“What now?” she shouted over the strange whine of the vortex.

“Into the portal,” Ryan and I shouted at the same time. Or, rather, Ryan shouted and I wheezed. Jill wound up and winged it right at the slit in a beautiful underhand throw that would have made any fast-pitch softball player proud. I had a split second of panic that it would be too large to go in with the garbage bag and tongs—then it shifted and disappeared.

“Kara, close the portal down!”

I shuddered, then yanked the power free of the circle, sending it down to ground into the earth. The sudden quiet seemed deafening, broken only by our collective harsh breathing.

I tried to stand up and whimpered. Ryan snapped his head to look at me. “Ah, shit.”

The pain in my back was well on its way to excruciating now. He grabbed me and pushed me to lie facedown on the floor, ignoring my breathless scream at the motion.

“Jill, get hot water, a knife, and matches or a lighter,” Ryan commanded. “Also, any salt you can find.”

Jill dashed to the kitchen again. I couldn’t help but think that she was enjoying this introduction to the arcane far too much.

“Just stay still,” Ryan said, voice unnervingly calm as he pulled my shirt up. He didn’t have to tell me that, though. Moving hurt too much, and the pain was spreading.

“How bad is it?” I managed to get out between clenched teeth.

“Bad enough,” he replied honestly. I was grateful for that, because if he’d told me that it wasn’t bad I wouldn’t have believed him.

“It’s not going to be easy, but I think I can get you through the worst of this,” he continued. Jill careened back into the room, holding the items out for Ryan.

He took the knife from her hand. “Okay, Kara, this is going to really fucking hurt.”

Maybe honesty wasn’t such a good thing, because he was right. I heard someone scream, then realized that it was me. My vision went dark and I fought it briefly, then decided that maybe going with my instincts to pass out was a good idea right now.

So I did.

Chapter 19

I woke up to the same amount of pain in my back, or so I thought at first. But after a couple of cautious breaths, I was forced to admit that it was nowhere near as excruciating as it had been before I passed out. Now it was merely on the level of hurts like shit.

I was lying facedown on my aunt’s bed, the yarn of her afghan tickling my nose. I shifted to get a tuft out of my nostril, grimacing at the dull spear of pain that accompanied the movement. I heard a chair scrape, then Ryan bent down, crouching beside the bed. Behind him I could see Zack leaning against the wall, his arms folded over his chest and his brows drawn down.

“How do you feel?” Ryan said, voice soft and thick.

“Like someone decided to shove an ice pick into the small of my back. Otherwise, peachy.” I moved carefully, relieved when I was able to roll onto my side without the pain becoming overwhelming. I gingerly reached to feel my back and discovered a wad of gauze and tape. There was a thick smell of garlic as well, so I had to assume that it had been used somehow in the treatment of the sting. Though I had no idea where they’d found garlic. Certainly not in Tessa’s pantry. I’d tossed out anything perishable some time ago.

“Okay, so what was that thing?” I looked at him, eyes narrowed. “You sure knew what to do with it.”

He glanced at Zack and a shadow passed over his face. He lifted a hand and scrubbed at his eyes, as if to brush the troubled expression away as well. “It … it’s like dreams I had,” Ryan said, looking back at me. “I mean, I sit here and rack my brains and I know—just know—that I’ve never in my life encountered anything like that.” His eyes were shadowed, green and gold like the middle of a forest on a summer day. The light from the window caught his face just right to make him look like a rugged statue with marbles for eyes. Then he sighed and shook his head, and the image was gone. “I did what felt right, then called Zack. He knew how to deal with the sting and brought some supplies over.” Zack gave a small nod of acknowledgment.

“And how did you know?” I challenged, looking at Zack.

“Dealt with something similar on a case several years back,” he replied. His expression was pleasant, but I got the distinct impression that he was not going to be forthcoming with any further information.

I was silent for nearly a full minute, then cautiously pushed up to a sitting position. My back throbbed, but it was already starting to fade to a manageable level. “How long was I out?”

