“I remember you,” Newt said, tapping the butt of her staff along the circle where it met the floor. Each jab sent a deeper wash of black crawling over the barrier. “I put your soul back together when you traveled the lines. You owe me a favor.” I stifled a shiver when the demon’s gaze went past my bare, pasty legs to Ceri. “Give me Ceri, and I’ll call it null.”

I stiffened. Kneeling behind me, Ceri found her strength. “I have my soul,” she stated, voice quivering. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

Newt seemed to shrug, fingers playing with her necklace. “Ceri’s signature is all over the imbalance on your soul,” the demon said to me as she moved to Ivy’s piano and turned her back on me. “She is twisting curses for you, and you’re taking them. If that doesn’t make her your familiar, then what does?”

“She twisted a curse for me,” I admitted, watching the demon’s long fingers caress the black wood. “But I took the imbalance, not her. That makes her my friend, not my familiar.”

But Newt had apparently forgotten us. Standing beside Ivy’s piano, the robed figure seemed to gather the power of the room into her, turning all that had once been holy and pure to her own purpose. “Here,” she murmured. “I came to get something of mine you stole…but this…” Tucking her staff into the crook of her arm, Newt bowed her head and held it. “This bothers me. I don’t like it here. It hurts. Why does it hurt here?”

Keeping Newt distracted while Ceri worked was well and good, but the demon was nuts. The last time I had run into Newt, she had been at least rational, but this was unimaginable power fueled by insanity.

“It was here!” the demon shouted, and I jumped, stifling a gasp. Ceri’s breath caught audibly as Newt turned, her black eyes full of malevolence. “I don’t like this,” Newt accused. “It hurts. It shouldn’t hurt.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, feeling airy and unreal, as if I were balancing on a knife’s edge. “You should go home.”

“I don’t remember where home is,” Newt said. Vehement anger colored her soft voice.

Ceri tugged at me. “It’s ready,” she whispered. “Call him.”

I pulled my eyes from Newt as the demon began to circle again, dropping my attention to the ugly, elaborate, twin-ringed pentagram drawn with Ceri’s blood. “You think calling one demon to take care of another is a good idea?” I whispered, and Newt’s pace quickened.

“He’s the only one who can reason with her,” she said, panicked and desperate. “Please, Rachel. I’d do it, but I can’t. It’s demon magic.”

I shook my head. “Her familiar? Would you have helped Al?”

While Newt chuckled over my nickname for Algaliarept, her demon captor, Ceri’s chin trembled. “Newt is insane,” she whispered.

“You think?” I snapped, jumping when Newt slammed a side kick into the barrier, her robes swirling dramatically. Great, she knew martial arts on top of everything else. Why not? She’d obviously been around a while.