“We are not kids anymore,” Trent was saying from the hallway. “Don’t ever endanger her like that again. Understand?”

  “Knock it off, Kallie.” Lee hit the hated nickname hard. “Your girlfriend had it covered.”

  “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” I muttered as the two of them faced off. I’d overheard a similar conversation at camp over a sensory burn and busted fence, but I think Trent had been worried about Jasmine, not me. At least, I think her name was Jasmine. Stupid memory blockers . . .

  “Hey, Rache. How about some light?” Jenks asked, and I sent a ribbon of awareness out to the ley line in the garden, pulling the living sunshine deep into me. My sock-footed feet tingled, flat on Hodin’s glyph-entrenched floor. He’s not getting his security deposit back.

  “Lenio cinis,” I whispered, gesturing toward the cluttered workbench set in the middle of the room, and a globe of light blossomed atop it. Unlike most charms, this one required me to maintain a hold on the ley line, and I shifted my shoulders, feeling the energy coming in to settle into well-used channels where I could let it flow for hours without strain. Bis’s eyes slitted, his grip on my shoulder easing as the line ran through us both.

  “Always said a demon was more handy than a jar of Vaseline.” Jenks’s wings thrummed as he darted from one corner of the room to the other. Hodin had covered the walls and ceiling with a metallic silver. Three interlacing circles took up much of the floor, one incorporating the neatly made bed, another the freestanding workbench, and a third around the illegal open-fire hearth under the window. There was no hood to funnel out the fumes, definitely not to code.

  “Nice lair,” I said as I went to the cluttered workbench. A circular, blemish-free mirror was propped against the wall, the nearby oil pencil telling me he used it like a dry-erase board. “Hey, that’s mine!” I exclaimed as I found a sock wadded up beside a used pentagram, and Bis’s tail tightened about me. I’d thought I’d lost that sock.

  “Don’t touch anything.” Trent pushed into the room, Lee fast behind him.

  He was right, and I drew my hand away, frowning at the book open to a doppelganger curse beside it. It wasn’t one of the nice ones you could buy for Halloween. This one was as illegal and dangerous as a left turn onto the expressway. Son of a troll turd. So that’s where the socks in the dryer go. Off to a demon’s doppelganger curse.

  Lee took my globe of light and raised it to the ceiling. “Hold this, will you, Trent?” He shoved the light at him. “I want a picture of these glyphs. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “It’s as if he lined his walls with tinfoil,” Trent whispered, his unease obvious.

  “Abundans cautela non nocet,” I said as Lee craned his neck, phone clicking. Bis rumbled at the surge of line energy through us as a lethal-magic detection spell hazed the workbench and then dissolved to nothing. The area was clean, and when Bis hopped from my shoulder to the table, I stuffed my sock into a pocket and flipped the spell book closed before Lee could see it.

  A handwritten theme book was under it. If Hodin had written down any experimental spells, that might be where they were, and I took it in hand, curious.

  “Thank you, Rachel,” Trent said, and Lee huffed in annoyance when Trent dropped to his knees and angled the light under the cot. “That is a handy charm.”

  “If you trust it,” Lee said sourly. “Any glyphs under there?” he added as Bis wrestled a leather-bound book open. It was almost as big as he was.

  “Yes, and I always trust Rachel’s charms.”

  “Mee, mee, mee, mee, mee,” Lee mocked, phone at the ready when Trent set my light on the desk and pulled the bed aside to show another, smaller pentagram under it.

  “Guys?” I flipped through the theme book as Lee’s phone clicked. The handwritten notes were all about Stef, and I set it aside to give to her later. “Can we focus? I’m looking for a really old spell book or anything that will link the chakra curse to the mage.”

  Lee looked up from helping Trent shift the bed back into place. “Who’s the mage?”

  Jenks came out from under the cot, hands slapping the cobwebs from his jacket. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out, dust for brains.”

  “Hodin’s former student.” Trent teased a palm-size book out from under Hodin’s pillow. It was old, leather-bound, and falling apart—and my interest grew. “We think he’s working with the incoming alpha pack to try to take control of Cincy’s Weres,” he added.

  Or was, I thought, appreciating Trent’s tact. I wasn’t supposed to know Walter was dead. Trent, either, but like I wasn’t going to tell him?

