He raised his eyes, trying to focus on Semele. At best, he expected to see a wisp of gray, but the apparition before him was so bright it seared his retinas.
Semele was made of stars and smoke, like a fireworks display frozen in midair. The colors were too intense to stare at directly, but if Nico looked at her from the corner of his eye, he saw a beautiful woman in a flowing white chiton, her hair a cascade of amber ringlets, her eyes like quasars in a misty nebula.
He tried to remember how to speak. “Is this…you?”
“My true form,” she agreed. “Nico, your Puffs have been heightening your senses, letting you see through the Mist. But now the Mist has shattered. You cannot stand such intense exposure to reality. If you don’t dull your minds, you will burn.”
Her words…actually made sense. Of course, Semele had been the only one who couldn’t carry a cacodemon. She was unaffected. But the rest of them had gone into battle with their Puffs, preparing for the Mist. It was like they’d acclimated their eyes to darkness so they could detect even the slightest glimmer of light. Now, with the Mist broken, they’d stepped out of a dark movie theater into the blazing sun of high noon.
He looked past Semele’s shimmering form, though his eyes felt like they were melting. The world was too three-dimensional. The trees vibrated with life. The smell of eucalyptus was so pungent it made him swoon. He heard the distant screaming of panicked mortals, the whir of helicopter blades somewhere over the horizon. In front of the de Young Museum, a confrontation was in progress. He could make out the dark robes of the three judges.
And there stood Hazel, facing them, her spatha at the ready, but everyone’s attention seemed to be on the sky directly overhead. Was that a funnel cloud descending? Did San Francisco have tornadoes?
“What—what do you meanburn?” he asked Semele.
The eidolon huffed with impatience. “I meanburn. Look at your friends!”
She was right. Frank’s body had begun to steam. Savannah was writhing, smoke tapering from her fingers like extinguished candles. And Will…
No, Nico thought. He couldn’t let them die. There wasn’t time to help them all remove their Puffs. He could barely make his own hands work. He drew on Defiance’s strength, which was probably the exact thing heshouldn’tdo, and screamed, “Cocoa Puffs, to me!”
He was dimly aware of Semele shouting, cursing his idiocy…or maybe that was his own inner voice. The cacodemons screeched in unison. The ones who hadn’t been paired with anyone reached him first. The others in harnesses wriggled free of their pouches and bounced toward him in a frenzied stampede. But they didn’t just gather around him—they meltedintohim, returning to the dark cradle of Nico’s soul from which they’d sprung.
It felt right, welcoming them home. It was also overwhelming, suffocating, and incendiary. He tasted soot. Smoke filled his lungs. His vision began to dim, but he could see Will stirring, opening his eyes. His friends were sitting up, looking around in bewilderment. Good. That was something.
“Nico!” Will scrambled over and took his shoulders. “What—what did you do?”
“It’s okay,” he croaked.
“It isnotokay!” Will shook him, as if that might dislodge the cacodemons. He looked around desperately, and then locked his eyes on Semele. “Can you do anything? Please!”
Nico reached for Will’s hand. He didn’t feel so good. He’d seen a number of monsters go up in flames before. Now he finally knew how they must have felt.
Semele’s voice cut through the pain, so close she might have been inside his head. “Nico, do you trust me?”
He fell into Will’s arms as the darkness pushed him toward unconsciousness. “I do,” he murmured. “With my life.”
“I am going to ask permission to do something,” she said. “I want your consent for me to possess you.”
Nico’s vision was almost gone, but he could dimly see Frank standing over him, his expression a mixture of fear and alarm.
“I can give you strength,” Semele continued. “I can help you survive this.”
Nico remembered a distant conversation, maybe from another life. “But…you don’t possess people anymore. You lose part of yourself every time.”
“I will take that risk!” Her voice seemed to catch in her throat, though she didn’t have a throat in this form. “I admit I have never done this with a willing party before. I am not sure what will happen. But I know what it is to burn. I cannot let that happen to you. Please, do you consent?”
Nausea roiled in his stomach. He was okay with dying if it saved his friends. But he also saw the pain in Will’s eyes. He knew he couldn’t leave him like this, not if there was any other way.
“I consent,” he said. “Please help me.”
Instantly, he sensed another identity in his mind. He’d never spent much time thinking about his own consciousness, but now he could clearly feel the boundaries of his self, because he was being forced to share his skull with a roommate. A second self had pushed its way in—a personality so full of energy and life that Nico thought his brain might burst.
Absorbing the cacodemons was one thing. At least they had been part of him to begin with. But this was too much. No brain was meant to hold two entire lives.
Easy, said a voice inside him—Semele’s familiar smoky tenor.I know this is uncomfortable, but if you accept my presence, we can work together.
His mind instinctively fought her intrusion. He pressed his hands to his temples and let loose an anguished cry.
