Cole's chest tightened; he hurried out of the cinema. He looked up and saw a tall, short-haired young woman kick Jax away and hurl a fist of red fire at him.Cole's hand shot out; a rubber rope flew from his palm — the power he'd just taken from Glasses — wrapped Jax's waist, and snapped him behind Cole. The garage was near-black; the woman didn't see he'd used an ability stolen minutes ago. She stood on the twelfth-floor glass railing, watching him, wary.Cole looked down. Five people on the ground. Jax aside, Tara and four others were collapsed, burned and cut, out of the fight. Jax's chest was charred black; saved, he dragged himself up to charge again.Cole caught him. "She did this — alone?""She alone," Jax rasped. "Tara's group came already hurt — other Stowaways."Cole nodded, murmured the activation, and snapped Granny Wolf's parasol open. Rain hammered the mall's windows. He walked toward the woman, calm; she watched him, cold.Ten meters between them, a hoarse male voice sa

Cole ran into a factory yard. On the ground before it, a single star lay quiet, no other player near.His eyes lit; he sped up — and just as his hand neared the star, he snatched it back. A sharp steel boomerang appeared where his hand had been; another half-second and it would have taken the hand off. He looked left.A young woman in a camel coat watched him, cold. She lifted her right hand and the boomerang tore free of the ground and flew back to her palm. Ten meters apart, they stared.They moved as one. Cole shouted the activation, snapped the parasol up to guard. The woman whipped the boomerang in a long arc, around Cole, at his back. He flung the parasol behind him; the boomerang slammed it, knocked him back a step, further from the branch. She drove the boomerang at him one-handed and ran for the star with the other. Cole held, parasol ringing against steel, braced a hand on the ground, slid the arc, closed the parasol, and stabbed a counter-thrust backward without looking. Sh

Pinocchio, ignored, pouted and sat on the far card. "Then let's play. You boring humans have surely never heard the Underfolk kingdom's famous Honesty Card Song!"Boop. "Fine, fine, it's not famous — but it's lovely— yes, yes, it's not lovely, stop growing, I'm singing!"> A king went hunting; the queen preened in her glass;> the minister ran after the king; the knight longed for the princess…> Where's the dear little Slave? Oh —> in the big pot in the Underfolk kitchen!> [ Ding-dong! Round one. Cards played. ]White light blazed up from the two cards, filling the world, until no one could look. Cole strained to see — and heard a clean, crisp crack.His body went cold; he knew the sound.The light vanished. On Cole's side, the iron card had split — cracks racing out from the center like a spiderweb — and then, with a second crack, it dissolved to white light and was gone.Pinocchio clapped a hand over his mouth, in mock dismay. "Oh, you dishonest children — what did you play?" Smi

"Is the ninth of September anything to you?"The words crossed the white world and fell into silence.Behind Cole, Brendan made a small strangled sound. Carl said, "What—" and bit it off. It was nonsense. It was the worst question Cole could possibly have spent their one irreplaceable weapon on — a date, a stranger's date, a thing that could be answered by a coin-flip and proved nothing and won nothing. Brendan's face was going slowly gray with the understanding that the quiet librarian had just thrown the game.Pinocchio's grin faltered. He'd wanted blood, or at least cleverness; he tipped his head, suspicious, waiting for the trick.On the far side, the three traitors looked at one another, baffled, then at the man in black, then back, trying to find the trap in it and failing.The man in black did not look baffled.The man in black had gone absolutely, perfectly still — the stillness of a struck bell in the instant before the sound. And then, slowly, something moved through his fac

The wall sealed, and the white went quiet, and Cole turned to his two surviving teammates and told them how they were going to lose the Queen."We play her," he said. "Brendan's Slave, Carl's Knight, I'm the Queen. We play the Queen, and I stand in her square, and I am the one who fights."Brendan had been a teacher for fifteen years, and he had the face teachers get when a clever student says something that is going to hurt them. "Mercer. The Queen is a life. We're down to three cards. We play her and they answer with Slave — Slave beats Queen — and she's voided on the spot, and we're at two. Two cards, three people. You'd hand them a free kill on our best card to — what?""To put one of theirs in the dirt."Carl frowned. "The duel. You're saying — if they play Slave to void our Queen, then the Slave's rep over there has to fight the Queen's rep over here. Has to fight you.""Has to fight me.""And you can take them?" Brendan's voice was flat. "You've shown this room nothing. You han