  Bis immediately dropped his large book, shocking Trent from his study when his wings opened and he half flew, half jumped to the elf’s shoulder. The kid gave him a wing-rising shrug, then leaned to study the tattered book Trent had splayed open in his hands. My eyebrows rose. The pages were glowing.

  “Rachel? Take a look at this,” Trent said, his head down as he came closer. “I’m pretty sure it’s the last curse Hodin did before you put him in a tulpa. The pentagram on the hearth is the one pictured here.”

  “You can’t put people in a tulpa,” Lee said.

  Bis smiled, his black teeth catching the chancy light. “Rachel can.”

  My shoulder bumped Trent’s, and with Bis’s head between us, I studied the unfamiliar script. “I don’t recognize that language,” I said, my fingers covering Trent’s to turn the book over to see the cover and spine. There was no title, which would, by logic, make it demon. But as the faint warning tingle in my hand began to hint at stabs of pain, I wasn’t sure. My almost hold on the book was kindling an as-yet-uninvoked spell, and I pulled away as the glow shifted to red. The book didn’t like me.

  But it likes Trent, I mused as the pages resumed a welcoming, pure white. “Is it elven?”

  “Ancient elven,” Trent said, and Lee quit taking pictures and came to look. “It’s hard to read, but I’m thinking . . .” Trent carefully shifted a tattered page, his focus going from a pentagram to the one on the floor. “Well, it’s the right book,” he said, now focused on a line of text. “This is the invocation phrase you gave the hospital. Al was right.” Guilt pinched his brow. “The chakra curse is elven. I didn’t want to believe him.”

  As if the book glowing at his touch isn’t enough of a clue? “Does it have the cure phrase?” Impatient, I reached for the book, yelping when a dart of mystic-powered energy shot through me. My globe of light on the bench went out with a pop. Bis chuckled in the sudden darkness, the gravelly, low rumble sending a shiver through me.

  “Way to hold the line, Carrots,” Lee muttered . . . and then three globes of light burst into existence: mine, Trent’s, and Lee’s.

  “You need to grow up,” Trent said, and Bis’s white-tufted ears went flat in annoyance.

  Flustered, I let my new light go out. “Turn to the end of the curse,” I said, ignoring Lee. If I could wake Cassie’s people, Vivian might cut me some slack.

  Trent eased the old page over, and I held my breath as I studied the hand-drawn pictures of a complicated-looking lens and a Möbius strip. I couldn’t tell if it was a continuation of the curse or we had moved on to the cure, and Bis leaned precariously lower to study them.

  Again I reached for the book, drawing away when it shot a warning zap of blue-tinted sparkles at me. “Is that the cure?” I asked, my fisted hand behind my back.

  “Give me a minute.” Trent’s brow furrowed as he struggled through the unfamiliar text.

  The book clearly did not like me this close. Then again, it might be responding to Lee, seeing as he was tight to Trent’s other shoulder, hand reaching. “Lee, perhaps—” Trent started, and then Lee yelped when a bolt of mystic-blue energy darted from the book and struck him.

  Lee’s light went out with a pop to leave only Trent’s. Jenks darted up, clearly startled. Bis, though, steadfastly held position on Trent’s shoulder, his red eyes hard as he glared at Lee. The man had backed up and was rubbing his fingers against his thumb, clearly smarting.

  “Hey, I found the lens,” Jenks said, his dust glowing as he kicked at an elaborately cut chunk of glass the size of a walnut sitting upon the workbench.

  “Ah, I wouldn’t knock that around if I were only four inches tall.” Looking odd with Bis on his shoulder, Trent shifted the book in his hand and tapped the illustration. “It focuses mystics into a dangerously high concentration within the engraved Möbius strip.” He licked his lips, a little pale. “That’s how it works. It shoots out a blast of mystics to stop the chakras’ spin.”

  “Except the heart chakra,” I said. “No wonder their auras are that greenish yellow.”

  Trent nodded. The light of discovery in his gaze was heady even if he seemed a little ill, and I felt a pang of love for him. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he added, and Lee cautiously leaned in, sullen and bad-tempered that Trent could hold the book with impunity and he couldn’t. “Look.” Trent jiggled the book so we all could see. “The lens focuses the mystics, and the pentagram traps them in the engraved Möbius strip before remolding it into a ring.” His brow furrowed. “It remains connected to the ley line even after the curse has been twisted. Odd.”

