11
J ackie and Hickory laid the futon—a thick pad of cotton wadding—out onto the living room floor of Simone’s unit, then placed a thinner memory foam mattress on top. Hickory passed Simone a traditional silk quilt with a Japanese quilt cover—it only covered the edges on the top side—as they put the sheets onto the mattress. They staggered slightly—everybody had had too much to drink at the bars in Akihabara—and giggled as the sheets got away from them. Jackie put the case over the pillow as Simone passed the end of the quilt to Jackie and they laid it on the futon together.
Hickory put her hands on her hips and nodded. ‘Do you need help with the groceries?’
Simone wobbled to the kitchen and started pulling the vegetables out of the bag. ‘No, I’m good.’ She checked her watch. ‘It’s past midnight! Oh no!’
‘The trains have stopped, and we’re stranded !’ Jackie said with mock horror.
Hickory giggled again.
‘Go home, I’m taking a shower and passing out,’ Simone said. She brightened. ‘I’m going to use my new bath!’ She pulled some cherry blossom-scented bath salts out of the bag. ‘And the onsen in Odaiba tomorrow, yes?’
Hickory leaned her arm on Jackie’s shoulder and gave Simone a thumbs-up. ‘Absolutely!’
Simone escorted the other girls out, closed the door on them and sighed with bliss. The little bed looked super comfortable, she had furniture arriving in a few days, and a luxurious bath in a haze of cherry blossom sounded wonderful. She went into the kitchen to finish putting the vegetables away, admiring the pristinely perfect Japanese mandarins she’d found at the supermarket. She looked up and saw out through the balcony’s sliding glass doors to the glowing city beyond, blurred by the glittering flurry of snowflakes. It was as delightful as Hong Kong’s skyline, and with much less pollution.
She would be okay.
Simone, I need you, Frankie said, and her head shot up. Mum’s in jail! Help!
What? Simone asked. I can’t come to the Heavens if you’re there ...
I’m at the Peak. Please? It’s awful!
Simone landed at the Peak living room half an hour later, to find her father sitting on the couch with a pyjama-clad Frankie in his lap. Frankie was gasping with sobs and clutching the front of her father’s Wudang uniform. Frankie jumped up, ran to her and grabbed her to pull her down into a tight embrace. Simone’s father rose and stood uncomfortably behind him.
‘The Jade Emperor put Mum in Hell!’ Frankie said. ‘We need to go down and get her right now! ’
‘Why on Earth did the Jade Emperor send her to Hell?’ Simone asked her father.
‘She insulted him to his face—among other things,’ Xuan Wu said, quietly amused.
‘She does things like that,’ Simone said, and pulled away from Frankie to see him. ‘She’ll be back soon, Frankie—’
‘For thirty days !’ Frankie wailed. ‘She’ll miss Christmas ! We have to go down there and get her out right now !’
‘We promised the Demon King we wouldn’t go down there, and we keep our promises, remember?’ Simone said. ‘He behaves himself as long as we stay away from him, and that means he doesn’t hurt people.’ She pulled him in to an embrace again and glared up her father. ‘Why did you let her insult the Jade Emperor right before our first Christmas all together?’
‘Do not, for one second, think that I ever “let” my wife do anything,’ Xuan Wu said.
‘You really like saying that don’t you?’ Simone asked.
He stopped. ‘Saying what?’
‘Your wife.’
His normally stern-and-serious First Heavenly General expression melted into something soft and sweet. ‘Yes, I do. She makes me so damn proud sometimes. She lost her temper with the Jade Emperor because he was being stupid, then she insulted him to his face, and here we are.’
‘What was he being stupid about? That’s not like her to lose her temper, it must have been something really major,’ Simone said, then realised. ‘Oh. Me.’
‘Among other things.’
She pulled back to see Frankie’s face. ‘Why did you ask Mum to bring you down here, though? You’re much safer up on the Mountain or in the Northern Heavens with Nan.’
‘I needed you,’ Frankie said, and sniffled. ‘I didn’t want to stay with ... with John. I needed you .’ He glanced at their father, whose expression was carefully controlled, then back at Simone. ‘Can you stay with me while Mum’s in jail?’ He threw himself into her arms. ‘She’s gone!’
Emma should have left him in the Heavens where he’s safe , Simone said to her father.
I took him to the Mountain, and tried to look after him there, Xuan Wu said. I bathed him and put him to bed, and he fell asleep—and then woke up screaming an hour ago. He was inconsolable. I asked if he wanted to return to Emma’s parents, but he only wanted you. He shrugged. I had to bring him down.
