Page 110 of The Wolfing Hour

“Laws. That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Get out of?—”

“Échate.” I flicked my hand, putting power behind it, and Miles went down on his ass on the worn carpet, cursing me the whole way. “How long?”

“How long what?”

“How many years have you been working for him? Decades? Centuries? Geologicalfuckingepochs?”

Miles’s pale face shone beet red. A trickle of sweat rolled down his temple.

I planted my feet on the stained carpet. “I’m going to summon him,Miles—we both know that’s not your real name—and it’s only going to get worse for you from there.”

“Not my real name? Damn you to the feet of Lucifer, woman. What are you talking about?”

My demon and witch sides stood at the ready. Magic from the soil simmered in my veins. I was a loaded weapon anticipating a target—a dark one.

“Lord Bertrand Sexton, I summon thee.”

The temperature in the overheated room plummeted. I flexed my jaw to keep it from stiffening in the cold and squared my shoulders. From the outside, I might’ve looked brave, but I was scared to the cells of my body. Vapor in the air formed frozen needles in my lungs, and when I cleared my throat, I coughed up ice crystals that I crunched with my back teeth.

“Hello, granddaughter.” His greeting was warm, even if his presence was arctic.

“Grandfather.”

He loomed behind me. I didn’t turn around, wasn’t ready to look him in the eye just yet.

“You are in danger? You require my assistance?” His voice carried a self-righteous quality. Satisfaction weaved through the spaces between every word.

I didn’t entertain his charade by responding to his questions. “Why’d you do it?”

There was a second where I thought he’d play dumb. He surprised me.

“You needed to accept your demon side. Had I not interceded, you would already be dead—or insane.”

“So, we’re sticking to the lies,” I said.

Not-Miles watched the conversation with haunted eyes. There was real fear there, and it lent credence to his human act, but I wasn’t fooled.

I reached into my pockets with both hands, withdrawing a handful of soil and palming a salt stick. Another Cecil original, it was made up of finely pulverized and compressed salt and Siete Saguaros soil. It crumbled easily—a negative on a hard surface but ideal for use on carpet.

Not-Miles eyed the soil as it steamed into my skin, as he was meant to. With my other hand, I dragged the salt stick in a circle on the carpet around him. It ended up less a circle than a puddle, the sides irregular, but unbroken and connected.

I still hadn’t faced Sexton.

“Mercurio.” I threw magic into it. “Fuego.”

Quicksilver flames danced in the soil on the lines, avoiding the salt. I kept them banked but visible. Mercury’s poison, as it was called in the other realms, was one of the few things in the universe capable of killing a demon. Permanently.

“Lucifer’s horns, not this again,” Not-Miles muttered. “I hate witches.”

“I bind you to this circle, Gnath, servant of iniquity, commander of the second brigade of malfeasance, demon of Highway 86. Here you will remain until I am done with you.”

With a wet, wrenching squelch, Miles’s form separated from the demon’s much smaller, green-skinned, noxious one. The man fell to the demon’s feet vomiting air and trying to scream. I’d unbound him from the possession with all the finesse of someone ripping a bandage from a weeping wound. It had to have hurt.

“You can leave the circle, Miles, but don’t break it,” I said. “The flames won’t hurt you.”

The pale man crawled over the fiery salt line. Gnath didn’t try to stop him—he just wrapped his nasty little arms around himself and stayed as far from the mercury flames as he could.