Tempt the Stars

dangling uselessly at his side and the other had five guards hanging off it—who suddenly staggered back, screaming, when a fireball erupted around Pritkin’s shielded arm and set their robes ablaze.
    But a bunch of reinforcements were streaming inside, despite the fact that the odds were already ridiculous. Six of them grabbed tabletops to use as shields and jumped Pritkin and the rest ran to help Rosier. Which left him able to turn toward his son and lift a hand—
    And the fire abruptly went out.
    Pritkin still had his own shields up, at least for the moment, but it didn’t matter. The guards had obviously had enough of trying to drag a reluctant demon lord anywhere, and with the extra numbers, they didn’t have to. They just hoisted him up, off the floor, and there were too many for even him to fight, and he was almost out the door—
    So I did the only thing I could.
    And moved it.
    Specifically, I moved it onto the ceiling, which was the only place I could think of that might help. But that appeared to have surprised the guards, who were still trying to use it to come in. And who ended up falling through the roof instead, and onto the ones surrounding Pritkin.
    Bonus, I thought blankly as they kicked and thrashed and he sprang free, looking a little crazed.
    But not as much as Rosier when he spun toward me, and screamed something in a language I didn’t know. And every warrior in the place abruptly stopped. And looked up, too.
    And then came rushing straight at us.
    “Jodor,”
Casanova breathed.
    I didn’t say anything, because I was struggling to get on my feet—why, I don’t know. It wasn’t like I had time to do anything, or even to form a plan. But it didn’t matter, because my legs weren’t taking orders, and my eyes kept losing focus and then something hit me on the head.
    But it wasn’t a guard.
    It was—
    “Good one,” Casanova breathed. And started rapid-firing bottles over the bar that we were somehow suddenly behind.
    I grabbed my throbbing head, which had connected with the underside of the bar top, feeling dizzy and confused and really pretty unwell. And saw the bartender stooped in a crouched position over by the wall, looking equally bemused. Maybe because he suddenly had nothing to be crouched in back of.
    Because we hadn’t moved to the bar; the bar had moved to us. But I hadn’t done it. And then someone came sliding across it, and someone else jumped on top of him, and—
    “Was that you?” I asked Pritkin, who was somehow over here now, on his back, his one good hand wrapped around his father’s throat.
    “The door,” he said, half-strangled, because the same was true in reverse.
    “No,
I
did the door,” I said, and hit Rosier over the head with one of our dwindling stash of bottles.
    “
That
door!” Pritkin rasped, his eyeballs rolling up.
    Which I took for a bad sign until I looked up, too.
    And was hit in the face by something hairy.
    I pulled it off and found a coil of rope in my hands. Weird, I thought. And then Rosier was somehow gone and Pritkin was looping it around my waist.
    I tried to help him, because his hand didn’t seem to work right. But then, neither did mine. “Wer’ we going?”
    “Out.”
    “Oh, good.”
    “Come on!” I heard Caleb’s voice and looked up again. And saw him hanging out of the bar’s front door, which was now opening out of the ceiling above our heads.
    And then I was being hauled on a fast ride up and out, onto the roof, where I landed on some nasty shingles that bruised my butt. And then froze it, because the Shadowland was always cold. But that was okay, because it cleared my head slightly.
    Enough that I realized that Pritkin and Casanova were still down there.
    I scrambled back to the edge of the door, where somebody else was on the rope, somebody heavy enough to cause Caleb to strain. I grabbed for the end of it, but before I could do anything, Casanova was climbing out of the opening.
    “I saved one,” he told me, looking a little disheveled.
    “What?”
    He hauled a bottle of hell juice out of the darkness and set it on the shingles. “Only one left.”
    The building shook as some kind of serious spell went off in the room below, and I grabbed his lapels. “Where’s
Pritkin
?”
    And then there he was, struggling to pull himself past the doorjamb with only one functional arm. But he managed, even before Caleb could help him, like he was in one hell of a damned hurry. And a second later I realized why.
    When