At the sound of her name, La Llorona tilted her head in a move too slow and eerie to be considered particularly birdlike. Those fathomless eyes bored into me, seemed to stare straight through me, as though she could see the furious spinning hamster wheel of fear that whirred between my ears.

Had I been some sort of tyrant or serial killer in a previous life? Because it just seemed wholly improbable that so many awful things could happen to me in quick succession. Lasciel's coin. Torelli's blackmail. The wendigo. Torelli's goons, the Wardens and now this. What did I have to do to balance the karmic scales so that I could have a moment of freaking sanity?

"You may bemoan your fate later, Molly," Lasciel chided me. "For now you will have to fight."

How? How the hell were we supposed to defeat this thing? Even now, her will battered against mine. If I'd been alone, I'd have been a goner for sure. The sensitive nature of my magic meant I felt her pain even more acutely than others might. Like a fish drawn to the lure of an Angler, she'd have me. Even with Lasciel's presence to bat her sending away and leave me mostly sane, I was still having trouble moving. The water was too deep for me to stand, too deep for me to both swim and fight. She could just push my head beneath the water and hold me under until I drowned.

The boat was precarious footing at best and with Anna still unconscious, I didn't want to try it. So what the hell could I do?

"We will have to make our own footing, my host. Do you recall what we discussed about earth magic?"

I did. Though my first weeks in the hotel were spent trying to ignore Lasciel for the most part, the exceptions had been her magic lessons. My education with the Ordo was criminally limited, and I sucked in all the knowledge I could glean from her like a sponge. The lesson on elemental forces had been one of my favorites because it gave me some insight into the powers that Harry regularly employed. It also gave me a new appreciation for just how strong he was. He channeled energies I'd have a difficult time harnessing like it was nothing at all. He was a tank, a magical bruiser who could literally and metaphorically kneecap most attackers. No wonder Nicodemus had wanted to give Lasciel's coin to Harry. Instead, she'd ended up with me. What a disappointment.

Lasciel's voice was a little softer when she spoke. "I do not regret our joining, Molly. As I said, we are well-suited. I believe I would have found Harry Dresden difficult and grating."

My body thought briefly about releasing a wispy chuckle, then promptly vetoed it on account of the pressing terror it was currently occupied with.

"Okay, elemental magic. What about it?"

"There are several applications for earth magic. I would like you to employ the second we discussed."

I didn't have to strain my memory hard to recall her words. Lasciel brought the memory to the fore without much difficulty, flicking through them and trading one for the other like a DJ at a turntable.

But just because I remembered didn't mean it was possible. Earth magic was probably the trickiest element for me to wield, especially under these circumstances.

"Lasciel, I'm drained. There's no way I can do this. And assuming by some miracle I do, I'm going to pass out and drown. It accomplishes pretty much the same thing, just saves her the effort."

"I will aid you. Prepare yourself, she is coming."

I couldn't quite understand what she was saying. La Llorona had just been standing there this whole time, watching me like I was a particularly interesting bug. A second later, Lasciel pulled the wool off my metaphorical eyes and I saw what was really happening. She was indeed advancing, though she was employing magic to appear stationary to my merely mortal senses. She couldn't trick Lasciel, though.

I performed an ungainly roll in the water and barely avoiding the pale, long-fingered hand that reached for me. The woman let out a sound of disappointment when she snatched only a handful of rushes instead. Unthinking, unreasoning guilt washed over me. Who was I to deprive her of what could bring her peace?

Lasciel's essence upended my thoughts and shook me like a kid getting the last crumbs from a cereal box. The experience was unpleasant and a little frightening, but it was effective. When I came back to myself the irrational pity I'd felt for La Llorona was gone, replaced with grating irritation.

"How the hell is she doing this?" I hissed at Lasciel. "She's just supposed to be a ghost, right? So how is she so powerful."

