Which meant that, at any point, Phaedra could have stopped the ifrit's murders, but she hadn't. She needed him out there, killing, as her scapegoat. Felicia, meanwhile, was supposed to be the link that bound Conleth to the Chicago murders, even though he had nothing to do with them…
Then my frantic mind caught onto another stray thought.
If Phaedra knew where Conleth lived in Southie, did she know about this place?
Because it was one thing if she'd followed as Anyan and Ryu had tracked Conleth and me back to this place. It was another thing entirely if Phaedra had known of the existence of this warehouse the entire time.
This could be a trap, I realized, my blood freezing in my veins.
My thoughts were interrupted as everyone responded to Phaedra's entrance. Caleb's arms tightened protectively around me and he retreated backward. Julian, Camille, and Ryu fanned out, keeping an eye on the Alfar. Anyan strode forward, his power exploding forth in a blunt, bullying wave.
I was so busy watching Conleth's reaction to Phaedra that I didn't see Ryu had made his way to my side.
“Jane, are you all right?” he whispered, taking me from the satyr. I felt Caleb's power shift away from healing and toward offensive magics.
“Are you all right? I was so worried…”
“I'm fine,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss my face all over. “What did Conleth do to you?”
“Not Conleth, Graeme.”
“Oh gods. What did he do?”
“Beat me up. Conleth saved me.”
Ryu started to say something else, but I shushed him. “Listen, Con knows Phaedra.”
“That's impossible—” Ryu began, just as Conleth yelled, “Phaedra, you bitch!”
I raised my stiff, but now healed, eyebrow at Ryu.
“What the… ?” Ryu's voice trailed off as we all turned to watch the circus.
Phaedra and the ifrit halfling were circling one another. Con's power was flaring out in brutal waves that would have incapacitated most other beings. But the Alfar's shields deflected it without strain.
“You lied to me, you bitch! You said ‘my people' were coming for me. You told me about your world. You gave me hope, and then you let me rot in that lab with that monster!”
The little Alfar's bloodred eyes were wide. “I promised you nothing, halfling. I explained to you the truth of your heritage. If you chose to misinterpret my words, it is through no fault of mine.”
Conleth's power flared stronger, his fire burning so hot it was tinged with blue.
“Goddamn you, stop lying! You gave me hope!” he cried, as he shot off a fireball at Phaedra. It ricocheted off the Alfar's shields and flew to the left, nearly taking the ear off Graeme's harpy girlfriend as she cradled him in her lap, crooning sweet nothings at his ruined face. She looked up, surprised, and then went back to her beloved sexual deviant. And I thought Linda Allen had issues.
Phaedra retaliated with her own wave of power that met Conleth's shields dead-on. He staggered under the force of the blow, but his defenses held.
They battered at each other like this for a while. To protect ourselves against the magic flying about, my group had gathered together around where Ryu and I were standing, feeding our own power into Anyan's shields, as he was the strongest.
“We have to help him, Anyan,” I shouted, as Con nearly went to his knees under a particularly fierce barrage by Phaedra. The barghest either couldn't hear me over the din, or he ignored me. He was busy distributing our combined power about his own shields as energy boomed out like cartoon sound waves from where Con and Phaedra's attacks met each other in the middle.
“Ryu, please,” I cried. “He saved me! Help him!”
Ryu looked at me like I was nuts. “Jane, it's Conleth. He's a monster.”
“Maybe, but he never had a chance! We can give him one! Phaedra is the real monster—” My voice was cut off as a container came toppling off a stack behind us to smash down directly where we were standing. It landed with a bone-rattling crash just as Ryu flung us to safety.
The toppling container gave Phaedra her opportunity. Conleth, distracted by the noise of the falling steel, lost his control for a split second. Nobody's fool, Phaedra had been waiting for just such a moment. The instant his shields wavered, she hit him hard, with two simultaneous blasts of pure Alfar elemental force. The combined elements hit him full in the chest, and he collapsed to his knees. He stared down at the smoking ruin of his torso before looking to where Ryu held me. Conleth raised his hand in supplication, and I strained forward, but Ryu's arms were like a vise around my waist.