Simone stared up at her father. ‘ You brought him down? Only a child’s mother can carry them in and out of the Heavens ...’
Frankie gripped her tighter. ‘We thought I was stuck up there for thirty days, but John made his Turtle and Serpent parts separate, and the Serpent’s a lady, and she said she’d try, and we did it.’
Xuan Wu sagged and looked away. ‘Uh. Yes. I guess I’m Frankie’s mother as well as his father. My turtle is Frankie’s father, and Emma and my Serpent are both Frankie’s mothers.’
‘Does Emma know?’
‘I didn’t know myself, but I will tell her as soon as she’s back.’
‘And she’s stuck in Hell, and we need to get her out,’ Frankie said.
‘I know it’s stupid, but we have to follow the rules,’ Simone said. ‘How about we have Christmas when Emma’s back?’
Frankie wiped the back of his hand over his nose and sniffled. ‘Can we do that?’
‘Come on.’ Simone took his hand. ‘Let’s write an email for Nan and see if we can’t postpone it.’
‘Does “postpone” mean “do it” or “not do it”?’ he asked. ‘I get “cancel” and “postpone” mixed up.’
‘It means do it later.’
‘Okay.’ He smiled up at Xuan Wu. ‘Can you get her out sooner, John?’
‘Let me see what I can do,’ Xuan Wu said. ‘But remember that you aren’t allowed to visit her, because you can’t go down to Hell. Maybe we can arrange for her to obtain a phone, so she can video call you.’
‘I would like that.’ Frankie tugged Simone’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s write an email to Nan. Can she leave her Christmas tree up until Mum comes back?’
‘I’m sure she can,’ Simone said, and guided him into her room. She turned back to her father. ‘Get her out, Daddy, that’s unnecessarily cruel. Nothing is worth getting sent to Hell for that long, tell Emma to let the Jade Emperor be stupid. I can put up with the orders, I just ignore them anyway.’
‘In this case, I don’t think she will.’
*
S imone stayed in her room at the Peak, because Frankie became completely hysterical if she even mentioned going back to Tokyo. At five am she was woken by the sound of his muffled sobs coming from his room. She raised her head, wondering why Emma hadn’t gone to him, then remembered that Emma was in Hell. Her father was in the Celestial Palace, so she checked the demon servants. Er Hao was in the Peak apartment servant’s quarters in the demon equivalent of sleep. She silently cursed the Jade Emperor. If she could go to Heaven she would give the JE a piece of her mind, and he probably knew it.
It was possible that their father was up early doing something that nobody else could do, and after the destruction of the wars with the previous Demon King there were a great number of things that he had to catch up on, but sometimes he was too dedicated to the security of the Heavens. He would get a piece of her mind later as well, and Emma would help when she returned.
She slipped next door to Frankie’s room. Frankie was curled up in a little ball in the middle of the bed, a heartbreaking reflection of the small, lonely child he’d been when held in Hell at the mercy of the Demon Kings.
She went to him, sat on the bed, and put her hand on his back. ‘Hey.’
He curled up tighter. ‘Sorry I woke you up.’
‘You lonely without Mum and Dad?’
He nodded under the blankets. ‘The house is really empty.’
She pulled him into her lap. ‘I’m here.’
‘You’re going away to live in Tokyo.’
‘I know. I will yell at some people tomorrow. The JE is being a turdface. He sent Mum away and Dad’s stuck somewhere doing stuff for him.’
He giggled and wiped his eyes with a shaking hand. ‘JE turdface.’
‘Want to come for a fly? We can go sit on top of a mountain.’
He pulled back and wiped his eyes with the corner of the sheet. ‘It’s the middle of the night?’
‘We are the darkness,’ she said theatrically. ‘I’m awake now, we might as well.’ He jumped out of her lap and opened his closet. ‘No need to get dressed. Stay in your Batman pyjamas, nobody will see us. Just put your robe around you, it’ll be cold up there.’
He slipped his robe on, turned, and put his hand out. ‘Can we have a lesson tomorrow? I want to do things like flying by myself.’
‘Dad’s the one who should be teaching you,’ she said, and railed at the JE again in her head. Their father had spent hours every day teaching Simone to defend herself when she was a child—and now was absent from his son’s life for at least ten hours a day, reorganising the defence of the Heavens. Their parents weren’t neglecting Frankie—Emma saw to that—but the gap from her being stuck in Hell would be a huge one. Again, time to talk to the Jade Emperor. The next time he summoned her to an audience, she just might go.