  Hence the person doing it dying of mystic overload.

  Trent didn’t notice Lee reach for the book, only to draw away in a frustrated anger—but I did. “If I’m understanding this correctly,” Trent mused, “when invoked, the concentrated mystics burst out, jolting the intended chakras into a state of immobility. If chakras don’t spin, they don’t allow a smooth energy flow.”

  “And the victim passes out,” I whispered.

  “To die a slow death.” Lee took a picture of the page. “That sounds elven to me.”

  “And the cure?” I hid my hand behind my back as the book redoubled its glow.

  “Hang on a second,” Trent said, and I dropped to my heels. Jenks was grinning at me, and it was all I could do not to flick his wing. “Rachel, you know Hodin’s handwriting. Are they his notes in the margin?”

  “Yep,” I said, frustrated when Trent flipped the pages back and forth, but never to the page I wanted.

  “That lens looks old,” Bis said. “There can’t be many people who can make it.”

  “Like zero,” Lee said as he moved to the workbench. “Where do you think Hodin got it? It’s almost like a reverse Fresnel lens.”

  Trent’s head rose at Jenks’s warning wing rasp. “Put it down, Lee,” Jenks said, and then I was scrambling, juggling the tiny book when Trent dropped it into my hands to confront Lee.

  Bis was suddenly in the air, and I yelped, freezing in indecision. I didn’t want to drop something that old and falling apart, but I didn’t want to be burned, either. I held my breath—only to realize that I wasn’t writhing in pain. The spell protecting the book hadn’t engaged. Wondering, I glanced at Bis as he alighted on my shoulder.

  “It likes you now,” Bis said as he peered down at it splayed open in my hand.

  Maybe because Trent gave it to me?

  “If that belongs to anyone, it belongs to Rachel. Put it down,” Trent said, and I turned to see him facing a belligerent Lee, Jenks hovering over Trent’s shoulder like an avenging angel.

  Lee peered through the lens, goading him. “Why? You going to twist the curse?”

  “Don’t be stupid. All we need to know is how to break it. Anything else is a really bad idea.” Smug, I turned to the last page, looking for the cure. If the invocation for the curse was in Latin, maybe the countercurse would be, too. “Lee, put the lens down before you break it.”

  “I’m not going to break it.” Lee set the lens down with a small click. “Sorry, Trent, I know you’re dying to try it, but this is out of your league, ancient elven or not.”

  “Will you grow up?” I said, glad we hadn’t told Lee we had a curse ring already.

  “It’s a lens and a strip of metal.” Lee gestured at the workbench. “What’s the problem? Scared of a little smut?”

  Sure enough, Trent’s ears reddened. I jiggled the open book, uncomfortable with the darts of sensation prickling my fingers. A memory flashed through me of them getting me into trouble at camp. Or Lee, rather, because Trent would do anything that Lee dared him. Course, Lee would do anything Trent dared him to do, so they were both kind of stupid.

  Lee took another picture of the pentagram on the hearth. “You don’t have to use the ring,” he said. “Just make it. I’ve never seen a spell that uses a Möbius strip.”

  I went to shut the book, but Bis flicked his tail into the pages, stopping me. “Not happening,” I said. My voice was calm, but I felt sick as I imagined a stream of mystics too powerful for a demon to handle, much less a witch or elf. No need to tell Lee that twisting the curse requires the death of the spell caster. My reputation was bad enough already.

  “Mmmm.” Bis’s focus darted over the page. “Severing the connection to the ley lines is what turns the ring from curse to cure. Reconnecting to the line again flips it back to curse. You need the lens to do it, not just the invocation phrase.”

  Which probably means flipping the ring from curse to cure will likely kill the person doing it as well, I thought, knowing I was right when Bis nodded at my sick look.

  “You can read ancient elven?” Trent asked, clearly surprised, and Bis blushed a deep red.

  “A little,” Bis said, then frowned at Jenks when he dropped down onto the page, where his dust set Hodin’s notes to glow.

