“To take him firmly in hand, yeah,” I said, seething. Stupid on top of stupid. God! I was ready to smack Trent into next week. “But he loosed Ku’Sox before I gave him his freedom,” I said, remembering the blood coming from Trent’s ears and nose. Maybe Trent was stronger than I gave him credit for.

Al made an uninterested sound and turned a page. “And of course the first thing Ku’Sox did was find me.”

“Because you’re my teacher,” I said, and Al laughed, the sound ending in a short cough.

“No,” he said, clearing his throat and waving his hand. I shivered as the dust in the air fell like rain, and I brushed it off. “Not everything is about you, itchy witch. Ku’Sox and I go back a long way. The son of a bitch completely yanked Asia out of my grip just when things were becoming interesting. I couldn’t get a familiar there for nearly a hundred years until Newt finally trapped him and tucked him safely away in reality. The demon is a genius.”

Ku’Sox was Al’s rival? Great. “And he can be under the sun,” I prompted, wondering if he had meant Ku’Sox was a genius, or Newt.

Al blew the dust off a page and turned it. “That was the entire point of creating him,” he said distantly, as if it bothered him and there was nothing he could do about it.

I wanted to go, but I thought he was working on something for me. The drip, drip, drip of the blood falling from the silent tapestry was loud, and sullenly I said, “I’m sorry.”

A short guffaw broke from Al, and he looked at me. “That makes me feel so-o-o much better. I’ll be sure to tell everyone that. My student freed her familiar, who let loose a demon we didn’t want to kill and just barely managed to imprison? Newt will be most vexed. Honestly, you told me you were going to be smarter. This isn’t it.”

“It’s not like you ever tell me anything,” I said sourly. “If you’d said, ‘Don’t go to St. Louis and free the crazy demon under the arch,’ I wouldn’t have.” Nervousness pulled me to my feet, and I went to the bookcase, shelving the scattered books one by one in no particular order—which might be a problem since none of them had names. “And I didn’t free Ku’Sox. Trent did. What Trent does is not my responsibility.”

A hint of deviltry was in Al’s voice when he asked me, “You severed all responsibility?”

“Yes,” I said as I shelved another book. “One hundred percent.”

“You didn’t even keep a call-back clause?” Al asked, then waved his hand and answered his own question. “Of course not. You’ve had the worst upbringing of any demon I’ve seen.”

I turned, the book I held pulling the heat from me through the binding. “I’m not a demon,” I said, and Al stood to bring me the book he was looking at, splayed open on his palm.