middle of a funeral, and the next thing I knew, I was almost drowning in the Chicago River.”
“And—you weren’t given a choice to return.”
“No.” Sloane almost sighed with relief when Mox came back into the room with a shirt on, his hair tied back in a low knot. “They told us that the fate of our world and the fate of Genetrix were intertwined. And that we would need to fight the Resurrectionist—I mean you—if we wanted to save them both.”
Mox stared at her for a moment. His shoulders started to shake. For a single, horrifying moment, Sloane thought he was sobbing—and then she saw he was laughing, holding one hand against the wound in his side.
“My God,” Mox said, sounding almost giddy. “This is what I meant. What’s more important than raw power? Elegant lies, that’s what.”
“So . . .” Sloane narrowed her eyes. “Earth’s and Genetrix’s fates aren’t intertwined?”
Mox flapped a hand at her. “Not that part. The part about me. Fighting me. Killing me. As if you could. As if it would help anything at all.”
“First of all, if I had decided to stab you in the jugular instead of having a conversation earlier, I would totally have been able to kill you,” Sloane said. “Magic is great and all, but you’re still just a sack of meat at the end of the day.”
Mox spread his hands—big even without the siphons to add bulk to them—in acknowledgment.
“Second—what’s the point of all this?” she said. “Why do they want you dead so badly they would take people from another dimension but won’t go after you themselves?”
“Not they—he,” Mox said, now agitated. He paced away from her. “Nero.”
“Nero,” Sloane repeated. “Not that I doubt you, but he seems kind of . . . nonthreatening. Are you sure he’s—”
“Am I sure?” Mox spun on his heel, and the pile of cans along the wall lifted from the floor all at once. They slammed into the ceiling, then flew in all directions. Sloane ducked as one rocketed toward her head; it hit the wall behind her and started leaking yellow juice.
Both of them were breathless, Sloane with fear, and Mox, she assumed from his wild-eyed stare, with anger.
“There’s no need to have a fucking tantrum about it,” she said. “All I’ve seen of Nero is that he’s Aelia’s lackey most of the time. Not exactly evil-mastermind material. Especially compared to a guy who just attacked an innocent can of green beans.”
She picked the can up and slammed it on the table, the dented side facing him.
“Raw power,” Mox said, “isn’t everything.”
“Clearly,” she said, disguising the quiver in her hands by making fists.
“He doesn’t just . . . do things,” Mox said. He started pacing again. “He gets other people to do them for him. He’s good at it. He’s whoever you need him to be whenever you need him to be it. Until suddenly—he’s not anymore. He brought you here—keeps bringing people here, over and over—to kill me. And if they fail, well, fine, it keeps everyone distracted from what he’s doing. Either way, he wins.”
Sloane cast a net in her memories of Nero, trying to catch a single instance of what Mox was describing. But the only time she had seen him deviate from his affable persona was after she and Esther had broken into his workshop. His voice had been so cold. But that wasn’t enough.
“What is he doing,” she said quietly, “that he wants to distract everyone from?”
Mox’s pacing slowed. “I’m not sure, but my guess is a working. Something that will make him more powerful than I am. Than anyone is. Fill him with magic.”
The words reminded her of the Dark One and how she had thought of him as no more than a mouth, devouring. That crafty as he was, the true horror of him was simple: Nothing, not magic, not pain, not power, would ever be enough. He ate just for the sake of eating. And there was no argument she could make to someone like that to get him to stop hurting Albie, to let them both go, to do anything other than what he wanted.
She stared at her boots.
Bare feet meant the past. Boots meant the present.
She crossed her arms. “Do you have any proof?”
Mox stopped pacing altogether and faced her.
“Surely you understand why I can’t just believe you,” she said. “There has to be something other than your word that I can rely on.”