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  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She conjures Blue Fire and …’ He hesitated, then murmured, ‘I have been closer to her than I care for.’

  I didn’t want to know what he meant by that, although my overactive imagination was having a field day. I hated her more than enough already; I didn’t need more reasons.

  ‘Are you free of her?’ Vaybian asked. ‘If we enter the drakon’s den, will she be able to break down your defences? If so, it is better that you stay here.’

  ‘I have been entombed in Blue Fire once, so it will make it easier for her to imprison me again,’ he conceded. ‘Hopefully we will find Amaliel first and take what is yours before she is alerted to our presence.’

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’ They both turned to me, Jinx with a slightly puzzled expression, Vaybian’s more expectant. ‘Why doesn’t Jinx change back into himself, then there is no chance of Persephone bumping into her doppelgänger and Vaybian can say he’s captured me and Jinx is back on side?’

  Jinx rested his chin on his fist; a familiar gesture which just looked weird done by Persephone. ‘I do not like looking like this,’ he admitted. ‘It feels too … intimate.’

  ‘I must admit just looking at him gives me the creeps,’ Vaybian said.

  ‘Looking at her gives me the creeps!’

  Jinx didn’t wait for any more discussion; the air shimmered and my Deathbringer was back. The suit was gone; he was wearing his trademark black leather trousers and boots, and he’d replaced the long leather coat with another, this one soft and supple, and not pecked into a holey mess by crows.

  He breathed in deeply. ‘Better.’

  ‘You like the coat?’

  He cocked his head to one side, ‘You do not?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ It did suit him, but it also made him look a little scary, especially with his hair hanging loose, and that make me wonder how much of him still belonged to Persephone.

  ‘You do not appear sure.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘If you want her to believe I am still hers, I must look the part.’

  He was right, of course, but it didn’t mean I had to like it.

  ‘What if Joseph turns up while we’re in there?’ I wondered.

  ‘We kill him,’ Jinx said.

  ‘He’s a human,’ Vaybian reminded him.

  Jinx turned his glowing eyes on Vaybian, his expression dark. ‘If he were a human, he would deserve to be crushed like an insect beneath the heel of my boot for what he and his mistress intend for this world. As he is not, he will get what he deserves.’

  ‘Joseph isn’t human?’ I asked.

  I had been quite sure that he was. If I was wrong, he had somehow managed to hide his daemon self beneath a very substantial façade – but then, hadn’t I done the same thing most of my life? Were they like me, or were they born to this world to live like sleepers, undercover and waiting for the time they were to be awakened by their handler? Maybe while humans were worrying about foreign sleeper spy cells, we had something much worse lying in wait.

  ‘Soulseer,’ Vaybian said, shaking me out of my reverie, ‘if we’re to make a move we should make it now. The longer we wait the better the chance of us being discovered, either by the Guardians out here, or upon the return of the real Joseph in there.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, taking a deep breath and pulling myself up to my full five foot five, ‘let’s go.’

  Jinx took hold of one arm and Vaybian took hold of the other and they marched me across the road to the house, leaving Pyrites to keep guard and alert us if the real Joseph should return. We’d texted Shenanigans so he knew where we were; if anything happened to us, we hoped the cavalry would arrive shortly. And even if they didn’t, the Guardians would be drawn towards Jinx and Vaybian’s earlier displays of power.

  ‘Torch the limo if you have to,’ I told Pyrites. ‘Though if you do, get out of the way fast: it’ll explode – but at least we’ll hear it inside.’ He shrank to the size of a bird and perched up in a nearby tree. I didn’t like leaving him, but we would be better served with him as a lookout than inside with us. Besides, I didn’t want Persephone getting her evil claws in another of my friends.

  By the time we’d reached the door I was pretty sure it was only Jinx and Vaybian holding me that was stopping my knees from giving way. I was beyond scared – but I had to help Kayla and my mother. I cheered myself up with the thought that I would hopefully get to see the smug smile wiped off of Persephone’s very red lips.

  Vaybian tapped in the code, pushed the door and in we walked, as easy as that.

