She was a little surprised when Sebastian stepped up behind her. “I’m here to pull you away if you need me to,” he murmured. So quietly she wasn’t sure even Aidan would have heard him.

  She nodded a little to show she’d heard. Then gently set her hands on the thrashing man’s chest. She didn’t open her psychic skills fully. There was a lot she just didn’t want to know about this guy. But she opened a tiny bit. Enough to feel the magic in the spell and tease it out. There had to be a way to do this without using her psychic abilities, but she didn’t know that way. Something she’d need to learn. This would do for now.

  Even that little crack in her psychic senses was enough to confirm she didn’t want to read more. Some people’s minds and lives were just too… They were the stuff of nightmares, and she had enough of those all her own.

  The spell did come clearer, though. She’d heard a lot of it as he was invoking it, so reversing it might be possible. She followed the currents of power, the way the lines of the spell made a pattern in her mind’s eye. The knotted loops of blue wrapped around the man, lines of that blue running toward the tree where she’d formed the portal to the hellscape. But more of those lines reaching out and around him. In all different directions. Down into the ground, away from the tree, toward the sky. All around, like he was surrounded by spikes of magical light linking him to everything.

  She was pretty sure that wasn’t what he’d intended with the spell.

  She nudged one of the many lines where it connected to the knot that, in her otherworldy vision, occupied most of the center of him. He screamed. Okay. Not good. She tried another line, giving it a very gentle tug at the place where it met the knot of his spell. He thrashed harder and let out a scream so loud she winced.

  “Stop it! You’re killing him,” the wounded man said.

  “You told her to do this,” Aidan pointed out reasonably. “Now you tell her to stop. She might not be able to help him at all, which means he’ll die. And it’ll be his own doing.”

  Aidan’s calm, reasonable assessment left Angie feeling a little better, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe Aidan was willing her some calm. That would be nice. She needed more calm. Because every time the man screamed, it set her nerves jumping and her heart racing. Without some measure of calm, she wasn’t going to be able to help him, even a little bit. And yet her attempts to help him were shattering her nerves.

  Another wave of…something washed through her and calmed her nerves further, let her center a little better. Huh. Didn’t feel like magic. Might almost feel like her own inner strength serving up a little calming wash of hormones. But this didn’t feel like her. This felt like it came from outside her.

  She nudged yet another line in the knot. This time the man didn’t scream. His body bowed up and his muscles tightened. But he didn’t scream in agony. That had to count as progress. She mentally took hold of that line of magic and tugged. The man panted, clenched his jaw. That was obviously pain, but still no screaming. Good. She tugged again.

  Under her breath, she began a spell designed to reverse bad magic. She wasn’t sure if this was the right spell in this case. There was probably an unbinding spell somewhere. She’d just never studied it. But since this was definitely a bad use of magic, she hoped the reverse of bad magic would do something for her. Bonus, the spell didn’t require hand gestures until the very end, which meant she could keep the physical contact with the man. Helpful as she continued to study the knot of threads binding him to the demon.

  The one that she could tug without making him scream led to the very heart of the knot. She tugged gently again as she came close to the end of her spell. The man’s muscles all tightened and his teeth clacked together as he clenched his jaw. She should probably stop now, but she continued to tug at the thread as she finished her chant, taking her hands from the man’s chest only long enough to form the final gestures. Then she sent the spell into the knot.

  She watched the pattern of blue thread loosen. Not unravel, but loosen. Loosen enough for her to following the thread she held into the center of the knot. Good. That was something.

  At the center was a little glowing ball of red. That would be the demon link. She didn’t want to touch that. Not even a little. Opening a portal for the first time in years was bad enough. Close enough contact with the demon realms. She’d have to unravel the knot fully without touching that red orb.

  Easier said than done. She kept her eyes closed as she worked, trusting Aidan—and strangely Sebastian—to have her back. In fact, having Sebastian literally at her back, guarding her and ready to pull her out of this if things went sideways was…maybe a little too reassuring. A little too much like relief. And also, for reasons she didn’t dare look at too closely, made her feel a little fizz of happiness in her gut.

  That was absolutely something she didn’t have time to deal with right now. The strange giddy dance in her tummy just thinking about Sebastian would be better faced later.

  She unraveled a few of the threads, pulling them completely free of the knot. The minute they were released, they dissolved, the magic spilling away into the ground beneath the man. She let it go. He was in no shape to reintegrate the used magic back into himself anyway. Plus, she was sure there was demon taint on that magic. The man was better off without it.

  She wasn’t entirely sure why she cared. He’d summoned a fuck load of demons and had then gone and bound himself to one. Not only was this his own fault, he’d been engaged in an evil act. She didn’t really care about him on an emotional level that she could explain. She just wanted to break his spell and free him from the torture.

  He screamed again, but she was so deep into the magic at that point, she barely heard him. And his thrashing was weaker now, so she wasn’t in danger of losing physical contact with him. Although she might be in danger of losing him period. Part of her still wondered why the hell he’d done all this. Part of her didn’t really care.

