“I guess we’ll find out why soon enough.” Sam returned his attention to the corridor. “We should be near the magical demarcation zone.”

As he spoke, the shadows closed in around us, becoming thicker—heavier. The flashlight’s gleam became little more than a glimmer, and I couldn’t see Sam’s back even though he was close enough to reach out and touch. The magic burned so fiercely across my skin now that my entire body shuddered under its force and sweat trickled down my spine. Had I been this close to a real fire, I could have sucked in the force of the flames and used the energy to fight the sensations. But while there definitely was fire somewhere in the zoned-off area up ahead, the rearing wall of flame that dominated this section of Brooklyn was little more than a subterfuge.

Jackson lightly touched my spine, and heat leapt from his flesh to mine. I resisted the temptation to draw it even deeper, to fuel my nerves and my strength with his fire, and stepped away from his touch. You need to keep your heat to yourself, especially since we have no idea what we’re about to walk into.

I’m barely keeping a lid on the inner flames, he said. Sharing is helping me as much as— The sentence was abruptly cut off. “Turner, stop.”

“Why?” Sam’s voice was curt, but more from tension than anything else.

“There’s movement up ahead.”

“I’m not sensing any kind of heartbeat,” Sam said. “So whatever it is, it isn’t human.”

“That’s not exactly a comforting thought,” I said. “Not given that the witch has already used hellhounds against us.”

Sam glanced at me, something I felt rather than saw. “Hellhounds actually exist?”

“Most mythical creatures do, even if humans have enhanced the reality of them over the centuries. In this case, hounds are actually spirits who live deep within the earth.”

Sam grunted and raised his flashlight; the beam did little more than flare uselessly against the wall of black. “Em? You want to try?”

I called flames to my fingers and shaped them into a ball before throwing it upward. It had no immediate impact on the gloom that surrounded us, so I increased the strength of the fiery sphere, until it glowed white-hot. Still nothing.

“This darkness is definitely sourced from magic,” Jackson said, “and it leaves me wondering what, exactly, is being concealed.”

“Can you still sense movement?”

Jackson hesitated. “Yes. Just.”

“Then let’s try my other party trick,” I said, and called to the mother. She answered instantly, rushing through me in a wave of power that briefly made my skin glow white-hot, then rolled outward in a wave. Whatever the spell was, it had no counter to the mother’s power. The heavy blanket peeled away from her touch, and the source of Jackson’s movement was revealed.

It was rats. Hundreds and hundreds of rats.