“My God, Landon did it ... ,” Trent breathed, but I wasn’t so sure this was going to have a happy ending. You couldn’t see an aura through a TV, but it still didn’t look like a repeat of what had happened up in Luke and Marsha’s apartment, even if the vampire was sobbing, holding on to the corner of the building as the guilt and shame of his soulless existence crashed down upon him.

Spontaneous joining? I wasn’t buying it. “What’s to keep it from spontaneously leaving?” I asked. We’d had to burn the gateway through which Felix’s soul had entered him to keep it from simply going back out.

Someone had stopped to help the vampire, now weeping inconsolably. The newscaster looked uncomfortable as she told people to stay off the streets and out of the way as the vampires found their souls.

“I guess they think we’re dead,” I said, not feeling at all good. I wanted to call Ivy and see how Felix was doing. “The surface demons will be showing up here in about three hours,” I said as I looked at the bright golden light.

His eyes on the TV, Trent got to his feet. “They seem to be staying in the main population centers.”

So far, I thought glumly. “You really think they’re free? For good?” If they were, then that soul bottle I’d made was going to be more than useless.

Trent hesitated, watching the TV as if it might have the answers. “I’ve no idea. Maybe their release was what you felt on the stairs.”

Or the attack in my mom’s spell room, I mused, an ugly thought trickling through me. If it had almost taken me, then maybe it had hit the demons, too.

I jumped as he spun, almost running to the stairs. “Where are you going?”

“To get Bis!” he shouted.

Fidgety, I looked out the big windows at the bright sun. “Trent? He won’t be awake,” I called, then gestured as if to say “I told you so” when Trent came back with Bis perched on his arm like a huge sleeping owl. My bag was over his other arm, looking funny against him.

“We have to get to the ever-after. Find out what happened.” Trent stumbled into the living room. He thrust my bag at me as he sat down on the edge of the couch. Motions tense, he tickled Bis’s ear. “Bis, wake up.”

The little guy scrunched up his eyes and pushed at him with one leathery wing. One red eye opened, saw me, and squinted closed in the sun. “It’s kind of hard when he’s in the sun like that,” I said as I shifted to put him in my shadow. “Bis!” I shouted, pinching his wing.