“And you trusted her?” I raised my voice.

Julie raised an eyebrow. She won the argument. “And if I hadn’t come back…”

“I’d be getting dissolved inside a dragon right now,” I admitted. “Sorry. It’s one thing to worry about one of you. I don’t know if I can handle two.”

“Better get used to it. I took a test an hour ago. Earl’s nose was right. I guess this is official.”

“What if—” There were a thousand questions.

“We’ll deal with whatever happens, like we always do.”

And that pretty much summed it up. We’d be okay. “You’ll be a good mom.”

“And you’ll be a great dad.”

We sat in silence for a long time. It was weird to have time to think again. I didn’t want to ask, but had to. “Who’d we lose?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out, but he hurt us.”

“Lacoco and VanZant?”

Julie shook her head. “MIA.”

I closed my eyes and tried to sink back into the bed. They were dead because of me. “I had to make the call,” I whispered.

“You were right, though. The Nachtmar concentrated on us. The demons attacking the conference center lost focus, and when the Nachtmar followed us through the clouds, it broke the spell. If he hadn’t followed us, who knows what would’ve happened. If we hadn’t made it off that roof, the Last Dragon might still be on the other side.”

Being right didn’t make it any easier. Lacoco had a little girl. “I had to make the call.”

She patted my hand as she began to cry. “I know.”

Epilogue

Epilogue

Mosh stopped the rental car at the end of the driveway. He took way too long to shut the engine off. It was like he was debating putting it back in drive and making a run for it. I couldn’t blame him.

“Ready?” I asked.

He glanced over at me. He’d gotten out of Vegas in better shape than I had physically, but his face was still bruised, swollen, and scratched from his fight with the nightmare cultists. Basically, the Pitt brothers looked like crap. “We could just pretend this whole thing never happened.”

“Like that ever works out.”

Mosh sighed and shut the car off. “Let’s do this and get it over with.”

It took me a minute to get my crutch out of the backseat. Even with Gretchen’s additional attentions, she said the human doctors were right, and I was going to be on that crutch for a while longer. My brother met me on the other side of the car and the two of us stared up at the house with dread. There was still a discolored spot on the driveway from where a Condition cultist had bled all over it. This part was much harder than squaring off against a nightmare monster.