Daemon squinted at them, looking from the narrow window frames to his own body. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze.”

“I guess you’ll have to stay out here while I go inside and have all the fun,” Fairy teased.

“How did I get stuck with such a cruel girlfriend?”

She smiled and pecked him on the cheek. It warmed away the chill of the rain.

“I’ll cut the glass as close to the frame as I can to give you space,” she said. “Just hold me steady.”

They cast gecko spells this time and climbed. At the top of the windows, Daemon stuck one of his hands firmly to the wall and made sure his feet were also well attached. Then he looped his free arm around Fairy’s waist; this freed her up to work with both her hands.

She pulled a slim vial from her botanicals pouch and what looked like a thin paintbrush. She dipped the brush into the viscous pink liquid and began painting the edge of the closest windowpane. The glass sizzled, then dissolved. Daemon kept their bodies close yet carefully away from Fairy’s concoction. One errant drop and their flesh would be burned straight through to the bone.

As she finished the final edge of the window, Fairy adhered one of her sticky feet to the glass so it wouldn’t fall and shatter. Her potion completed its work, and the windowpane released itself from the frame. It clung to her foot as if held tightly by a suction cup.

“And now for the acrobatics portion of tonight’s entertainment,” Fairy said.

She slipped the foot holding the glass inside the study, latched both hands onto the top of the window frame, and swung herself through. Her body arced upward one hundred eighty degrees so she was upside down. She stuck one foot to the wall above her and kept the other one—with the glass pane—far enough away so she didn’t break it.

“Bravo,” Daemon whispered.

Now it was his turn. With Fairy out of the way, he could get through the window frame.

He didn’t move immediately, though. Something creeped along the back of his neck, like an army of baby spiders. He slapped at them, but there were no spiders, just little hairs standing on end.

Was someone watching them? He was still a little worried about that eighth person he swore had been in the study earlier. But he darted a glance back at the ground and the wall beneath him, and there was no one there. If it were Hana, surely she would have attacked them by now.

You’re getting paranoid, he chastised himself. Daemon faced the window frame once more.