What rose up in me then wasn't outrage or terror. It wasn't righteous wrath. It wasn't confidence, or surety, or determination to protect a loved one. It was 100 percent pure, contrary stubbornness. Chicago was my town. I didn't care who this joker was; he wasn't going to come gliding down the streets of my town and push in my teeth for my milk money.

I don't get pushed around by anyone.

Cowl was strong, but his magic wasn't inhuman. It was huge, and it was different from what I worked with, but it didn't have that nauseating, greasy, somehow empty feel that I'd come to associate with the worst black magic. No, that wasn't entirely true. There was a lingering sense of black magic involved in his power. Then again, there's a little of it in mine, too.

The point being that Cowl wasn't some kind of demon. He was a wizard. Human.

And, behind the magic, just as fragile as me.

I poured power down my arm, whirled my staff, pointed it at the car on the street beside him, and snarled, "Forzare!"

The sigils on the staff burst into sudden, hellish scarlet light, as bright as the blaze of my shield, and shimmering waves of force flowed out from me. They flooded out over the sidewalk, under the Toyota parked on the street nearest Cowl. I snarled with effort, and the Hellfire force abruptly lashed up, underneath the street side of the car. The car flipped up as lightly and quickly as a man overturning a kitchen chair. Cowl was under it.

There was a crash, and Hell's bells, it was loud. Glass shattered everywhere, and sparks flew out in every direction. The car's alarm went off, warbling drunkenly, and alarms started going off all up and down the street. In apartment windows, lights started blinking on.

I fell to one knee, suddenly exhausted, the light from staff and shield both dwindling to nothing and vanishing. I had never moved that much mass before, that quickly, with nothing but raw kinetic energy, and I could hardly find enough energy to focus my eyes. If I hadn't had the staff to lean on, I'd have been hugging the sidewalk.

There was the sound of metal grating on concrete.

"Oh, come on," I said panting.

The car shuddered, then slid a few inches to one side. Cowl straightened slowly. He'd gotten back to the very rear of the car's impact area somehow, and he must have been able to shield himself from the partial impact. As he straightened he wavered, then braced himself against a streetlight with one black-gloved hand. I felt a surge of satisfaction. Take that, jerk.

A low growling sound came warbling out of the black hood. "The book."

"Bite," I panted, "me."

But he hadn't been talking to me. Kumori stepped out of the shadows of a doorway and gestured with a whispered word.