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“After the great success in the desert, we thought we’d take things a little further for the birthday boy. Tonight, Kenny is going to summon a full-fledged demon and capture it in a magic circle.”

Dan picks up the pitch. “When they’re ensnared, the demon becomes your slave and must answer all your questions—about the past, present, or future. Since it’s Rudy’s birthday, he’ll have the honor of asking the first question.”

Trash wizard Kenny, what have you been doing, you bad, bad boy? I want to run right then, but I know Janet won’t leave. I think things over. Kenny did manage to summon the gut monster and enhance the vampire. Really, what Dan and Juliette are talking about is simple enough. Draw the circle. Do the hoodoo. It’s mostly mechanics, really. If he sticks to his paint-by-numbers grimoire, even Kenny can’t fuck it up.

As for the other Lodge members, the giddy tension in the room jumps up a couple of notches. Heartbeats pound like a gorilla banging on a trash can. There’s the slightly metallic tang of fear sweat. But the crowd seems excited by their demon dream date. Mainly because they have to be. It’s an animal thing, and a schoolyard thing. Never look afraid or whatever is coming for you will come twice as hard.

Juliette and Dan herd us ducklings down into the rumpus room. Kenny slipped away earlier and is already getting the ritual started. He takes a handful of salt and dribbles it out in a circle on the wooden floor. I push my way up front so I can check his work.

To my surprise, it’s not a bad circle. Simple, but solid. It should hold any of the low-level bogeymen garbage Merlin can conjure. It’s not like the ass has the power to call up a hellbeast or Qliphoth. At best, we might get the ghost of Bela Lugosi coming down from a bender.

I relax a little.

With the circle complete, Kenny begins a chant. Very quietly at first, then letting his voice rise with each repetition of the words. Like the circle itself, the chant is simple and pretty generic. Okay. Good. We’re going to be all right.

With each round of the chant, Kenny gets louder. In a minute, he’s practically shouting. Then something changes.

The little prick is going off script. I don’t even recognize the language anymore. It’s not English, Latin, Hebrew, or Greek. It sounds almost like someone trying to speak Hellion with a mouthful of marbles.

Oh shit.

Something explodes from the center of the circle, and the force of it knocks the first row of gawkers back a few steps.

The thing is about ten feet tall and squidlike. But not entirely physical. It’s more like smoke, but not quite. The shape stutters and glitches like bad video. It flails its tentacles around like it’s really pissed or trying to signal a waiter. It’s a funny-looking thing.

The smoke squid’s tentacles crawl across the ceiling, looking for a way out of the circle. It slams the edges with its thick body, looking for the slightest imperfection in the design. But it’s stuck, and by the sound of its foghorn bellowing, it’s not taking it well.

Good for you, Kenny. It looks like you actually pulled it off.

A moment later, the smoke squid gives up trying to bang its way out of the circle. It retracts its tentacles and just hangs in the air, like it’s floating in dark water.

When the thing calms down, Kenny gets a round of applause. Even I have to give him a couple of claps for not getting us all killed in the first thirty seconds of the smoke squid’s appearance.

Dan and Juliette escort Rudy Morrello right up to the edge of the circle. When he stops, the squid slowly turns its thick body around like it knows Rudy is there. While the rest of the Lodge stares in envy, the birthday boy looks like he’s about to soil his nice suit.

Juliette says, “Is there anything you’d like to ask our captive?”

Rudy looks like he wants to run, but he’s stuck between the doom twins and they’re not letting him go anywhere.

“I’m . . . I’m not sure,” says Rudy. “I had something, but I can’t remember what.”

Juliette puts an arm around him.

“Take a minute. Relax. I’m sure it will come back to you.”

As Rudy stares, the smoke squid slams its tentacles at the edge of the circle, just a few inches from Rudy’s nose.

Everybody jumps. Janet grabs my hand.

“Pass!” he yells. “I give up my turn. It’s my birthday and I say that I don’t have to go first.”

“It’s okay,” says Dan. “You don’t have to ask anything complicated. It can be who’s going to win the World Series. When are you going to die. Even lottery numbers.”

Rudy shakes his head furiously and pulls away from the doom twins.

“I need a minute. Let somebody else go first.”

While they argue, I notice a few grains of salt on the interior of the circle move, like there’s a gentle breeze coming from somewhere.