I lurched around the side of the warehouse, following the sound of shrieking, and remembering that I’d left Agnes battling a god all on her own. Only to stop dead at more evidence of why she was Gertie’s heir. She’d learned from my mistake, realizing that time spells didn’t work properly on Aeslinn, but that they did work on everything else.

And that those things worked on him just fine.

Which was why a massive cloud of seagulls were stuttering around his head, to the point that I couldn’t even see it any more, while a tangle of roots had shot out of the ground, wrapping around his limbs, and dragging him down to earth, stabbing him repeatedly in the process.

Unfortunately, along with souped up healing, Aeslinn seemed to have acquired souped up strength. Or maybe the fey were just that strong naturally; I didn’t know. I just knew that he grabbed a handful of the animated vines and jerked them out of his flesh like huge, writhing, blood covered snakes.

And then flung a lightning bolt at Agnes large enough to have turned her to ash, only she was no longer there.

Reflexes, I thought blankly, and shifted a barge.

I hadn’t meant to, because that would be stupid. I couldn’t move a barge, with its thick wooden sides and heavy metal smokestack, much less one that was also pulling several flat, raft-style boats like cars on a train. The very idea was absurd.

I’d planned to shift some of the cargo, but Agnes had been right: through my link to Mircea, I was mainlining something a lot stronger than the Tears of Apollo. I was also watching another lightning bolt scorch half of the waterfront, sending a line of boats flying upward in flames and freaking me out. So, I shifted a barge.

A whole one.

On top of Aeslinn.

Only, that wasn’t the best part. The best part was something that I hadn’t intended or even thought about, because I’d only vaguely noticed the heavily laden barges making their way up and down the Thames. They were as much a fixture of life in Edwardian London as the seagulls that constantly wheeled overhead, chugging along and carrying everything from wool and timber to cement and cheese.

And coal.

Lots of coal.

Huge mountains of it, in fact, to light all the fires and run all the factories around London.

And guess which barge I’d grabbed?

I’d always thought of coal as more of a smoldering thing than an exploding thing, but I guess it’s not supposed to be lit by lighting. Or maybe some volatile gasses had gotten trapped under those black mountains. Because, hell yeah, it exploded.