  The entrance hall was dominated by a huge staircase with ornate banisters leading up to a landing going off to the left and right. Thick carpet patterned in red and gold covered the floor and stairs and paintings in ostentatious, gold-lacquered frames covered the off-white walls.

  Small pieces of antique furniture were strategically placed at either side of the two doors leading off from the hall: dainty occasional tables and fancy cabinets on which stood porcelain Japanese vases full of sweet-scented flowers. Like her beautiful painted face, it was all for show, just like her other lairs.

  ‘Which way?’ Vaybian hissed.

  Jinx pointed and led us back behind the stairs. Of course – another bloody basement. It was Amaliel we were after, and where else would he be except down underground, hiding in the dark like the rodent he was.

  Jinx yanked open the door and let go of my arm to step onto the staircase. Vaybian gestured for me to go next and he followed on behind. Despite our differences, I felt that much safer knowing he was at my back.

  A bulb enclosed in a thick glass wall light glowed overly white at the top of the stairs, and there was another at the bottom; that illumination led me to believe there was someone waiting for us down there – whether they were expecting us or not was a different matter.

  Then a little flame of doubt bloomed in my chest. Jinx might still be in her thrall; this might all be part of the game. The words he was speaking could be her words; the gestures he made her gestures. He could be leading us to our doom.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a solid, heavy door, a fire-door, maybe. Jinx took hold of the handle and turned it. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, not making a sound. He stepped inside, with us right behind him. I paused on the brink, but it was too late now: if this was a trap, Vaybian and I had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

  Blue light flowed through the open doorway and I wondered which poor soul was now captured within its fiery grasp. Then I saw – and for the second time in as many hours I was left speechless.

  It was the bokor encased in blue flickering light, his rigid body twisting and twitching, his mouth stretched wide in a silent scream. Amaliel, standing to one side, his back to the door – his back to us – gazed up at him as he hissed, ‘Know now who wields the real power!’

  We moved into the room, Jinx on one side of me, Vaybian to my other, but although I didn’t think we’d made any noise, Amaliel must have sensed he had an audience, for he spun around to face us, his eyes flared and he took a step back.

  ‘Well, well, well. It appears there’s no honour among psychos either,’ I said. I couldn’t quite believe that at last we had him just where we wanted him: cornered like the rat he was.

  He took another step back so he was standing just behind the writhing bokor. I wondered what he’d done to so piss Amaliel off when the two of them had been in cahoots for years.

  Amaliel’s eyes went to Jinx and he recoiled, gasping, ‘Keep him away from me—’

  When I looked at Jinx, I could understand why; he’d gone all feral again – and Vaybian’s expression wasn’t much better.

  ‘Let me go,’ Amaliel said, a wheedling tone in his voice.

  Was he mad? ‘And why should I do that?’

  ‘I have something you want.’ Amaliel groped around inside his robes and pulled out two crystals hanging on the chains about his neck.

  ‘And if I let you g
o, will you give them to me?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘You cross your revolting black heart and hope to die disgustingly and painfully?’

  ‘I … promise.’

  Jinx made a snarly sound in the back of his throat; he obviously gave the same weight as me to any promise Amaliel might give.

  I crossed my arms and stared straight into his terrible eyes. ‘I don’t trust you.’

  ‘Nor I you.’

  ‘Then we have a problem.’

  He rattled the crystals together. ‘I will smash them.’

  I stared at him some more. We both knew I didn’t have much choice, but I wasn’t about to show him that I was fazed. ‘Take them from around your neck and hold them out in your hand.’

  ‘And you will let me leave?’

  ‘If you hand them to me.’

  ‘You can’t trust him to do what’s right,’ Vaybian whispered in my ear.

  I glanced his way and our eyes met. ‘If I’m to save Kayla, I’ve no choice. Get ready to make a grab for them.’

  Amaliel had unclasped the chains from around his neck and was holding them in his bony fingers, the phials clinking against each other as they dangled. Vaybian took a step towards him and Amaliel snatched his hand back and clasped it against his chest.

  ‘We had a deal, Amaliel.’

