I felt like my middle was gone and I was only a shell. I tried to see my hand, but there was nothing. And then my face went utterly cold. “This can’t happen. Minias said it couldn’t happen. I’m not a demon. It shouldn’t work for me! I’m not a demon!”

“Apparently,” Al said, slamming into the bars in time with his words, “you’re so damn close, it doesn’t matter!” There was another grunt, then he shouted, “Someone get me out of here!”

Pain pulled me double and my hair pooled on my knees. Oh, God, it was going to kill me. I felt like I was going to be split in two. No wonder demons were pissed when they were summoned.

“Rachel,” Trent was saying, his hand on my back, leaning over me as I gasped for air. “Promise me you’ll get my people whole. Promise me you’ll use the sample! I’ll die content if you promise me you’ll use the sample!”

Sample? I don’t even have the sample. I pulled my head up, not seeing him, then seized as my aura seemed to soak inward to my core, pulling my flesh along with it. Agony burned through my mind, and whimpering, I stopped fighting it. I wanted to leave, didn’t I?

It made all the difference in the world.

The pain vanished. A silver thread of intent pulled through me, and before I could marvel at the heavenly absence of pain, I was whole, my lungs trying to work but not quite managing it yet. I was on my front, facedown. Or at least I would be when my aura finished rising through me, putting the idea of flesh around my soul again. I panted when my lungs formed, and I stared at the shadowy plywood floor two inches before my face. I could see. And it smelled like…bleach?

There was a soft murmur of incantation, and the scent of ash and candle mixed with the reek of burnt amber flowing from me. I looked at my hand in front of my face, seeing the bright glow of my aura. I could see it. I shouldn’t have been able to.

I took another breath and the haze of gold faded to nothing. The incantation dissolved into a collective gathering of breath. I was in someone’s basement. I had been summoned out under Al’s name. It wasn’t possible. This was so wrong. Confused, I looked up past the stringy length of my damp curls to see a cluster of black-robed figures safe on the other side of a glowing-hot sheet of ever-after.

“Lord demon,” a young, masculine voice said, and my head jerked up as I recognized it. “Are you…well?”

Twenty-nine

“You!” I raged, my confusion vanishing as I saw the youthful, clean-cut features of the I.S. officer standing before the long conference table in Betty’s basement.