Chapter One The suffocating pain in my head just wouldn’t go away. It didn’t help, of course, that the bickering at the table was getting progressively louder with each disagreement. “We’re wasting our time with this.” Scorn dripped palpably from Staines’ voice. I wondered idly whether, in my position as head of the task force designed to take down Endor, I could force the werebear to attend charm school. Maybe in Switzerland with a bunch of well-to-do teenage girls. Or perhaps Timbuktu. “It’s hardly our fault that he’s not come back to this plane in the last week. Divination only stretches so far. We’re not God, for goodness’ sake.” I decided I’d send the entire delegation of mages along with him. They would be good at studying after all the years they had to spend at mage academies learning their art; in fact, they’d probably fit right in. “Clearly,” Staines sniffed. “Her Most Eloquent and Gracious Majesty, the Summer Queen, believes that we should begin examining which planes this low-life human scum may be cowering in.” “And you’re volunteering for that, are you? Starting with the first few hundred thousand?” Beltran sent Lucy a withering look. “We’re quite happy to narrow it down to a small list of possible demesnes and let you, as the brawn and clearly not the brains