We rejoin our heroes at Baron Kenmore's Friday night party where Magda has just revealed the gizmos to the Countess, and the Countess has called out the guard.
Which of course brings us to the important question of where is Soraya, anyway? She is out in the dreaming, where she encounters an old eshu man, Ishmael, and his friend Desk (a talking mobile antique desk). They have fled from the persecution of Desk's people (the gizmos) in the Midwest. Soraya thinks that they seem nice enough, even if her attempt to steal some of their things fails. Going back to the road she encounters a demonic biker gang bent on bringing her back with them to Hell, and is forced to use the doorknob. She ends up falling out of Sidone's attic, and Sidone fills her in on what's been happening. They both head to the party, arriving just about when things are exploding. Miles adds to the explosion by prophecying at the Countess:
"A hook in the lip is good for a fish,
but a hook in the heart makes you someone's dish."
She is terribly affronted.
Our heroes sort out what's going on amoungst themselves, more or less. Magda heads off to court to get her armor, and the Countess goes to see the Duke of Boston to get his permission, since the gizmos are on his land. Milton intercepts her to talk and sees that she has a big wedge of pain somehow stuck into her, quite possibly affecting her judgement. The crew decides to intercept Magda and let her know about this.
They catch up with her as she had to slow down and put on her armor and tell her about the piece of pain. She tells Sir Wassant, and there's quite a bit of telephoning about trying to get ahold of the Countess but mostly for naught. They do manage to persuade the seer to come with them, but that takes some doing. Magda and company head off in the van trying to arrive before the various guards (the guard of Boston having joined in to exterminate the gizmos).
Soraya and Sidone have slipped off a little earlier and gone ahead to warn the gizmos, but they aren't convincing enough and the gizmos start debating about whether the guard is really attacking or whether it might not be an Eshu trick instead. The two samaritans throw up their hands in disgust, and Sidone kidnaps a couple of the smaller gizmos trying to save them.
Meanwhile the Countess and the Duke and their legionlettes have arrived (about forty warriors in all) and the seer says "yep, that's a big chunk of pain." He doesn't seem to be able to do anything about it. Sidone and Soraya go back to the warehouse and this time the gizmos can hear the soldiers and start out the back door while a valiant porsche goes and mock-charges the soldiers some to distract them.
Then the Duchess of Cambridge shows up, dressed for battle, and declares that the gizmos should be protected, not attacked, and there is a massive argument which finally leads to the Countess disobeying her leige the Duchess, and the Duke ordering his soldiers to attack the Duchess. Battle ensues and it's a horrible mess, with the porsche charging and getting gutted on spears, Miles throwing pebbles of misfortune, the Duchess moving like a flash through the soldiers, and Magda knocking out the Countess and then rescuing the Duchess, cleaving a soldier in half with the Tenth Child. Oh, and Desiree knocks out the Duke with magic as well.
After Magda joins the Duchess, the combined fear of the magical swords and the Duchess's words convinces the Duke's men to retreat (the fact that the Duke is unconcious helps a lot). In the aftermath, the Countess is sent home to Radcliffe and Magda explains her actions to Sir Wassant, the gizmos are shipped to one of the Duchess's warehouses where they will be safer, and the man Magda virtually cut in half is determined to have been so damaged in soul by the Tenth Child that Milton puts him out of the world's misery with a well-placed bullet.
Afterwards everyone makes it back to Radcliffe and they worry about what to do with the Countess. Milton determines that the wedge of pain can be wrapped in a lesser pain so as not to control the Countess's actions: Milton places a curse on the Countess in such a way as to do that. It looks like the wedge has something to do with the fomorian messenger, as well.
The rumor at court after this is that Miles cursed the Countess but
luckily Magda gave her a bracelet of protection to couteract the
curse. Miles goes home to drink. A lot.