"Spirits present their own challenges and in your weakened state, you would likely still struggle with one. But you are correct. This level of self-awareness and psychic ability in a spirit of this age is remarkable. Bordering on impossible. It is likely being fed energy from a high sidhe or perhaps even an outsider."

Though the water hasn't changed temperature, goosebumps still pop along my arms. Outsiders. Lasciel's shadow had shown me a vision of one. A horrible, hairy thing with an indistinct shape and too many teeth. It had killed her host, Lenore, and sent Lasciel back to her coin without any hope of avenging her.

"Yes. Them."

Lasciel's anger bubbled like a poisonous brew in the back of my head and it gave me enough focus to avoid Llorona a second time. I gripped the underside boat with white-knuckled hands, kicking out violently when spindly hands tried to grab me from below. Though it was not my anger, I drew upon it anyway, used that thrumming, inhuman rage to shape the crude spell as well as I could before thrusting my hand downward with a cry of:

"Tsuchi!"

The water around us pitched violently like someone had just turned on the wave pool. The hinkypunks below were washed away, or otherwise smashed flat by the thick slab of earth that jutted from the water a few seconds later. It rose higher and higher until it formed a square about six feet by six feet in the middle of the marsh.

Even when it was through and I'd scrambled onto the makeshift island and dragged Anna on with me, I still found it hard to release the emotions fueling the spell.

The width and breadth of Lasciel's anger was terrifying. She'd been a silent voyeur to my thoughts and feelings, had seen the seedy underpinnings that lay beneath my reasoned mind. Never once had I gotten a look at her in the same intimate fashion. But now? Now magic and shared desire to end this thing allowed me an illicit glimpse. Though she tried to block me, I finally got a peek at her. The true her. And it almost shattered my mind to do it.

She was beautiful. Terrifying. Corrupt. Even in pure thought, my flimsy human mind couldn't encapsulate her. It conjured up an avenging angel with singed wings, eyes that seemed to hold whole galaxies, a tunic so slicked with blood and filth that it could barely be called fabric any longer, skin like bronze, the scars of a thousand battles crisscrossing the flesh in red and white lines so that she almost seemed crosshatched, drawn into being by pain and malice and sheer will.

I felt, for just a second, that I could grasp her motives, alien as they were. And then that knowledge slipped through my fingers like water, fading as though I'd never grasped it at all.

The vision ended abruptly, like a door being slammed in my face. I was left blinking in confusion, hundreds of sunspots dancing before my eyes, and a warm slide of blood trickling from my nose and ears.

"Foolish child," Lasciel hissed. "Are you trying to kill yourself? Allowing the shade to drown you will be less painful."

I dabbed the blood from my face with one soaked sleeve of the corset jacket. I was going to have to enchant this thing to repel water next.

La Llorona floated closer, extending one hand toward me. Tears flowed freely down her death-pale cheeks. She seemed to shiver with cold, her lank hair framing a face so tragic that Shakespeare would have killed to pen a play about it. The need to pity her was a distant thing, kept at bay by a cushion of spiritual numbness. I knew it wouldn't last, but seeing Lasciel's true form had done me some good, at least. It was like biting into something too hot and burning one's tongue. It had seared my senses, left them blunted in a way they hadn't been in a long time. It was blessed relief not to be picking up on the minutiae of people's feelings anymore. Doubly so since La Llorona's would deceive me.

"Are you comparing me to pizza or hot wings, my host?" Lasciel's tone couldn't seem to land on either anger or amusement, so it came out as a mix of both.

"Less talky more fighty," I muttered. "What can we do to this thing?"

"Ghost dust would be preferable. Unfortunately, we have not prepared any."

"That's super helpful, thanks."

La Llorona's face creased when her psychic sending failed to produce the results she wanted. Namely when I didn't hurl myself into the water in despair and let her drown me.

She threw both her arms wide as if she'd embrace me, coming to hover above the water only feet away from my position on the rock.

