Heart pounding, I knelt to shove the last of my curse stuff into my bag. “Jenks!” I shouted, clueless as to where he’d gone to. “We gotta go!”

Pulse fast, I ran out after Trent. The light was blinding after the soft glow of electric lights. “Damn it, Trent,” I shouted as my feet hit the concrete stoop. “I can’t get you home in one piece if you run off like that.”

Arms pinwheeling, I skidded to a stop on the narrow landing outside the door. There in the shade of the trees was Minias with three of those demons in red. Trent was slumped on the ground before their feet. He wasn’t moving. Crap on toast, they’d known we were here the instant Minias had been slung back home with the sun.

Hand fumbling for my splat gun, I turned to retreat, only to run into Minias’s chest.

“No!” I shrieked, but I was too close to do anything, and he pinned my arms to my sides. He was in the sun, and I could see his pupils, slitted like a goat’s, and the red of his irises, so deep that it almost looked brown.

“Yes,” he said, pinching my arms until I gasped in pain. “What, by the two worlds, have you been doing, Rachel Mariana Morgan?”

“Wait,” I babbled. “I can pay. I know stuff. I want to go home!”

Minias sent one eyebrow rising. “You are home.”

There was a pop from under the trees, and Minias grimaced as he looked toward it.

“That witch is mine!” came Al’s distinctive voice, and Minias wrapped a possessive arm around me. “She’s got my mark!” the demon raged. “Give her to me!”

“She wears Newt’s mark, too,” Minias said. “And I have possession of her.”

A ribbon of panic pulled through me. I had to do something. I didn’t think Al knew I had his summoning name, or he’d be yammering about that, not the lousy mark he had put on my wrist. I had to get out of here. I had to reach my splat gun.

Grunting in effort, I wiggled and twisted. Minias swung me around. My legs folded awkwardly under me as he slammed my ass onto the concrete. I reached for the cement, trying to find my feet and run at the same time. But Minias put a hand on my shoulder, pinning me. A wave of something flowed from him, and I stiffened as I struggled to breathe through the sensation of every last erg of ley line power being pulled from me. It was the opposite of Al’s line-overload punishment, and it felt like rape. I struggled to flee, but his hand on my shoulder pinched harder.