Sitting upright once more, the Crone refocused on me. “You must do this alone tonight. No friends, demonic or Warden. Their energies will interfere with the spell.”

I guessed I better hope this worked, because if it didn’t keep Zayne contained long enough, he was going to be very angry.

Rising from my chair, I hesitated as I looked over at the kid. “Will I see you again?”

Those eerie eyes lifted to mine. “I can’t answer that.”

The why occurred to me. Because if he did, it would tell me too much. It could possibly tell me that there was an after to all of this. Or that there wasn’t. A chill skated down my spine as I nodded and turned.

“Tell Roth I said hi,” Tony added, and my gaze swept back to him. He smiled, and my heart rate kicked up. “Tell him that my mom would love one of those chickens he brought me. He’ll understand.”

“Okay,” I heard myself say, and then I left, a small smile tugging at my lips.

Tony had just shared that I would see Roth again, and unless Roth returned from Hell between now and tonight, which was unlikely, it meant I survived tonight.

So at least there was that.

Updating Dez on everything that had gone down went just as I had expected it to.

Dez wasn’t remotely on board with the idea of me using something a witch had given me to draw Zayne out, nor was he happy that I was doing this alone. It took a while to convince him that this was something I had to try, and finally he relented after I told him he could help by making sure the park was cleared of all people by seven. I promised that I would let him know what happened as soon as I could.

At least that conversation was far less awkward than the one before.

Cayman, on the other hand, was just not about that kind of life, anyway. He promised to remain back at the apartment.

“Call me if the spell somehow doesn’t contain him and you need to run for your life,” he’d told me. “I’ll run with you.”

That wasn’t the most inspiring of all comments, but he did tell me that I probably didn’t need to worry about drawing any demons to me. He had a feeling that after Zayne’s show-and-tell from Saturday night, most had hightailed their butts back to Hell or out of the city, but that didn’t include the demons who were working with Gabriel, obviously.

So, yeah, thoughts and prayers on that front.