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“That’s so fucking cool,” she said finally.

The ache in Fey’s chest lessened, and she grinned.

“It’s harder the further away I am,” Fey explained. “Easiest if I can touch them. And it’s much easier to freeze than boil. Trust me I’ve tried.”

Willow’s eyes were wide. “You’ve boiled someone from the inside?”

“No,” Fey corrected. “I said I’ve tried. I could, maybe, if I had any control over Fire, but…” She shrugged. “Air helps with freezing. And unless it’s been raining, there’s no way I can do it from a distance.”

“Come on, let’s get down there. We need to drag him out of sight before anyone sees him,” Lilith said.

Joy hopped down from the roof, using air to float gracefully to the ground. She hooked her arms under the Demon and pulled him into the alley, depositing him unceremoniously behind a trash can.

“One down, two to go,” purred Lilith.

They moved, four specters of death creeping through the night.

Lilith took the next Demon.

He passed right by them, unaware of what lurked in the shadows, the danger that was watching and waiting. When she slit his throat, he barely made a sound before crumbling to the ground. Willow dragged his body back into the alley with the other guard.

Joy took down the Demon guarding the door, her power pulling the air from her lungs before she even knew there was anyone there. She died silently, suffocating at their feet as they moved past her and through the doors.

There was no alarm when they entered the warehouse, no sudden shriek of a siren. It was quiet inside.

Lilith summoned a sphere of Fire, holding it out in front of her to give them enough light to see the building.

It was… incredibly unremarkable.

“Isn’t this supposed to be some big drug stash?” Willow asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Fey nodded, frowning. Willow had been right earlier—this didn’t feel like a criminal enterprise. The one-story building was just a single, enormous room full of wooden crates. Unremarkable, innocent-looking crates.

It really could have been a shoe factory, Fey thought, looking around. It looked like a storage facility.

Lilith shrugged her backpack to the ground, nodding to Joy to open it. Inside were stacks of plastic explosives, long white bars that just needed a spark to ignite. Lilith held her ball of Fire away from the bag, careful not to get too close to it.

It was a simple assignation. Take out the building and its contents, and leave. A few charges of plastic explosive set in the right places around the building, and boom—no more devil dust.

Fey didn’t hear the Shifter approach until it was too late.

“Don’t you fucking move,” a voice snarled in her ear. His breath was hot and putrid. He held a knife to her throat, but his hand shook hard enough that the metal blade nicked at her skin.

“You tell your friends to drop their weapons, drop whatever it is they are holding, and I’ll make sure you all get out of this alive,” he told her.

It was an effort for Fey not to laugh.

“Sister?” she called out, ignoring him entirely. Her eyes met Willow’s in the dark. “A little help, please?”

The knife at her throat glowed red hot, and the Shifter yelped in shock, dropping the blade before the metal had even started to melt. Fey dropped to the ground and rolled to the side as Willow struck, hitting the Shifter like an avalanche. She was a ball of knives and fists and fury. The Shifter screamed as she hit him, and they crashed noisily into a stack of wooden crates.

The male was dead before he hit the ground, but the momentum of Willow’s attack shook the boxes. “Shit,” Willow hissed. She leaped away from the dead Shifter, but it was too late. The stack tilted and swayed, and several crates tumbled to the ground with a crash.

The sound echoed through the building, and Fey winced.

“Oh great, just fucking great.” Lilith snapped. “So much for the element of fucking surprise.”

Willow frowned at the mess on the warehouse floor, cringing. “Oops,” she said.