Stepping carefully to not touch his spiral, Trent set a thumb-size bottle at the very center, upside down and still stoppered with a black wax. A faint glow raced from it to fill the spiral. Nina gasped, and I winced at the almost unheard whine. It set the bones in my ears vibrating. It was coming from the spiral itself, waves of glowing light pulsating from it like the heart of creation.

Even more carefully, Trent backed out.

“Ah, it’s working,” I said as more eyes showed, rising up from the grass like lions.

Crouching, Trent touched the red-drawn circle around the spiral, and a not-there shimmer seemed to rise straight up, not arching closed to make a dome but making a perfect column with the spiral glowing within it. It was his containment field, and the ache between my ears grew.

“Nina,” he said, hair falling into his face and a glow about his hands that made him look nothing like himself. “Once he shows, lure him into the spiral. You can pass in and out of it, but don’t touch any of the lines. The spell should ignore you, even if you touch the spiral, but no need to take chances. Once the surface demon touches any part of the spiral, he’ll have no recourse but to walk it. That will force his essence into the bottle.”

Is this how he captured my soul? I wondered, a faint memory of chant chilling me.

“Are you sure?” she warbled, clearly ready to break.

“Pretty sure.”

I looked at the glowing eyes inching closer, my unease growing. We’d come into this knowing what to do, but not what would happen. Trent’s magic was attracting every surface demon within a hundred miles. “Trent, how can I help here?” I asked, and Nina made a hopeless cry of despair.

Something dangerous plinked through me as our eyes met. He could sing souls to him, mine included, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. “Keep the rest off us,” he said, words having an odd cadence, not quite chanting, but oh so close, and it pulled at me. “I don’t like what your aura looks like. Stay out of the column,” he added, then more sharply, “Nina! On your right!”

The woman shrank away, hand to her mouth as a surface demon edged in, emboldened by the others behind him. I could hear them creeping closer, and I itched to invoke the outer protection circle. “Jenks!” I shouted, searching for the sound of wings. “Talk to me!”

But the surface demon had hesitated, his eyes fixed on Nina. “Try holding out your hand,” I suggested, and she shook her head, eyes almost entirely black as she retreated.

“That’s not him,” she whispered.

I turned to Trent for his opinion, and in that instant—the surface demon moved.