Seeing as it was the nearest park to our guild, I supposed it made sense that multiple members would use it, but it was still kind of weird how we kept coming back.

“How much longer?” I asked, stuffing my hands in my pockets.

“They’ll be here any moment,” Ezra replied.

I didn’t bother asking who we were waiting for. Whether Ezra was being mysterious for kicks or he had a reason for keeping Aaron and me in the dark, I didn’t know. Maybe Kai could’ve gotten an answer out of him, but the electramage was stuck with Makiko again, catching up on whatever criminal business they’d missed while we were jaunting around the western United States.

An icy breeze slid through the trees, rustling their bare branches. The orange glow of streetlamps scarcely penetrated our hidden clearing, and my eyes strained to pick out shapes among the dark shrubbery as I scanned for our unknown guests.

Another minute ticked past. Then another.

The back of my neck prickled. I rolled my shoulders uncomfortably, peering side to side. Ezra glanced behind us, then faced the dirt path that wound into our hidden nook. The breeze gusted, bending the boughs overhead and blowing a swirl of dead leaves past my legs. I glanced up at the creaking branches.

When I looked down again, we were no longer alone.

Two women stood on the trail, wrapped in leather jackets. One was tall and willowy, with blond hair in loose, messy waves. The other was slim and petite, with shoulder-length hair that appeared black in the darkness and glasses perched on her small nose.

Robin Page, our guild’s only demon contractor, and her cousin Amalia.

I blinked repeatedly. Robin was the mysterious “ally” we were waiting to meet?

“You’re late,” Ezra observed, his smooth voice blending with the darkness.

Robin shot an annoyed look at her blond cousin, then took an uncertain step into the clearing, studying me and Aaron carefully. Had she known we’d be part of this rendezvous?

“Why are we meeting here?” she asked.

Ezra shrugged. “Some of us prefer open spaces and room to maneuver.”

I hid a frown. Who was “some of us” supposed to be? Because I’d been in enclosed spaces with Robin before and it hadn’t been a problem.

“I see.” She folded her hands in front of her, waiting expectantly. “We’re ready to hear your trade.”

A fresh twist of uncertainty unsettled my gut. Why did I get the feeling I was way out of the loop here?

Ezra gestured toward the bag I carried over one shoulder, and I passed it to him. He reached inside and pulled out the glossy black cult grimoire.

“Robin,” he murmured, “it turns out we share an enemy, except I know him as Xever.” He extended the grimoire toward Robin. “This belongs to him.”

She approached the book, gingerly taking it as though it might morph into a beast and bite her arms off.

“This is what you want to trade?” she whispered.

“No, not that.” Ezra gestured to me. “Tori?”

I’d already passed him the bag with the grimoire, and there was only one other thing he’d told me to bring.

Doubt flickered through me—but I wouldn’t second-guess him now. I slid my hand into my back pocket and took hold of a fine chain, warmed by my body heat. Lifting it out, I held up the swinging talisman.

Robin’s eyes went saucer-wide as she tracked its motion, her whole attention focused on it like it was the key to the universe.

“The amulet,” she breathed, disbelief feathering the words. “Vh’alyir’s Amulet.”

“That,” Ezra said, “is what we’re here to trade.”

Her stunned gaze snapped to him. “And what do you want in exchange?”

“I want you to use that grimoire”—he pointed to the book—“and find a way to break the demon mage contract binding me and Eterran so he can leave my body.”

My heart screeched to a halt, and it took my brain a moment to catch up.

I whirled on Ezra, the amulet swinging from my fist, and shrieked, “She knows?”

Amalia cocked her hip. “Well, duh.”

“Since when?” I blurted.

Crimson flared across his pale eye. “Since you went to Enright,” he rumbled in a guttural accent, “leaving Ezra and me to find out what she knew about the amulet.”

I backpedaled away from him, and Aaron recoiled in the opposite direction with a breathless curse. Eterran had taken control? Just like that? But how—

Eye still glowing, he turned to Robin and Amalia—and they didn’t so much as flinch. No fear, no surprise, no confusion. They’d seen this before.

What had Ezra said to Xever? If my demon and I both want the same thing, which of us is in control?

Holy freaking shit.

“We have made our offer,” Eterran rumbled. “Will you accept it, or will we finally spill each other’s blood, Zylas?”

Silence fell across the park.

I held my breath, confusion buzzing in my head and my nerves prickling with inexplicable apprehension. Stillness lay heavy over us, and even the breeze had died down. Then an almost inaudible sound rolled out of the darkness behind me.

