“No, it will light on its own if we do it right.” The wind brought the sound of pixy laughter to me, recognizable but faster and higher than Jenks’s kids, and I inhaled slowly. A quiver went through me. I’d never shown anyone outside my friends that I could do demon magic. But Trent was looking at his card, squinting as if he didn’t care.

“What does it say?” he finally asked.

A flush warmed me. “Um, bella usually means beautiful, doesn’t it?”

Trent scrunched his face up, clearly not knowing, either, but I bet he’d find out thirty seconds after he got to his phone. “You want to wait until I find out?” I asked, already knowing the answer, and sure enough, he shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter. I want the mark off. Now.”

Yeah, me, too. Jittery, I looked at the candles, hoping they’d stayed put. The curse didn’t physically change anything or break the laws of physics, so the smut would be minimal; Nature didn’t care about the laws of demons or men, only her own. Break them, and you pay.

“Ex cathedra,” I said, carefully scraping a bit of wax off the first candle at Trent’s right and holding it under my nail. I didn’t need a focusing object most days, but I wanted no mistakes in front of Trent. Thinking consimilis calefacio to light the candle, I pinched the wick and slowly opened my fingers to leave a new flame. Ex cathedra, “from the office of authority” I hoped my pronunciation was right. It wouldn’t mess up the curse if I was off, but this curse would be registered in the demon database, and word would get around.

Lighting the candle had taken an almost minuscule drop of ley-line force, and I met Trent’s startled gaze. “Ceri knows how to light candles like that, too,” he said.

“She’s the one who taught me,” I admitted, and Trent’s frown deepened. Guess she hadn’t taught him. “Rogo,” I said, lighting the second candle on my left. I am asking, I thought, watching until I was sure the flame wasn’t going to go out.

Trent cleared his throat at the rising power, and the hair on my arms pricked. “Mutatis mutandis,” I said, lighting the candle to my right, continuing my counterclockwise motion. Counterclockwise. This was really wrong, but it was for a good reason. Things to be changed.

“Libertus,” I said as I lit the candle to Trent’s left, almost completing the circle. Just one right in front of him to go, and if it didn’t light on its own, then I was in trouble.

“Read your card,” I said as I stared at the unlit candle. “And for God’s little green apples, don’t blow anything out in the process.”

Much to his credit, Trent didn’t lick his lips or give any indication that he was nervous, and with a smooth, enviable accent, said, “Si qua bella inciderint, vobis ausilum feram.”

I felt a sinking of self, and my hand pressed firmly into the glass. It was as if the world had dropped out from under me and I was suddenly not just under an abandoned building’s overhang in the middle of nowhere, but also in the theoretical black database in the ever-after. I could hear whispers of demons talking through their own scrying mirrors, sense the bright flash of a curse being registered. The double sensations were confusing, and my eyes had closed, but they opened when Trent roughly said, “Nothing happened.”