Begrudgingly, she tugged the funeral director’s arm, shouting at him to stand. Once he was on his feet, he took off running for the basement stairs without a single look back. Good riddance. Hadley raced to Lowe’s side and prepared to help him fight the best way she knew how.

She called for the Mori.

They stirred from the darkened corners, pushing their way out of the wall. As they were forming, dark faces turned toward the fire goddess. Yes, she thought. Take the damned creature down. She expected to feel their excitement, a sort of buzzing energy they gave off whenever she gave in and unleashed them, but it didn’t come. Worse, she felt them cower, turning away from the creature as if it physically hurt them to look at the fire. Then they did something she’d never seen. They rejected her command and disappeared back into the walls.

If the Mori were afraid of the creature, what the hell were Lowe and Hadley doing standing there?

Lowe seemed to be thinking the same thing. With a grunt, he ripped the hose off the tap and flung the snaking rubber at the giantess. “Go, go, go!”

They raced up the stairs, Lowe urging her forward with a firm hand on her back, and surfaced on the main floor to find Trotter holding a kitchen knife in one hand and a telephone’s earpiece in the other as he recited his address into the mouthpiece on the wall. “Sorry for the urn, Mr. Trotter,” Lowe said, throwing a shower of bills at the man as they ran by. “We won’t be needing your services after all.”

Wood exploded.

Hadley turned to see the fire goddess at the top of the stairs. The basement door dangled on one hinge; flames leapt across the splintered wood. The creature stepped through it and swung her lioness head around, looking toward Trotter. He dropped the telephone earpiece and fled down the hallway and out of sight. The creature immediately fixed her eyes on them.

“She’s after the crossbar!” Hadley shouted at Lowe as she backed away.

“And she’s damn well not getting it—come on!”

NINETEEN

LOWE GRABBED HADLEY’S HAND. They ran through the hall past Trotter’s office, bursting through the front door into cool night air. The hellish lion-headed giantess was dogging them—no mistaking the boom of her feet pounding through Trotter’s house.

Want the amulet piece, don’t you, old girl? he thought. You’ll have to catch me first, you sack of flaming shit.

He dug car keys out of his pocket as they raced toward the silver Packard. The giantess smashed through Trotter’s front door. Christ. The sleepy town of Lawndale was going to love seeing this. He unlocked the driver’s door and shoved Hadley inside, practically sitting in her lap before she had time to scoot across the front seat. A moment later, the engine roared to life. Tires squealed as he flicked on the headlights and sped away.

“Good lord,” she said, twisting around to peek out the back window. “She’s still coming.”

Haloed in flames, the creature bounded after the Packard, her bare feet scattering sparks over the asphalt. The Packard’s engine protested when Lowe switched gears and pushed it faster, but she didn’t fail him. And as he put some distance between them and the creature, he kept his eye on the rearview mirror, watching the monster’s frantic pace slow to a lope. Then a hobble. Then one of its legs seemed to give out, and the creature collapsed in the middle of the road and its body disintegrated into a roaring pyre.

“Hurra!” Lowe shouted excitedly, pounding the steering wheel with his fist. He grinned at Hadley. “Packard beats magic.”

She flipped back around and melted into the seat. “That was a disaster. Poor Mr. Trotter.”

“I gave him money—money that I couldn’t really afford to throw away, at that. You’re only upset because he was drooling over your legs.”

“He was most certainly not.”

“He was ready to drop to his knees and suck your toes.”

“Don’t be crude.”

“Oh, pardon me. I thought you wanted to be treated like a man. Are you now wanting me to sanitize everything for your delicate feminine ears?”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her coat. Something was bothering her, and it wasn’t him this time.

“You okay?” Lowe asked after a few seconds of silence.

Her eyes remained fixed on the road ahead as they headed back to the city. “You know that was Sekhmet’s form.”

“The breath that gave birth to the desert,” Lowe said. “Yes, I recognized the likeness.”

“And did you see the oil dripping from the ceiling before the creature formed?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought I heard someone upstairs right before, then a black liquid leaked from the rafters. The creature formed where it pooled on the floor. It seemed to be the substance on its skin. It was as if she were conjured or created out of that liquid.”

Lowe thought about that for several moments. “At Gloom Manor, when I dropped the jar, the griffin didn’t rise out of the ashes, so to speak. Remember how the parrots were fleeing it? It came from a distance.”

“Yes.”

“And if someone was upstairs in Trotter’s office pouring some sort of hellish oil into the basement, then the jars aren’t loaded with protective magic. Someone is following us and sending magical creatures—”

“To get the crossbar pieces,” she finished. “Both times, the creatures were after the pieces. Can I please see it?”