Trove’s head was above my own, chin resting on my skull, from the feel. He squeezed me as if I were a juice box, all the while complaining about my running out of power. He was right. Aside from gripping that knife, I didn’t exert an ounce of energy. He’d only steal it.

Bones had almost reached us. I felt rather than saw Trove eye him, perhaps in contemplation of draining the rest of what he had left, or with more sinister intent. Still, I remained limp to the point of lifelessness, suppressing my growing anger.

“Empty already? Thought you’d have more fight in you,” Trove said, his tone heavy with disappointment.

With that disparaging comment, he released me, no doubt expecting me to drop to the floor. I didn’t. My knees wobbled but held, and as soon as his energy-sucking embrace was gone, the bone knife Ian had made months ago from Denise’s lower leg flashed in an upward arc.

Aside from briefly holding my daughter’s hand, feeling the knife ram into Trove’s eye was the highlight of my week.

The demon screamed, the sound cutting through the air as though all the hounds of hell followed with it. I spun around, trying for that second, fatal strike, but he knocked my hand away. Then his Armani suit split at the seams as his body began to grow at an impossibly rapid pace. Red appeared beneath those rents of fabric. Not blood. Skin, as the demon shed his human appearance and morphed into his true form.

“I’ll kill you!” he roared, grabbing for the bone knife.

Part of me was relieved that he hadn’t used his teleporting trick and disappeared. The rest of me let out an internal uh-oh because I was in no condition to fight back. I had to try, though, and I held on to the knife with the grip of the damned as Trove tried to wrestle it away.

Even with one eye destroyed, his strength was too much. The blade began to slip from my hands, cutting me with how tightly I tried to hold on to it. Just as it was about to be wrenched free entirely, something large fell on Trove.

Bones.

He might have lost his physical strength, but his weight and bulk were enough to loosen Trove’s hold. I got a firmer grip on the knife, preventing the demon from snatching it away. Trove let out a vicious curse, trying to throw Bones off and yank the blade back at the same time. He didn’t drain power from either of us, though, and that couldn’t have been an accident. Maybe with one eye destroyed, he couldn’t anymore.