"Come mi hija," she crooned. "Come to me and I will give you peace."

Her voice echoed to me like she was speaking from the bottom of a well. An unnerving little smile curled the edges of her bloodless lips, tears still trickling down over them.

"Like hell," I growled. "Find some other sucker, lady. I'm not buying this."

La Llorona's head tilted in that slow, serpentine way it had before, canting at an impossible angle. I heard vertebrae rattle against one another as she did it.

"It will be a mercy," she said in a whisper than nonetheless carried. "She will destroy you, mi hija."

For a second I couldn't figure out who the eponymous "she" was. Then it clicked. Lasciel. La Llorona thought she was saving me from Lasciel. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. The sound that came from my throat was a strange mixture of both.

"Do you want to see what she will do? What inevitably lies at the end of this road, lovely girl?"

Then the water was roiling, slapping the sides of my magicked island as furiously as before. All around me shapes began to bob to the top of the marsh like pale corks. I crouched in a defensive position over Anna's body, wands at the ready as the hinkypunks surfaced. Except...they weren't hinkypunks. Or, more accurately, they weren't only hinkypunks. The little creatures themselves appeared like insubstantial little clouds of mist, contained by something as thin and translucent as a plastic bag. The only truly solid bits of them were their hands and the phosphorus lanterns they clutched in their knobbly fingers.

The lights cast enough of a glow for me to be able to make out the other shapes she'd conjured. When the shapes finally resolved themselves, I bent double and threw up.

They were bodies. Dozens of them. Familiar faces all.

Daniel, with his untidy dark hair slicked down by the mud, his teeth and cheekbones beginning to poke through rotting skin, pale gray eyes fixed and unseeing. Matthew, in a similar condition not far off. Alicia, her sporty blonde ponytail tangled around a rock, most of her beautiful little face gone, just like Claudia's. What remained was being eaten away, maggots sliding out of the burned holes that swiss-cheesed her face. Amanda is thankfully face down, sparing me more horror, though the sight of her small body bobbing on the rippling water still gutted me. There was nightmare fuel enough in the rest of the waterlogged bodies. I was glad I didn't have to see what's ended her.

Hope and little Harry, bodies broken, their limbs bent at impossible angles, like little birds who'd leaped from the nest too soon. Mom, arms slashed from elbow to wrists, looking almost as anguished as La Llorona herself. She died crying.

And dad...oh God, dad.

He was dressed in his surcoat, though its pristine white was drenched in red, almost obscuring the cross pattée on its front. He still gripped Amoracchius in one hand, though the blade was mundane metal, not shining with ethereal power.

His head was hanging to his neck by only a few tendons, throat cut down to the white vertebrae by claws that I'd seen before. That I'd wielded before. Every slap of the water threatened to tear his head free completely.

There were more, of course. Father Forthill. Harry. Rosanna, Ken, the ladies of the Ordo. They were all there, in various states of bloating decay. It was fortunate for me that I'd burned myself on Lasciel's power because this sending had a very great chance of rendering me insane. I couldn't pay attention to a single thing Lasciel was trying to shriek at me.

La Llorona's hands stroked along my cheeks, her Arctic touch gentle, wiping at the salty tears pouring down my face. I hadn't realized I'd begun to cry. Or scream, for that matter. My throat burned weakly. The shade bent her forehead to mine, the stringy curtain of her hair blotting out what little light was left. Her kiss was the only thing that seemed real. It seared into my soul.

"She will destroy them all." La Llorona's silken murmur traced my ear. "We cannot fight our natures, Molly. She will destroy you utterly and all that you love. Unless..."

Her frigid fingers wrapped around my wrist and she pulled me toward the edge of my island. The stench of putrefaction pouring over the edge made me gag once more. The shade waved a hand over the murky water and, with a suddenness that knocked the breath from me, the bodies vanished. The stench cleared.

"She will end everything you love. Unless you end her first."

