“Priestess, are you up to the challenge now?” Maat asked her.

“If you like.” Rowan helped her to her feet. She held out her hand, saying tiredly, “I just want this day to be over so that my beau and I might start our life together.”

I bit my lip as Maat approached her, the feather in her hand. My stomach roiled, and I tried desperately to think of a way to stop her, but my mind was a mass of worry and fear and dread, and offered no helpful suggestions on a way I could change what was about to happen.

The feather floated down to her hand. Maat smiled, and gently plucked the feather from Mrs. P’s palm. “You may move on as you like.”

“What?” roared Bael.

“Oh, did you not notice?” Mrs. P smiled sweetly. “I was told to switch my Ka with yours when I took the ring. You’ve had mine all along, and a few minutes ago when you took what you thought was mine, you simply exchanged it for yours.”

He lunged forward, his face a terrible sight to behold. He took the chair with him, and with his free hand, slammed it into one of Osiris’s guards. Rowan leaped forward at the same time Constantine and Gabriel did the same, but Bael wasn’t lying when he said he had enough power to do as he wanted in the Underworld—with a shouted word, there was a loud percussive noise, and all three men flew backward a few yards.

Bael headed straight for Mrs. P and me. I snatched my bow from my back and hurriedly fit an arrow to it, but before I could let it fly, he was on us. I stabbed the arrow into his hand when he reached for Mrs. P, kicking out at the same time and hearing the satisfying crunch of his knee taking the brunt of my attack. Rowan reached us first, with Gabriel and Constantine immediately behind him, and all three men, with the aid of Osiris’s two guards, pulled Bael off and rebound him to the chair. This time they tied one of his hands to his leg, palm upward.

He started chanting in a singsong voice, causing a horrible pressure to build up inside me (and I gathered everyone else, since Mrs. P and May both clutched their heads), but Osiris stopped that by simply marching over to Bael and whacking him upside the head with the same punchbowl I had used on him earlier.

“None of that, now!” Osiris said. “I will not have you casting curses in the Duat. If I want people cursed here, then I shall do it.” He turned to Maat. “Finish the challenge.”

Bael spat at her, literally spat at her, which just caused Osiris to snap his fingers. One of the guards brought a napkin from the overturned banquet table, which he used to gag Bael.

Maat approached Bael, who struggled against his bonds, but it was no good. She dropped the feather into his hand. It curled up onto itself, rolling up tight, then fell off his hand to the ground with a thunk.

Bael’s eyes locked on first Mrs. P, then on me, and finally, Rowan. The sight of them was so horrible, I had to look away. Even Rowan looked pale after receiving Bael’s full attention.

“You may not go as you please,” Maat said quietly. “You are henceforth bound to Duat.”

I thought Bael’s head might explode, so furious was he, but he had to content himself with trying to take more years off our lives with his deadly glare.

Mrs. P shook off my supportive hand and turned to where Osiris was standing. Her face lit with an inner joy that was wonderful to see. “At last, my beau, I am here before you. And I have brought you an offering to our love, that which will allow us to live together in peace.”

“Eh?” Osiris said, looking somewhat startled. “What’s that about living together? My wife wouldn’t like—”

“My beau, oh my beau,” Mrs. P said, pulling the ring out from her belly button. She ran with it to Osiris… and then passed him by and threw herself into the arms of the taller of the two guards. She kissed his face and his neck and his ears, and he picked her up and spun her around, kissing her in return.

“What the…” I stared at them, shaking my head before turning to Rowan. “Do you see that?”

“Interesting,” he said slowly, watching Mrs. P and the guard murmur sweet nothings to each other. “I believe we have been mistaken in our assumptions.”

“Well, you can say that again. Mrs. P!” I marched over to her and tapped her on the shoulder, feeling that the situation allowed for me to do a little interrupting. “What the hell?”

“What is your problem?” she asked, glancing quickly at me before returning to coo at her boyfriend.

“My problem is that all along you’ve been talking about being with Osiris. You know, your beau.”

“Silly gel,” she said with a tinkly little laugh, clinging to her guard. “His name is Bo. And he’s mine, all mine, and now that he has the offering, he shall use it to leave Duat, and we shall be together forever.”

“That was a close thing,” Osiris told the First Dragon. “I thought she was going to demand I leave with her. My wife would never condone such a thing. Just the other day she was ranting about one of her priestesses who had given me a deep tissue massage some seven hundred years before. The woman has the memory of an elephant, I tell you. And the temper of a devil. She’s always claiming my guards are lusting after her.”

“I told you not to wed our sister,” the First Dragon said mildly. “Such things can never end well.”

“Come, dragon,” Mrs. P said as she gave the ring to the guard named Bo. “You wish to preserve the essence of the ring? Be ready to catch it.”

The guard released Mrs. P long enough to bow to Osiris. “My lord, have I your permission to make a life elsewhere?”

Osiris sighed. “It’s always the way—I train up a guard just the way I like it and he finds a way to leave. Yes, yes, be gone with you. There’s nothing I dislike more than a moping guard.”

Rowan’s face clouded. He moved forward hesitantly. “I want the essence, but I don’t know what I can use to bestow it upon.”

The First Dragon drifted over to us, shaking his head sadly. “I had such high hopes for you, too.”

Rowan frowned. “You made me a dragon, and I have embraced it. In what way have I disappointed you?”

“I gave you the means to make whole the sept, to provide for my children, and yet when faced with the opportunity to do both, you refuse.”

“I’m not refusing to do anyth—oh.” Rowan thought for a few seconds, then hurriedly searched his canvas bag until he pulled out the three pieces of the broken glass. “This has importance to you? To… dragons?”