Page 73 of Cheater Slicks

Ozone filled the room when Kierce burst in, his gaze fixing on me. “Frankie?”

“Don’t just stand there,” Dis Pater snapped, kicking his legs harder. “Don’t let her get away.”

“No.” Kierce stumbled back, his nails digging into the doorframe to either side of him. “Master, please.”

“Don’t argue with me.” Dis Pater wrestled with Anunit. “Your girlfriend has my relic, and I want it back.”

Glancing from Dis Pater to me to the bone must have clicked the pieces together in Kierce’s mind.

“Frankie.” He planted his feet. “Go.” His nails lengthened into talons.“Now.”

“How dare you disobey me.” Dis Pater thrashed under Anunit. “Restrain her.”

“No,” Kierce rasped even as his claws slid off the wood, his feet dragging him closer to me.

“Anunit.” I fisted the back of her shirt. “We got what we came for.”

Harrow might be a witch, but he wasn’t strong enough to tussle with a god and win.

“He’s been feeding on our people.” Her eyes blazed up at me. “How can you suffer him to live?”

So, her omission during my recruitment hadn’t been a tactic. She hadn’t known the other gods were feasting on her kin. Which meant Dis Pater was in for a world of hurt now that he had let it slip.

We couldn’t kill him on the spot. We didn’t have the equipment. I wasn’t even sure how you killed a god, but the Alcheyvaha were dead. Other gods killed them. That meant it was possible. But not here. Not with Kierce fighting to protect me at what I was certain would prove to be a great cost to himself.

“Anunit.” I willed her to hear my resolve that he wouldn’t get away with it. “This isn’t the time.”

With a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, she spat on Dis Pater’s face then took my hand.

And if fish-shaped bits of dry cat food spattered his cheeks too, well, I pretended not to notice.

Seconds later, we stood in the guest bedroom at Vi’s, and I had to block out how I left Kierce behind. I had to focus on destroying the bone, freeing the souls, and then…

Then I could figure out what to do about Kierce. About Dis Pater’s hold over him.

“How do I do this?” I had to engage Anunit, keep her from jumping back into the fray and killing Harrow the next time a lightning bolt struck true. “Can I break it in half and call it a day? Do I grind it into powder? Does it need to be dissolved in acid?” Methods for destroying magical artifacts weren’t pretty, but they were effective. “Anunit. Please. I’m not going to let Dis Pater get away with what he did to the Alcheyvaha, but your people are dead. Mine are still alive. Help me save them.Please.”

“Grind the bone to dust, mix the powder in water, and drink it.”

Dumbstruck, I stared at the bone pinched between my fingers. “Do what now?”

“You must assert your dominance over the enchantment. To do that, you must devour the caster.”

That sounded like cat logic. Tremé hadn’t cast the enchantment. He was, at most, the anchor for it.

But maybe that was just me, splitting hairs becauseohmygodwere things about to get disgusting.

“Okay.” I shoved out the door and bounced off Jean-Claude. “Don’t let Kierce in the house.”

“Did y’all have a fight?” He chased after me with a dripping paintbrush. “He disappeared in the middle of helping me roll on a new layer of that epoxy with the color chips. Vi will have a coronary if I don’t have it done when she wakes up after I promised it to her as a birthday present.”

“Her birthday was four months ago.”

“Hence the coronary.”

“Tell whichever Suarez is with Matty that I need him.” The closest mortar and pestle were in Vi’s room, so that was where I headed, and Jean-Claude stuck to me when he realized I had a bee in my bonnet. “Harrow got banged up, so he could use a once-over when you get a second.”

“What’s got you so worked up,cher?”

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