The library was just as she’d left it, with blood drying on the rug. She collected the grimoires, organizing them on the table. In one pile, she stacked the volumes that were way off-topic—the farming spells, and curses.

She flipped through the Picatrix, but it was a jumble of arcana, astrological facts, and descriptions of heavenly deities. Into the discards it went.

That left only one book: DAEMONS. As if its title wasn’t forbidding enough, the heavy volume was bound in a black leather that reminded her of Abrax’s wings. Dread whispered over her skin as she cracked it open. Someone had rendered a long-toothed demon in excruciating detail, his head capped with a blood-soaked conical cap, a pile of bones laying at his feet. Along the top of the picture were two words: Red Cap.

She flipped the page. Amongst a pile of gold and jewels sat a monstrous man with bull horns protruding from his temples. Above his head his name read: Raum.

With a shiver, she reminded herself that these were her people now.

At least this book was going in the right direction. It didn’t include any words—only pictures—but it appeared to be some sort of demonic guide.

She flipped through from the beginning: Aamon, Apollyon, Abezethibou, Abrax, Abyzou… She stopped. Flipped back one page. Even without the name Abrax emblazoned on the top, she’d have recognized him: black wings, talons sharp as knives, and the face of an angel. The incubus had his own page, and someone had written in the margin—Henry’s spindly scrawl, by the look of it.

Try as I might I haven’t been able to learn much about Abrax. He appears to have led the assault on Mount Acidale, but after the battle he disappeared.

Ursula shut the book. To say that he’d reappeared would be a major understatement. Bloody hell. The fact that he had his own page suggested she was up against one of Nyxobas’s most powerful demons. She gritted her teeth. She still didn’t know where to find him.

She glanced at the clock—two a.m. Her body burned with a mixture of adrenaline and exhaustion, and she scanned the shelves again, searching for Henry’s ledger again. She’d scanned through it quickly before, but maybe there was something in there about Abrax, considering Henry had been researching him.

She pored through the ledger, filled with page after page of conquests, starting in the 1830s.

Near the end, where he’d written about Starkey’s Conjuration, he’d written the name BAEL. Below, he’d scrawled:

“I have imprisoned him in my study. Despite my attempts at persuasion, he refuses to reveal the location of the New York lair. When my interrogations rendered him mute, I used Perrault’s Enchantment to put him to sleep.”

Bael. That was the beautiful man upstairs.