Blue electricity radiographed Tucker’s skeleton. Shock softened his face out of its vampire lines. The last things Jonathan saw were brown eyes nearly identical to Andrew’s. Bracing for the explosion of goo and bones that had followed the last time he’d discharged the shrink ray, Jonathan screwed his face up. The hands holding him disappeared.

As he crashed to the floor, Jonathan’s knees took the brunt of the fall. Hiding his chin in his shoulder, he begged himself not to cry. Not out of pain. Not out of relief.

Something bumped into one of his undoubtedly bruised legs. Sucking in a breath, he cracked open his eyelids, expecting to see one of Tucker’s friends kicking him while he was down. Instead, he found something too big to be a bug and too skinny to be a rat. Smaller than a standard-size action figure. Larger than a Dungeons & Dragons miniature. It raised tiny white fists into the air, shouting in a high-pitched voice presumably only dogs could properly hear.

Jonathan glanced over at the shrink ray and back. It had actually worked. Tucker was shrunk to a twelfth of his normal size. Jonathan shoved him into the inside pocket of his messenger bag.

“It’s a good thing you don’t need to breathe,” Jonathan told Tiny Tucker, clipping the bag closed again.

Getting to his feet, Jonathan was taken aback by the sudden silence in the room. The Mayor had paused his speech. And all the demons had turned to look at the far wall.

To look at Jonathan.

A vampire unmistakably dressed like a cowboy pointed across the club. “Kill the slayer!” he shouted. “Drink his blood!”

“He killed Rowan the Merciless!” shouted the vampire in the bondage suit.

“No! I didn’t!” Jonathan said, scrambling to pick up the shrink ray again. He cradled it to his chest, feeling the pulsing warmth of the recently discharged barrel. “He’s alive! I mean, still undead! Just scaled down!”

“Let’s kill him! I want my free drinks!” shouted another voice in the crowd.

“Hold on just a moment,” the Mayor said. “I’ll let you all get to your slaughter soiree. But first, I want to remind you all that any creature with proof of residence in another dimension is now eligible for voter registration. Just come on down to City Hall and ask my buddy Jeff here for an application. Make sure that you register before the primary, otherwise—”

Onstage, the air started to ripple. The giant campaign poster pulsated, as though something huge was trying to birth its way out of the Mayor’s photograph. A portal ruptured the air, spitting out the familiar blond-haired form of the slayer. With a Willy Wonka somersault, she leaped to her feet, the Dowsing Rod of Vem clutched in one hand. The Marnoxon gem blazed green light, the brightest thing in the room.