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Lana had warned me of that cicada swarm...why?

She was my hostage. It would have been her perfect chance to escape.

No, she had given her word she wouldn’t try to escape.

Again, why? Why would she make a deal like that?

Here I was, threatening to end her kind, and still shehelpedme.

Plus I could have sworn that demon back there had drawn his sabers like he’d been about to execute her.

Something wasn’t adding up.

As I mulled it over, we drove west on Interstate 40 across Tennessee and into Alabama. My goal was to make it to Texas by tonight. We’d reach the Mexican border tomorrow.

I’d chosen the route that would take us via Interstate 10 right past New Orleans, another potential demon hotspot, in case we came up with any leads along the way. Since we’d gotten dick so far, I wasn’t hopeful. Damn me, I should have steered clear of that haunted city. I was probably driving right into an ambush.

We’d get there late this afternoon, and I was starting to get nervous.

Hemmed in by thick trees on either side, the uninterrupted highway stretched out under a blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds. It had that eerie still feeling, like the calm before a storm. It had me on guard.

What wasn’t Lana telling me?

We drove in silence for a while before I finally brought it up.

“I think it’s time we talked about your...statusamong demons,” I said. “That’s the second time a demon’s attacked me without regard for your life... and the second time you’ve chosen to escape with me rather than be rescued. I’m noticing a pattern here.”

“First of all,” Lana said sullenly, “they didn’t come to rescue me—”

“Clearly.”

“—they came only to kill you. And I didn’tchooseto escape with you the first time. I was unconscious, and you came back for me.”

I peered sideways at her, but she wasn’t meeting my gaze. “And?”

“So I didn’t have a choice. I’m your prisoner.”

“At the gas station yesterday, you chose to stay with me.”

“I need to get to the portal so I can go home, and you’re the only way I’m going to get there. We made a deal, remember?”

I studied her, a nervous tic in her cheek betraying that she was lying.

“Nuh-uh,” I said. “I don’t buy it. Smart thing to do would have been to let them kill me, then go back with them. Cut and run. You have no loyalty to me. But youwarnedme of that fucker’s attack—that bringer of blight or whatever.”

“Clades,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She peeled up one sleeve of her jumpsuit and scratched absently at the inside of her arm.

“If you hadn’t,” I continued, “I might be dead. Both of us, in fact. Sure looked like he was about to kill you, too.”

Her eyes were anguished. “He wouldn’t have killed me, but... in my world, warriors don’t have much regard for life,” she said softly. “It’s not their fault. And I’m... behaving badly as an Infernarus right now.”

She continued to scrape her fingernail back and forth along her arm, back and forth.

I raised an eyebrow. “I thought Dominus wanted you back?” I said.

“He does. He did. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I mean, he does... but you’re even more important. Dead.”

“Maybe,” I mused, rubbing my jaw. My valuable prisoner was starting to seem not quite so valuable. “Or maybe, they never gave a shit about you in the first place.”