I was still breathing heavily, my heart thudding in my chest. I needed to calm down and think this through. After all, who knew what could happen if I had a panic attack? Would I go into cardiac arrest or something? All bets were off now. Anything was possible.

I sank down to the floor, wrapping my arms around myself, and focused on slowing my breathing. This was all too surreal. I couldn’t process it. It wasn’t possible that I could be mortal. It wasn’t possible that I could die. It wasn’t possible that I could actually touch a man without harming him. Over and over I told myself those things. Meanwhile, Aubrey strolled over to me and rubbed her head against my leg. Reaching out, I stroked her back, barely aware of my actions.

What was I going to do? We had five hours until the meeting, which couldn’t come soon enough as far as I was concerned. I needed answers now. I couldn’t live with this uncertainty. My heart started racing again. Fuck. I really was going to have a heart attack. Hugh was a doctor in his day job; maybe I should call him about my blood pressure.

Call . . .

An idea hit me then, and I stood up to go find my purse. Producing my cell phone, I dialed Dante. If anyone might know about this, it would be him. He probably wouldn’t know the intricacies of how this affected my infernal standing, but he had to know something about demon summoning. Dark magic was his specialty. Besides, I wanted more than just his expertise. I suddenly just wanted . . . well, comfort. I wanted to see him. I wanted him to hold me and reassure me. I needed him to tell me everything was going to be okay.

But the phone rang and rang without answer, sending me to his voice mail’s friendly message: “Talk.”

So much for that plan. I disconnected and leaned against my counter. Slowly, steadily, I felt my brain waking up, trying to find a scrap of reason through my fear. It wasn’t in my nature to be passive. I had to do something about this. I couldn’t wait until tonight for answers.

“Let’s research this ourselves, Aubrey,” I said. The average human knew nothing about the true nature of Heaven and Hell and how we operated. Yet, every once in a while, if you looked hard enough into arcane writings, you could stumble across a piece of truth that some adept mortal had uncovered. Ninety-nine percent of what I’d find would be inaccurate, but an Internet search could uncover some grain of truth about demon summoning. It was a total long shot, but it was the best I could do for now.

Only, when I went to get my laptop, I discovered an unfortunate fact: I’d left it at the bookstore. I groaned. Now what? Another plan shot down.