“It’s okay, little girl,” I cooed. “Want a nibble? It’s a yummy treat. You need to eat to get strong again.”

The frightened, half-grown kitten let out a low warning growl. Sighing, I dropped the treat through the bars, then crawled backward before rising to my feet. The vet had said the kitten should recover with food and rest, but she’d gone almost twenty hours without eating a bite.

I hadn’t specifically intended to adopt the cat, merely get her to a vet before she died, but someone had to take care of her. The vet had assured me—after I’d invented a story about finding the injured animal in an alley—that the kitten’s chances of survival would be much better with me than at a shelter, but if she wouldn’t eat, what good was my care?

I turned toward my bedroom door and started in surprise. Zylas was leaning against the threshold, arms crossed and light gleaming across his left armguard.

“Why are you wasting time?” he asked in a low, biting tone.

Ignoring his question, I squeezed past him into the apartment’s main living area. It wasn’t much—at one end, a tiny kitchen with a short breakfast bar that fit two stools, and at the other, a living room overflowing with a single couch, a coffee table, and a small TV on a cheap stand.

The TV was secondhand. Amalia had purchased a brand new one to start, and after setting it up, she’d made me give Zylas a stern lecture about treating it with care. He’d put his barbed tail through the screen ten minutes later.

Keeping a demon entertained wasn’t easy. He could survive a few days without anything to do, but then the restlessness set in. And a restless demon was destructive.

He could speak English but couldn’t read it, so books weren’t an option, and he hated screens. After questioning him, I discovered framerates that appeared smooth to the human eye were aggravatingly choppy to him. So all TV, movies, and video games were out. How did you keep a battle-hardened demon entertained in an 800-square-foot apartment?

A few days into the pinnacle of my flu, I’d sent Amalia to the department store with my credit card and begged her to bring back every game she could find. Zylas wouldn’t touch most of them, but when Amalia dumped a 500-piece puzzle onto the floor, he’d wandered over to watch.

Amalia spent four hours on the puzzle, then broke it apart, shook up the pieces, and dumped it out for Zylas, daring him to beat her time. He laid all the pieces out face-up as she had, then, for a full ten minutes, he simply stared at the disassembled puzzle.

Just as Amalia and I wondered if he understood the game, he picked up two pieces and fit them together. Then picked another out of the 498 scattered bits and fit it in. Then the next. Then the next. One by one, he fit each piece together, only occasionally needing to test two or three to find the right one. If he got it wrong, he set the piece back in its original spot.

We watched speechlessly as he assembled the puzzle in minutes.

The next day, Amalia returned with a 1000-piece puzzle. He did the exact same thing, staring at the pieces—not even sorting them first—before assembling the puzzle as though following invisible instructions. We watched him complete four puzzles before I figured out what he was doing.

He was memorizing the pieces. Every one—its color, shape, and location. Then, as he started assembling, he would recall which pieces might match and where they were among the hundreds of others.

I’d known his memory was sharp, but his ability to memorize tiny details in a matter of minutes was beyond comprehension. If I dared to arm him with any new skills, I could teach him to read in a matter of hours. He could memorize letters and words faster than any human. His steel-trap memory also explained how he’d adapted so quickly to a foreign world.

I wondered if he ever forgot anything.

In the main room, Amalia sat on a kitchen stool, her blond hair twisted into a messy bun as she sifted through the documents we’d found in Uncle Jack’s safe. I slid into the spot beside her, still ignoring Zylas, who was literally breathing down the back of my neck.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Nothing about safe houses or sanctuaries.” She slapped her hands down on her thighs. “The documents are all legal contracts and business agreements for everyone my dad deals with. Guilds, contractors, summoners, rogues, criminals, forgers …”

I tugged at the infernus chain resting against my neck. “Unless this was all your dad kept in his safe, whoever broke into it took everything else. What do you think they were looking for?”

“My dad’s location, just like us. He—”

With an effortless jump, Zylas landed on the counter and sat on the edge, watching us with unreadable crimson eyes. He kept one heel on the counter, arm propped on his raised knee, his other leg hanging off the edge beside me.

Scowling at the demon, Amalia continued, “My dad isn’t stupid—usually—but he has a weakness for money. He never should’ve revealed to a rogue guild like Red Rum that he had a new demon name. I’m sure rumors have leaked out by now, especially since your bloodthirsty pal there killed so many Red Rum rogues.”

I shuddered at the reminder.

“I’d guess a lot of people are looking for Dad, hoping to get their hands on that demon name before he sells it too many times and the value drops.”

No wonder Uncle Jack was in hiding. People like that would kill for a lot less than ten million dollars.

“It cannot be sold.” Zylas’s husky tones made Amalia and me start. His mouth had thinned angrily. “No more hh’ainun can know it.”

“We’re trying,” I replied quietly. “If we can find the grimoire in time, then no other summoners will get your House name.”

“What do you care if other demons of your House are summoned?” Amalia snapped irritably. “If you make it back to your world, you’ll never be summoned again.”

I blinked in surprise. If Zylas returned, he couldn’t be re-summoned?

He gazed at her, then leaned forward and scooped me off my seat. The moment my butt was clear, he jammed his foot into my stool, which hit hers and sent it toppling. Amalia managed to jump away and landed unsteadily as her stool crashed to the floor.

“Zylas!” I exclaimed angrily, squirming against his arm around my middle. He’d swept me onto his lap, his thigh under my rear, my back against his chest. Heat radiated off him, his body several degrees warmer than a human’s.

I wrenched at his wrist but couldn’t budge his arm. His strength was impossible. “Let me go.”

Tightening his arm, he pushed his face into my hair.

“Zylas!” I jerked my head away. “Quit that! Let me go!”

His low laugh slid under my skin. He blew on my hair, making it flutter. My jaw clenched. A couple of days ago, there would have been nothing I could do to stop him; I’d have been entirely at his mercy.

Daimon, hesychaze, I thought clearly.

With the silent “rest” command, crimson light erupted across Zylas. His body vanished from under me—the weirdest feeling ever—and my butt landed on the counter with a painful thump.

Zylas’s power hit the infernus and bounced right back out again. He rematerialized in front of me, teeth bared and crimson eyes blazing.

“Let me go when I tell you to!” I snapped before he could speak.