She teleported them to the sky above the Peak building. The lights of Hong Kong blazed below them, and the sky was yet to lighten with the coming dawn.
‘You ever thought about putting another banner up on Lion Rock or something?’ Frankie asked her as she guided him—he was flying himself, a little wonkily but still managing to hold himself in the air—towards Kowloon. ‘That was awesome. “We Want Universal Suffrage” in big characters.’ He looked confused. ‘What is universal suffrage anyway?’
‘The right to vote. Everybody should have the right to choose our leaders, not just a few select elite.’
‘But that’s how it works in the Heavens? John has a Council, but nobody votes for them, he chooses them.’
‘We’re going to change that too,’ she said with determination.
He studied the Lion Rock mountain’s side as they flew level with its top and passed it towards Tai Mo Shan. ‘You should put another banner up on it.’
‘People not responsible might be arrested if I do it again,’ she said. ‘I can’t risk innocents being hurt. The government has arrested and jailed other people for stuff I’ve done. I can’t do that any more.’
‘Just get them out of jail!’ he said.
‘I can’t even get Mum out of jail,’ she said bitterly.
He went silent.
They landed on top of the Tai Mo Shan tourist lookout and the little restaurant below them was closed. They sat facing north, with the Hong Kong new town high rises visible around the dark country parks, spreading to the border and the lights of the dense high rises of Shenzhen beyond.
‘I like your dress,’ Frankie said as he settled to sit beside her. ‘I want John to teach me more, so I get some cool clothes too!’
Simone looked down at herself. She’d changed to Celestial Form to make the travel easier, and the robe was deep navy blue, highlighted with golden stars. Frankie didn’t seem fazed by her black, shining scales or twining, snake-like hair, and she wanted to hug him.
‘You just tried on fantastic new robes that Mum had made for you,’ she said. ‘Next time we go flying at night you can wear them—but the batman pyjamas are cute anyway.’
‘Batman,’ he growled, and raised his arms. ‘We are the night. Fighting bad guys and kicking ass.’
‘You are too little for that,’ she said, pulled him in and gave him a squeeze. ‘And it’s a lot more complicated in real life. Hold off on the superhero stuff until you’re old enough to not get other people in ...’ She took a deep breath. ‘Trouble.’
‘Really in jail because of stuff you did?’ he asked, his voice small.
She nodded and wiped her eyes. ‘The judge steamrolled everything and sentenced them for looking at public government records—when I was the one that did it. And then the government tried to jail the lawyer for defending them—so she had to hide in New Zealand for a while.’
‘Isn’t Mum trying to send some of the people over to Canada or something? I heard her having meetings about it.’
‘Yeah. Dad told me what happened.’ Simone lowered her head. ‘The Jade Emperor won’t let her send them somewhere safe. So she got mad at him, and yelled at him, and used some very choice words, and ...’ She pointed down.
‘ That’s why she’s in Hell?’
Simone nodded.
He straightened. ‘You should have told me that. If she’s down there because she wanted to help people to escape from all of this ...’ He waved one hand to indicate the Territory around them. ‘Then I’m proud of her.’
‘I’m proud of you,’ she said.
‘We can go home now. I’ll go back to sleep okay.’
Their father appeared next to them in his human form, wearing his armour and carrying his sword on his back. ‘Why are you two still up? It’s way past your bedtime, young man.’
‘You sound like Mum,’ Frankie said.
‘Good.’ Xuan Wu pulled Frankie into his lap. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’
‘Nobody was around except Simone, and it was really quiet, so we came for a fly.’
‘Good idea. Sorry I was out, little ones. I was trying to arrange remote video visits with Emma for you. The Jade Emperor was being ...’ He searched for the word.
‘A turdface!’ Frankie said and giggled.
‘You teaching your brother bad words?’ Xuan Wu asked Simone.
‘He’ll need them. The life we lead—we need to have an outlet, to blow off steam. The words help.’
‘Yes, they do.’ Xuan Wu rose, still carrying Frankie in his arms. ‘How about I take you home, flying really fast?’
‘Yes please!’ Frankie crowed.
‘Try to keep up, Simone,’ Xuan Wu said, then he rose into the air and shot away so quickly that she was nearly knocked off the roof, leaving a cloud of vapour behind him.
