Immediately Trent took the larger ring. I put the smaller one on my pinkie, but if it was like our practice run earlier, nothing would happen until he put his on. It bothered me that the only way I could take off my ring now was if Trent slipped his over mine, nesting them on my finger to remove them both at once. It had been a scary five minutes figuring that out.

“Here we go,” Trent said as he took his gloves off, and Jenks frowned, still not convinced. The glint of the pinkie ring twin to my own caught my eye, and I wondered at the connections we had. I still wore Al’s demon mark. Was it the same thing, or different?

My shoulders wiggled as the ring fitted about Trent’s finger and a weird sensation of entanglement sprung up around me. Bis actually sighed in relief as the connection to the discordant line dulled. It was still there, but it felt diluted—the best I could put it was that the energy was now going through a maze of passages to find me. It was the chastity ring, and when I nodded, Trent eased the grip of it until the flow was again its normal self, almost as if he had lifted me above the maze and I could connect normally.

Trent’s presence was faint in my uppermost thoughts, sort of like a teacher walking the aisles during a test. We were ready, and I closed my eyes.

“Okay.” Bis loosened his tail about my neck and shivered. “Ah, I’m going to sing you Newt’s line first.”

My concentration shattered. “Newt’s!” I exclaimed, heart pounding.

“Newt has a gargoyle?” Jenks exclaimed, and Bis’s tail tightened until I nearly choked.

“Rachel, will you listen? I think I’m going to spew pigeon feathers. Newt’s was the first one I learned, okay?”

I nodded, closing my eyes again, which made me feel dizzy. “Give me a sec,” I said as I sat down in the puddle of lantern light, but then it only felt like the world was tilting.

“Rachel?”

Trent’s voice was close, and I put my palms on the ground for balance. “Dizzy,” I said, smiling at him. “We’re okay.”

Jenks’s wings clattered. “This is as smart as sleeping outside in November,” Jenks grumbled. “You sure you got her, cookie maker?”

“I’ve got her. Just watch the woods, pixy.”

“Listen,” Bis demanded as he resettled his wings, and I closed my eyes, feeling the pure ting of a rise and fall of sound, glittering in my mind’s eye like a silver thread of light, a bare hint of jagged red and gray and silver, half a beat out of step with the glorious hum. It sounded sort of familiar, comfortable. Like the line in the graveyard . . .