“Yes,” Werther says. “I’ve lifted the bounty. You may still get a straggler or two, but I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with them. You haven’t so far.”

He walks over to Chu, looks him up and down like he’s inspecting a bug. “You brought murder into my home. You had the very light of my life killed. What should I do with you?”

“Not that my opinion means much,” I say, “but vengeance hasn’t really worked out well for me.”

“If you can say the same when you’re over two hundred years old, I might take it under advisement. Try as you might, ours is not a world that allows such luxuries as turning the other cheek.”

“You know, things are about to get kinda hairy around here,” I say. “Could use your help.”

Werther laughs. “You would have me stand against a god?”

“Hey, I stood against two of ’em.”

“Yes, and look how that turned out for you. No, Mister Carter, I’m very sorry, but you’re on your own.” He and Chu disappear as quickly and silently as he appeared.

“What the fuck, Eric?” Letitia says. She’s already holstered her weapon, and her stance says she’s ready to face anything, but her face is ashen.

“If I’m right, Chu and Quetzalcoatl are connected, though I doubt Chu knows that. I’m betting everything that just happened here, Q knows about. He’s going to want this bottle and it’s going to get really ugly, really fast.”

“Shit,” she says. “Annie’s out there. I have to get her out.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Hey, you’re the one who told me to have The Talk. So we did and she didn’t believe me and then I showed her a spell and she lost her shit and then when she stopped yelling at me she told me to show her more so I was gonna introduce her to some of the mages here who aren’t raging assholes like you. This was supposed to be a goddamn mayoral fundraiser, not some vengeful god’s FUCKING STOMPING GROUND.”

“That was impressive. I don’t think you took a breath once. You done?”

“Yes,” she says, pumped with adrenaline. “I’m getting people the fuck out of here. If your god shows up, his pet’s not gonna be far behind.”

“If you’re lucky, a lot of people will have already left once they heard the noise in here.”

“I don’t think anybody heard anything,” she says. “I didn’t, and nobody was acting like they had, either. And believe me, if security had, they’d have been in here in nothing flat.”

“That’s just as well. Things are going to shit already. We don’t need a bunch of normals knowing about us.”

“Yeah, until the god shows up.”