After leaving Nova speechless and sending Stephen to disconnect Cassus's magic connection, Cristo had shot away toward the boss.

By the time he parted the dance floor, Lien Cassus had drawn her gun — and the last possible second to be unexpectedly undecided had arrived. No time to wallow on how her blank eyes had looked him over, devoid of affection. On what that meant. What he should do. What she was doing here, and how she could be so convincing that she didn't know him that he almost believed her. No more time to think it out. He charged. And when three shots rang out, he slammed to a stop.

Cristo's hand went to Louis Reveur's gun, which was concealed in a holster in an expanded interior breast pocket of his suit jacket, and the room around him spun.

And then it swayed until it came to a stop, waltzers and witnesses to the attempt at murder swinging to a stop like the jamming gears of a clock that ground together until inertia caught them and held them prisoner.

The timepiece imagery that struck Cristo disappeared after a few seconds, replaced by the crazy idea that there had never been a living, breathing party in the first place, only a hundred dolls set up on the roof. Dancers around the periphery posed like ice figures of ballerinas, those closer to Potestas twisting around to see what was the matter, some dramatically petrified, some caught with curious expressions, pleased that something interesting was happening, some concerned and some only pretending to be.

At least on the roof of Potestas Tower, time had come to a stop.

It wasn't Cristo's doing.

He took his hand off the gun as if that would make it start again. Nothing happened. The revelers were frozen, looking more and more like mannequins, heads tilted toward where Lien Cassus (in a flared pantsuit with black shades that were supposed to count as her mask) was firing at the boss (wearing a spectral indigo suit) arranged in high fashions like a display in a trendy store window.

Cristo took one step forward, and another, and looked to see if anyone else was moving, but no one was, and stepped up onto the raised balcony to stand next to Cassus. No time to waste, even if it was stopped, but he did say out loud, "Too easy," suspicious that someone in the crowd might only be pretending to be stopped. He didn't want anyone to think they had gotten the better of him, and he watched Nova for the time it would have taken for more than one inhalation and exhalation.

Cristo would disarm Cassus while she was frozen in time. There was still the problem of the second gunner, Vincent Cassus, who had the chief of police held hostage, and the last, Sera Cassus, the one in the hat, who could step into Lien's role in a heartbeat, and who before his heartbeat stopped along with the passage of time had been threatening the witnessing party guests with exploding craniums — and firing at Cristo.

Lien's gun would fire in her hand only. Cristo drew the dead man's gun after all and shot Vincent Cassus, then Sera Cassus. He aimed to wound. Both rounds fired from the chamber, but the projectiles stopped in the air as soon as they penetrated their targets, just as fixed in time and space as the shooters who were about to go down with holes in them. No blood began to spill just yet.

After he disarmed Lien, there would still be one last problem to deal with: the gun he had stolen from Leander Prince and snuck illegally into Potestas Tower. The unexpected time freeze gave him an unexpected opportunity to fulfill his promise to Leander and return Louis Reveur's firearm, as long as everyone stayed put another thirty seconds. Cristo found Leander Prince only a few steps from the balcony.

Without Leander's knowledge and tempted to laugh out loud at the thought of how surprised Leander would be to find the gun in his suit jacket when time started to move forward again, Cristo slipped the weapon back to its slightly more rightful owner, securing it in the man's inside pocket.

Back up on the balcony, Cristo took Lien Cassus's gun out of her hand, and a rush of sound and movement came at him as the past and the guests caught up to the present while Cristo was halfway to throwing Lien a punch to the jaw that threw her to the ground.

A/N Thank you for reading Stars Rise, a novel in the Constellations universe. Please stay tuned for the chapters to come, and if you like the story, you will love the short Constellations on my profile: When Inyanga Goes to Magicians College, Bay Works At the Cloud, and It Feels As If A Spell Has Been Placed Over Izara's Neighborhood.

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