Newt simpered. “Aren’t we all, old man. Rachel?”

She extended a slender hand to me, pale and unmarked. I could have sworn that her knuckles had been bruised, and I shied from taking it. Smiling, she turned her reach into a flamboyant gesture. “She’s modest. The girl can do it.”

“No!” Dali exclaimed. “By the two worlds colliding, if I could go back in time, I’d kill her the first time she set foot in my office!”

Al rubbed his forehead before picking up two shot glasses full of an amber something he’d just poured from Trent’s bar. “I know the feeling,” he said, setting one of them on Trent’s desk and giving it a clink before sipping his.

“Then you’d both be dead three times over already,” Newt said brightly. “You, Dali, are not yet ready to slip from this life, and for all your pissing and moaning, neither are you, Gally. Not like this—whimpering and sniveling, taken out by an elf’s plotting. Rachel can do elven magic. I don’t care if you don’t like it. So can you, so can you all, if you would take that holier-than-thou noose off your necks!”

“Ah, Newt?” I hazarded, but Dali had stood, his face red and frustrated as the already insecure demon came to grips with the fact that he was helpless before a world that wanted to see him dead.

“No more!” the demon bellowed, and Newt stood, robe unfurling.

“You will!” Newt shouted back, and I pressed deeper into the couch. “I have watched your cowardice and unfounded prejudice stain our existence long enough! We share a source of magic with the elves. No wonder they best us time and again when we ignore the source of our strength and take it in the dribs and drabs that exist in tiny pockets.”

“Enough!” Dali shouted, and Newt strode forward to put her face inches from his.

“You will listen!” she exclaimed, her black eyes flashing and a haze of blue rimming her hands.

Dali’s eyes flicked to them and she abruptly backed off, shoulders hunched and eyes down. Al cleared his throat. “This just got a lot more interesting,” he said, and Dali’s confidence came rushing back. “Newt, where are you getting your magic, love?”

Newt grimaced. I gave Trent a shrug, breathing easier when Dali finally found someone else to be mad at.

“Rachel isn’t the only one dabbling in elf magic, eh?” Dali said, clearly disgusted as he pushed back from the desk and stood.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Newt hid her hands in her sleeves. I suddenly felt like two kids having been caught setting off stink spells in the girls’ bathroom. Not that I had experience there—much.