the chair he sat in alone, trying his best to conserve a last, small amount of magic for the fight. The cricket in amber sat on the table, throwing a small amount of honey-colored light on the wood around it.
Suddenly, for the first time since She sent him down to Elysium, he felt Life there with him, a trickle like a bright stream through his brain. There is still time for you to be the Card I needed! Don’t just sit there! You are letting Her win the Game!
“I have a new strategy now.” Asa lit a cigarette and took a long drag.
And it is madness! She said. She will win! Especially now that M—
“You don’t even care about them, do You?” he said, sending up a long, thin cloud of smoke.
What do you mean? She asked with an edge to Her honeyed voice.
“I mean, why put the people through this?” Asa said. “Why use Your power to create a world like this? Do You care about the beings You’ve trapped here, who could be living lives with dignity and health? Do You care about the creatures You created who will be destroyed when the Game ends, one way or another? Or do You just love to gamble?”
How dare you speak to Me so! She said. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to Mother. I gave you life! I gave you everything you have, and I can take it away in an instant!
“I don’t think You can,” Asa said. “I’m already on the board. If You could, You’d have done it already. No. This time, we’re making the decisions. And we are going to win.”
What has happened to you? She asked. Why are you like this? Because of the girl? You know that a human could never truly love a daemon, Asa. And a daemon can never truly love a human.
“Maybe,” said Asa. “But as far as I’m concerned, I’m not a daemon anymore, no matter what I look like. I am more than that now.”
No daemon has ever done this before, She said. You have broken from Us completely. You know that the punishment We will arrange will be spoken of for eons to come. The very atoms of the universe will weep for you.
“I know,” said Asa. He took another drag on his cigarette and let out a long, indulgent cloud of smoke. “But it’s been one hell of a ride while it lasted.”
Angrily, Life trickled out of his mind like a flow of diamond dust and was gone.
Asa finished his cigarette as the ground rumbled and pitched beneath him, knocking over a vase nearby. Not long now, he thought. He closed his eyes and thought of Olivia, of Rosa, of Sal.
Asa put his cigarette out in a dish. Then he slipped back into his human form—what of it he had left, anyway. He flexed his fingers and pulled on his gloves.
He pulled the cricket out of his pocket and looked at it.
“Too late now, I’m afraid,” he told it.
And as he slipped out into the streets of Elysium, he let the cricket drop into the dust outside the Robertson house. He didn’t even look back.
When I returned to the house, the other girls were in the kitchen, sitting around the table, already holding their weapons. They were completely silent, feeling the gravity of tonight pull at them like the moon.
An earthquake sent us grabbing for chairs and walls. The lights flickered. Rosa had been so frantic that Mowse had had to put her under a sleeping spell, and Olivia sat, holding her hand for hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette.
“What time will they get here?” Judith asked.
“After sunset,” Zo said. “Like an execution.”
“Don’t think of it like that,” said Cassandra, her usual dreamy voice suddenly serious.
“I’m just being realistic,” said Zo.
“No you’re not,” said Cassandra. “You’re being gloomy and a pessimist, and that is the very worst thing to be right now.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “We can’t afford to think we’ll lose, or we will. All we have to do is hold them off until morning. And the horses are splendid. We will win. And none of us will die.”
“Okay, then, Pollyanna,” Zo said, but there was a softer, more apologetic tone in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “You’re right. We’re going to be fine. We at least got a fighting chance.”
“Hell yeah we do,” said Judith, forcing lightness into her voice. “I’m gonna take out at least ten by