  “Hodin’s notes say he was grooming someone with the initial S to make a ring,” Bis said, his pebbly brow pinched as he studied the book in my hand. “Stephanie? It’s a good thing you put him away.”

  “The Turn take him,” I whispered as I recalled the theme book full of notes regarding her. Having put Hodin into a tulpa suddenly seemed way too good for him.

  Jenks’s dust went a thin yellow. “I bet Glenn could find out if there have been any missing high-magic users in the last six months,” he said, and my gaze went to the pentagram before the hearth. The spilled wax looked like melted flesh, and I stifled a shudder.

  Trent’s finger tracing a line of print made the book glow. “Bis, what’s your opinion here? Could this be the phrase to invoke the cure?”

  Hope lit through me when Bis nodded. “This? This is it?” I said as I found the Latin amid the elven gibberish. Humus, fluenta, accenderaet, I mused, translating the first three words into earth, water, and sun. Aer, aether, lucem, and spatium were the last four, which loosely meant air, ether, light, and the-nothing-that-was-all. They were the seven main chakras and, in hindsight, obvious. A thrill of anticipation raced through me. I had the cure.

  “The words, together with the ring, summon and direct mystics to get stilled chakras spinning again,” Trent said, and then he hesitated, taking the book from me and flipping the pages back and forth. “Bis, double-check me. A simple circle will protect the person summoning them, right? We’re not going to bring the Goddess into this, are we?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bis said, and Jenks snickered when his voice cracked. “But I’m going to go with you anyway,” he added, his tail tightening across my shoulders.

  I stared at Trent for an entire three seconds, a wealth of possibilities making my fingers itch. I have the cure. See, Vivian? I am a good person. “Sorry, guys. Bis and I have to go.”

  “Count me in.” Jenks’s dust was a cheerful gold. “How about you, Cookie Man? You got time to spot Rachel while she does some spelling?”

  “Let me call Quen.” Clearly pleased, Trent reached for his phone. “Five minutes.”

  “Wait, you’ve actually got one of these rings?” Lee said, eyes wide. “You’re kidding, right? Can I see it? Where did you get it?”

  Bis was practically humming with anticipation, and I touched his foot. “Al has it,” I lied, not knowing why. “And no way in hell,” I said, jumping when Trent snapped the tiny book in his hand closed and handed it to me again. I froze, startled out of my next thought as the book seemed to warm and settle, accepting my touch now that Trent had made it obvious I was to be trusted. Like a demon servant shelving books? Ancient indeed. “I have to go uncurse Cassie’s friends.”

  “What about your porch ward?” Lee asked as he headed for the hall—only to jerk to a halt when Trent stopped him.

  “Give me the lens,” Trent said, and Lee smirked.

  “You little moss wipe!” Furious, Jenks hovered between them. “You tried to lift it?”

  “Jenks, relax,” Trent said as Lee pulled from his grip. “He’s just being a jerk-wad.”

  The mild epithet made Lee laugh, somehow turning his potential theft into a kid’s game. Not at all embarrassed, Lee took the lens out of his pocket and tossed it to Jenks.

  “Hey!” the pixy shouted, barely getting under it before it hit the floor. Wings laboring, he managed to drag it back atop the workbench.

  “Not funny,” I said as Bis rumbled low and deep on my shoulder.

  “Can’t blame me for trying,” Lee said with a chuckle. Hands in his pockets, he went into the hallway.

  “He doesn’t have anything else,” Bis whispered in my ear. “I was watching him.”

  “Thanks, Bis,” I said. Trent had followed Lee out, Jenks hot behind him as he swore, bringing Disney, Tink, and troll turds together in an unholy trinity. I took one last look at Hodin’s room as I picked up the lens and dropped it into the pocket with the ring. A weird feeling passed through me as I hit the hall. The last time they were together like this, Hodin was twisting a dark curse, killing someone.

  Hodin’s door was still open, and I shifted the Srandford bowl between the door and jamb so it wouldn’t shut. “Hey, Lee? You’re still a jerk, but thanks for your help,” I said as I joined Lee and Trent in the sanctuary, a dark elven magic book in one hand and a gargoyle on my shoulder. Lee already had his coat on, but his tight frown eased at my words.