*
S imone came out late the next morning and went to the kitchen to see what Er Hao had in the way of breakfast. She thought of the thick-cut sweet Japanese toasting bread and the mini toaster oven back at her own apartment and smiled. When Emma returned, Simone would have a cosy little nest ready to move into and enjoy with a circle of friends.
She opened the bread bin, pulled out slices of Western-style toasting bread, and popped it into the toaster. Er Hao had boiled the urn, so she sat with some green tea, summoned her tablet and brought up the news sites.
Her eyes widened with horror as the reports filled her screen. She selected a video and watched with dismay as tanks rolled across a snowy landscape in a location similar to where she’d been when they rescued the families of the demon replacements in Eastern Europe. An armoured personnel carrier followed the tanks, and a unit of soldiers exited it, then proceeded to shoot at families who were running towards the camera. Children fell, obviously dead, and she winced and turned the video off. She returned to the news sites and flipped through the articles to discover that the invasion was limited to a couple of Eastern European countries, and the general reaction from the press was bewilderment—the governments who’d invaded had been holding ‘training exercises’ on the border, and then suddenly crossed into their neighbours and attacked everything.
A red box appeared in front of her on the table and she understood. The action taking place in Europe was a shadow of what was happening on their Celestial plane—the demons had found a working portal and were moving back into the European Heavens. Another report popped up onto her feed—more bewilderment at the viciousness and ferocity of the invading forces’ actions. They were targeting civilian centres rather than military ones and taking a great deal of pleasure in cruelty and destruction.
It had to be a major demon influence. She paused the video, thumbed the clasp of the red box, and pulled out the dun-coloured vellum scroll, tied with a red ribbon. She opened it and saw that it was written in vermilion ink in the Emperor’s own hand, and he hadn’t put his official seal on it, so it looked more like a personal note.
It’s too late now, their leader is in the Heavens and has opened the way for their army. What could have been solved with a couple of quiet assassinations has now turned into a major cross-platform incident. Before I said the results could be catastrophic; now the worst-case scenario is a hundred times as bad. You are the only one capable of fixing this. I ordered you when I should have asked you nicely and admit that was the wrong way to go about it. I am asking you nicely now. Please. You have no idea how important this is. Noon at the Hyatt.
Please.
JE
She dropped the scroll into the box, and it resealed itself, but didn’t disappear—allowing her to read the missive again if she wanted. The toast popped up and she buttered it as she considered the implications. The JE was right, and this was a catastrophe. He was also probably right about her being the only one who could fix it, as the only one who could kill a demon without provocation. Her resolve to not be used as a workaround assassin wavered. She put the toast onto a plate, sat back at the table and continued to scroll through the news reports with growing horror and dismay.
At noon, Simone teleported to the large lay-by next to the hotel’s entrance, where battered red taxis and expensive chauffeur-driven cars lined up to let their passengers out. The doorman opened the glass door for her with a smile, and she didn’t really notice the soaring ceiling and marble floors as she passed the tired travellers and harried-looking locals on her way through to the side door to the event spaces. The corridor was decorated in dark tones and an empty urn sat on a big side table with stacks of coffee and teacups next to it.
The hotel’s meeting room was one of the smaller ones at the end of the corridor. She went in and stopped. It was set up in a traditional Chinese meeting-style with three sofas in a U-shape with tea tables between them, and the Jade Emperor, as serene as ever, was sitting on the central one facing Imperial South. The emperor wore his full Celestial regalia of gold silk robes embroidered with brightly coloured six-toed dragons and a hat with a veil of beads that stopped anyone from looking him in the eye. Er Lang, the Second Heavenly General, stood at the emperor’s right hand behind his sofa, appearing as a thirty-year-old warrior wearing green scaled armour and holding a halberd.
Michael was on one of the other chairs, his eyes blank with grief. He was wearing crumpled white hospital scrubs—inpatient attire from the Tiger’s mental health facility—and his hair looked unwashed and tangled.
Simone skipped the obeisance—making Er Lang scowl—and waved one hand at Michael.
‘Let him go back to the West and grieve. He just lost his wife, and his child has been taken from him! This is reprehensible.’
‘Sit, Princess,’ the emperor said, maddeningly calm. ‘As I said: please. I have something of vital importance to tell you.’
