“There are complications,” Amalia added. “The big one being blood.”

I squinted at that ominous statement. “Blood?”

“The second summoning required Eterran’s blood.” Ezra frowned between the two women. “He doesn’t have a body anymore. My blood isn’t demon blood.”

“No, your blood wouldn’t work,” Robin agreed. “But I think we can modify the spell to summon Eterran using blood from the same House. Are you familiar with demon Houses?”

“Yeah,” Aaron answered. “Different demon types are called Houses and there are nine or ten of them.”

“Twelve,” she corrected as she lifted her backpack onto the table. “But yes. Their Houses are essentially lineages, so any blood from Eterran’s House will be nearly identical.”

A dozen demon Houses—and her demon was the king of one of them? That was what Ezra had said when we’d handed over the demonic amulet.

I pressed my hands to the table. “You want us to get another demon’s blood? How are we supposed to do that? We don’t even know what ‘House’ Eterran is from!”

“Dh’irath, the Second House,” Robin revealed calmly. “The same house as Nazhivēr.”

Nazhivēr? As in Xever’s terrifying winged demon that Ezra had barely held off using demonic and aero magic?

With a happy little smile, as though she were presenting us with a basket of fresh-baked cookies, Robin slid a metal case out of her bag and flipped the lid open. Inside were five vials of dark liquid nested in a foam insert.

“This is Nazhivēr’s blood.”

I looked from the vials to Robin and back. “Where—and how—did you get his blood?”

“Well, um … technically speaking, I stole it.” She shrugged. “Claude—or, rather, Xever was trading it to vampires in exchange for their saliva.”

“Because vampire saliva affects demons,” I murmured. “Is that why there are illustrations of vampires in the cult grimoire?”

“One of the reasons.” Robin set the case aside and began unrolling one of the large papers. “Amalia and I put together a ritual that we think should work. We can’t be sure … but this is the best we can do without any testing.”

Aaron helped her flatten the three-foot-square paper. Drawn out on it in exhaustive detail was a summoning circle, the outer ring decorated with swirling lines and runes. Inside it were two more circles, their edges overlapping.

Ezra leaned over the drawing, and crimson sparked in his left eye again. He pointed to one of the inner circles. “This … what is this?”

“Zylas added that part,” Robin answered. “He said it’s for—”

Red light blazed off her chest. A streak of power leaped down to the floor, then stretched upward and solidified. Her demon appeared, his eyes glowing like magma and a mixture of fabric, leather, and light armor covering his lean, muscular body.

“It will bind the blood to its nearest brother.” White teeth, pointed and predatory, flashed as the demon smirked. “You do not know this vīsh, Dīnen et Dh’irath?”

Ezra’s—Eterran’s upper lip curled. “I have never seen it before. Is it real vīsh, Dīnen et Vh’alyir?”

“You think that if you do not know a magic, it is not real?” His tail snapped sideways. “Smart. You will live long thinking that.”

“I know more vīsh than most Dīnen ever see,” Eterran snarled softly.

Zylas’s smirk curved, a vicious tilt to it. “Because you are broken, so you needed greater power, na?”

Sticking out his right arm, he drew a line across his inner elbow with one fingertip. I couldn’t guess what he was getting at with the gesture.

“You learned how to heal too late, Dh’irath,” he mocked.

“You learned to fight like a coward, Vh’alyir,” Eterran sneered back.

Call me crazy, but I was getting the impression that Eterran and Zylas didn’t like each other.

Ezra blinked a few times, and the red glow faded from his left eye. I waited for Zylas to streak back into his infernus—but instead, he drifted behind Amalia, peering curiously around the dining room.

Robin began explaining the summoning ritual and the changes she and Amalia had made to it, but I was paying more attention to the demon in the room than anything she was saying. Judging by the way Aaron and Kai were tracking the creature’s movements in their peripheral vision, they were equally distracted. Only Ezra seemed to be paying proper attention.

Zylas finished perusing the dining room, then drifted into the kitchen. He disappeared around the corner.

Pausing her explanation, Robin glanced over her shoulder and called, “Don’t break anything, Zylas!”

“Mailēshta,” came the grumbling reply.

