When Arra turned onto Boundary Road, he closed his eyes for a moment, confronted the fear that had been chewing at him since the call, and said, “Do you think CB’s dead?”

“No. He knows too much. He could be too useful. The Shadowlord can’t have changed so much he’d throw away that kind of resource.”

Which would have been more reassuring had she not so obviously been trying to reassure herself.

At 8:43 the parking lot was still surprisingly full. Zev’s car was gone and so was Amy’s—Tony thanked any gods that might be listening for small mercies—but Lee’s bike was still there.

“They’re shooting promo stuff,” he murmured, realizing. “Lee had to stay.”

“Any new shadows will be for control, not information, so he’s probably shadow-held.”

Again? Oh, that’s just fucking great. The thought of Lee shadow-held came with the memory of Lee’s hands on his body, scrambling his responses.

“He survived it the first time,” Arra reminded him, misreading his silence.

“Yeah. That’s not very comforting.”

She shrugged and turned off the engine.

“What do we do now?”

“Right now? We wait for your Nightwalker. No point in going over the battle plan twice.”

Seat belt unbuckled, Tony twisted around so that he could see her. She looked unconcerned. Or possibly blank. Nothing showed. He was looking at the last wizard of her order, the one hope to defeat the Shadowlord—he could just as easily have been looking at someone’s grandmother, parking and waiting to pick the grandkids up from school. He wanted to know what she was thinking but he couldn’t see it on her face.

“So, does a gate have to be opened in a specific spot?”

“No. Variables are adjusted for location.”

“So you could open a gate here?”

She turned very slowly to face him. “I could.”

He really, really hoped she’d add, But I won’t. But she didn’t. “Hey, I just thought of something.”

“Don’t strain yourself.”

She was under a lot of stress, so he’d give her that one. “If you can only affect the gate on the world of origin, how’s the Shadowlord going to get home? I mean, sure this is a great world and all, but his stuff’s back there and I expect he’ll want to go back and forth.”

“He probably has the spell set up on the other side ready to go off every twelve hours.”

“He’s got the gate on a timer?”

“Essentially.”

“Cool. Still evil,” he clarified as Arra turned to glare at him. “But cool.”

“Less cool if he calls through reinforcements.”

“Granted.”