“Fuck.”

Alice nodded. “Yes.”

This snake cult wasn’t playing softball. Whatever they wanted, whatever they were hoping to achieve, there was no body count too big to make it happen. We were the only ones who were standing in their way . . . and I still had to get back to rehearsal.

Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

Eighteen

“Heroes save everyone. Heroes sacrifice themselves for the sake of people they’ve never met. We’re not heroes. We’re never going to be. But if that means we make it home alive, I’m all right with that.”

—Alice Healy

The Be-Well Motel, about seven hours later

DOMINIC ANSWERED THE DOOR when I knocked, taking in my bedraggled appearance and spiky hat-hair (well, technically, “wig-hair,” but that had a confusing connotation) without comment. He opened the door wider, letting me inside. The smell of Chinese takeout assaulted my nostrils a beat before the mice started cheering.

“I thought you were dropping the mice at the apartment,” I said.

Alice, who was sitting cross-legged on the room’s single bed with a carton of shrimp fried rice in her hand, smiled brightly. “They decided they’d rather come with me for Chinese food and debriefing.”

“They’re Aeslin mice,” I said. “They would rather do anything that involves food.”

“HAIL! HAIL THE WISDOM OF THE ARBOREAL PRIESTESS!” exulted the mice.

“See?” I said. Dominic was waiting patiently nearby. I turned and leaned up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he replied. “Did the remainder of rehearsal go well?”

“This week’s group number is a hip-hop piece set to ‘Dragula,’ so yes if you like being screamed at to be a better vampire, and no if you’re not comfortable doing a dance routine where six of the people have wooden stakes in their hands. Somebody’s going to get impaled.” I walked over to investigate the Chinese food. “Lyra isn’t speaking to me because of the whole ‘ditching her for Malena’ thing, Anders is telling everybody they have to be nice to me because my grandmother is dying, and Brenna should be here in about twenty minutes, so I can fill her in on what we found under the theater.”

“You mean Malena,” said Alice.

“No, I mean Brenna,” I said. “She’s the show’s host, and she’s part of the local Nest. She needs to know what’s going on. Also, the people I heard talking in the subbasement confirmed that she wasn’t part of the snake cult, which makes her one of the safest potential allies we have left.” The salt-and-pepper prawns were gone, except for a single piece of chitin and a few slices of pepper. I made a sad face.

Dominic tapped me on the shoulder. I turned, and he presented me with a fresh carton of prawns. “I know how much you enjoy the cockroaches of the sea,” he said. “Alice was just explaining her plan to find Bon.”

“She won’t be at the flea market, but she won’t have gone far, either,” said Alice. “We need to figure out where the routewitches camp in this area, and Bon will be there.”

“Which gets us the counter-charms, got it,” I said, sitting down on the floor and opening my Chinese food. “It’s Friday. The show—and elimination—is next Thursday. We need to find these snake cultists and stop them before that happens.”

“On the plus side, we know they’re not going to kill anybody before then,” said Alice. “The only bodies we found in that room were people you knew.”

“Oh, yay: only my friends are in danger.” I didn’t want to be hungry. My stomach grumbled, and I picked up a pair of chopsticks. “I have rehearsal tomorrow. If that’s when you’re visiting Bon, I won’t be able to come with you. Or we could wait until Sunday and just go see her at the flea market.”

“I was hoping to be able to pick up the charms on Sunday, if she doesn’t have something already prepared,” said Alice. “There’s a chance she’ll need a little time, and I want us to have them before we go back to the theater Monday morning.”

“We’ll need them for Pax and Brenna, as well as the three of us and Malena,” I said. Putting it that way, I actually felt pretty good about the team we were assembling. I couldn’t ask Brenna to fight for us—dragon princesses weren’t exactly set up for dealing a lot of damage, and she couldn’t beat anybody to death with her spike-heeled shoes—but I wanted her to understand what was going on around her. Having a good source of inside information couldn’t hurt anything. It might help.