And this time I didn’t try to contain it. I didn’t even think about the Seven Deadlies. I let it rise, the air pressure tightening around me, pressing on my eardrums, my hair lifting with static electricity. Nearby trees made whining, cracking sounds, residual sap heating and bursting the bark. “You’re damn right I do,” I said grimly. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not, and I didn’t care. “Pemkowet can’t afford this. Not now.”

She screeched.

It was an earsplitting, soul-shaking sound, and I still didn’t care because I was pissed off. I was sick and tired of being lied to by sociopathic bartenders and megalomaniac frat boys, sick and tired of being torn between friendship and the eldritch code, sick and tired of the eternal balancing act that was my life.

“You want a piece of this?” I beckoned with dauda-dagr. “Come and get it.”

Meg Mucklebones lunged at me.

Jen screamed.

But I was already in motion, scrambling up the angled length of the fallen pine tree, the bark rough and scaly beneath my bare feet.

And the world . . . changed.

I don’t know how to explain it. It was like a glamour falling or a scrim descending on a stage. Looking through it, I could see that I was perched precariously on a slanted log, an expanse of scummy pond water beneath me, dauda-dagr in my hand, and Meg Mucklebones turning back toward me.

But looking at it, I saw myself treading a narrow bridge over a lake of fire, a fiery whip trailing from my hand, black, bat-veined wings extended for balance.

In the one vision, I looked more than a little ridiculous and painfully vulnerable.

In the second, I looked powerful. Dangerous. Deadly, even.

My right palm felt either blazing hot or icy cold. To be honest, I couldn’t tell which it was. I flexed my fingers impotently, trying to determine whether I held the hilt of Hel’s dagger or the butt of hellfire’s whip. From somewhere or nowhere, laughter arose: not the marsh hag’s, but a slow, rolling bell toll of dark mirth that resonated deep in my chest.

An image of my father’s face flashed behind my eyes. Belphegor, lesser demon and occasional incubus.

I had an unhealthy suspicion that I shouldn’t have unleashed my temper to quite this extent.

Belphegor wasn’t here, not really. Not in physical form, anyway. But my rage had weakened the Inviolate Wall and called out to my father across the ether, and it felt like it was real. Black eyes, as black as the pits of hell, bored into mine.

Daughter.

“I’m busy!”

His head dipped forward, inclining the curved, pointed horns that sprang from his temples in my direction. Although I’d never admit it aloud, they were actually sort of cute in a totally demonic way.