Stay calm. Don't panic.

Jace forced herself to swallow. What had Iris told her? She had to name it, or the Ephemeral Card would turn against its summoner and fight for control of her magic. The last thing she wanted was an imp getting its knifey little teeth in her skull.

Drop it! her mind screamed at her, freaking out like a mouse clenched in a fist. It kept showing her the image of a claw delicately slicing out a chunk of her brain and bringing it to grinning, moist lips. DROP IT!

Her hands convulsed, making the imp lose its balance; it slowly turned and faced her, crouched on all fours like a deranged cat, talons digging into her palms. Its mouth split wide. Its eyes sparkled like hungry Swarovski crystals.

Jace shivered, sternly telling her imagination to shut the hell up so she could remember what she'd been told. A name, for chrissakes, that wasn't so hard. This one's name was . . . Air-something. Greek, she thought. A word of darkness and shadows. Air . . . no, Er. Er-ah. Er-eh? Oh, yeah!

"Erebos!" she said, half triumphant and half about to yeet the thing as hard as she could so she could scrub her tingling palms on her soft black leggings, a gift from the Nightmares at the palace.

The imp giggled. It blinked its large, white, jewel-faceted eyes at her, as trusting and adorable as a child ready to play a game.

Well, she had a game. One she was going to win.

"Get that egg back," she told the Card spirit.

Erebos flowed obediently off her hands, its movements somewhere between flying and warping. Jace hitched her bag over her shoulder and pounded after it. Fallen needle-fan leaves puffed up under her boots unseen, crackling softly as they landed. Shadows upon shadows, the imp warped along with a faint glitter so dark that her eyes felt like glass marbles trying to keep it in view. Somehow, she did, though she gritted her teeth against the ache in her leg. Without that egg, she may very well die here.

She didn't want to die now any more than she had before the accident.

Jace stumbled, chillingly sure that the next step she had been about to take wasn't the one she actually did take. Erebos must have pulled her along in its warping wake, because a lizard-dog, the one with its crocodile jaw stuffed full luminescent egg, loomed up right in front of her. That wasn't possible, not with how fast it ran and how slowly she hobbled – yet it was there, long spine bending for the next bound, flexible, rat-like tail extended, short dragonish ears flat to the ridged skull.

It never made the bound. Erebos, more smoke than shadows, struck like a bolt of black lightning, straight toward the earth. The lizard-dog crumpled without a whimper.

A second dog darted in. It scooped up the egg.

The anti-lightning struck. This dog, too, collapsed like a pile of Tinker Toys.

Three more lizard-dogs succumbed to Erebos's warping, stabbing strikes. Jace hobbled closer, wincing in real agony because of her leg, which refused to bend properly at the hip and knee. She picked up the egg, trying but failing not to notice how her little helper crawled over to one of the animal corpses. It reached out, dug around a bit, and brought a choice morsel to its lips.

"Stop that," Jace told it sternly. "You're a spirit, so you don't need to eat."

She didn't know if the not needing to eat thing was true, but Erebos smiled at her with knife-bladed teeth. Then it stuck a thumb in its mouth and began to suck like a toddler.

"Stop it!" She fought to keep the squeak out of her voice. "That's even worse!"

The gentle night passed on, unconcerned with the grisly scene. Erebos grinned around its thumb. A strange sort of affection surged through her, and she grinned back at it. She was supposed to recall the spirit now, bind it back into its Card form. Erebos looked so happy, though, blinking its jeweled eyes at the star-whorls in the sky, stretching its bat wings, twitching its pointed ears, sniffing the breeze, that she hesitated. Besides, she wasn't sure how to recall it. That lesson hadn't stuck as easily as the calling part had; it had seemed more important, somehow, to bring an Ephemeral Card to her defense than whatever happened after. She could figure it out, but it would take time.

"Stay," she said to it experimentally, pointing at the ground. Erebos sucked serenely on its thumb. Jace shrugged and left it alone so she could study the egg in her arms.

She couldn't find any evidence of mauling, though the shell seemed thinner than before, more brittle. Its occupant rolled, seeking, she hoped, a weak spot. Jace ran her fingers over the shell's bumpy texture, following the movement within. Excitement and nervousness leaped in her stomach.

"It's all right," she crooned, and, as though in response, the shell's aurora began to pulse. "You can come out now."

"Not just yet," a rough voice called from the trees.

Jace wanted to smack herself. She'd forgotten about the Card Hunters. She hurriedly backpedaled toward Erebos and only stopped when her boot stepped on something that almost caused her to roll her ankle – a rat tail, a hundred times too big. She winced but held her ground.

The Hunter emerged from star-cast shadows, his face featureless in the darkness. Gloved hands clenched a crossbow. Two more Hunters appeared, similarly armed. All three cursed her when they caught sight of their precious lizard-dogs, dead in a pile behind her.

One of them, too angry for words, raised his crossbow and pulled the trigger.

Jace didn't have time to choke on her scream before Erebos hissed, flowing upward, eyes as cold as chips of crystal. The bolt struck it clean through the heart.

With a shriek, Erebos vanished in a puff of purple smoke. Jace stared at the spot of empty night, shaken by the suddenness, the completeness, of it. Erebos was dead. Killed by a human Hunter with a spelled weapon, she was sure of that.

Sadness crashed over her, guilt following close behind. Jace had grown to like her cute little helper in the last few minutes. Now that Erebos was gone, the night seemed very lonely indeed, the shadows far less friendly than before. It may have been a common shadow-type Ephemeral Card, but it had been hers, had been given life by her, had been asked to win a fight that she couldn't even take part in. Why hadn't she recalled it to its Card form when she had the chance?

"Put the egg down, Nightmare," the Hunter growled.