  ‘You have said you’ll let me go – but will he?’ Amaliel pointed a skeletal finger at Jinx.

  ‘If you don’t hand the Soulseer the phials, it will be me you will have to worry about,’ Vaybian snarled.

  ‘This is not helping,’ I murmured. I wondered what Amaliel was thinking about ‘Joseph’ switching teams; he’d not commented … I took a step towards Amaliel and when he took a step back I smiled. ‘You’re not scared of me, are you?’

  ‘Of you?’ If he was aiming for defiance in his voice, he failed miserably.

  I started to laugh. ‘I don’t believe it. You are! You’re scared of me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous – why should I be scared of you?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t hand me the crystals right now you’ll pretty soon find out.’ I stretched out my hand, and when he took another step back, the phials still clutched to his chest, I said, ‘Amaliel, I’m beginning to lose patience.’

  ‘If you stand over there’ – he pointed to the far corner – ‘I will place the crystals there’ – he pointed to the middle of the floor, next to where the bokor continued to burn – ‘then you will let me leave.’

  ‘Right, so you can slam the door shut behind you and lock us in? I don’t think so,’ I said, folding my arms.

  ‘You will soon be released – the Guardians are no doubt on their wa—’ But he was interrupted not by angelic-looking daemons but by an enormous boom! from up above. The room shook and puffs of dust started floating down from the ceiling.

  Our eyes went to the doorway – the car had exploded, which meant Persephone was back – and that was all Amaliel needed.

  ‘Catch them if you can!’ he cried, and as he leaped for the door he flung the crystals towards the far corner.

  Vaybian threw himself across the room, his fingers outstretched, and I had just started after him a fraction of a second slower, when a strong hand grabbed my wrist and held me back.

  ‘Omnia statur!’ Jinx said – and everything went still. This wasn’t like before; then, just the living had frozen in time. Here I could see the clouds of dust hovering above us, Amaliel was frozen in the doorway and Vaybian was sprawled out in midair, his fingers not quite reaching the crystals. He had missed them. The amethyst crystal had just hit the wall, the tip had shattered and the golden basket in which the crystal rested was glowing red and melting.

  Jinx let go of my wrist and strode over to where the undamaged crystal had stopped mid-flight. He wrapped the chain around his fingers and it fell limply into his hand. When he lifted the crystal up to the light, a deep blue glow pulsed from within. It was Kayla’s crystal.

  I couldn’t remember my mother and my heart ached for her. She was well and truly lost to me, for ever. But now wasn’t the time to grieve; that would have to come later.

  A small smile lifted the corner of Jinx’s lips as he dropped the crystal into his top pocket. I was about to object, then thought better of it: he had saved her, not me and not Vaybian, so I guess that gave him the right to keep her safe now.

  He glanced Vaybian’s way and with a look of disgust placed the tip of his forefinger on the back of his head. Vaybian fell in a sprawl to the ground with an undignified yelp and instantly changed to daemon. He crawled up onto his knees, looking this way and that, then saw the crystal shattering against the wall and his face contorted into an expression of outright misery. ‘Kayla?’ he whispered. ‘My princess? My princess—?’

  ‘It’s okay, she’s safe,’ I told him. ‘Jinx saved her.’

  ‘Can I see?’ he asked, looking from me to Jinx.

  ‘No,’ Jinx said, and touched the amethyst crystal, which continued its flight into the wall and exploded into dust.

  ‘Was there not some way—?’

  Jinx shook his head as the golden cage and chain flowed to the floor and melted into a liquid pool. ‘It was too late for her – hopefully, seeing this will make Amaliel think both crystals were destroyed.’

  A door slammed upstairs, followed by raised voices and the sound of pounding feet.

  ‘Idiots!’ a female voice shrieked. ‘Bloody idiots!’

  ‘They must still be inside,’ a calm male voice with a slight American drawl replied. Joseph.

  Persephone was far from calm. ‘Find them! Find them, find them, find them!’