Low, husky laughter.

I whipped around. Pulse hammering, I scanned the darkness, seeing only the black shapes of foliage and shrubbery.

“Escaping your hh’ainun prison …” The voice, suffused with a throaty accent, floated out of the night. “… does not mean escaping the hh’ainun world, Eterran.”

My head snapped back, gaze flashing upward.

In the branches of a tree, a pair of magma eyes glowed. A dark shape uncoiled, then dropped from the high boughs and landed with a soft thump in front of me. His thin tail lashing, the demon straightened, glowing eyes fixing on mine.

Not all that long ago, I’d taken a good long look into this demon’s eyes. His lithe, humanoid shape was strangely unnerving, and something about him had never sat right with me. All demons were frightening, but this one had made me twitchy in a different way.

Looking into his eyes now, I knew why he’d unsettled me—because staring back at me was a pair of demon eyes bright with cunning intelligence and lucid ferocity.

This demon was no mindless puppet.

His lips curved up, revealing sharply pointed canines. Terror flashed through me and I lurched backward in a frantic scramble. The demon glided after me with prowling steps more graceful than any contracted beast.

My back thumped against a warm body—Ezra. His heady scent filled my nose as he laid a hand on my waist.

“Tori, Aaron,” he murmured, “meet Zylas.”

The demon’s sharp smile widened, and his tail snapped against the ground. I trembled, instinct screaming at me to flee from the predator standing almost on my toes.

From somewhere on my left, a soft female sigh fluttered through the quiet. “Zylas, could you try not to terrify her?”

At her exasperated question, the demon slid back half a step, and I took a couple small, gasping breaths.

“No fun,” he growled quietly. “When do I get to scare hh’ainun, na? Never.”

“At least you don’t have to pretend to be enslaved right now,” Robin retorted.

Another snap of that barbed tail.

Pretend? Had she said he pretended to be enslaved in a contract? All those times I’d seen him out of her infernus, his stare blank and motions wooden, he’d been pretending?

I inhaled again, battling a wave of lightheadedness.

“Well?” Ezra’s voice rumbled against my back—except that guttural accent had returned, meaning I was leaning against Eterran, not Ezra. “Do you accept the trade, Zylas?”

The demon’s eyes narrowed. Robin walked to his side, the grimoire cradled against her chest, and he flicked a glance at her before refocusing on Ezra. “One condition, Dh’irath.”

“What is that?”

“When you are free, you will bring no harm on me or my hh’ainun.”

Ezra—or Eterran—nudged me aside so I was no longer between him and Zylas. Facing the demon, he raised his left arm, and crimson veins raced across his hand and up his wrist.

Zylas lifted his left arm, and the same magic snaked up the demon’s hand.

They pressed their palms together, outstretched fingers aligning. One hand bronze-skinned and human, the other reddish toffee with dark claws tipping his fingers. The scarlet magic radiating from their skin sizzled on contact and the air around them chilled, electric with deadly power.

“Enpedēra dīn nā,” Zylas said, the alien words flowing with the cadence of a chant.

“Enpedēra dīn nā,” Eterran answered.

The crimson light flared, then died away, and the demon and demon mage lowered their hands.

Great. Just wonderful. Robin’s demon was not only uncontracted enough to walk and talk under his own power, but he had control of his magic too. My gaze snapped between her and Zylas, and I wasn’t sure which I wanted to do more: demand answers in a hysterical shriek or run screaming in the opposite direction.

Off to one side, Aaron stood two steps away from Amalia. They were watching us—Amalia with an impatient arch to her eyebrows, and Aaron with an expression somewhere between shell-shocked and grimly resolved. I knew how he felt. When I’d walked into the park, I’d been confident that no matter what “allies” Ezra had in mind for us, I could handle them—but now, I felt so far out of my depth I might as well have been swimming the Mariana Trench.

I froze as magma eyes turned to me. Zylas extended his hand again, palm turned up expectantly.

“Give it to me, hh’ainun.”

I realized I was clutching the demonic amulet against my chest, the medallion hidden under my hands. Sucking in a wild breath, I glanced questioningly at Ezra.

A faint red gleam lit his pale left eye, but it was the human who spoke. “It’s okay. You can give it to him.”

“But he’s …”

“It belongs to him, Tori.” He glanced at the demon. “Zylas et Vh’alyir, King of the Twelfth House. The Amulet of Vh’alyir is his.”