Jenks’s wings clattered as he dropped down, shrilling something so fast I couldn’t understand him.

“You surprise me, Rachel,” came an oily voice from the dark, and I spun, heart pounding as I turned to the river. Ku’Sox? Crap on toast!

“It’s Ku’Sox!” Jenks shouted, dripping an angry, frightened red dust. His sword was out, and his wings by my ear, harsh.

“Not in that you figured it out,” Ku’Sox said, a small sphere of light blossoming in his hand to show his presence beside my screaming, damaged line, “but that you’re stupid enough to be out here alone.”

Bis landed on my other side, puffing up as much he could by sucking in the moisture from the air. The size of a large dog, he crouched beside me with his tail thrashing.

“She’s not alone,” Jenks spat, hovering at head height and brandishing his sword. “Back off, Cute Socks. I cut your nose off before, I’ll do it again.”

Ku’Sox’s globe of light flickered, and with that as my only warning, I invoked my protection circle, still scratched in the dust around me.

Bis yelped at the energy I yanked through me, the gargoyle shrinking as a ball of greenish black bounced off Trent’s larger circle, invoked an instant before mine. Ku’Sox’s spell hit the nearby retaining wall and stuck, glowing a weird greenish light. I dropped my circle.

I stood, white-faced, and the ugly line hummed through me, harsh and dizzying as I pulled it in, trying to become stronger. “I cursed you!” I exclaimed as I stood behind a grim-faced Trent. “You can’t leave the ever-after!”

“I haven’t.” Smug, he walked into the light of our hissing lantern, and my stomach clenched as my first thought was borne out. Nick. He had possessed him. A doppelgänger curse was easy. Demons did them all the time. Al had once possessed Lee to walk about in reality in the daytime. “You’re fortunate that your boyfriend is rather light in the loafers when it comes to manipulating ley line energy,” Ku’Sox said, confirming my thoughts, “or I would tear through your familiar’s paltry circle and be done with you right now.”

“He’s not my familiar,” I said as Ku’Sox halted before us. “And Nick is not my boyfriend. He is a mistake!”