“Two days.”

“What!” I straightened in shock, which sent a fresh throb of pain through my back. I groaned as Ryan smiled.

“Just kidding,” he said, eyes twinkling. “Two hours.”

I groaned again. Two hours was still pretty impressive.

“Jill went to get food,” Zack said. “There isn’t a damn thing to eat in this place except for some red beans that she turned her nose up at.”

I laughed weakly. “Yeah, she doesn’t think much of the instant stuff.” I carefully levered myself to stand, taking slow breaths until the wave of dizziness passed. “All right. So did we manage to get all of those things out of the library before I lost it?”

Ryan nodded, expression sobering. “Looks like it.”

“Then the next questions are: What were they, and how did they get in there?”

His face clouded again, then he gave a small shudder, as if throwing off a chill. “Zack said that they’re some sort of very nasty pest but … not from here.”

“From where?” I didn’t look at Zack. I wanted to see how much Ryan knew.

“From an alternate plane. The demon plane, I think. Like that dog.” Ryan’s frown deepened, and I could feel a chill walk over my skin. His eyes were shadowed pits as they lifted to mine. “Don’t ask me how I know this, Kara. I don’t know.”

There was so much I wanted to ask him. No, there was so much I wanted to shake out of him, like, Who the fuck are you?

“Okay,” I said instead. “So it didn’t kill me. That’s a good thing. Then I guess I need to figure out how it got into my aunt’s library.”

“That I think I can help you with. There’s a section of the library that feels really wacky.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Wacky?”

Ryan laughed, only slightly forced. “Yeah, that’s a technical term.”

“How can you even tell in that library? There’s arcane crap everywhere!”

He thrust his hands into his pockets, smiling sheepishly. “Um, we kinda moved a bunch of stuff around while we made sure that all of those things were gone.”

“Ooooh, you are gonna be in so much trouble when my aunt comes back. For all we know she had a system in place.”

He made a sour noise. “Well, it’s a system of a big pile on the floor now. And there’s a place that looks wacky. Are you feeling well enough to take a look at it?”

I started to respond, but the banging of the front door caught my attention. I heard pounding footsteps, then Jill came careening around the doorway, bags of fast food in each hand. The intense and worried expression on her face cleared instantly at the sight of me standing.

“Well, it’s about time you got over your little mosquito bite,” she said, flouncing into the room and plopping the bags on the desk. She crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing me. I grinned and hugged her.

“Get off me, you crazy bitch,” she grumbled, but I could hear the relieved laugh in there as well. “Here—Ryan and Zack said you needed to eat. And I need to as well. I’ve been spending the last couple of hours perched in the damn disaster area your aunt called a library with a fucking fishing net, waiting for another one of those psycho pixie things to pop out, while Ryan and Zack moved books around and muttered to each other.”

I had to laugh at the mental image. “Okay, food first, then fun with fishing nets.”

Chapter 20

Two aleve and a hamburger and fries later, I was ready to deal with my aunt’s library again. The ache in my back had settled to merely sore, and I managed to make my way down the hall with only one or two muttered invectives.

I brushed my hands over the library door frame. It felt odd without any wards on it. As I stepped in, I felt a crawl of sensation—not the usual beaded-curtain sensation of going through wards but more the feeling of approaching a source of wrongness. I now knew exactly what Ryan was talking about when he said “wacky.” There was a section of the floor in front of the bookcase on the east wall, an area almost two feet across, that was wrong. I forced myself to step closer, certain that I had to be stepping near a diagram or circle, because every sense I had was screaming at me that this was a portal.

What I couldn’t tell was if it was open. I frowned as I crouched. It wasn’t open in the sense that I was familiar with—the slit of light making a doorway from one sphere to another—but it sure wasn’t closed either. It was … mushy was the best word I could come up with. Stuff could get through but not easily.

