Xev shrugged nonchalantly. “I wasn’t completely sure it was you. Besides, she was a lot more gentle in her attack on you than I’d have been.” He swept a bitterly amused glance over Nick’s body. “With her, you’re still in one piece. So stop whining like a baby before I have Simi burp you.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Xev inclined his head toward the bedroom. “Kody’s with your mother, who’s unconscious for some unknown reason. No matter what we try, we can’t seem to get Cherise to wake up again.”

“Could it be Tiamat? I saw her just before I came here.”

Xev went so still that for a moment, Nick thought everything had frozen again.

Until Xev blinked ever so slowly. “Nyria?”

Her features completely ashen, Kody came out of the room. “What did you call me?”

He ignored her question. “Tiamat is free.”

The color drained from her face, too. “What?” She looked to Nick for confirmation. “Are you sure?”

Nick nodded. “She was at Caleb’s. She thought I’d summoned her.”

“Did you?”

Should he be offended by the way she asked that? A part of him thought so, given that only an outright moron would do something that stupid. And while he’d been known to pull some award-winning acts of dumb, he’d never been quite that asleep at the wheel.

At least, not yet, that he knew of.

“I don’t make it a habit of summoning gods I don’t know, no offense. Especially not one I’ve never heard of before. I don’t even play those video games after what happened with Madaug. How slow on the uptake do I look, and don’t answer that. I have a very fragile male ego where you’re concerned.” Nick scowled as Xev carried his unconscious mother out of the bedroom and placed her on the couch, between them. “What are you doing, champ?”

“I am not letting her out of our sight. I will not be blamed for her harm, and I will allow no harm to come to her while she’s in my custody.” Xev placed a small round pillow beneath her head, then covered her with the pink crocheted blanket she kept tossed over the back of the couch, and took up a post at her feet, facing her with his right hand on her leg.

Okie-dokie, he was just a little paranoid.

And in that moment, the full weight of Xev’s true trauma hit Nick. The ancient ex-god was in the middle of an all-out panic attack. A bad one, too, by the looks of it. Kind of like Nick whenever his chemistry teacher sprang a pop quiz on him at school.

“Xev?”

He didn’t hear him. His breathing labored, he wasn’t really with them. Instead, he appeared to be in a waking nightmare of some kind.