Simone gathered her robes—she looked down, surprised, at her Celestial form, stars and all. Obviously she had some of her Celestial alignment back while she was willing to listen to the emperor. The scales were gone, and her robes were holes in reality, a portal into the universe of gold glittering stars. She sat with the robes flowing around her, then lifted her butt, tugged her long golden hair out from under it, and pulled it to one side over her shoulder. She leaned forward to speak to Michael. ‘Whatever he wants, I’ll do it and leave you out of it. I’m on your side, Mikey.’
Michael’s eyes were still blank.
‘You two are destined to be together, and you both know it,’ the Jade Emperor said.
Michael collapsed over his knees and made a wordless sound of despair.
Simone threw herself to her feet and summoned her swords. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
‘Sit!’ the Jade Emperor said, and Simone ignored him. She strode forward to take his head off, and ran into Er Lang, who blocked her with his halberd held diagonally in front of him.
‘Out of my way, asshole,’ Simone said.
‘Just a reminder, Simone, that if you take his head, you have conquered the Heavens and you gain his position and title,’ Er Lang said. ‘I don’t think you want that.’
‘I don’t know,’ the emperor said wistfully. ‘A few years in the Peach Garden with my wife sounds awfully peaceful.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Simone made a loud sound of disgust, dismissed her swords and sat. Her hands were covered in scales again, and she returned to human form.
‘If you don’t do what I’m asking, Prince Michael will never recover from this loss,’ the Jade Emperor said. ‘He will never be mentally competent enough to care for his daughter and will only see her once more in her lifetime.’
Michael didn’t move, still collapsed over his knees.
‘You don’t know that,’ Simone said.
‘Yes, I do,’ the emperor said. ‘I can see the future, and in any future where I do not send him on this mission, the damage is permanent. He will see her once more in her lifetime, and she will tell him that she hates him and never wants to speak to him again.’
‘Oh god,’ Michael moaned into his knees.
‘This is unnecessary cruelty to all three of us,’ Simone said. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘It is the only way. Believe me, I have searched for kinder options, and there are none. Your love for him will help him heal to the point where he is capable of rebuilding the relationship with his daughter—’
‘Oh, fuck you!’ Simone shouted, rose and stormed to the door.
Michael didn’t respond at all.
‘This really is very important, Simone,’ Er Lang said, breaking Celestial protocol. ‘You can stop the war in Europe. Listen to him.’
Simone stopped and turned, astonished. Er Lang never broke protocol, he had a cast-iron pole up his butt.
‘The fate of the whole world—Celestial and Earthly—is at stake, and only you two can save it,’ the emperor said. ‘You cannot live as a couple for some time, but right now he needs to do this to pull him from his grief, and you need to go with him.’ The emperor raised one hand and a Celestial Palace fairy appeared next to him. She passed him an iPad, and he turned it so they could both see it. ‘I believe that performing this task may also return your Celestial alignment, and he will do anything to give that back to you.’
‘You overestimate my desire to return to the Celestial,’ Simone said. ‘I will not torture him to allow you to order me around again.’
‘I am already ordering you around,’ the emperor said. He raised the tablet. ‘This is a European Shen. There appears to be one left—and he is not Semias, the spirit of the city that you met when you were abducted and taken there, Michael. He is—to put it in plain terms—a European god of the highest order.’
Michael’s head shot up. ‘What? No.’
‘Yes. Your father’s agents have found one. He is weakened and appears to be stuck on the Earthly in human form, but he seems to be the last one.’ The tablet showed a small, overweight middle-aged white man who didn’t look anything special. ‘He is so weakened that we can’t even ascertain his alignment. He could be any of them.’
‘Where is that?’ Simone asked.
‘Paris. You two are the obvious choice to locate and negotiate with him. If you can find the new portal, both of you are capable of entering the European Heavens—’
‘Emma would be a better choice to go than either of us,’ Simone said. ‘She’s been in the Western Heavens and she’s a Celestial Shen of the first rank with a pure-European heritage.’
‘I agree,’ Michael said. ‘Shoving Simone in my face right after I lost Clarissa will not help me heal.’
The emperor raised the tablet. ‘This is a Heavenly Shen of the first order. Excuse the term, but in this case, I must send my biggest guns, and that means the two of you. You are both descended from the Celtic Serpent People of the West from your mothers, but you are also children of the most powerful Shen in the Eastern Heavens through your fathers—something that Emma is not.’ He laid the tablet on the tea table next to the tea pot. ‘Er Lang will pass you the full details of the mission.’ He poured the tea for himself, picked up the teacup, and studied them in turn over the edge. ‘This is the only way. Any other action we take will have catastrophic consequences—and not just for the three of you. Trust me. I am securing your futures.’ He put the teacup down, and his voice softened as he looked away. ‘You can hate me for it later.’
