problem. I was alive in the world. What were they going to do with me?

Janet’s family couldn’t kill me, because they were too kind, and they played by the rules. So they tried to bring me in and form me into their mold.

Though, that wasn’t quite right. Coyote had tried to explain this to me. They’d decided to be family, and family extended hospitality. He’d told me to be a good guest.

So I was doing what good guests did—left before they brought trouble raining down on the people who’d been nice to them. While Janet, Mick, and Colby were safe at the C, I was here, figuring out how to save them.

Here in the arena, I could summon the demons again. I could tap into the Beneath magic to lure out the Earth entity, and then we could obliterate it. Somehow.

The magic mirror had talked about an Earth-magic sink that had been in the sand dunes that created it. I pulled out the new shard I’d taken from the original mirror before we’d left the Crossroads and unwrapped the cloth napkin I’d folded around it.

“Here we are again.” I lifted the shard and flashed it around. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s cold and dark and really scary, and I don’t want to be here, sugar.”

I ignored this. “Is the arena connected to the Earth-magic sink? You said it ran deep and had spread far. Could you tap into it?”

“You don’t want to do that, sweet thing.”

Interesting—it hadn’t said it couldn’t tap the Earth-magic sink. “Do you have a better idea? Should we sit around and wait for the entity to rise? Make some popcorn?”

“Maybe it will find something else to do,” the mirror said in a small voice.

“I’m thinking it won’t. But fine with me. If it wants to fight Beneath magic, I’m going to let it. Oh, one more thing. If you can tap into this Earth-magic sink, can you also conjure a storm?” From Coyote’s hints, I knew we’d need one. “Or at least make sure one comes here, so Janet can be at her full strength? The weather has been obnoxiously nice lately.”

The mirror let out a breath. “I’m going to point out that you can’t make me do anything. I belong to Mick and Janet, brought to life by their fabulous sex magic. They command me, not you.”

I brought the shard close to my face. My eyes were dark in the gloom, and the crease between my brows made me look as stubborn as Grandmother Begay. “Do you want to save them so they can go on cuddling with each other? Or do you want to watch them die? The entity is going to get me in the end, so I might as well go out saving my sister’s life. You want to help me? Or let them be wiped out? Your choice.”

“Oh,” the mirror said. “Well, if you put it like that …”

“I do put it like that. First thing, find the magic sink.”

“I don’t have to find it. It’s right here. All around us. Why do you think the dragon slayer likes this place?”

“Figures,” I muttered. Also explained why Janet and I were able to open a vortex as easily as we did. Took a lot of Earth magic plus Beneath magic combined.

The dragon slayer had come with us on our journey, bound physically with ropes in the back of Fremont Hansen’s plumbing truck, borrowed and driven by Titus while Drake sat with the slayer and kept the binding spell topped up.

Mick had ridden his Harley, and Janet and I had luxuriated in the back of Amos’s limo. The only way to travel.

“So what do you want me to do?” the mirror asked.

“Storm,” I said. “Bring one here, then we’ll jump up and down and call for the entity.”

The mirror heaved a long sigh. “Girlfriend, you really are insane. But all right. Here goes.”

Because I was deep inside a basement, I wouldn’t know if the weather was cloudy or sunny or foggy or snowy. But I felt a pressure in my ears, as though the atmosphere outside changed.

“One powerful thunderstorm, coming up,” the mirror said. “You know, Janet will catch on that someone manipulated the weather. And if she asks me, I’ll have to tell her the truth. She won’t be happy,” it finished with a singsong note.

“By that time, it won’t matter.” I took up a stance in the middle of the arena, my heart pounding. I tried to press my fear aside, or at least ignore it.

I could do this. The entity hated Beneath magic, was afraid of it. Therefore, it must be afraid for a reason. If I could save Janet and Mick so they could canoodle the rest of their lives, and Grandmother Begay, so she could fuss over Pete and Gina, and the dragons …

I almost cried. With Colby and Drake I’d found guys I could be with, without worrying about hurting them. They took my teasing and my craziness and shrugged it off, seeing me more as an interesting challenge than a weird, scary woman to avoid.

They had no obligation to me, unlike Janet and Grandmother, and even Mick. Colby and Drake hung out with me because they wanted to.

The warm fuzzies that thought conjured made me want to rush away from here and grab on to Colby and not let go.

I made myself stand still, go through what I’d come here for. Fighting the entity would save Colby’s life.

If I lost mine in the process, no big deal. Janet and Grandmother would be saved the bother of me, and maybe they’d remember me with fondness rather than eye-rolling exasperation.

None of those places are yours, Coyote had told me when I’d whined that I didn’t belong anywhere. Don’t try to take them.

He was right. I’d been trying to take over, make Janet and her family acknowledge me—first by fearing me, and then by putting up with me.

I was finished with all that. If I survived, I’d thank Janet and Grandmother and all for their attempts to help me, and return to the C and do my job—if Cornelius wanted me back, that is. I’d show him I could be good at what I did, even if he’d only hired me because Chandra told him to.

Sometimes you have to grow up and move out of your family’s back bedroom.

“What are you doing?”

The rumbling voice belonged to Titus. He stood above me on the first tier of the spectators’ area, resting leather-gloved hands on the railing.

“Getting ready for a fight,” I answered lightly. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“I have no idea.” His eyes glinted gold then shifted slowly to light gray. “I haven’t made up my mind about you.”

“Well, make it up fast. Is it raining yet?”

“Sprinkling as I was coming in.”

“Good.” I spread my arms. “Let’s get this party started.”