Free The Mortal Bone by Marjorie M. Liu

may not have had a good intention behind it. I need to find the person responsible. Him.”
    I couldn’t say my father . It felt too strange.
    “Maxine,” Grant said, in a voice that was too gentle. “You can’t enter the Labyrinth.”
    “I have to.”
    “Cannot,” Zee said firmly. “Not now. Not as are. Will die.”
    “I’m not helpless.”
    The little demon—and Grant—made growling sounds.
    Zee muttered, “We go with you, protect you—this world dies.”
    That got my attention. “What do you mean?”
    He threw up his clawed hands, looking at me like I was an idiot. “Our prison falls, the other follows.”
    Grant stiffened. So did I.
    “What,” I said, “does that mean?”
    Zee drew his claws down his chest, over his heart. Sparks danced. I shivered, imagining that I could feel his touch on my own skin.
    “Ours, first prison,” he murmured. “Power that binds, connected to all the prison walls. We break, all break. Army goes free.”
    “In other words,” Grant said, “apocalypse, again.”
    “Shit,” I said.
    On the other side of the pallet, Raw reached into the shadows and brought out a grenade. Without hesitation, he pulled the pin and stuffed the live bomb down his throat. Grant and I tensed, but all Raw did was belch.
    Aaz growled at him. Raw rolled his eyes, jammed his arm under the pallet, and lugged out a small missile: five feet long, slender. He handed it off to his brother.
    “Er,” Grant said. “Let’s have this conversation elsewhere.”
    “Uh-huh,” I muttered, as Aaz dragged a jar of Grey Pou-pon from the shadows, and smashed it against the missile’s metal exterior. “They’ve had a very stressful day. It might be a nuclear warhead next.”
    “With ketchup?”
    “Tabasco sauce. And chips.”
    “Nice,” Grant said. “That’s . . . wow. Okay. He shouldn’t really be biting that part, should he?”
    “It won’t kill him.”
    “I’m more worried about us.”
    “Watching him is making me hungry,” I said. “You want Raw to bring us pizza?”
    Grant stared at me. “You’re a nutty woman.”
    “I know,” I replied.
    And though the familiar knot of fear and concern was lodged in my heart, all I could think was that I desperately wanted to prolong the moment, to love and cherish it as though it was my last, with all of us together.
    Just in case it was.

CHAPTER 9
    A CCORDING to Grant, we were somewhere in Northern Africa, on the edge of an oasis. I saw date palms and clumped grass and smelled water. A short distance away, past the outskirts of where we rested, sand dunes rose and fell like the frozen waves of a dark ocean.
    Behind us, I found a structure that looked very much like a Bedouin tent, open in the front and filled with a few small pieces of furniture: a low table that required floor-seating to use, and two more soft pallets that lay on top of woven rugs.
    “The desert reminds the Messenger of her home world,” Grant said. “Zee brought us to her, so that she could help me heal your wounds.”
    I closed my eyes, not entirely comforted. The Messenger had no other name. As a genetically engineered slave of the Aetar and descendent of the Lightbringers, she had all of Grant’s powers—but unlike my husband, she had been trained from birth to use them. To kill.
    She and I did not get along.
    “I’m surprised she didn’t try to murder me instead.”
    He grunted. “Who says she didn’t?”
    I smiled. “And the ice and Popsicles?”
    “Her doing, slipping in and out of space. I don’t know where she got it all or who she terrified when she did.”
    “I owe her.”
    “Don’t tell her that,” he replied, watching as I changed into a clean set of clothing. Aaz had gone shopping for me—in Paris, by the look of the tags—returning with sleek designer jeans and an off-the-shoulder black silk blouse with fluttery sleeves.
    Dressing exhausted me. My muscles were weak, and I had trouble standing. Lying down, I’d been fine, but the fever had stolen