"Molly!" Lasciel's voice was dim and far away. "It's a trick! Just listen to me, damn it!"

A hysterical little giggle bubbled up in my throat. Lasciel was swearing at me. My impeccably well-mannered angel was losing her cool. The mirth was immediately doused by the realization that La Llorona was right. Wasn't this everything I'd feared? Everything I'd known would happen if I gave into the Fallen's influence?

I'd become a monster if nothing was done. But I could end it here and now. Slip into the inky dark and disappear, taking Lasciel and her coin with me. There was nothing holding me back.

A small groan tore my attention away from the fathomless depths of La Llorona's eyes. Behind me, Anna coughed and rose up onto her elbows, hunching double so she could vomit the rest of the water she'd imbibed. Her eyes blinked blearily once, twice, widening in fright when she realized we'd left the relative safety of the Omni Hotel behind. When her eyes fixed on me and the shade, locked in a quasi-embrace it was enough to shake me from La Llorona's influence.

The lying bitch was wrong. I did have things holding me back. I had people to protect. I'd taken a hard knock here or there, but my fight wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

"Promise me, Lasciel," I whispered to her. "Promise me this never happens."

"Molly-"

"Promise me," I demanded, pressing the only advantage I'd ever gained on her. "Promise me that no harm comes to my family from the Denarians. You yourself will see to it. Do it or I'm going to end this right here right now. I'll push Anna through the way and let this crazy bitch carry out her plan."

I could practically feel Lasciel twisting her hands. I wasn't sure if her claims to care for me held any water, but I knew one thing for sure. This portion of faerie was not a place she wanted her coin to be trapped in. Even if the others could find it eventually, it would be many years from now. Years trapped at the bottom of a lake with only shades and hinkypunks for company.

"I cannot promise the safety of Michael Carpenter," she said finally. "He is a Knight. He opposes our designs, would destroy us outright if he could."

"Fine." It was war, my father a weapon against them. Dying was already a risk he'd accepted. "But the rest of my family. Promise me, Lasciel. Promise me on your ideals."

I knew she had them. Knew now that there was a core reason behind the evil now.

"Fine," she spat finally. "I vow to protect your family excluding the Knight, even against my confederates, for so long as you are the wielder of my coin. I swear it on the ideals I hold most dear."

A weight lifted off of my shoulders as the fear of being used as a weapon against my family lifted.

"Now do your part, my host. End this creature."

I didn't have ghost dust, but I did have my shield bracelets, carved as they were with cross pattées beneath every stud. It wasn't a holy site, but my belief in the symbol should at least deter La Llorona long enough for me to tear open a way and hightail it out of Dodge. I lifted my wrist and shoved my will into it.

A shield sprang into being at once, forming a sphere large enough to shield Anna and me. The shape of a hundred little cross pattées studded its surface like a million stars, glowing white pinpoints of light that thrummed with the power of my belief.

La Llorona was blasted back to the middle of the marsh, her hands smoking, eyes wide with anger now, instead of sorrow or pity.

"Mi hija-"

"Unless your name is Charity Carpenter, I'm not your daughter, bitch," I snarled. "Take your bullshit illusions and shove them up your ass!"

I seized Anna's hand and dragged her toward the edge, leaping into empty air. I clawed at it, opening a way once more, the act draining the last of my energy away. My shield stuttered and died. If we ended up in a worse place than this, then we were fucked. I had nothing else to give at this point.

We tumbled through the opening I'd made in the fabric of the Nevernever and landed face-first on stone. My body started waving the white flag of surrender at that point. I'd had enough. This far, no further.

I barely managed to crack my eyes open to get a glimpse at our surroundings. All I could spy was the side of a brownstone home with flowers growing in its front yard.

"Where are we?" Anna croaked, sitting up beside me.

My vision narrowed to a pinpoint of light, blackness swallowing me whole.

"An excellent question," I breathed. "Wake me up when you know, will you?" I need a nap."