My mother had kept it in special storage to protect the aging paper from degradation. I didn’t know where it was or how to access it, and I was afraid to mention it to Uncle Jack. He might not know it existed—or that I wanted it—and if I tipped him off, the grimoire could disappear forever. He’d auction it off for extra cash or bequeath it to his own daughter instead of me.

The timer on my phone beeped. I hurried away from the library door and trotted up the stairs.

The kitchen lights were already on when I walked in. Kathy stood at the sink, a pink apron tied over her floral-patterned dress as she scrubbed dishes. Her black pumps clacked against the floor with each shift of her feet.

I stopped at the counter, confused. The cooling rack was gone. No, not gone. I spotted it in the draining rack beside the sink of soapy water.

“Aunt Kathy? Did you move my muffins?”

She smiled at me with her overly red lips. “Did you make them?”

Who else would’ve? “Yes, I—”

“Travis is allergic to peanuts. Didn’t I tell you? I threw the muffins out.”

My mouth hung open. “You threw them out? But—”

“Just because Travis has an epi-pen doesn’t mean—”

“They didn’t have peanuts!” I interrupted shrilly.

“There were nuts on top.”

“Pecans!” I exclaimed, my hands curling around the hem of my sweater and squeezing. “Those were pumpkin muffins with cream-cheese filling and cinnamon-pecan streusel topping.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “I didn’t realize. Can’t be too safe with a peanut allergy.”

“You could’ve asked me!”

Her black-lined eyes squinched. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.”

I glared into her foundation-coated face, her pouchy cheeks quivering above her wide shoulders, then my gaze fell to the floor. I walked out of the kitchen.

Earlier this afternoon, I’d bussed to the store to get ingredients. I’d prepared the cream-cheese filling before dinner so it could harden in the freezer, then made the batter and streusel after the kitchen was free again. Just because I was using baking as an alibi while I searched the house didn’t mean I’d committed minimal effort to the task. The muffins had come out of the oven perfect. The pumpkin aroma still lingered in the hall.

Tears stung my eyes. I hated this house and everyone in it.

I’d searched the storage room in the basement. The garages—both of them. The spare bedrooms. Every closet in the house, except the ones in Uncle Jack’s, Amalia’s, and Travis’s rooms. There was nowhere else to look for evidence of Uncle Jack’s lies or my parents’ belongings.

Well, there was Uncle Jack’s office, but he was always in there and I wasn’t brave enough to risk him catching me. The library, however … If Uncle Jack had somehow gotten his greedy hands on my mother’s grimoire, the library would be an ideal place to store—or hide—a book. Yeah, it was a long shot, but what else could I do?

I squinted at the library door, a foot in front of my nose. I hadn’t been back since the cookie-throwing incident.

At the reminder, I lifted the paper towel I held. Stacked on it were half a dozen dark brown cookies, their crispy surfaces deliciously cracked to reveal the fluffy, cake-like insides mixed with chocolate chunks. White sea salt sprinkled the tops.

When I was stressed, I overindulged in my two favorite hobbies—reading and baking. I bit into a cookie and almost moaned. Perfect. Melty, chocolaty, sweet and rich, and a touch salty. Absolute perfection.

Fortified by sugar, I cracked the library door open and peered inside. Abandoned. Jack and his partner, Claude, usually visited in the afternoons, and it was almost nine o’clock now. I turned the lights up, then waited, staring at the black dome where the cookie-hurling demon hid. Had it saved any crumbling missiles for my inevitable return?

It seemed not, because nothing happened. I scooted the long way around the room to the sofas, set my snack on the end table—the one farthest from the circle—then surveyed the room. I’d already given the shelves one pass, but I hadn’t been looking for grimoires.

Keeping an eye on the inky dome, I started with the section on magic. I pulled out each book, checked it, then slid it back. Slow work, but I didn’t want to miss anything. The always-ravenous bookworm in me filed away each title, compiling a reading list so long it’d take me all year to finish.

Something scuffed against the floor.

With my hand raised to slide The History of Celtic Druidry onto a shelf, I froze, my senses stretching toward the summoning circle four feet behind me. Another soft scuff—like a body shifting position, limbs brushing the floor.