I looked sharply back at the doorway. Ryan and Jill stood just outside the door, watching me warily, but it wasn’t them I was interested in. “The wards,” I said, unintentionally hissing softly on the last s.

Ryan frowned. “What about them?”

“I think they were twofold.” Damn it.

“Why? What is that?”

“It’s … a portal. Sort of. A weak spot.”

“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “The wards kept stuff in as well as keeping things out.”

“Yeah,” I said with a groan. “There were wards all throughout the library, which I couldn’t understand. And when I had Kehlirik take down all the wards, that left that portal wide open, so to speak.”

Jill leaned against the wall, thumbs hooked into her jeans. “So why didn’t Kehlirik see that portal thingy?”

An unpleasant feeling settled in my stomach as I looked back at it. “I’m not sure. He was exhausted after clearing the wards, and with the books and other stuff piled all over, I guess he could have missed it.” I rubbed my arms. “Heck, it wasn’t until you moved all the stuff that we knew it was here.” But surely a demon of Kehlirik’s level would have been able to feel it. So why didn’t he say anything about it? Maybe because he had more reason not to? He’d wanted to speak to me—about Ryan. But after he cleared the library wards, suddenly it wasn’t as important. Because he’d found the portal? Now that I was close to it, I could feel a sickeningly familiar resonance about it. It’s probably big enough for that dog to have come through.

Could this portal also have something to do with the consumed essences? I considered it but then dismissed the idea. The portal had still been warded when Brian’s essence was eaten, so whatever was doing it couldn’t have come from this.

Ryan voiced the question that we were all thinking. “Can it be closed?”

I sighed. “I have no idea. I don’t even know if it should be closed.”

Ryan frowned, but Jill angled her head to the side. “Oh, like maybe this is a pressure valve or something?”

“Yeah. And that’s putting it a lot more clearly than I ever could have.” I eased my back into a more comfortable position. “I … have to see if my aunt comes back, and ask her.”

Jill shifted uncomfortably.

“And if she doesn’t come back,” I continued, throat tightening, “I’m going to have to ask, um, someone else.”

I swore I could hear Ryan’s teeth grind together. He muttered something under his breath and then spun away and strode down the hall. I clenched my hands and counted slowly to ten, then counted another ten for good measure.

Jill leaned her head out of the doorway to watch the retreating Ryan, then looked back at me, eyebrow raised questioningly.

“He and I had a bit of a discussion the other night wherein he stated that he was worried about me throwing myself at Rhyzkahl and falling for that pretty face and forgetting he’s a demon.”

She pursed her lips. “Hmm. And he doesn’t know that you and ole demon lord have already bumped uglies?”

“No, he does not,” I said. “And it’s going to stay that way, now that I know he considers it akin to selling my soul.”

A flicker of doubt passed over her face, and I sighed. “It’s not,” I assured her. “He’s not a ‘demon from hell’ kind of demon.”

“Then why are they called demons?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“The same reason that midwives were called witches a few centuries ago. Fear of what is not understood.” I could hear the defensive tone in my voice, and it made me take a mental step back. I did fear Rhyzkahl. And I sure as hell didn’t understand him.

She pondered this for several heartbeats, then shrugged and lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the floor. “Okay, so you can summon demons. And can work magic or whatever—”

“I can shape arcane energy,” I explained.

“Uh-huh. Magic to me,” she said, nose wrinkling as she smiled. “But then again, electricity is magic to me too. Flip switch, light comes on. So what about other supernatural stuff?”

“Like what?”

“Like vampires and werewolves and witches and that sort of thing.”

I had to shrug. “I’ve never met any of those, as far as I know.” I shook my head. “I take that back. I’ve met witches, but they’re not the ride-the-broom, cast-spells kind of witches. But vampires and werewolves?” I shrugged again, but I thought instantly of the missing essences. Was that some form of vampirism? And what about that dog-thing? “I’m not going to say that they don’t exist, because who am I to say that, but I’ve never met a werewolf or vampire that I know of.”