But outside of practice, that thought could just as easily be something more like, “Put your gun into your mouth and pull the trigger.” We both knew that. We both worked hard to improve as a result. It was a part of the training I’d taken every bit as seriously as teaching her theory or enchantments or exorcism, or any of a hundred other areas we’d covered over the past few years.

But we’d never done it for blood.

The Corpsetaker moved Butters’s hands up to gently frame Molly’s cheeks and said, “My, my, my. Training standards have improved.”

Molly slammed Corpsetaker’s head back against the wall with a short, harsh motion, and said, “Stop squirming and fight.”

Corpsetaker bared Butters’s teeth in a slow grin, and suddenly surged forward, slamming Molly’s back against the opposite wall while simultaneously moving up a stair, so that their eyes were on the same level. “Slippery little girl. But I was crushing minds like yours centuries before your great-grandfather’s grandfather left the Old Country.”

Molly suddenly let out a gasp, and her face twisted in pain.

“They never have the stomach to hurt their darling little apprentices,” Corpsetaker crooned. “That’s called pain. Let me give you a lesson.”

“Lady,” Molly panted, “did you pick the wrong part of my life in which to mess with me.” She took a deep breath and spoke in a ringing, furious voice. “Now get the fuck out of my friend. Ideru!”

I felt the surge of her will as she spoke the word, and suddenly reality seemed to condense around my apprentice. There was a terrible, terrible force that ripped forth from her, pulling hungrily at everything around it. I’d felt something similar once, when a nascent White Court vampire had unintentionally begun to feed on me—an energy that spiraled and swirled and pulled at the roots of my senses. But that was only one facet of the gravity that Molly exuded with the spell.

Corpsetaker’s eyes widened in surprise and sudden strain. Then she snarled, “Have it your way. The little doctor was my second choice, in any case.”

And then I saw Corpsetaker’s dark, mad soul flow into my apprentice on the tidal pull of the beckoning she’d performed.

The expression of Butters’s face went empty and he collapsed, utterly without movement of any kind. Three feet away, his shade’s helpless, confused gaze locked onto his fallen physical form, and his eyes went wide with terror.

Molly screamed in sudden shock—and fear. In that instant, I saw in her eyes the reflection of her terror, the panic of someone who has come loaded for bear and found herself face-to-face with a freaking dinosaur instead.

My drifting, dream-slow advance had finally gotten me close enough. With sluggish and agonizing grace, I stretched out one hand…

… and caught the Corpsetaker’s ankle as she slithered into my apprentice.

I settled my grip grimly and felt myself pulled forward, into the havoc of the war for Molly’s body, mind, and soul.