Aaron frowned at her. “Uh, do you mind calling him back where we can see him?”

“He’ll be fine. As I was saying, if the binding portion of the ritual works correctly, then …”

I forced myself to focus as Robin described the ritual in detail. The moment she stopped talking, Aaron zoomed toward the kitchen, muttering something about “checking on things,” which probably meant, “checking on the demon wandering through my house unsupervised.”

Kai followed warily, and Ezra trailed after him, more amused than worried. I dropped heavily into a chair as Amalia rolled up the papers.

Unconcerned about her demon’s absence, Robin perched on the seat beside me, “Any luck with a location?”

“Not yet.” I let my head fall back against the chair, staring at the ceiling. “I’ll find something, though.”

“We’ll need a large circle. Much larger than standard so we can fit two circles inside it.”

I squinted, picturing the temple ruins from Enright. We could always go back there to do it, but that was just asking for trouble.

“I’ll find something,” I repeated with more confidence than I felt. “How long will it take to set up the ritual and stuff once we have a location?”

“A couple of days, then the Arcana will need to charge for three more days.”

So a week then, assuming I got my butt in gear and found a location in the next two days. A week, and we could save Ezra. A week, and this nightmare he’d lived for almost ten years would finally be over. He’d have the future he never thought he’d live to see.

I want you to be part of my future. My heart beat a little faster as I remembered him murmuring those words, his voice in my ear but hundreds of miles between us.

“Robin.” I turned toward her. “Are you sure this will work?”

She looked at the grimoire on the table, open to the demon mage section. “As long as we can link the Second House blood to Eterran specifically, I believe it will work. The big question is … whether Ezra and Eterran will survive the separation.”

That did absolutely nothing to ease my apprehension.

“Not to be insensitive or anything,” Amalia interjected, “but they’re going to die anyway. Better to try, right?”

Straightening in my chair, I shot the blond sorceress a cold look. “I never said I didn’t want to try. Besides, it isn’t my choice. It’s Ezra’s—and Eterran’s—and they want to try.”

“And what about after they’re separated, assuming it works?” Amalia asked. “It’d be just great if we freed Eterran only for him to turn around and kill us all.”

“You don’t seem too worried about Zylas killing you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I worry about it every day.”

That gave me pause.

Robin busily gathered her papers. “We don’t need to worry about Eterran yet. We’ll be summoning him into a circle, and he’ll be trapped there until we free him.”

“Trapping him in a circle isn’t much better than leaving him stuck inside Ezra.” It was better for Ezra, though. “I don’t see him agreeing to a regular contract-infernus-type deal.”

“We can cross that bridge when we get to it,” she said reassuringly, returning the grimoire to her backpack. “There may be options you haven’t considered.”

“Options like what?”

She shrugged mysteriously. “We—”

A muffled shout erupted from beneath our feet. I looked down at the floor in alarm. “Where are the guys?”

“Where’s Zylas?” Robin yelped.

Another male voice exclaimed loudly from the basement, and I launched across the dining room. Robin and Amalia were right on my heels as I careened down the stairs and burst into the workout room.

Aaron, Kai, and Ezra stood amongst the exercise equipment—and Robin’s demon was with them. Relief hit me—no one was fighting, bleeding, or dead—but it was swiftly followed by confusion.

For some reason, they were all standing around a barbell loaded with what looked like four one-hundred-pound plates—on each side.

“No way,” Aaron declared. “It’s impossible.”

“But he just deadlifted six hundred pounds like it was nothing,” Kai replied, his gaze flicking between the demon and the barbell.

“He’s shorter than you.” Aaron folded his arms. “It just isn’t physically possible.”

Ezra shook his head. “You have no idea what a demon can do.”

Zylas’s tail snapped back and forth, then he leaned down and grasped the bar. The hard, lean muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched. He heaved up, lifting the barbell. It bowed under the weights as the demon lifted it to his chest.

“Holy shit,” Aaron muttered, inching away from the demon as though doubting whether he wanted to stand that close.

Puffing out a breath, the demon wrinkled his nose. “What is the point of this? Lifting heavy things?”

“Humans do it to make themselves stronger,” Ezra explained dryly.

“This makes hh’ainun stronger?”