Hammering on the wood, I called, “Amalia? It’s me!”

A clatter from inside, then the clack of the bolt. The door swung open. Amalia stood in the doorway, a dimly lit room with a single queen bed behind her. She glared at me.

Socks meowed more loudly at the sight of her missing human.

“I’m sorry!” I blurted before Amalia could say anything. “I’m so sorry for being a horrible friend and a horrible cousin and just for being horrible!”

She blinked.

“I didn’t mean to ignore your advice. It was good advice and I tried to listen but there are things I haven’t told you, and I should’ve been open with you about my feelings so you’d understand. I didn’t listen because I—I—” I glanced at Zylas, hovering beside me, and panic spiked in my chest. I steeled my courage. “Because I’m in—”

“Wait!” she half yelled.

I broke off in confusion.

She shot me a warning look, then swung the door open wider, revealing more of the small room—and the man standing near a desk with a small TV bolted to it.

Stocky, bald, pot-bellied Uncle Jack offered a hesitant smile.

My jaw hung open in horror at what I’d almost said in front of my uncle. Snapping my mouth shut, I gave Amalia a painfully grateful look for stopping me.

“We’ll talk later,” she muttered, then added at a normal volume, “Dad arrived like fifteen minutes ago. We were just debating going over to see you.”

“You … you were? I thought you were done with me.”

She huffed. “Yeah, well … we can talk about that later too. Get your asses in here before someone notices you.”

I scooted inside, dragging my suitcase, and Zylas followed. As soon as Amalia shut the door, he uncoiled his tail and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, his cold crimson stare running over his summoner.

Uncle Jack gawked at the demon, then pulled himself together. “So that’s how you’ve been managing without an infernus? Dressing like a human?”

“And it works pretty well,” Amalia declared. “Especially with my special design.”

“Well, that won’t be necessary for much longer,” he told me. “I have your new infernus.”

Nervous excitement shot through me.

“It needs one more spell,” Amalia added quickly. “If we start it right away, it’ll be ready by Wednesday night.”

“Wednesday? But that’s—”

“Really freakin’ close to Xever’s portal opening at dawn on Thursday, yeah.” She shifted her feet. “But maybe that doesn’t really make a difference. Dad and I were talking, and we think … we think it might be time to get out of here. That’s what we were going to hash out before coming to see you.”

I looked around the motel in confusion. “Get out of here?”

“Not here,” Uncle Jack said impatiently. “Out of the country. I need to get you both off this continent—away from Xever and whatever he’s planning to do with that portal. If you two are right and he wants to get his hands on one of these all-powerful female demons, then we don’t want to be anywhere nearby when it happens.”

“And we need to get away from the bounty hunters,” Amalia added. “The MPD hopefully thinks you’re dead, but that won’t last if you’re seen.”

“Both scenarios are bad.” Uncle Jack rubbed his hands together anxiously. “And I’m not letting you two be captured or killed.”

Fleeing the country. We could. We could leave Xever to open his portal and use Zylas’s blood to summon a female demon or whatever he intended to do. I could abandon my desire to avenge my parents and put my own safety ahead of righting the wrongs of my ancestors.

But I wouldn’t. And neither would Zylas.

“I can’t leave.” I looked between them. “Not yet.”

Amalia shook her head. “Robin, I get that you want to stop Xever, but—”

“We can stop summoning.” I touched the Vh’alyir Amulet. “Zylas and I figured out how this works. It isn’t a portal. It’s the key to ending summoning forever and saving demonkind.”

I looked up at Zylas, his eyes bright and fierce.

“And we’re going to use Xever’s portal to do it.”

Amalia pressed her palm to the Vh’alyir Amulet, her fingers curled over Zylas’s hand as he held it with her.

“Enpedēra vīsh nā,” he rumbled.

“Enpedēra vīsh nā,” she repeated haltingly.

Crimson lit up the medallion, and a spell circle appeared beneath them, filled with jagged runes. Standing at the edge of the room with Uncle Jack, I watched them experience the vision of Anthea and Zh’rēil, Amalia’s eyes wide with disbelief and Zylas’s expression grim.

She gasped, then gasped again. As the magic swirled slowly around them, her astonishment darkened into bleakness.

The glow fizzled away, and Amalia yanked her hand off the hot amulet. “Holy shit.”

Yeah, that about summed it up.

“That was … whoa.” She gave herself a shake. “Anthea and her demon pal built summoning magic so that it could be deactivated? How does that work?”

“The King’s Vow,” Zylas said, dropping the amulet over his head to rest on his chest. “They created a … bridge … between their magic and the King’s Vow magic. We will break the bridge.”

“And sever the connection forever.” I crossed the room to stand beside him. “Summoning circles will no longer connect to the magic of the demon world, preventing demons from being pulled through.”

“End summoning,” she murmured in disbelief. “End Demonica. Nullify an entire class of magic.”

Uncle Jack rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Will this process affect existing demon contracts?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We’re going to break summoning magic, not contract magic. Which, all things considered, isn’t a bad thing. If thousands of demon contracts suddenly evaporated, at the least we’d have thousands of dead contractors.”

“But probably a lot more death,” Amalia mused. “Some demons wouldn’t immediately kill their contractors to trigger the banishment clause.”

I paced the short length of the room alongside the shabby bed. “Ending summoning requires an open portal. It’d take us years to master enough Arcana Fenestram to do it ourselves, but Xever’s portal will open at dawn four days from now.”

Amalia perched on the foot of the bed, watching me pace. “Okay, yes, but Xever has Nazhivēr and Saul backing him up, not to mention an unknown number of other demons and an entire cult. He won’t have left his precious portal array unprotected.”

I pressed my lips together.

“You and Zylas have never defeated Nazhivēr. You can’t expect that to suddenly change just because we really, really need to win this time.”

“I know, but …”

“You can’t end summoning if you’re dead,” she said firmly. “How are you going to access his portal without him killing you?”

I halted my pacing, hands clenched with frustration.