I dropped the demon book on the cot and sat next to it. Elbows on my knees, I kicked my bag under me. I didn’t want to be there, but I wanted to be in the motel room less. The silence grew, and I reluctantly slid the curse book onto my lap. I was here, I might as well do something. Wedging off my shoes, I sat cross-legged with my back to the drape drawn between me and the front seat. It was dim, and I tugged the little side curtain open to let in the light.

My lightning charm rasped on the yellowing pages as I leafed through the tome looking for anything familiar. There wasn’t a table of contents, making it difficult to satisfy my curiosity. Big Al used demon magic to look like people he had never seen, plucking their description and voice from memories like I picked flowers from my garden. I wasn’t going to twist a demon curse for a disguise when I could use an illegal, white earth charm, but comparing the two might give me insight into how the three branches of magic pulled on each other’s strengths.

The Latin word for copy caught my attention, and I leaned closer, feeling my legs protest. I needed to get out and run; I was stiffening. Slowly I pieced it out, deciding the word actually translated into transpose. There was a difference. The curse didn’t make someone look like someone else, it moved the abilities of one person into another. My lips parted. That’s how Al not only turned himself into Ivy, but took the abilities of a vampire as well.

My eyebrows rose, and I wondered whom Al got his vampiric abilities from. Piscary, in return for a favor? A lesser vampire he had in the ever-after? Ceri would know.

Gaze dropping to my bag, my pulse quickened at the thoughts sliding through me. I couldn’t duplicate the focus without commissioning an artist—who would take forever and then have to be charmed into forgetfulness—but maybe if I moved its power to a new thing…

“Demon curse, Rachel,” I whispered. “You’re a bad girl to even think it.”

The sound of a motel door opening and closing pulled a thread of caution through me. I didn’t hear footsteps. Berating myself for not having done it sooner, I tapped a line. “Rhombus,” I whispered, instigating a series of hard-practiced lessons that flicked a five-minute setup and invocation of a circle into a heartbeat. The zing of ever-after tingled through me, making it feel as if my body was humming. It was fascinating that the line here “tasted” different, more electrical almost. I think it was all the ground water.

“Yikes,” came Jenks’s soft voice. “When she wants to be alone, she doesn’t leave any bones about it, does she?”

There was a high-pitched answer, and I pushed the book off my lap and lurched past the curtain and into the front. “Jenks,” I called, tapping the glass before I stuck the key in the ignition and rolled the window down. “What’s up?”