Silence thrummed in my ears. After a minute, my spine relaxed and I released the breath I was holding.

“Hh’ainun.”

I gasped in air to scream and choked on saliva. I started to lurch backward but realized the circle was right behind me, and as I spasmed in place, Celtic Druidry fell out of my hand and the spine hit me in the forehead. The thick tome tumbled to the floor and landed with a loud thwack.

Gasping and hacking, my eyes watering, I spun around and pressed my back against the bookshelf. The black dome loomed too close. I blinked away tears, my nose throbbing and knees trembling. My glasses hung crookedly off one ear.

“Hh’ainun.” The quiet, growling voice rolled out of the black dome. “Will you answer a question?”

Panic squealed incoherently in my ears. My limbs had gone numb and I couldn’t remember how to run for the door. The demon was talking. Talking. To me. It had … asked me to … “Huh?”

The demon didn’t respond. Maybe it didn’t know what “huh” meant.

Gulping, I sidled along the bookshelf until I was a safe distance from the circle, then took a wobbling step toward the door. I needed to leave. Uncle Jack had been very clear—if the demon ever spoke, fetch him or Claude immediately. Whether I reported the demon’s behavior or not, I should get the hell out of the library.

And yet …

From out of the circle’s inky nothingness, a creature from another world had spoken to me. Call me insane, but I kind of wanted to hear what it had to say. It was contained in the circle. It couldn’t reach me, couldn’t hurt me.

Pulse thundering in my ears, I backed toward the sofa and dropped onto the cool leather, relieved my weak knees hadn’t given out. I straightened my glasses, taking deep breaths. Inhale, exhale. I was okay. I was safe.

“Why should I answer a question?” I whispered cautiously. Then, since I’d already hitched a ride on the crazy train, I added, “You threw a cookie at me.”

“You threw it at me first.”

I stared at the black dome, even though there was nothing to see. That was … true, I supposed. “What’s your question?”

A long pause, as though the creature were second-guessing its words. “What is it you threw into the kaīrtis vīsh before?”

My brow wrinkled. Its English was heavily accented, but part of its query hadn’t been in English at all. “Threw into the … what?”

“The … vīsh … the magic.”

The magic? Threw into the … oh. “You mean the summoning circle? You’re asking what I threw at you?” Mad laughter bubbled in my throat but I swallowed it down. “Cookies. I threw cookies.”

“This is … food?”

“Yes.” I blinked bemusedly. “Did you eat them?”

Silence. Did that mean … yes? I had no idea how to interpret its lack of response. Who knew what long silences meant in demon conversation?

Oh god. I was having a conversation with a demon. I was crazy. I’d lost my mind. Stress-induced insanity. That had to be it.

The door called to me, but I felt tethered in place. It wasn’t fear that held my butt to the leather cushion and my socked feet to the hardwood floor. A new feeling had awoken inside me.

My archnemesis: curiosity.

A painfully familiar voice murmured in my memory.

“Oh, Robin,” my mother had laughed as she’d bandaged my scraped knees. I’d climbed a tree to look in a bird’s nest after reading about how sparrows care for their young, but had fallen on my way back down. “Curious and impulsive—it’s a volatile combination. You need to remember to think through your decisions.”

I thought I’d learned that lesson years ago, but even as I told myself I needed to leave, the demon’s quiet voice fed my thirst for knowledge, its words tinged with an alien accent—vowels sharp and crisp, consonants heavy and deep. A bit of throaty German and lilting Arabic, and a touch of rolling Greek.

A hundred questions crowded into my head. Where and how had the demon learned English? Why had it spoken to me? What was Uncle Jack trying to negotiate and why wasn’t the demon responding?

Or, even better, where had the demon come from? What was it like to be summoned to Earth? What sort of life had it led before this?

Don’t ever speak to the demon. Though Uncle Jack’s warning was easy to dismiss, I wasn’t about to forget my parents’ most important lesson: Stay away from magic. But my curiosity burned, and really, what was the harm?

“Um, demon?” I began tentatively.

Silence.

“Are you listening?”

Nothing.

“Helloooo? Demon?”