“Oh, that old shtick.” Neil picked a dust rag up from the counter and started polishing a yellowed globe the size of a beach ball. “Does seem like a bad time to pick up a human squeeze, with the material world ending and all. But eh, c’est la vie, right?”

A thin, long-haired tortoiseshell cat jumped onto the counter with the jerky, tired motion of an old feline. I absently reached out a hand to pet it.

“Ah ah ah!” Neil tsked without looking up. “The Queen of Sheba does not tolerate the touch of mere mortals—no offense.”

Before I could withdraw my hand, he passed the globe to me. “Hold this.” I took it without thinking, and he proceeded to wipe an inch-thick layer of dust off the shelf.

“So you know about the prophecy?” I asked, shifting the globe around in my arms, trying to find a comfortable way to hold the thing. It must have weighed fifty pounds.

I thought I saw Neil roll his eyes. “Do I know about the… Chica. We go through this every decade or so. There’s always some crazy bastard out there who smokes too much catnip and starts on a rant about the Elder Gods or the Jolly Green Giant here—” he threw a finger at Riley “—returning to Earth and making a mess of your little human lives whenever another Alignment comes along. Sooner or later one of them will hit the nail on the head.”

“This prophecy is real,” Riley said quietly. “And I do not wish it so.”

“Eh? Two months ago you were jumping out of your chair for a chance to make some apocalypse happen.” Neil turned, running the cloth over a ram’s skull. My arms were starting to burn under the weight of the globe.

“You know how things change, Crawling Chaos,” Riley whispered, and for a moment, I thought I heard the edge of a plea in his voice.

Neil looked from Riley, to me, and back. I opened my mouth to ask if I could set the globe down, but before I could get the words out, my arms collapsed and it fell to the wooden floor with the heavy, painful smack of a bowling ball dropped into the alley. I yelped and stumbled back before it could roll over and crush my toes.

Riley picked it up like it weighed nothing at all and studied the little continents painted on its surface, his green eyes soft at the edges, tender, as he traced the coast of New England with one perfectly manicured finger. “The Alignment approaches, and the prophecy is in motion,” he said. “It cannot be allowed to bear fruit.”

I glanced at Neil. His eyes went wide and he had stopped chewing on the edge of his pipe as he stared at Riley like he had sprouted tentacles.