He crouched on the rooftop’s edge, hands braced on the concrete between his feet, then launched us across the gap. Landing on the building, he slunk along the ledge until he was above our unit.

Without a glance at the drop below, he hopped off.

I gasped as we plummeted, but he caught the ledge above a tall, narrow window. Hanging from one hand, a foot braced casually against the brick, he slid the window open. I peered over his shoulder into my dark bedroom.

“Is this how you come in every night?” I whispered. For some reason, I’d always assumed he climbed up the wall, not dropped off the roof.

He leaned across the sill, inhaling through his nose. After a cautious pause, he swung inside and landed silently on the carpet. I clutched his shoulders, scarcely breathing as I surveyed my room. Dark and empty. My closet door hung open, several of my belongings scattered across the floor, but I wasn’t sure if I’d made the mess while frantically packing.

Sliding off Zylas’s back, I hurried around my bed. A book sat on the nightstand: a study of Latin usage in Demonica that I’d borrowed from Amalia while we’d been working on the ritual to save Ezra.

I lifted the textbook—and there was my notebook. Exhaling in relief, I unzipped my coat and stuffed the notebook down the front of my shirt, its cover cold against my stomach. With my shirt tucked in, there was no way I could drop it while Zylas leaped across three-story-high gaps.

I zipped my coat and grinned. “We got it. Let’s … Zylas?”

Eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring, he prowled to my open bedroom door and stopped, staring into the living room. I crept after him and peered over his shoulder.

The living room looked like it always did. Had the Grand Grimoire team even searched it? My focus darted from the breakfast bar to the sofa, remembering all the times Zylas and I had sat there. Sorrowful nostalgia stole over me as I realized those comfortable afternoons belonged to the past. We’d never spend time here again.

“I smell Nazhivēr,” Zylas growled. “But I do not sense him.”

“Smell him? You mean he was here?”

Zylas slid into the room, and I minced after him, revolted by the suggestion that our enemy had been here, looking at our home and touching our things.

Scenting the air, Zylas headed toward Amalia’s bedroom. I waited where I stood, scrutinizing everything.

A glint of metal in the dark room. My brow furrowed. I took a few steps closer to the coffee table. Lying across the wood, a chain neatly coiled around it, was an infernus.

My hand jumped to my chest as, illogically, I assumed I must’ve forgotten mine. But of course I hadn’t. Mine was hanging around my neck on the repaired chain.

The sigil etched on the infernus’s face was wrong. Unfamiliar. Alien … but I’d seen it before.

“Robin!”

I reeled backward at Zylas’s warning snarl—and crimson light swept across the strange infernus.

Power ballooned from the medallion and took form directly above it, stretching upward, expanding into the shape of unfurled wings. The coffee table creaked warningly as heavy weight settled atop it.

As I backed into Zylas, Nazhivēr solidified before us, the infernus between his feet. His lips curved, flashing white canines, then he scooped up the infernus and hooked it on his belt.

His glowing eyes rose to me and Zylas. “It is difficult to sense anything from inside the infernus. I was not certain you had come, Vh’alyir.”

We have to attack together, I told Zylas desperately.

I felt his instant alarm—that Nazhivēr was too close, that it wouldn’t work—then a surge of determination.

Get back, then attack.

Obeying his silent instruction, I retreated in a scramble, keeping my eyes on Nazhivēr while I ran through possible cantrips to use against him.

His lips curving in a venomous grin, the winged demon launched off the coffee table, the force of his leap collapsing the wooden legs.

Crimson streaked over Zylas’s hands, forming his phantom talons. The two demons met—and I gasped as Zylas’s talons plunged into Nazhivēr’s lower gut. That easily, he’d landed his first strike.

Zylas’s fear slashed across my mind—the realization that he’d made a critical mistake.

Nazhivēr’s elbow smashed down between Zylas’s shoulder blades, throwing him into the floor. I flung my hand up, crimson sparking over my fingertips as I called up the image of the impello cantrip.

I expected Nazhivēr to attack Zylas, crumpled at his feet. To stomp on the smaller demon before he could retaliate. To do something to his more dangerous opponent.

But in that single, miniscule instant, the Dh’irath demon turned his attention to me.

He was across the living room in a flash, and his blow struck my chest.

I flew back and crashed into the refrigerator. I was in the kitchen now? The thought flittered across my dazed, pain-racked brain—then a huge, powerful hand closed around my throat, squeezing my windpipe.

A tearing tug against my chest, a slash of pain across the back of my neck, then the world spun as I flew through the air.

Arms caught me. I thudded against Zylas, gasping and coughing. As his grip on me tightened, I lifted my tear-blurred gaze.

Nazhivēr stood in the kitchen, a chain dangling from his fist. My infernus. He’d torn it off me so I couldn’t use it to call Zylas out of danger or tap into his magic.

The demon smirked mockingly as he raised his other hand and closed it around the swinging medallion. Crimson flared across his fist.

Terror washed through me in an ice-cold wave. Zylas’s horror mirrored mine, a dark swirl in my mind.

No, I silently gasped.

No, he furiously snarled.

Magic blazed over Nazhivēr’s hand, and his fingers clenched. Canines flashing in a sneer, he opened his fingers.

The broken shards of my infernus tumbled from his hand and pattered to the floor. I scarcely heard the faint clink of metal on tile, consumed by the sudden, deafening emptiness inside my head.

Chapter Fifteen

Zylas?

Zylas?

ZYLAS?

No matter how forcefully I thought his name, I got no reply. I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t sense him. His arms were still around me, but he was gone from my mind—and his power was gone from my body.

Nazhivēr dropped the infernus chain atop the rubble of the medallion. Wings flaring, he charged us.

Zylas threw me out of harm’s way. I landed on my hands and knees, then scrambled across the carpet as the demons collided. Panting with desperation, I crawled into the kitchen and grabbed the largest piece of the infernus—a shard the size of my thumb, the edge of the Vh’alyir sigil etched on it.

Daimon hesychaze! I mentally shouted, clutching the bit of metal.

Zylas dodged Nazhivēr’s slashing talons and landed on the sofa. He grabbed the floor lamp and swung it at the larger demon. The shade flew off as it grazed Nazhivēr’s horns, and Zylas jabbed with it like a spear.

Nazhivēr ripped it out of his hand, and Zylas seized a throw pillow. He chucked it at Nazhivēr’s face, then dove for his enemy’s leg. He raked his claws across Nazhivēr’s ankle as he slid past.

Zylas rolled back onto his feet. Nazhivēr spun around—and with a crash, the floor lamp tumbled after him. Somehow, Zylas had looped the cord around Nazhivēr’s leg.