“Shut up, Magog,” snarled Mantis Girl. “I can’t think with you running your stupid mouth.”

“We’re nearly out of time,” Magog growled.

“She knows that,” snapped a third Denarian. I recognized this one, which looked like a woman, except for the reverse-jointed legs ending in panther claws, the bright red skin, and the mass of metallic, ten-foot-long, independently moving blades in place of hair. Deirdre, Nicodemus’s darling daughter. She turned back to Tessa. “But Magog has a point, Mother. Scent tracking has been useless.” She held up a small pink sock. “Bits of clothing with her scent on them have been scattered everywhere.”

“That’s the Hellhound’s work,” Magog spat, bright green eyes glowing brightly over dull, animalistic brown ones. “He’s fought us before.”

“He hunts us,” Deirdre said, “while she forces us to focus on piercing a veil. They work too well together. He’s killed two of us. Three if you count Urumviel.”

Tessa bounced the silver coin in her palm. “Urumviel’s vessel may have been killed by his own idiocy,” she said. Her insectoid eyes seemed to narrow. “Or perhaps the wizard managed to return before the Sign was raised.”

“You think that pathetic sot bested Father?” Deirdre said with scorn.

I bristled.

“He wouldn’t need to best him, you moron,” Tessa said. “Only to run faster. And it would explain why Thorned Namshiel hasn’t appeared as well.”

Yeah. If Spinyboy ever woke up, it would be with one hell of a Dresden hangover. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Deedee.

“The wizard is nothing,” Magog growled. “If the girl is not found, and swiftly, none of this will matter to us.”

Tessa snapped her fingers and once again did that disgusting little trick where the mouth of the mantis form opened and the head of a pretty young girl emerged, smiling. “Of course,” she said, looking at Deirdre. “I should have thought of it sooner.”

Deirdre tilted her head. Blades whispered murderously against one another at the gesture. “Of what?”

“The entire strength of this plan is predicated upon attacking the child, not the Archive,” Tessa said, her smile turning vicious. “Ignore the girl. Bring me the Hellhound.”

Chapter Thirty-two

It took me about a second to see what Mantis Bitch had in mind, and half that long to hate her for it.

Ivy didn’t have a family. Until I’d given one to her, she hadn’t even had a name. She’d just been “the Archive.” What she had was a world of power and responsibility and knowledge and danger—and Kincaid. While the Archive would know that the proper decision would be to allow Kincaid to die in order to protect the sanctity of the Archive, Ivy wouldn’t be making the decision with the same detached calm. Kincaid was the closest thing she had to family. She wouldn’t let them hurt him. She couldn’t.

Damn them, to take a little girl’s loneliness and use it against her like that.

Grand schemes and sweeping plans to bring doom and darkness are all fine and scary, but they at least have the advantage of being impersonal. This was simple, calculated, cruel malice deliberately aimed at a child—a child —and it pissed me off.