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“Sure.” Reece’s retort is delivered on a full growl, and my chest is infused with hope. Maybe he’s recovering faster than I first thought. “You mean the way that turns functioning people into your waggy-tailed puppets?”

“Puppets who are happy!” Her eyes gleam like she’s about to morph into a damn bear. With matching wildness, she claws Mis and Ira backward until their heads are trapped in her armpits.

“But robbed of everything that makes them people.” Reece grits the last word and maintains his vicious countenance while moving in front of me. If Faline is going for the bear angle, then he’s set on fighting back at full dragon mode. His gaze crackles with lightning blasts. His hands are curled like reptilian claws, looking ready to send out sci-fi laser balls. But can he? Or is this all for show, to keep her here and talking? “Don’t you get it, woman?” he finally growls, shaking his head. “If you do this, you’re no better than your own parents.”

Faline’s fire completely drains from her.

But only for two seconds.

After that, her fury is back at double its force—twice its violent emotion.

“How. Dare. You.” And with that triplicate of snarls, three times its destructive conviction.

“No, Faline.” My husband holds fast to his position, both physically and figuratively. “How dare you.” I struggle not to wince as he carefully balls his hands back together, one quivering finger at a time. He’s still flirting with danger by feigning his force, but there’s not a thing I can do about it. Not right now. Not from where I’m at. “You got short-changed in the decent moms department, woman. For that matter, the dads too. But their dissatisfaction with their lives had little to do with you—and even if you don’t believe me and succeed in creating a super race of every perfection there is, there are going to be humans in that gene pool who aren’t ever satisfied. They’ll be that way because they’re human, and we’re all hardwired to seek more, to crave more, to want…more.”

I pace over, stopping when I’m directly by his side. “He’s right,” I state softly. “And there are times when I wish it weren’t so, either…but he’s right. Frail or strong, curvy or skinny, doubtful or fearless, powerless or even able to fly”—I smile through my awestricken tears as my kid hovers in the air between Reece and me—“we’re always going to want to go further, accomplish more, be more. And sometimes we’ll succeed, but at others we’ll fail. But that’s not going to stop us. Even perfection—or whatever it is that you perceive as perfection—isn’t going to be enough, Faline. Don’t you see? None of it will ever be enough.”

There’s more, so much more that I can say, but the fullness of my heart indicates that for now, it’s all right. Or maybe I know that because of Angie’s and Trixie’s affirming smiles. Or Reece’s electric magic of a hand squeeze. Or the matching hug my head receives once my son parks his backside on my shoulder and then leans in for the kid-sized clinch. It’s a moment I bask in because I know it can only be just that: a moment of a very minor celebration because we’ve still got so far to go. Faline still has both my daughters in ruthless chokeholds.

Until…she doesn’t.

My breath snags as she relents on the noose grips around Mis and Ira. But just as swiftly, she’s grabbing both of them by the hands, until I see their little fingertips glowing green from the pressure. Their stares have turned the same color, overflowing with moss-green terror. In so many ways, both of them have predicted what the bitch is going to attempt.

What I’ve been dreading since I got here.

“Well, bravo, Mistress Flare,” Faline sneers. “You get the day’s honor for the prettiest speech.” She forces the girls’ arms into victory pumps as she dips into a mocking bow. “Yet regrettably, it’s also the most ineffective.” Then rises up, a sinister smirk turning the weak scribble of her mouth into a swerving strand of spaghetti instead. “Because nothing from your pathetic little mouths have changed my mind—and now you’ll all have to simply live with the consequences!”

Yep.

Exactly what I’ve been dreading.

Down to every last syllable she utters. Every grand gesture she makes. Every sickening swirl of her head as she prepares to open up a new portal into the darkness of the world beneath us.

And does.

“No,” I rasp.

“Noooooo!” Mis wails.

“Madre! Madre! No!” Ira screams.

I yearn to shriek out with them. What’s the sound of a sun screaming? There has to be one. There has to be. And that sound has to be so hot and hateful that it shatters the air—and destroys a witch. But my throat is too dry. My senses are too weak. Soon, even my body is, as well. It takes everything in my being to melt down just three of Reece’s pillars and then to race forward, through the gap.

As Faline reopens her portal. The doorway into the dark world where she’ll banish the girls forever.

But once the wide round threshold is open, my mouth drops open in a matching shape. “What…the…” I finally manage to stammer, attempting to peer deeper inside the circle—only there are no depths inside there to be seen. Unlike the first time Reece and I ventured under the city, there’s no smell of earth, vibrations of traffic, or scurries of eternally nocturnal creatures. It’s a void. Literally, a blank space of nothingness.

“Oh, my God!”

But the Big Guy isn’t ready with any fast answers—and right now, that’s exactly what I need. I whirl back around, quickly locating the closest thing in my world to a living, breathing version of the Almighty. Except that right now, Reece isn’t looking all of anything or mighty in the least. He’s down on the ground, on all fours, with our son parked in the middle of his back. I blink in pure astonishment. And then again. Unless our son has had another wild and crazy growth spurt during the last hour, he’s now glowing with a lot more than just his light. There are defined streaks of blue in his energy streams.

Which are now aimed at the same hole that Faline sliced open in the atmosphere.

Or…did she?

I whip my focus back around, taking in the woman with new eyes. Okay, with the same eyes I beheld her with before but with a clearer jolt of understanding.

Her sunken eye sockets. The old mop hair. Her wan skin—which, now that I’m looking closer, seems to be the only thing besides her bones filling out her catsuit. She’s gone from being a sleek black Siamese to one of those weird breeds with all the wrinkles. While her aura still radiates nothing but bloodred, her actual energy and vitality are…