‘I just lost my wife. My mother-in-law took my daughter from me. I’m not emotionally capable—’ Michael stopped mid-sentence. His voice dropped to a low growl. ‘You complete fucking bastard .’
‘My apologies, sir,’ the emperor said. ‘I will return your grief when your mission is complete.’
Simone struggled to speak, but words failed her.
‘Do you require assistance to focus as well, madam?’ the emperor asked.
She lowered the temperature of the room and her breath fogged as her voice returned with a vengeful echo. ‘Touch my mind and I will kill you—then give your throne to my little brother.’
‘Good,’ the emperor said. ‘Er Lang will provide you with the rest of the information and a European base of operations.’ He rose. ‘If there’s nothing else—’
‘One question,’ Michael said.
‘Yes, she is,’ the emperor said, and Michael collapsed with relief.
‘What ...’ Simone understood. ‘Am I Immortal. You knew, and you never told us. My family have been frantically worried about me dying before I could regain Immortality, and you knew all along that it wouldn’t happen.’ She lowered her voice to a growl that mirrored Michael’s. ‘You complete fucking bastard.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I will do this on one condition.’
The emperor leaned on the arm of his chair to sit again, suddenly looking very old. ‘If I release Emma from Hell, in two weeks she will discover that you are in a life-threatening position, rush to your side, be killed, and land in European Hell, unable to escape. It will eat her soul before you can save her. The only way I can stop that from happening is to keep her incarcerated for thirty days—safe in a place she cannot escape from.’ His voice sharpened and he shot Simone a warning glance. ‘Do not tell her why, or it will happen anyway.’
‘What about Frankie?’ Simone asked. ‘With both me and his mother gone, and you running my father off his feet—’
‘I am granting the Dark Lord parental leave for thirty days,’ the emperor said. ‘It will be good for him to spend time with his son, so they can build their relationship. Er Lang and the Thirty-Five will pick up the slack.’
Er Lang’s expression filled with horror. ‘What? No! I can’t—’
‘Too late, Number Two.’ The emperor rose again, this time with more energy. ‘Show them their base in Europe and give them the briefings.’ He shot Simone another warning glance. ‘Don’t permit Emma to follow you there. If she does, she will never return.’
He disappeared, and the room reconfigured itself so that Simone and Michael could sit across from each other with a large meeting table between them. Er Lang waved one hand and a three-dimensional map of Paris appeared on it, looking like a satellite image.
‘Your base is the Tiger’s hotel in the fashion district,’ Er Lang said, and the map zoomed in to the street with its elegant art deco buildings. ‘He has put aside a suite for you already. Travel there at your earliest convenience.’ He placed two thick binders containing stacks of paper onto the table and pushed one to each of them. ‘This is all we have on the European Shen. The Tiger’s European agents will meet you at the hotel after you arrive. Any questions?’
‘The emperor didn’t provide us with a goal for completion,’ Michael said. ‘We know that the demons have invaded the Heavens, we know that there’s a Shen there—but what is he expecting us to achieve?’
‘That depends entirely on what you encounter over there,’ Er Lang said. ‘The main goals are twofold: clear the demons from the European Heavens, and through that, stop the war on the Earthly.’
Simone flipped open the folder and shuffled through the briefing notes. More information on the Shen—they’d been following him around for a while—and a list of the biggest protagonists in the ongoing war in Europe, with speculation on which of them were demons. She closed the folder; she could read it on the trip over there.
She turned to Michael. His face was set into a grim mask. ‘I need to go say goodbye to Frankie,’ she said. ‘He’ll probably have a meltdown.’
‘His father will handle him,’ Er Lang said with confidence.
‘No, he won’t,’ Simone said with similar conviction. She spoke to Michael. ‘Pack your bag, meet me at the Peak apartment, and we’ll set out from there?’
Michael nodded and disappeared.
Simone picked up her binder and tucked it under her arm.
‘Before you go, Princess,’ Er Lang said.
She scowled at him. ‘What?’
‘Thank you.’ He nodded to her. ‘For making this sacrifice. Again, all the Heavens are in your debt. You truly are one of the Celestial’s greatest heroes.’
‘I’d rather be a doctoral student getting drunk on Friday nights with a group of stupid friends,’ she said, then teleported back to the Peak.