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wasting his time and energy fighting with Caphiera, until their sire had stepped in and brokered a truce. The underworld god had then ordered them to work together to find Atroposa, suggestingthey would need the sorceress of air to complete their mission.
    While Caphiera had searched west, Magus had looked east, and he’d finally located the sorceress in the wind-ravaged steppes of Tibet. Even though his discovery of and renewed alliance with Atroposa would surely bring them one step closer to fulfilling their plans, Magus regretted having to bring her into the fold.
    He had no love for any of his three sisters, but Atroposa he disliked most of all. She could fan the flames of his temper like no one else. He could never quite pinpoint what specifically about her drove him to distraction, especially since it seemed
everything
about her set him on edge.
    Even now as he regarded her, perched on the edge of a rock overlooking the sea—her attention still focused on the spot where the cyclone had struck—she irritated him immensely.
    She was an eerie creature for certain: from her ashen skin, which lent her a ghostly countenance, to the lidless slate-colored eyes, set deep within a bony skull, that stared out hauntingly. Her nose was slight but crooked, and wafer-thin gray lips pulled pensively over a double row of pointy teeth. The rest of her was a flurry of constant movement. Her tattered clothing, which barely covered her reed-thin limbs, rippled and swirled about her while white, nearly translucent tendrils whipped and danced wildly about her frightening visage.
    But her voice was perhaps her most disquieting feature. When she spoke, it was exactly like the moan of a hauntingwind at the peak of a terrible storm. The sound was sure to beckon one’s worst nightmare, and few were those who could tolerate it for long without being driven completely mad.
    And although Magus was not likely to be rendered insane, he still detested every word she spoke, even when it was to tell him some good news for a change.
    “It is done,” Atroposa announced. “The One is dead.”
    Magus eyed the distant shore and frowned skeptically. Nearly a year earlier, the sorcerer had attempted several times to kill the young Oracle Laodamia had named the most important of them all—and every attempt had failed. Somehow, each time Magus was sure the child would not live to take another breath, she and her companions escaped him.
    So he stood there, eyeing the distant coastline, unconvinced, and called to his she-beast. “Medea!”
    The great hellhound approached him cautiously, careful to avoid getting too close to Caphiera the Cold.
    Magus studied his hellhound with a small measure of sympathy, but they would need Caphiera’s help to get across the channel and verify that the girl was in fact dead. “Sister,” said Magus as politely as he could. “Might you assist us?”
    Caphiera’s blue lips smiled devilishly. “Of course, Brother,” she said, waving her hand across the water. Instantly, a thick bridge of solid ice formed in front of Magus, extending as far as the eye could see. Magus presumed it went all the way to Dover.
    His hellhound took a tentative step onto the bridge when Magus gripped the beast’s furry neck, halting it. “Wait!” he commanded, sneering in irritation at Caphiera. “Remove the trap you’ve set in the middle,” he spat, knowing her dislike of his pets all too well. It would be just like her to create an open section midway across the channel so that his favorite beast would fall through and drown.
    Caphiera chuckled wickedly and snapped her fingers.
    “And the spikes.”
    Caphiera stopped laughing, her face registering irritation, but snapped her fingers again.
    “And the—”
    “It’s perfectly safe!” she insisted with two final snaps. “Now send your mutt across, Magus, or settle for Atroposa’s word.”
    “Go,” Magus said quietly, pointing to the distant shoreline. “Bring me back evidence that