“Drop your circle before I throw you into it!” Pierce said stridently. “Rachel is not a demon!”

Again, Oliver made a grunt of negation, peering at me as if I were a bug, not a person he’d condemned three days ago. “No,” he said, his voice rough, as if he’d been yelling. “If we let her out before she agrees to do what we want, she won’t do it.”

I couldn’t help my snicker at that, and I shifted my weight to my other foot, wishing I had something on my feet other than socks. It was cold in here, and I wrapped my arms around my short-sleeved shirt. “I got news for you, Ollie,” I said. “I’m not going to do what you want anyway.”

Eyes wide, Pierce spun, making his coattails furl. “We are asking for help, not demanding it.” His eyes shifted to mine, pleading for forgiveness. “I’m sorry. The circle was not my idea.”

But you went along with it. “You think if you ask for my help, I’ll give it for free?” I said, hearing my voice echo as my arms dropped to my sides. “After you let an elf curse me and label me a demon? In front of everyone?” Oh yeah. I have to talk to Trent. I looked at Oliver, seeing not a hint of guilt. “After you promised me a clean slate?”

Pierce dropped his head, hearing my rebuke. Hell, I knew it had been a slip of his tongue that had put me here and him working for the coven. It hadn’t been intentional, but here I was, in a circle, and there he was, outside it. God, I was stupid. Tired, I was putting up a hand and glancing to the empty seats when a rumble echoed through the air. They all hunched, as if expecting the roof to come down, and the cowering witch shook, curling deeper into himself if that was at all possible. Leon?

“What happened? Where are the rest of you?” I asked, fatigue lapping about my ankles.

Vivian came forward into the light. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, she looked tired, as if she’d seen too much in too short a time. “We lost them,” she said, her expression closed. “Ku’Sox…”

A pulse of adrenaline lit through me and my eye twitched when her words cut off in heartache. Ku’Sox. Why am I not surprised?

“He killed them,” Pierce said bluntly. “Ate them as they screamed for succor. Then he ate their souls as they watched. Consumed them. That was yesterday. It could have been averted if the rest of these lily-livered ’fraidy-cats had listened to me sooner.”

They want me to fight Ku’Sox for them, I mused, seeing the power outage and the smell of cracked cement in an entirely new way. A thread of adrenaline-laced hope pulled through me, making me stand a little straighter. They wanted something from me. I wanted something from them. But first, I needed to talk to Trent.