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There was someone—something—in my house.

“No one make a sound,” I hissed. “It doesn’t know we’re down here.”

“It will,” Brad said. “It’s sniffing us out.”

I glanced at Lana, who gaped up at the ceiling with just as much wide-eyed fright as I did. It was her fear, more than anything, that terrified me.

“Brad, stay withLana.” I ejected the ammo clip from my Glock and slotted in a new one. “I’m going up.”

“The hell you are,” he said. “We’re in a bomb shelter. What’s it going to do?”

“I don’t know.” I holstered the weapon on my hip as I charged into the armory, walls lined with racks of guns and ammo. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

He followed me. “Then I’m coming with you.”

“Stay with Lana,” I ordered. “Guardher. We need her alive.”

I yanked an M4 carbine assault rifle off its rack and pulled on an ammo vest, icy adrenaline buzzing in my fingertips.

Fighting demons, I could already tell, would be very, very different when they were hunting you.

“You need backup—”

“I’ve been doing this solo for two years,” I said. “Nowmove.” I barged past him and strode into the garage, where a trapdoor exited into the backyard behind a hedge.

What I didn’t say was he had already risked his life coming to help me, so if he died, his death would be on me.

God knew I had enough guilt in my life already.

I never should have called him.

At the top of the ladder, I unlocked the trapdoor and heaved it up, uprooting the carpet of dead vines that had grown over it, then crawled out into the garden, lungs heaving.

Every window in the house was dark.

Crouching below them, I slunk toward the back door, the dry husks of dead bushes scraping my cheeks. I’d fired the gardener after Nikki died.

I tried the handle. Locked.

Opening any door or window in my house should have tripped the alarm.

The demon—if it was, in fact, a demon—had either magicked its way past the alarm or slithered in through a chimney or something.

I unlocked the back door with the key under the third flowerpot, now full of yellow weeds and rotting leaves, and inched the door open into the shadowy kitchen, creaking on its rickety hinges. Then I slipped inside and switched off the M4’s safety.

Mounted on the wall, the alarm control panel lit up and flashed a warning.

I keyed in J-O-Y, my daughter’s name. The LED turned green.

Joy Asher, scarcely two when demon magic cut her life short. She would have been four, now. I could barely remember what her smile looked like.

My face tightened. I needed to focus.

Cleavers and knives glinted in the dark kitchen. Backing into the shadows, I listened.

No more sounds. No more footsteps.

Yet I couldfeelits presence, tugging at the hairs behind my neck. Something evil here.