By the time Monica had finished with me I didn’t recognize myself. I had short red hair in a pixie cut, brown eyes from stage contacts she warned me not to keep in for too long, and was wearing a black minidress that barely covered what it needed to. Oh, and long high heeled boots.

I had to move now, while I had the disguise. I had to hope Anansi wouldn’t simply smell me anyway.

He was a trickster. He might respect what I was trying to do. Or maybe he was even hoping, somehow, that I’d stop him before things went too far. Sometimes people wanted to get caught.

A small voice noted he might want a kiss, which I shook out of my head. I wasn’t sure where it had come from, and I wasn’t kissing anyone except Kanesha. But then, from what I’d seen of tricksters.

Okay. Where was he? I needed help finding him, and I closed my eyes.
A raven swooped overhead. “Hello, Hunin.”

He didn’t say anything, though. He kept flying. The fact that he’d seen right through my disguise was worrying, though. Even if I’d called him.

But he knew where Anansi was, and now I realized so did I.

I could feel the energy, the death energy, and it was tugging at me, draining me.

He wasn’t going to make everyone immortal at this rate. Just the opposite. He was going to end the world, drain everyone into spirits.

Drain everyone, and I shivered, but Hunin was gone, once I’d clued in.

I had to not be noticed, but that meant acting like a mortal. I could use no magic.

None. Not even the magic I used to not be noticed. I pulled my arms together and walked down the street, shivering, putting the best look of terror on my face I could manage. Doing my best to look lost.

“Hey.”
A soft voice. I glanced over, hoping it wasn’t some well wisher I’d have to get rid of.

It was a ghost, but this one smiled at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I tried to hurry away from it…from him…from that concern. It meant I was doing this well.

Was I actually not using magic? I realized I couldn’t be sure.

Loki would either be proud or disappointed.
And there he was. Anansi. He was sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a king in a court of ghosts.

Getting used to this, perhaps. Getting used to having power over the dead. He didn’t feel the same, somehow.

And I knew exactly what was going on. But I still had to get the artifact.