  She worked through another, trickier thread in the knot, and with a mentally audible pop, something gave. The entire knot unraveled in front of her mind’s eye. The red, pulsing orb at the center of the knot flared brightly and a rush of heat washed over her, like stepping out into the summer desert heat from an overly airconditioned store. Dry and breath-stealing and surprisingly, weirdly pleasant.

  That last made her wince. Nothing to do with demons should be pleasant. Especially not their heat. The fact that it was, that she’d liked that wash of heat, was worrisome.

  She waited until the pulsing red dot shrunk and vanished before she finally opened her eyes and reoriented to the real world. The man under her hands was still now, his eyes closed. But he was breathing, so she hadn’t accidentally killed him unraveling his spell. That was something, she supposed.

  “I should be studying for my midterms,” she murmured, mostly to herself.

  Sebastian stepped closer, and she felt his hand hovering over her shoulder. But he didn’t touch her. And a moment later, he stepped away again.

  “He’s separated from the demon now?” Aidan asked.

  “Mostly. Not clear what kind of damage was ultimately caused. But the bond is broken.”

  “Thank you,” the injured man said, his voice gruff.

  She glared at him. “Why the fuck did you summon so damned many demons? What the fuck did that get you?” Her anger rose as she asked, even though she wasn’t expecting an answer.

  She wasn’t disappointed. The man glared back at her and kept his mouth shut. The second man didn’t even glance up, hadn’t glanced up throughout all the screaming and yelling. Angie was starting to wonder if he was even conscious.

  “They’re part of a…cult would be the best word,” Aidan said.

  Surprising Angie and the man both because the man turned his glare on Aidan.

  “End of the world cult,” Aidan said. “Summon lots of demons. Release them on the world. Ensure you’re bound to a demon so you have power over the remaining humans. Apocalyptic fantasy world for them to play in.”

  Angie cursed again. “Well that’s a fucking shit idea.”

  Sebastian huffed a sound like a laugh but not quite.

  “These three came the closest to unleashing more demons than they could handle,” Aidan said. “The others have been…stopped earlier than this.”

  “Why were they allowed to get this far?” Angie demanded.

  “Not allowed. Got to this point before we could get here.” Aidan shrugged. “We can’t all teleport.”

  The phrasing brought Angie blinking up short. Wait. Some of the hunters could teleport?

  Aidan grinned.

  Angie couldn’t tell if she was joking or not with that grin. She decided to believe it was a joke because Aidan had a very weird sense of humor.

  “How do you know this?” the injured man growled.

  “It’s my job,” Aidan said. “Sorry we dragged you into it, though,” she said to Angie, mostly ignoring the injured man. “But I am glad you were here.” She gestured to the now unconscious man. “Neither of us could have done anything to help him with a magic spell.”

  Demon hunters didn’t wield magic. Even if the way they could use their will did sometimes look like magic. She wondered if Aidan was being honest, though. She didn’t know enough about exactly what the hunters could do with their will to say for sure that they couldn’t use it to break a magical spell. In fact, she suspected they’d have to be able to use it against magic because demons possessed a kind of magic. Their power manifested as “magic” in this realm anyway. Fighting demon magic meant the hunters could fight magic. But maybe they couldn’t break anything that wasn’t demonic? Maybe witch magic was beyond their will?

  And did Angie really want to know the answers to those questions? She was curious enough to say yes, but had enough self-preservation instincts to know that if she got those answers, it might drag her in too deep into the hunters’ world for her own good. Probably better to remain on the outside, and let them keep their secrets.

  She glanced back at Sebastian and something like regret moved through her. She ignored it.

  “Now what?” she asked Aidan.

  “We go.”

  “What about them?” Angie nodded to the cult members who’d just nearly brought about a mini-apocalypse.

  “They have some recovering to do.” Aidan got into the face of the injured man, so suddenly he leaned backward and blinked hard. Aidan smiled at him. “I wouldn’t recommend continuing to summon demons, though. We’ll be here next time. And the time after that. And we’ll keep stopping you from unleashing them on the world. It’s what we do. But… Who knows if next time we can stop them from claiming you. We won’t always have someone with us who can break a binding spell. Ask him when he comes to what it was like. Then rethink your life. And maybe, maybe…get a new set of friends. Up to you of course.”

  She straightened away from the man, who was trying to glare at her, but his gaze kept darting to his unconscious associate.

  The third man finally glanced up from under the scruff of his hair, giving Angie a narrow view of dark eyes with heavy purple circles underneath.

  “And if that’s not warning enough,” Aidan continued to the injured man, “I do believe there are some people in law enforcement that have a great deal of interest in what your friends have been doing. More than you might realize. They will have some questions for you. If you don’t stop heading down this road.”

  Angie stood away from the unconscious man, watching the injured one working through everything Aidan was telling him. His expression was still mulishly stubborn. Maybe he’d take the advice. Maybe he wouldn’t.

  But either way, it was no longer her problem. The hunters could deal with these idiots.

  As they turned to leave though, Angie did say, “Definitely ask him what that bond with a demon was like. What it did to him.” She sighed. “If he wakes up, he’s going to need a hospital or a healer. I’m not a healer, so I couldn’t fix the…damage.”

