The guy looked like Cleat’s brother, but he was nubby instead of spiky. And clearly angry, from what I could see of his face behind the nub-studded helmet.

“Let it go,” Midas said.

“You’re letting them take him?”

“I made my arguments. I was outvoted.”

Not exactly resounding cooperation there.

“He fed himself to us!”

“If you want to take over the Lodge while Lord of Loss’s back is turned, now’s the time to show some leadership,” Tattletale murmured.

“Shut up, Tattletale,” Midas growled.

“It’s being handled. We have a solution in mind,” Semiramis said. “The heroes have a way to take away his power, then they’re bringing him back here.”

Not exactly the way we’d posed it, and now we looked bad if we didn’t do either.

“Not good enough,” Nubby said. The Desperado Dustwind stood behind him now.

“It’s going to have to be,” Semiramis said. “You—”

Nubby moved, and I flew over the railing, to get far enough away I could block with my forcefield if I had to. Semiramis moved in that very same moment, causing a ghostly, out-of-sync image to overlap Nubby.

It was the initial moves of a fight and those moves were very much on our side. But we were badly outnumbered by angry B-listers, and I had only a second to take stock of them and figure out who I was going to be fighting, out of everyone here. Not Nursery, thankfully, but there were others.

In that moment I was sizing up the room, I heard the sound, the gasp.

I turned.

Little Midas with his arm outstretched, and the sixty-year-old cape with the limp was falling down the stairs. His hand reached for the railing, and was blocked by a crude block of gold.

Snuff slammed Little Midas against the wall. I flew toward Mr. Case Twelve. Sveta got to him before I did. Tendrils caught him, arresting his fall, supporting him from multiple points.

Here, everything was upside-down. Villains and violence ruled, Sveta wore an expression of anger rather than sorrow while holding a limp bloody man in her tendrils, and it was an act of caring, not of killing, because she didn’t hold him tight.

By the look of it, though, she might have been willing to hold someone else tight. I saw her look at the crowd, move, and I put myself close enough to her to block her view.

“Your plan,” I told her, in an effort to break the spell.

“My plan?”

“We might have to. What you outlined.”

“You don’t have to,” Semiramis said. She sounded pissed as she addressed the room. “There will be no fight! You’ll seat yourselves or turn away and you will let them leave as the group upstairs arranged! If you defy me, if you press me on this, I will bring this building down on your heads!”

Could she? I wasn’t sure I grasped her power.

But they certainly seemed to think she could. Nobody fought. Nobody spoke.