When she turned to look over her shoulder at me, with massive eyes the color of molten gold, my mouth went as dry as sand. I couldn’t be positive, having never seen one before—they weren’t exactly a dime a dozen—but for my money, this sure looked like one of the former seraphim.

A fucking fallen angel, landed in my basement.

“Oh, Hecate’s chilly tits,” I whispered to myself, my heart plummeting even as a rising thrill swelled inside my stomach. “This is so very deeply fucked.”

From what I’d read, the fallen were ultra-wily, temperamental, and extremely powerful—exactly the kind of unpredictable daemonfolk I do not fuck with as a general rule.

But here she was, anyway, which meant shit was about to get extremely outside the box.

She whipped around to face me in a single blurring motion, still kneeling, dainty little hands folded primly on her lap. Her fingers were tipped with vicious black talons, knuckles dusted with iridescent scales. She cocked her head, examining me, the tip of a forked pink tongue peeking between her lips. Then she smiled at me, wide and feral, a flash of onyx teeth with fanged canines and incisors.

Let me tell you, there’s something viscerally unnerving about black teeth, especially ones as sharp as hers. I had a mounting suspicion that, unlike the real Malachus—wherever the hell he was—this chick’s demonic bite might be a lot worse than her bark.

A bloom of pure dread uncurled inside my chest, shooting down into my fingertips and toes like a falling star. Alas, the thrill-chasing part of my brain that often took the wheel at times like this downright relished it. So this wasn’t going to be a lesson-learned type moment, then, I noted to myself. No big surprise there; I’d never been much good at those.

“Ill tidings!” the demon said cheerfully, in a cross between a velvety purr and some gigantic gong struck directly between my ears. Gritting my teeth, I narrowly resisted clutching at my head. When it comes to demons, a show of weakness is just about the worst thing you can do. “Whom do you serve?”

The roteness of her greeting defused the tension just a hair. Demons always start with the ill tidings bit; it’s what passes for good manners with them, part of some governing daemonfolk etiquette.

I drew myself up, putting on an imperious expression modeled after my mother, and doing my level best to avoid looking as rattled as I felt. When dealing with entities from the netherworld, throwing up a badass-witch front tends to be at least half the battle.

“I serve my goddess, my ancestors, and above all, myself,” I replied, the traditional response of an Avramov summoner. I don’t know what the Blackmoores, Thorns, or Harlows say—in the highly unlikely event that a witch from one of Thistle Grove’s other magical families has ever bantered with a demon—but I’d bet my ass on some corny noise about serving the ultimate good, light conquering darkness or whatever, cue a stirring orchestral overture. Avramovs don’t buy into any of that oversimplified, good-vs-evil binary crap. Like the pragmatists we are, we’ve always staked our claim firmly in the gray.