Phaedra strode toward the ifrit halfling, pulling at one of the two hilts that peeked out from behind her shoulder. A machete flowed into her hands, the steel cold and deadly in the weak glow of our few, forgotten mage lights. I screamed, fighting against Ryu's grasp, as Anyan shouted as well. But before the barghest could stop her, the little Alfar had raised her gleaming blade to hack downward at Conleth's neck. With a single sickening chop, she held his head in her hands. I tasted bile as I collapsed in Ryu's hold.
The Alfar scanned over her prize dispassionately before she dropped Con's head next to his still-twitching body.
“Kaya, Kaori, away,” she commanded, advancing on us. The harpy who'd been healing the spriggan grabbed him firmly under the armpits and, using a massive amount of power, launched herself and her giant burden up and out of the warehouse, crashing through a skylight to escape. The other did the same with Graeme. They hovered, just over the roof, and we felt their power grow.
“While it has been entertaining playing with you, I am afraid that our time together is at an end. The boy is dead, and with him his secrets. Except that you have all become what humans call ‘loose ends.' You know too much, and I regret that you must follow your halfling friend into oblivion.”
Phaedra's little mouth was upturned in a small smile as she sprang her trap. Using the power of the harpies' element, air, as a catalyst, she unleashed her own imitation of Conleth's fire. But she also bound us, at the same time, in a tight web of Alfar force that pushed us together into the center of the room and kept us from moving. With every beat of the harpies' wings far overhead, the fire raged higher, until even the metal containers seemed to be burning.
Phaedra paused, and I felt a shift in her mojo as she locked her web into place. We were trapped, coughing, in the maelstrom of her power as her artificial inferno swiftly advanced. Then she turned tail and fled before she could get caught in her own trap.
Everyone around me was furiously trying to staunch a section of the flames surrounding us, but their struggles only seemed to make the Alfar's trap grow tighter. I tried to keep out of the way, but my eyes were streaming and I was coughing like crazy.
Nevertheless, through my rising panic, and the Alfar's net, the Atlantic beckoned. Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink, my brain cackled unhelpfully. Particles of seawater hung in the air, droplets of moisture connecting me, like an invisible string of beads, to the water directly below our feet. The ocean would take care of the fire, obviously. But I'd been probing at Phaedra's web with my own severely weakened power, and I thought I understood how she'd made it. I knew that I could bring it down if I only had the resources.
I stared down at the floor and remembered Conleth and his electricity.
“Bring the mountain to Mohammed,” I murmured as I closed my stinging eyes, centered myself, and pulled.
I had only a little bit of power left from Julian's abbreviated attempt to recharge me. And for a second, I thought it wouldn't be enough. When I reached and nothing happened, I nearly panicked. But I pulled myself up sharply and reached again, hard. This time, it was enough to make contact. Using the dregs of my force, I called to my ocean, and much to my surprise, she answered with all the passion of a long-lost lover.
None of the others were aware of what I was doing, and they were so busy battling the fire they didn't hear what I heard. They didn't hear the ocean still, as if drawing in a breath. They didn't hear the suck of the waves receding, gathering themselves. But they did hear what came next, as crashing waves broke through the tall windows on all four sides of the warehouse, soaking us and putting out Phaedra's fires. And with every drop of water that touched me, more of the Atlantic's power forced its way into my body.
We were still caught in Phaedra's net, but most of the fires were out as torrents of water crashed through the thin, rusted walls of the warehouse. Then the sea was actually rising through the floorboards as unnatural waves rose up directly underneath us to meet me. As the water pooled around my ankles, I felt myself both reinvigorated and consumed by the power of the ocean, and I began to understand my devil's bargain.
For the sea always takes as much as she gives, and I had just asked for one hell of a favor.
The water was up to our knees now, and the ocean's power arced through me like electricity. The force was so strong that it lifted me, causing me to float, my arms and legs spread like Michelangelo's famous drawing, a few feet above my friends' heads. Ryu blinked up at me, stunned, his wet hair plastered to his head like a slick, dark cap. But I was brought back to the business at hand as another, increasingly painful, surge of power shot through my body, blasting out of me willy-nilly. I knew, at that moment, what a forty-watt lightbulb must feel like when it gets plugged into a hundred-watt socket. I was going to get that damned web down, but the ocean was going to burn me up doing it.