A streetlight glinted off his dark eyes, and he brushed a strand of hair off her face. “What did your parents do?”

“They summoned a mage’s spirit into my body. I’m possessed with it, even now. As long as I keep the iron ring on, it dampens the magic, and I feel normal. The true god protects me. But if I take it off, the mage takes over my body. She can make me do things I don’t want to. She can turn me into a mage and force me to cast spells.”

Josiah paled. “Are you sure this is all true?”

“Twice now I’ve had the ring off, just for a few moments. I felt her invade my mind. It’s horrible. I was splintering, and my skin was burning.”

Josiah glared at Caine again. “And how is a demon going to help you rid yourself of magic? And, more importantly, why would he help you?”

“I’m just a caring person,” Caine said, his voice flat.

“He’s going to help me find a sybil in one of the demons’ clubs, and she can tell us how to exorcise it. Caine will absorb the spirit into his own body.”

“He’s doing it to gain even more power,” Josiah said.

She sighed. “Probably. And if he doesn’t exorcise the spirit, he’s stuck training me under the orders of the Vampire Lord. He seems to find the idea kind of tedious.”

Josiah’s eyes bulged, and she half-wondered if he was having a heart attack. “The Vampire Lord?” Clearly, she shouldn’t even mention Bileth, or her Guardian would hurl up his dinner.

She touched his arm. “Once I’m free, we can explain it all to the Brotherhood, that I’m cleansed again, and they can stop hunting me, right?”

Josiah stared at her intently. “I’ll see what I can find out. Maybe there’s some sort of precedent in the Brotherhood’s history of exorcisms. I can tell you that I’ll fight for you.”

Relief washed over her. “Thank you, Josiah.” She’d nearly forgotten to ask him the questions that had been burning in her mind for the past twenty-four hours. “Josiah. Have you heard anything about the Brotherhood burning people?”

The vein bulged in his forehead again as he clenched his jaw. “Did this demon tell you that? You can’t possibly trust him.”

He wasn’t answering the question. “Does that mean there are no burnings?”

“Of course there are no burnings,” he shouted. “Do you think I’d be on board with that? And I’m not leaving you here with an incubus. It’s out of the question.”

“What are you going to do?” One of Caine’s eyebrows raised, as if faintly interested for the first time. “Take her to Randolph Loring before she’s been exorcised? I suppose from where you stand, it’s better to risk burning her at the stake than leaving her with an incubus who might get his hands on her. One of these things would irreparably crush your ego, while the other would just be a bit unpleasant. All that ash and blackened bone to clean up.”