She was wrenching lengths of chain from the hand-shaped altar. Kane couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten free, but then he saw an ancient lock by her feet, popped open with a single hairpin.

“That actually works?” he gasped, helping a girl off the altar.

“The reveries love a good trope,” Adeline grunted, “Get ready for the twist.”

“Another twist?”

Adeline dragged her chains up, coiling them again, as the last girl ran off. None of what just happened pleased the crowd, but it appeared to be the virgins saving themselves that fundamentally offended the reverie, and not the sorcerer’s defeat. Kane sensed another distortion boiling through the fabric of this universe.

“Here it comes. Get behind me,” Adeline said, putting herself between Kane and the crowd.

“Where are the glowing lobsters?” Kane asked.

Adeline glanced at him. “How’d you know about that?”

“I was in the boiler room. I heard you talking with the Others. That’s what you call yourselves, right? The Others?”

Adeline unraveled a length of chain. She was looking past Kane now, her face unreadable as several barbarians vaulted onto the court. They were the biggest people Kane had ever seen, each one a tower of mass and muscle, glaring with pearly, white eyes that matched the polished blades of bone they swung.

Adeline shrugged. “Okay, Nancy Drew, I hope you’re ready to fight. Do you remember how to do that snappy thing with your fingers?”

“What?”

With a shriek, the closest warrior lowered into a gallop, sword held high over his head. Adeline grabbed Kane’s arm and held it up, his hand aimed at the warrior’s chest.

“Snap!” she commanded.

In a flash he remembered the jet of magic that had burst from his fingertips to stop Ursula. He wiggled his fingers and, when nothing happened, Adeline heaved them out of range of a slicing blade. The warrior snarled, ready for another jab, and his friends were close behind him.

“I said snap, not jazz hands!” Adeline screamed.

Kane snapped.

The sound was loud like thunder, sharp like a gunshot; the sight was a vein of iridescent brilliance carving the air apart. It was hard to see anything else as the flare slammed into the warrior with such savage ferocity that he was blown backward, very quickly and in a great many pieces. And then the other warriors were upon them.

Adeline didn’t let them get close. She swung her chain in elegant sweeps and slashes, flicking the metal whip with remarkable precision. She struck where the joints of armor failed. Throats, elbows, groins. The warriors barely had time to gnash in frustration as she drove them back.

“Kane. Focus,” she commanded, but Kane was transfixed by the remnant blaze that played across his knuckles. Every color he had ever known vibrated in the pale magic. The prints of his fingertips glowed, as though he’d pressed his hand into liquid light.