My breath caught at the sudden clatter of things hiding. I jerked my attention up to see a sphere of energy headed right for me. If I made a circle, Al would feel it. If I deflected it, Al would know. So like an idiot, I froze, and it smacked right into me.

Fire rippled over my skin. My head flung back, mouth open as I fought for air. It was simply line energy, overflowing my chi. Tulpa, I thought as I fell, giving it somewhere to go.

Immediately the fire died, racing to the sphere already up and waiting in my head. Something in me seemed to shift, and I knew I had made a mistake. The things around us squealed and vanished.

I heard a gentle pop. Heart pounding, I straightened. My breath caught, and I slowly let it out in a steaming ribbon of white moisture. Al’s jaunty silhouette was black against the setting sun as he stood atop a broken building, his back to us.

“Shit,” Lee swore. “What the hell is he doing here already?”

I spun to Lee and the soft hiss of metallic chalk against pavement. It was a ley line witch’s version of duct tape, and it would make a very secure circle. My heart pounded as a shimmer of black and purple rose between us. Blowing hard, Lee tucked his chalk away and smiled confidently at me.

Shivering violently, I looked over the sunset-red slumps of broken rock. I didn’t have anything to make a circle with. I was a dead witch. I was on Al’s side of the lines; my previous contract didn’t mean anything.

Al turned at the sensation of Lee’s circle going up. But it was to my eyes that his fixed on. “Rachel Mariana Morgan,” he drawled, clearly pleased as a cascade of ley line energy washed over him and his attire shifted to what I thought was an English riding outfit, complete with whip and shiny, calf-high boots. “What did you do to your hair?”

“Hi, Al,” I said, backing up. I had to get out of there. There’s no place like home, I thought, feeling the hum of the line I was standing in and wondering whether it would help if I clicked my heels. Lee had flown over the rainbow, why, oh why, the hell couldn’t I?

Satisfaction all but glowed from Lee. My gaze went from him to Al as the demon carefully picked his way down the slide of rubble to the floor of the large square.

The square, I thought, hope catching in my throat. Spinning, I tried to place myself, tripping as I pushed rocks with my foot, searching. If this was a mirror of Cincinnati, then this was Fountain Square. And if this was Fountain Square, then there was a humdinger of a circle all laid out between the street and the parking garage. But it was really, really big.

My breath came fast when my foot revealed a battered arc of purple inlay. It was the same. It was the same! Frantic, I realized Al was almost to the floor of the square. I quickly tapped the nearby line. It flowed into me with the mirror-bright taste of clouds and tinfoil. Tulpa, I thought, desperate to gather enough power to close a circle this size before Al realized what I was doing.