Cormel moved, and I stung him with a pulse of ever-after. “You want to live forever?” I shouted, gun pressed against his head. “You need your brain intact! Tell them to back off! Now!”

It had gone silent. Landon was flat on the floor, a haze of energy in his hand. Trent was standing over the two vampires he had downed. He had a red mark on his forehead, and his eyes were angry. Whispers came from the hall, and I tightened my grip when six capable-looking vampires edged through the glass in the hallway. Each one of them had a gun pointed at me.

Cormel began to laugh, pissing me off. “Shoot her,” he said to his men. “Try not to hit me this time.”

My eyes widened. Shit, he had called my bluff.

“Rachel!” Trent cried out, and he went down under two vampires.

My breath came in. I could see everything. Landon on the floor, the court papers strewn before him, a scrap of Trent’s pants showing from under the pile of guards, the scent of excited vampire stinging my nose.

The bang of the handgun seemed too small, and I knew before the bullet left the muzzle that it was going to be true. I had no time. My eyes closed and I wished it had happened some other way. Energy tingled, but I couldn’t set a circle. Not without being connected to a line. He’d won. The bastard had won.

With a familiar furp-ping, the bullet glanced off a bubble and buried itself in the wall.

I tensed, feeling nothing but the sensation of tingles over my skin. My heart thudded in the new silence, and I opened my eyes. Someone had saved me. Trent?

But it hadn’t been him. My lips parted. Cormel tried to move and I instinctively tightened my grip, shoving the handgun into him harder. A faint haze hung before me like a bubble, but it wasn’t the expected red-tinted ever-after with shades of an aura, but a milky white.

Shit. The mystics.

Panicked, I looked at Trent. His face was pale as he struggled in the grip of two vampires.

“How ... !” Landon sputtered, the papers scattered before him forgotten. “You don’t have a familiar!”

I swallowed hard, my grip on Cormel tightening. “Yeah, how about that.” Everything I’d been working for to get the demons to survive was gone. Even they wouldn’t listen to me now. Not with mystics swarming through me.

“She must have taken a familiar,” Cormel said. He had me on weight, but the gun beside his eye kept him still.

“That’s right,” I lied, and Trent shook off the goons on him. “You there. Put the paperwork on the desk.”

“This won’t change anything,” Landon said. He was right, but I wasn’t leaving without Ivy.

“Get Ivy in here!” I shouted. “Now!”