Not that I could imagine Prancer being an outright danger to Moose.

“We negotiate,” he said. “Give her a breath, come on. Enough have died.”

Swansong looked at me, then at my nod, lifted Etna up.

“What do you want?”

“Call off the reinforcements,” I said.

“Can’t. I’m not in charge.”

“Convince them.”

“Can’t. They don’t like me,” Prancer said. “I made a play for power and I failed. Lost my Queen.”

There were more vehicles on the road now. The cars Foil had disabled were moving now.

A convoy of capes and the kind of locals who’d worked with Nursery and accepted her methods because it meant a shot at a house.

Our team still wasn’t up.

“Let Sveta go,” I told the others. “We let you have Etna.”

The chess Case Fifty-Three turned his head slowly to look at Paris. Sveta gripped the head from five different angles.

“This the Svet’?” Thud asked, in his booming voice.

“Yeah,” I heard Sveta. It sounded like she was having trouble making words. “Let me fucking go!”

“Let her go,” Paris said. “She’s more dangerous to them than to us.”

They released Sveta, who escaped. Swansong let Etna slump to the ground, backing up to stand by my side.

I bent down and picked up one of the Harbingers. The second Harbinger was up, and crawled our way until he found ground steady enough to stand on. His leg looked mangled. In this manner, we gathered together. A very small group when compared to what felt like a larger assortment of others. Not because we were outnumbered by that much, but because they were more intact as a whole.

Swansong elbowed me. When I looked, she passed me a phone.

Ah, Etna’s phone. What had she been interested in? The reinforcements?

An overhead map with a field of red dots. The traps. Easily fifty. She’d been keeping an eye on the layout while trying to herd Swansong toward the traps. While moving around on her own. Probably everyone had something like this.

Seemed like Love Lost had been making a lot of use of the tinker power, lately.

“It’s going to mess with the dog’s tracking,” Swansong said. “How can they follow a trail if it’s littered with this garbage?”

“Let’s talk about you showing us the way to them,” I said, to Prancer.

I saw others react. Firming up, tensing, getting ready for debate, fight, argument.

“You leave anyone I name alone, your targets aside,” Prancer said, calm, “Then yeah.”

“We shouldn’t,” Moose said.

“You really shouldn’t,” Contender said, hostile and angry. Beside him, Paris looked like he agreed with the villain consensus.

“Give my guys protections, keep the peace, I’ll show you where those guys are,” Prancer said.

“You’re not making any friends,” Contender told him.

“Deal,” I said.

Prancer laughed. “Fuck no. That’s one of my conditions. Second? Money. Enough to get resituated.”

“You’re making enemies who’ll come for you,” Contender said.