makes you such a formidable foe—what you bring to the table that none of the rest of us can.” Omen stepped into the darker recesses of the building and pulled a sack from a shadowy nook. I thought I saw him suppress a wince, though from the heft of it, the bag couldn’t be that heavy.
Then he upended the bag in the middle of the platform, and I understood. He’d brought several metal items, some silver and some iron.
I studied his face. “You hauled all this in here? You could have asked—”
He waved me off. “I can survive being in close proximity for a little time here and there. I just can’t manipulate it well enough to effectively use it. But if you can bind Tempest with silver and iron, she won’t be able to escape into the shadows like she did the last time. You can force her to hold her physical form, and then we’ll have a real chance of taking her down.”
“Right. So what exactly am I doing with this right now?”
“I’m having a chain manufactured that’ll combine both metals and be long enough to wrap around her, but it won’t be ready until tomorrow. For the moment, I’d imagine it’d be most useful for you to practice melting this stuff. Get used to how much fire you need to summon to heat the metal to that point. You’ll want to meld the chain right around Tempest to be sure she can’t simply shake it off.”
I’d melted the silver-and-iron bars of Company cages before. This wasn’t so different. I sifted through the collection of items, raising an eyebrow at a few of them. The ornate silver sugar bowl looked like it’d been stolen from Versailles itself, and the cast iron frying pan would have been very satisfying whacking into the sphinx’s head all on its own. A little tricky to keep hidden until the right moment, though.
I focused on the smaller pieces first, letting the floodgates inside me ease open until the searing sensation rose to my throat. A burst of flames reduced a silver necklace to a shimmering puddle. A sharper spurt of fire liquified an iron bar the size of my thumb. The burns I’d given myself earlier prickled, but no fresh ones broke out on my skin. Two victories in one.
The frying pan proved the most difficult. I glared at it for a full minute before the flames I’d called up brought the edges and handle sagging down.
My frustration sparked an answering flare across my hip. I swiped at it, hoping Omen was too distracted by the metal spectacle to notice.
“You won’t have to work with anything that dense when we face Tempest,” he said. “Good to know you could if we needed you to.”
I let out a hoarse guffaw, twice as weary as before even though I’d barely moved in the past half hour. “As long as whoever I’m trying to melt that pan at doesn’t mind waiting around while I work up to it.”
“Hey.” Omen touched my shoulder, thankfully not on any spot where I’d barbequed myself. His tone turned unusually gentle. “You’ve got this. She thinks she knows all, and that’s her biggest downfall. She’s got no idea what she’s in for when you really step up to the plate.”
“She doesn’t really know you anymore either,” I reminded him, and couldn’t resist the opportunity to lean in and claim a kiss. If it was as much to reassure myself that he was still invested in this—and in me—as to satisfy a pang of desire, I didn’t see how anyone could blame me.
Omen kissed me back, his hand sliding up to tease over my hair, but it seemed a world tour of landmark sex spots wasn’t in the cards tonight. When he drew back, despite the hellish heat glinting in his eyes, he looked intent in his typical all-business way.
Maybe even more serious than usual. He didn’t speak as we crossed the platform to the Colosseum’s looming walls, or after our separate trips through the shadows, when I caught up with him on the street a block away. A pensive furrow had formed in his brow.
We’d left the Everymobile—and the rest of our crew—parked in a lot nearby that had cleared out for the night. The city bus guise still functioned decently well. It had even adapted to the city. I just hoped no one wondered why this particular city bus featured a whirling satellite dish on its roof.
The second I stepped