  Jinx stalked to the door and grabbed hold of Amaliel’s arm. Reanimating him, he dragged him back into the room, growling from the corner of his mouth, ‘Be still!’ as Amaliel tried to pull away. ‘Be still, or you will not see a second more.’

  Amaliel stopped struggling, but held himself as far away from my death daemon as he could.

  ‘We fight?’ Vaybian asked.

  ‘We barter,’ Jinx said.

  ‘Barter?’ I asked.

  ‘For your freedom.’

  ‘I’m not the important one, Jinx,’ I told him. ‘If they have you, they have the means to destroy this world.’

  He gave me a sideways glance. ‘To me you are important.’

  ‘You can’t even remember my name!’

  ‘I will, I know this. In my last moments I will.’

  I didn’t understand what he meant, but he was scaring me. Then several people in suits were at the door. They stepped inside and parted like an honour guard as Persephone appeared, closely followed by Joseph.

  Her petulant pout was replaced by a crafty feline smile when she saw Jinx, and her smile increased a tad more as her eyes wandered over Vaybian – then her gaze shifted to me and her nose wrinkled.

  ‘Why on earth is she still around?’ she asked Jinx.

  Jinx scowled at her. ‘She is mine.’

  ‘There you go again,’ she said, ‘thinking you have a say in anything. When will you learn?’

  Her attention returned to Amaliel and the bokor and she tapped a pointed red fingernail against her lips, a gesture that weirdly brought Kayla to mind. ‘And please let go of him, Jinx,’ she said, indicating Amaliel. ‘He is not your enemy.’ She took a couple of steps forward to stand right in front of Amaliel, and I noticed Joseph keeping very close to her right shoulder. ‘Have you finished with Gaston?’ she asked, gesturing towards the bokor.

  ‘I was interrupted, but yes – for now.’

  ‘You’d better release him – we need to go.’

  ‘Why bother?’ Joseph said. ‘He won’t be good for anything now.’

  ‘He’s a lot tougher than you think.’

  Joseph shrugged, clearly not convinced.

  Amaliel raised the flat of his hand toward the pulsating column of fire and muttered something I couldn’t understand. For a moment the fire burned bright, then it darkened to violet, the
re was a pressure on my eardrums and the flame vanished, leaving tendrils of smoke and a smell like a blown-out candle. The bokor remained rigid for a fraction of a second, then fell to his knees, clutching at his throat and struggling to breathe.

  ‘I hope you’ve learned your lesson,’ Persephone said, slipping her arm through Amaliel’s as she looked down on the kneeling man.

  ‘Remember, child, who I am – remember what I have done for you,’ the bokor gasped. His rich voice now had the rasp of a man who had gargled with razorblades.

  It was like flicking a switch. Persephone’s disdainful look turned into rage as she snatched her arm from Amaliel’s and towered over the bokor. To his credit he didn’t flinch as she screamed, ‘Done for me? What exactly have you “done for me”?’

  ‘I took care—’

  Persephone raised her hand. ‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare say it, because it would be a lie.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘No!’ Her lips twisted into a nasty smirk. ‘Jinx, darling, time to show me what a good boy you are.’

  He put his fist to his temple as she crooned, ‘Jinx, why fight me? You’d feel so much better if you just let go.’

  His fist dropped to his side and his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Kill him,’ she said. ‘Make him really burn.’

  Vaybian and I both took an involuntary step back; being close to a burning black magician wasn’t our idea of fun.

  ‘Persephone, you don’t—’ Amaliel warned.

  She spun around to face him, her beautiful face contorting in a rage bordering on madness – no, strike the ‘bordering’. Psycho Bitch had jumped right off that cliff.

  ‘Who do you think you are to tell me what to do?’ she shrieked, spittle spraying from her lips as she bared her teeth.

  Joseph laid a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

  ‘I am not one of your fucking little acolytes!’

  ‘You will treat me with respect,’ Amaliel said, and she must have been crazy not to hear the warning in his voice.

  ‘Respect? Treat you with respect? Why should I? Why the fuck should I?’

  ‘Persephone—’ I heard Joseph whisper and he leaned in close to murmur something in her ear.