  This got the injured man blinking. He scurried closer to his associate on the ground, pressing a hand to his chest.

  Angie followed Aidan, Sebastian at her back, as they left the three men to clean up their mess. If they could.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The diner was quiet this time of night, only a few scattered people sitting at booths at the opposite side of the open dining room and one person sitting at the counter. There weren’t any people at the free-standing tables in the middle of the room, which gave them even more space and privacy.

  Angie worked her way through her burger and fries, feeling like she hadn’t eaten in a month. After working all that magic to unravel the binding spell right after opening a demon realm portal took its toll on her strength. And now that she no longer had the stink of sulfur in her nose, her hunger overwhelmed her. She drank three refilled sodas and had nearly finished her meal before anyone spoke.

  Sebastian sat across the table from her, Aidan next to him. He’d ordered a burger and fries too, and was mostly done eating when Angie finally pushed her plate away. Aidan had finished her bowl of spaghetti and side of fries a few minutes before Angie and was nursing a Coke.

  “Spaghetti at a diner?” Angie asked.

  Aidan shrugged. “This place makes a good red sauce.”

  Angie let out a half-hearted chuckle.

  “Thanks for helping tonight,” Aidan said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Do you want to explain?” Aidan nodded to Sebastian. “Or I can later.”

  Angie glanced around the diner. No one was close enough to overhear if they spoke quietly. But even if someone was close enough, she was pretty sure Aidan could just will them not to hear.

  “Not a lot to explain,” she said to Sebastian, who was staring at her. For a beat, she forgot she was supposed to be talking, getting lost in that stare, those lovely dark eyes, with just a faint hint of red in the depths. She blinked and shook her head. “I can open portals to demon realms, realm breaches if you will. All I need is a tree trunk that forms a natural V. Doesn’t happen with just branches. Needs to be the actual trunk of the tree. Has to have grown that way, to form the V-shape naturally.”

  “How? Magic? A spell?”

  “No. At least nothing active like that. It’s magic, I guess. But not anything I control. I just have to…look through the tree, and I can see into a demon realm. And my looking thins the barrier between that realm and this one.”

  “Thins it?”

  “Enough the demons can see the opening. Enough to let things out,” she said quietly.

  “But also enough to force things back,” Aidan added.

  Angie shrugged, but she didn’t look away from Sebastian.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Sebastian said. “But the demons that went through disappeared.”

  “Unless they get out into this realm, no one sees what I see. Not through the tree, anyway. You’d see the demons after they broke through the breach I opened. I’m the only one who has the…” She was about to say, with heavy sarcasm, the “pleasure” of seeing into the realms. But she pulled back on her ire. Sebastian didn’t deserve her sarcasm right now. None of this was his fault.

  Not anyone’s fault really. It was a curse-gift she had and had to deal with. Life wasn’t fair. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

  She finished her sentence with, “I’m the only one who sees into the realm.”

  “When did you first discover you could do that?” He kept his voice quiet and low, the English accent a calming rumble.

  “Five. Church parking lot.” She finally looked away to smile faintly at Aidan. “A hunter came and saved the day.”

  Aidan smiled faintly back.

  Angie faced Sebastian again, only to catch him giving Aidan a quick look of surprise. She was curious enough to wonder about the look but not curious enough to ask. The less she knew about Sebastian the better. She was already dreading the idea of saying goodbye for some reason, and she didn’t like that she felt this way. Liked even less that she didn’t fully understand her own reaction.

  He met her gaze again. Her heart beat a little harder and her stomach danced a giddy jig.

  Or maybe she did understand her reaction to him. Maybe that was the problem.

  She didn’t belong in the demon hunters’ world. She was a college student who needed to study for her midterms. She was a practicing witch who still had plenty to learn. The magic was a constant discipline that took years of study and focus. It was her calling, her…identity. She was a witch.

  And that meant getting to know a handsome demon hunter any better than she already did was dangerous.

  The waitress came to clear their plates and ask if they wanted anything. Angie and Sebastian ordered tea. Aidan ordered another Coke. When the tea arrived, Sebastian scowled at the tea bag next to his mostly warm cup of water.

  “Something wrong?” she asked him.

  “This isn’t tea.” He held up the little bag and shook his head. “This is an abomination against tea.”

  She pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh. “So you’re a tea snob, then.”

  “Not a snob. I just have functioning taste buds.”

  She chuckled at the face he made as he dunked the bag in his tepid water.

  Yeah. Definitely dangerous getting to know him any better.

  To her relief, they stopped talking about demons as they finished their drinks. They talked about nonsense like the best teas, and a good place in the US to get actual proper tea—what Sebastian considered proper tea—and no one asked any more questions about how she broke through the barrier between demon realms and this one just by looking through a tree.

  The truth was, she didn’t know herself. No one had been able to explain the how to her. Aidan hadn’t had any answers. Neither had her mentor Esmerelda. Though Esmerelda had given her the pentagram charm to help her stay in control in the moments when she opened that barrier.

  But in her studies, she had, occasionally, tried to look up the origin of her skill. Any information about what it was, how it had happened, how she could better control it.

 

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