Amalia looked between the two arrays. “These aren’t exactly the same.”

I nodded. “Anthea’s version is missing pieces. Saul and his sons filled in the pieces with their own Arcana, but as we know, their fix wasn’t perfect.”

The portal had opened, yes, but as soon as something had attempted to pass through, the magic had collapsed. I wasn’t complaining, though, seeing as that “something” had been a bloodthirsty monster from the demon world that’d nearly killed Zylas.

I shivered at the memory of him lying on the helipad, his shoulder crushed and chest pierced by the īnkav’s horrific crisscrossing teeth.

“What does Claude want the portal for?” Amalia asked. “That’s the big question here. Why does he need a direct doorway into the demon world?”

“Ahlēavah.”

She cast me a sideways look. “Huh?”

“Ahlēavah. That’s what Zylas calls his home … I think.” Though he’d never explained it, I’d picked up the word from his thoughts. “I’m not sure if it means a specific spot or an area or territory or what.”

“Ah-lee-ah-vah,” Amalia sounded out. “That’s … surprisingly pretty. Not what I expected.”

She glanced around, probably hoping for more information, but Zylas had wandered into my bedroom for some peace and quiet after hours spent picturing the same array nonstop so I could draw it out. Too taridis for him. Very mailēshta, he’d complained.

“Anyway,” Amalia continued, “Claude didn’t even show up when Saul opened the portal. Does he actually care?”

“I think he was busy dealing with that ‘court’ thing. He planned to be waiting for someone.”

“The thing Ezra got all worked up about.” She nodded. “Well, you’ll get answers about that in a few hours, won’t you?”

Apprehension danced along my spine at the reminder. Ezra had texted me three days ago that we needed to meet ASAP to “trade,” but I’d been busy preparing my report for the MPD—explaining the helipad incident without mentioning portals or monsters—and it’d taken longer than expected to schedule a rendezvous with him.

“Maybe he’ll tell us, maybe not,” I said. “He’s not always forthcoming with information, is he? He wants answers about the Vh’alyir Amulet so he can separate from Eterran, but we don’t know how it works.”

“We know it’s got three spells in it,” Amalia clarified. “One is abjuration and is probably the ‘power’ Ezra described that interrupts demon contracts. One is super demonic looking. And one is Arcana Fenestram.”

“Portal magic.”

“Probably the portal magic. For opening a dimensional doorway into hell, which we’ll need to send Zylas home. Won’t that be fun?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled.

She cast me a sidelong glance, then leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Are you choked up about him leaving?”

“I … I’m not …” I trailed off, ducking my head.

“Robin,” she sighed. “I get that you’ve got a soft spot for that horned asshole … I do too, I guess … but he needs to go. Every day you’re in an illegal contract puts your life at risk. You can’t fake it forever.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“Just imagine how happy he’ll be back in his world, running through demon meadows and picking fights with other demons and whatever else demons like to do.”

Forcing a chuckle, I steered the conversation away from that topic. “Back to Claude, do you think he wants a portal so he can … go to the demon world?”

“If he did, he’d probably die in five minutes, which would solve a lot of our problems.” She grimaced. “He can’t be that stupid. He wants something else. I think he wants something from Demon Land.”

“Like what? A demon army?”

“But how would he control demons without contracts?”

I shook my head in frustration. Why did we always have more questions than answers?

I tapped the array from the grimoire. “Well, we know a few things about this spell, at least. It needs to be built in the open air, under moonlight. And”—I arched an eyebrow—“I might know why Saul’s version didn’t work.”

“Oh?”

I slid the grimoire over and flipped backward a few pages to one of Anthea’s brief notes on an earlier iteration of the spell. “See this? She’s talking about the minimum length of the central lineation of the array.”

Though tempted, I didn’t stop to complain about the amount of time it’d taken me to connect the Ancient Greek terminology with the modern-day Arcana jargon.

“On this page, she crossed out ‘treiskaideka,’ which means thirteen, and wrote in ‘oktokaideka’—eighteen. But here …” I flipped forward to the final iteration. “It says ‘treiskaideka’ again.”

“You mean it got copied wrong?”

“I think so. One of the previous scribes accidentally copied the original measurement instead of the correction. It changes the scope of the entire array.”

“Then the portal on the helipad was too small?”

I nodded. “Significantly too small. That might be why it broke apart when something tried to pass through. It couldn’t handle the arcane energies, like too much power in an electrical circuit.”

“Well, shit. So if Claude wants to try the portal again, he’ll need a location that’s even larger.”

“Yep.”

“That’ll be interesting. Maybe Ezra will spill some details on what Claude is up to. Or if we’re lucky, he already killed Claude.”

I didn’t get my hopes up for that. If Ezra had defeated Nazhivēr, he would’ve told us by now.

Pushing to my feet, I scooped the papers together, collected the grimoire and my notebook, and headed into my bedroom to put everything away. The room was dark, the only light leaking in from the streetlamp outside the window. Night had fallen while Amalia and I had been reviewing the spell array.

Twin spots of crimson appeared—Zylas’s glowing eyes. He was reclined across my bed, Socks lying on his stomach.

“Ready for the meeting?” I asked him as I set the grimoire in its case.

“Hnn. A trade with Eterran et Dh’irath.” His white teeth flashed, but it wasn’t a smile. “He healed me.”

“He did,” I whispered, trying not to think about how close Zylas had come to death.

He mused in silence, then rubbed his palm over Socks’s head, flattening her ears. She purred at top volume, ecstatic as always for any attention from her favorite demon.

Snapping the metal case shut on the grimoire and my notes, I slid it under the bed. “Zylas, do you trust Eterran?”

“No.” His eyes gleamed. “Vh’alyir never trusts Dh’irath.”

His answer didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t inspire confidence either. Whatever the powerful Second House Dīnen wanted, it would be dangerous for me and Zylas both.

When Ezra had said we should meet “in private,” this wasn’t what I’d expected.