“Gotcha,” Nick whispered, his breath exploding from him in a ragged sound as he finally gained control of the fish.

“Not the saltwater!” I warned as Nick held him over my dissolution pot. “Here.” I shoved Bob’s original bowl at Nick. Ordinary water sloshed out, and I blotted it up as Nick dropped Bob in. The fish shuddered, sinking to the bottom with his gills pumping.

Silence descended, framed by the heavy rasping of our breathing and the ticking of the clock above the sink. Nick’s and my eyes met over the bowl. As one, we turned to the demon.

It looked pleasant enough, having taken the shape of a young man with a mustache, elegant and polished. It was dressed as an eighteenth-century businessman in a suit of green velvet with lace trim and long tails. Round glasses were perched atop its thin nose. They were smoked to hide its red eyes. Though able to shift its form and shape at will—becoming everything from my roommate to a punk rocker—its eyes stayed the same unless it made the effort to take on all the abilities of whomever it was mimicking. Hence, my demon bite laced with vamp saliva. A tremor shook me as I recalled that its pupils were slitted like a goat’s.

Fear tightened my stomach, and I hated being afraid. I forced my hands to unclench their grip on my elbows, pulled myself straight and tossed my head. “Ever think of updating your wardrobe?” I mocked. I was safe in a circle. I was safe in a circle.

My breath caught as a red mist of ever-after hazed it. The demon’s clothes molded to a modern-day business suit I’d expect to see on a Fortune-twenty executive. “This is so … common,” it said, its resonate, British-laden accent perfect for the stage. “But I wouldn’t want it said that I wasn’t accommodating.” It took its glasses off, and my breath hissed in. I stared at the alienness of its eyes, jerking as Nick touched my arm.

Nick looked wary—not nearly scared enough to please me—and I felt a flush of embarrassment at my earlier panic. But damn it, demons scared the crap out of me. No one risked calling up demons since the Turn. Except for whoever called this one up to maul me last spring. And then there had been the one that attacked Trent Kalamack. Maybe demon summoning was more common than I wanted to admit.

I hated that Nick’s respect for them stopped short of terror. They fascinated him, and I was afraid his search for knowledge would someday lead him to make a foolish decision, letting the tiger turn and eat him.

The demon smiled to show thick flat teeth as it glanced over its attire. It made a deep-in-thought sound and the wool disappeared, to become a black T-shirt tucked into leather pants with a gold chain belted around narrow hips. A black leather jacket appeared, and the demon stretched in a cloud of sensuality, showing every curve of the new, attractive muscle pulling its T-shirt tight across its chest. Blond hair cut short grew as it shook its head, and its height lengthened.