Somewhere in the darkened field in front of them Boyle groaned.

ISABELLE STIRRED FROM HER TWO-MINUTE INVOLUNTARY nap. Her ears twitched as sound carried across the clearing. Twigs breaking in the distance. Voices.

Many of them.

“Isabelle,” Thomas whispered.

“I hear.” She stiffened against Thomas’s chest, where she’d fallen asleep. Her skin where they touched was warm, but her bare back—bare except for her bra strap—nape, legs, and arms were cold.

The morning light touched the iridescent green leaves and curling, vinelike vegetation of the alien outcropping of trees they’d taken shelter beneath. Even stranger than the flora was the staggered urban skyline in the distance.

A demon city.

A whole city filled with demons.

Isabelle’s mind had stuttered to a halt at the idea—jagged and pointed alien skyscrapers full of demons.

There was a point where your mind could only hold so much. After that capacity was breached you either had to accept what you were seeing, or you would go crazy. She and Thomas had already passed that point before they’d glimpsed the skyline.

Thomas sat up a little straighter and pulled her along with him. The thicket concealed them, but who knew what sort of magick floated on this air. Neither of them could be certain they’d be able to hide themselves adequately from whomever or whatever approached.

Flicking out a small tendril of power, Isabelle tapped the morning moisture in the grass. Her magick flared instantly and shot out ten feet farther than she’d intended. “Shit!” she whispered. “My magick is a lot stronger here.”

Power flared like velvet against her skin and a mild taste of earth skated against her tongue as Thomas tested the magickal currents. He grunted. “Mine is stronger, too, and it handles differently. The equivalent of going from manual to power steering.”

“Different earth, different magick?”

“Or maybe—” He broke the sentence off. “Maybe it’s not that our magick works differently here. Maybe it works different on our Earth. Maybe our power is stronger here because the part of us that’s demon is…home.”

“Don’t say that. I reject that. I’m ignoring you now.”

Cautiously, she added more magick, adjusting the way she handled it so it wouldn’t rush out and alert the walkers to their presence. She sent it from one drop of water to the next, toward whoever walked on the far side of the clearing. She would probably only find out what they already knew—demons walked there.

After a couple of minutes, she found them and gleaned what information she could remotely. Around forty individual boots tromped through the wet clearing, so that meant something like twenty demons. All of them had large feet, which meant they were likely male demons.

Isabelle unhooked the tendrils of magick and withdrew. After she’d told Thomas what she’d found she added, “They’re speaking some strange language, demonish, I guess.”