Jace hugged the egg so closely she was sure the thing inside could hear her heart pounding.

"S'matter?" another Hunter barked. "Forget how to talk, filthy Nightmare?"

Jace opened her mouth but couldn't think of a thing to say, and the third Hunter flinched. Actually flinched, as though she'd pitched a bowling ball at his face.

What was going on? Three big men, armed to the teeth, had surrounded one crippled woman in the gloom. She blinked at the shiny tip of the bolt pointed at her forehead. There's the magic, her mind said calmly. An arrowhead spelled by a rogue elemancer against the rules of that big, corrupt academy-thing that controlled who was allowed to summon Ephemeral Cards, according to Isis. The one who had made the whole world of Ephemeros fear and hate aliens like her, none of whom came here on purpose, none of whom could go home. That spell was how the Hunters had killed Erebos.

Now they're going to kill you after they hunted you and sicced their dogs on you, and they think you're the Nightmare?

She remembered the forested hillside, the ditch, the hallucinations. Those monsters, the mutations. They hadn't been real. She'd been scared, and confused, and sick, and it had been night, much like now. Did the dark in Ephemeros play tricks on all humans, alien or native? Did these men see a monster when they squinted at her through the dimness?

She hoped they couldn't see the big, crooked line of darkness that appeared in the luminescent eggshell.

Come on, little one, she thought at it. I could use your help right about now.

"Why do you want the egg?" she asked in a desperate bid for more time, her clear voice startling the three Hunters. One, the youngest, she guessed, glanced uncertainly at his partners. His crossbow slowly drifted to the side, like a steering wheel under an inattentive driver's hands.

The one who had shot Erebos didn't relax. He stepped closer. Unnecessarily, since he was going to shoot her, she noted sourly. Close range wasn't going to make her more dead.

"Can't let any more of you monsters taking what's rightfully ours," he said gruffly.

"How is it yours?" she asked indignantly. "I found it. It's mine."

"It's ours!" he barked. "It belongs to the people of Ephemeros, not to a stinking beggar of an alien. You don't belong here. The egg doesn't belong to you. Put it down. Now."

"All right, fine," she said hastily. Was that a crack she heard? She spread her feet and awkwardly laid the egg on the ground, turning it so that its unblemished side pointed toward the Hunters.

The young one snickered at her posture. She glared at him. "Your dog-thing bit me, you know. It hurt like hell," she said, laying the accusatory guilt on as thick as she could.

His gaze jumped from her to the lumps of darkness behind her, and his face darkened in fury. The crossbow in his hands snapped to attention. "Back away, Nightmare! Now! Before I split your skull open!"

His buddies grunted approval. Ugh, dog-lovers! Not only did they think more highly of themselves than an alien, they probably thought more of their animals than their families. She rolled her eyes.

"Fine," she said again, proud of how her voice remained steady. Even aloof. The way it sounded when Rob went off on one of his rants about money or dirty dishes and she let her eyes glaze over while she imagined slapping him so hard he'd start talking backward. She straightened with difficulty, then took a hitching step to the side. The next step came easier, and the next, though they hurt. Hurt was better than dead.

The Hunters inched forward, jabbing their crossbows at her to make her retreat further. She did, only because any move she made for her Card deck would result in her lying very, very dead on the woodland floor.

Besides, the spirit inside the egg chose that moment to emerge.

The final cracks sounded like a giant concrete slab shattering. Shadows streamed out in a torrent, extinguishing the Northern Lights effect, cloaking the stars. The bits of dead shell liquefied and joined the shadows, rushing away.

Shadows gushed from the cracks in the road. They bubbled like lava in the dark, steaming like fresh tar.

It was the same. The same shadows. The ones that had swallowed her and brought her to Ephemeros. She could almost smell the rain, the exhaust, the dirt, the metal. Her throat closed up. And then they came.

As though in answer to her desperate plea, they coalesced out of the unnatural darkness. Pale things like ghosts with black pits for eyes. Purple things like smoke with starlight for eyes. Childlike, big-headed, winged things with skin of ebony. Tiny fluttering bat-things. Small lumpy things, each lump encasing a golf ball-sized gem that pulsed like an LED. The things smiled at her. As if in recognition. As if in welcome.

The creatures were back. In absolute blackness, they danced around her in what could only be described as joy. Because the one had been born. The one they called—

"Iskia!"

Jace shouted it, howled it, felt the name rumble up from her stomach and stretch her throat. She smelled a brief waft of ozone, the kind of scent that hissed out of the cans of air she used to dust her keyboard, and then nothing.

The Card spirit, naked but as gorgeously androgynous as a Seoul fashion model, hovered in the eerily muted center of the celebrating, orbiting shadow elementals. It took in its surroundings with huge eyes and pointed ears, and then it curled in on itself, no larger than an American Girl doll but as slender as a Barbie, its expression so piteous and frightened that Jace's heart went out to it.

"Don't be scared," she blurted, forgetting for a moment that the ephemeral creature wasn't a child in the human sense.

Wide eyes filled with tears. The lower lip trembled. Iskia spoke in the same way Anhell had, in a sort of soundless whisper that Jace's brain interpreted as a voice. Its eyes, dark and liquid as oil, held galaxies in their depths.

Are you my master?

A/N: Wow, I had no idea I'd get stuck so badly in writing this scene! I'm still having fun with this story, though. I feel good about it! I really, really hope that you, Dear Reader, are enjoying it as well.

Reviewer Thanks! St4r Hunter. I have been holding on to the notification of your last review for all this time. I kept looking at it, reminding myself to keep writing, to not give up, to have FUN. For that, I want to give you the biggest hug I can. Thanks so much for being here for me!

As always, please leave a review before you go!

Ever Yours,

Anne