“Xever’s grimoire should contain the ritual and the contract he used to bind me and Eterran,” Ezra continued. “You need to find something in there that will allow it to be broken.”

“So Claude … Xever turned you into a demon mage?” I asked hesitantly. A common enemy indeed.

His mouth thinned. “Xever is more than a summoner. He’s the leader of the Court of the Red Queen.”

That must be the “court” Claude had been talking about, the reason he hadn’t been present for Saul’s portal attempt. “What is the Court of the Red Queen?”

“It’s a cult of demon worshippers.” His gaze took on that intense, viper-like quality. “The ‘Red Queen’ is a deified version of a female demon, and the cultists worship her as an all-powerful goddess. Some of them are fanatically obsessed.”

Obsessed—like Saul, Braden, and Jaden, who were so fixated on female demons that they’d kidnapped, raped, and murdered dozens of women they’d thought resembled payashē.

“The abjuration sorcerers were cultists?” I asked uncomfortably.

“Most likely. If they were attached to Xever, then they were involved with the cult in one way or another.” Ezra gestured at the grimoire. “You’ll find details in there about the supposed power of the Red Queen and other doctrine.”

He said “doctrine” like it was the most disgusting word he’d ever uttered.

Amalia nervously shifted her weight. “How big is this cult?”

“There’s the High Court with the cult leaders, plus an unknown number of hidden sects called ‘circles.’ I couldn’t even guess the total number of cultists, but they’re dangerous.”

Cold washed through me. “And Claude—Xever is their leader?”

“Yes.”

I stared down at the grimoire cover—the circle with a crown inside it.

“So?” Tori prompted, watching me intently. “Can you do it?”

Claude had stolen from me and my family. He’d murdered my parents. He’d been experimenting with Demonica and contracts for who knew how long. His contract with Nazhivēr was like nothing I’d ever read about, and he’d developed a ritual to bind a demon to more than one infernus.

And now I knew he was the leader of an entire cult of demon worshippers.

Compared to defeating him, unmaking a demon mage didn’t seem so impossible after all.

Chapter Four

Perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, I stared down at the black leather cover of the cult grimoire. Beside it was a new notebook, the first ten pages filled with lists, translations, and a rough table of contents for this anthology of secrets.

My enemy’s secrets.

For months, what Claude wanted—what his ultimate goal was—had puzzled me. And now I had some answers … but still so many questions.

Amalia slid onto the stool next to me. “Well?”

“So far, I’ve confirmed that the Court of the Red Queen and Claude are both terrifying.”

“What do you mean?”

“This book is as much a religious text as a grimoire, and it talks all about the cult’s beliefs. They believe in an immortal and all-powerful ‘mother of magic’ who created the twelve Houses of male demons to serve her and gifted magic to humankind.”

“Creative,” Amalia remarked dryly.

“Right?” I shook my head. “And they believe that when they die, the Red Queen will claim her followers’ souls and deliver them to an eternal afterlife in the demon world.”

“You should ask Zylas if he ever ran across a river of souls on his way to the demon supermarket.”

Though I doubted there were soul-filled bodies of water in his world, I would’ve asked his opinion if he were nearby. At the moment, he was in my bedroom with the Vh’alyir Amulet, analyzing its mysterious spells.

“The cult has a really strange view of contracted demons too,” I said. “They believe that male demons are loaned out by the Red Queen and these ‘Servi’ willingly protect loyal worshippers, and when the contractor dies, the demon takes their soul directly to the goddess.”

“Wow. Does Claude believe all that?”

“I don’t know. My first instinct is ‘no way, he’s too smart.’ But he has a very unusual contract with Nazhivēr.”

“Their relationship does resemble that whole ‘willing servant’ thing.” Amalia tugged on a lock of her long blond hair. “Claude is scary manipulative, though. I can see him building a cult and convincing people to worship a nonexistent god, all for his own personal gain.”

“But what gain? What does he want?” I tapped the cover. “There’s information in here about the twelve Houses, feeding demon blood to vampires, and other experiments with demon blood—all things Claude has been involved in. But nothing about portals.”

“Well, yeah. Think about it.” She propped an elbow on the table. “In real religions, you have to die before you can go to heaven or the afterlife or whatever. Same deal for the cult, because if all its followers knew you could open a portal and walk right into ‘heaven,’ that would become their goal instead of obeying the cult until they die.”

“That makes sense,” I muttered. “But what about something like the Rapture?”

“Is there anything about the end of the world in the grimoire?”

“Not that I’ve seen.” I shifted uneasily on my stool. “If the cult’s religion includes an end-time event where believers are transported directly to the goddess … could that be the reason for Claude’s portal fixation?”

“But there’s no way he actually believes in the cult bullshit … right?”

We exchanged looks of doubt and disquiet.

Amalia shook herself. “What about Ezra and the unmaking of a demon mage? Any progress?”

“I found the section on creating demon mages,” I answered, opening the cult grimoire to a marked page. “I haven’t done more than skim it yet.”

“We can go over it together.” She slid off her stool. “I just want to finish sewing the zipper on Zylas’s coat first. I hate doing zippers and I need to get it done before I decide to do snaps instead.”

I laughed. “He might prefer snaps.”

“No one prefers snaps. Not even a demon.”

She headed for her bedroom, and I focused on the grimoire. I perused the dense paragraphs of Latin on the first page of the ritual, then jumped to the opposite page, which featured a complex diagram. Yeah, I’d definitely need Amalia’s help with this.

Slowly turning pages, I studied each successive diagram. Summoning wasn’t simple, straightforward magic. Abjuration might have a reputation as the most difficult branch of Arcana, but most sorcerers had never tried summoning. Amalia had been studying it for years and was still a green apprentice who had yet to summon her first demon.

As Amalia’s sewing machine whirred in the background, I slid my finger down an illustrated array. Interspersed through the semi-familiar Arcana were spiky runes—demon magic. How did that work?

Sighing, I flipped back to the first page and picked up my pencil.