“Don’t expect your guard dog anytime soon,” Antares crooned in my ear. “My men had orders to take your companions as soon as I had you.”

I trembled involuntarily as his mouth touched my ear. The physical proximity to Antares was making me sick. I fought to control myself. I might be powerless at the moment, but I still had brains, and Antares was laughably easy to manipulate.

“Your men?” I asked, a faint note of contempt in my voice. “You mean that cowardly little blob demon and his friend who looks like a pile of walking snot?”

“Be careful, sister. Those demons that you hold in such contempt will be your masters soon enough.”

I tried not to imagine what he was talking about and failed. It is not pleasant to contemplate a future in which you will be raped and tortured by demons. I hoped that Antares could see none of this on my face, and kept my voice even.

“I doubt that very much. Those two ran off as soon as Gabriel looked at them sternly, remember?” I said, referring to the time when Antares had tried taking J.B. hostage in order to draw me out. “He’s probably tying them in knots as we speak.”

Doubt flickered across Antares’s face for a moment. He tightened his embrace. We would look like lovers but for the blood running from my skin at his touch. I felt a wriggling around the vicinity of my ribs and I froze, remembering Beezle. He’d probably fallen asleep in my pocket again and was now trying to get out.

Stay down, Beezle, I thought desperately. Antares had put Beezle in a gargoyle version of a coma once, and Beezle had taken it personally. I didn’t want him trying anything stupid in the name of revenge.

I put my hands on Antares’s chest and did my best to look threatening. It’s hard to look like a badass when you are very petite but I gave it my best.

“You’d better let me go or I’ll blast you from here to Gary, Indiana,” I said. The wriggling in my pocket grew more frantic and I could hear Beezle’s muffled, indignant cries.

Antares smiled, and his smile chilled me to the bone. “No, you will not do that, little sister. I understand that your powers have left you.”

How could he know that already? I wondered. Unless . . .

“Have you been following me?” I said, and my voice dripped with contempt. “Like some mangy sneak-thief?”

Antares’s grip tightened, and I realized I was growing faint from blood loss. I could feel it running in rivulets from my arms and back.

“This mangy sneak-thief managed to catch you and that foolish human unawares. You should show me more respect, sister. I know something that you do not.”

“I find that extremely difficult to believe.”

“I know what slaughtered the wolf. I know what hunts you. I know secrets that you cannot even begin to fathom.”

I tried not to show it, but I was definitely interested. I wanted to know what had happened to that wolf.

“If you’re talking about Samiel, you’re not telling me anything new.”

“There are things worse than a nephilim’s child. Horrors that you cannot comprehend. But I know. I know of matters that the lords of the Grigori themselves do not know.” The pupils of his eyes grew thinner in his excitement. “I will make you respect me before you die.”

I am not afraid of death. You can’t be afraid of death when you do my job. But I did not want to die screaming at the hands of a demon. And as I thought that, I felt something rise up inside of me, and I knew that my magic had only been sleeping awhile. Then I heard a gurgling yell.

Antares looked away from me for a moment, and I pushed that magic up, up to the tips of my fingers still planted on his chest. Electricity crackled where I touched.

He turned his face back to me. I smiled and said, “Boo.”

Then I let loose the magic, and it surged through me and into Antares, blue fire that blasted him away from me. I heard him screaming in pain as he was launched several blocks away.

My wings having reappeared along with my powers, I fluttered up from the ground and looked around. Antares had disappeared. This was not unusual. It was a neat little magic trick that he had inherited from his mother. It generally followed a battle in which he had a lot of woundlicking to do.

Beezle popped out of my pocket and glared up at me. “You kept me in there on purpose.”

“Absolutely. I didn’t want Antares to turn you into gargoyle bits.”

“I can handle that powerless fool,” he said indignantly.

I stroked his head soothingly. “Yes, I’m very unreasonable. I just don’t know what I would do without you.”

Beezle tried not to look pleased and failed.

There was a groan from nearby, and I looked around the backyard. J.B. was lying facedown in my fallow vegetable garden. He had been wearing a puffy green ski jacket, and the back of the jacket had been scorched away by the bolt. The garment hung in blackened ribbons from his shoulders. I could see long shiny welts on his back where the magic had burned through his clothing.

I rushed to his side as he attempted to turn over. Beezle emerged from my pocket and flapped around us like a bossy mosquito.

“Don’t turn him that way. You’ll get dirt on the burns,” he said.

“I think I can handle this without instruction,” I said, annoyed.

Kneeling in the dirt, I helped J.B. to sit up. His face was scraped and bruised from the impact with the ground.

“Was there a tornado?” he asked, wincing in pain as I helped him to his feet.