slick ledge until my hand wrapped around the railing. I took a deep breath and awkwardly pitched myself sideways, scrambled onto the balcony, and skidded, almost crashing into Merrimoth. Silver fog swirled around his legs. Creepy as hell. Even creepier when I realized he wasn’t completely still. His arm was rising in slow motion, a hair at a time. His angry gaze struggled to shift in my direction.
A wave of dizziness unsteadied me. My Heka reserves were draining and I was running out of time. I shuffled around Merrimoth, spotted Lon’s vintage gun in his hand, and pried it out of his fingers. Then I scurried through the balcony doors into the house.
I found myself inside a cavernous bedroom, decorated with restraint and neutral colors, like the rest of Merrimoth’s home. Automated ceiling sprinklers doused everything with circular sprays of water. I stumbled across polished wood flooring, frantically looking for a way out, and found more than I wanted: three cameras on tripods, a bed outfitted with black rubber sheets, an object that I initially thought was a curly dildo (and upon closer inspection, was, I thought, a butt plug with one end shaped like a pig’s tail), and a gleaming, shiver-inducing metal speculum. I scurried around a black leather swing hanging from an exposed beam and darted into the hallway.
Silver fog eddied around my feet as I galloped down the main stairwell and rushed through the living room. The layout was disorienting. Lon and I had only been in this room a few moments before Merrimoth went apeshit earlier and chased us upstairs. I finally spotted a pair of glass doors. My fingers shook as they flipped a dead bolt and flung the doors open.
A small set of stairs led to the beach. Trudging over wet sand, I slipped the bulky Lupara inside my jacket and scoured the shoreline. Lon’s golden halo hummed in the darkness. He was still hanging in the sky over the foaming water, though he’d descended a bit. If he dropped a few more feet, I could reach him . . . if he weren’t suspended a few yards out over the ocean.
Minutes ago, the crashing tide would’ve pounded me to a pulp against the rocks here, but now the water was eerily still, silver fog clinging to the quiet surface. I plodded into the winter-chilled water. My steps left dark holes in the foamy surf. Utterly surreal. I marveled at the way the splashes around my watery footprints hung in midair, how they deepened as I waded knee-deep. Farther away, somewhere beyond Merrimoth’s house, I could hear the surf pounding: my moon magick apparently had limits.
Lon was above me now, his black peacoat billowing at his sides like the wings of a fallen angel. I focused on climbing the rocks to reach him, a task more difficult than I initially thought. They were slimy with seaweed, rough with broken mussel shells, and it didn’t help that shivers racked my body. When I got to a point where I could stand without falling, I stretched and nabbed Lon’s ankle, then tugged. He moved a few inches. Holy Whore—it was like pulling a box of bricks out of the sky. I tugged harder and, with a series of groans, dragged him through the air, retracing my steps to shore.
My lungs felt close to bursting and I was seriously dizzy from the amount of Heka I was using. But I knew that once I let go of the moon magick, Merrimoth would inflict some sort of insane Narnian winter across the beach. Maybe even turn us into frozen statues. Or set us on fire. I shoved Lon closer to the ground, leaning across his back, then finally sitting on him when that didn’t work.
Screw David Merrimoth and screw Dare for calling me up in the middle of the night to bind him. As I considered whether I had the strength to wrangle Lon up the driveway and into the car so we could just get out of there, a figure materialized in the shadows beneath the stilted house.
It was a woman, possibly fifty years old, long and lean. She was wearing odd clothing—a toga-like gray dress. Silver fog clung to her bare ankles. Her dark hair was pinned up and dusted with gray at the crown. She had intelligent eyes, cheekbones that could cut diamond, and a full, sensual mouth. French, through and through. She crossed her elegant arms with an air of superiority and smiled at