Ice quickly formed on both the ledge below and the wooden siding at our backs. My fingers slipped. Merrimoth swooped his arm in a downward arc and a long strip of ice solidified at our feet. It shot out into the night air like the enormous, curling tongue of a mythological Nordic Frost Giant.

Lon’s leg banged against mine, then his foot gave way. I turned just in time to see him careen down the icy slide. He launched into the air, rocketing into the night sky as if he’d been released from a slingshot. I watched in horror as his body hung for a split second, then dropped, heading straight for the rocky coastline below.

I didn’t have time to make a plan. No option existed but stopping Lon’s fall. And after all the trouble I’d been having summoning up my moon power to bind Merrimoth, in that single moment—the second Lon dropped—the erratic magick immediately submitted to my will and lashed out like lightning. I had no particular spell in mind, not even a sigil. Only one thought ballooned inside my head and crackled through my synapses: No.

Magick whooshed out of me with my breath. I blinked, drowsy and momentarily disoriented. I knew I’d done something big, but it took me a moment to realize exactly what.

Time had slowed.

I glanced around in shock. A peculiar silver light swathed my vision. Raindrops hung suspended in the air—illuminated by light from the house’s windows, they looked like clusters of misshapen glass beads. And on the balcony, Merrimoth’s body stood stock-still, his mouth open, hand poised in the middle of some unrealized gesture like a wax figure. As if I’d pushed a pause button. I peered over the arch of ice at my feet, dreading what I might find.

Lon!

He was suspended in the air a floor below me, caught in my magick, falling facedown, his halo and long hair streaming behind.

I’d never, never done anything this big—never even imagined I could. But the amount of energy it took to power it was already draining me.

Screwing up my courage, I chanced a couple of small, cautious steps on the slick ledge until my hand wrapped around the railing. I took a deep breath and awkwardly pitched myself sideways, scrambled onto the balcony, and skidded, almost crashing into Merrimoth. Silver fog swirled around his legs. Creepy as hell. Even creepier when I realized he wasn’t completely still. His arm was rising in slow motion, a hair at a time. His angry gaze struggled to shift in my direction.

A wave of dizziness unsteadied me. My Heka reserves were draining and I was running out of time. I shuffled around Merrimoth, spotted Lon’s vintage gun in his hand, and pried it out of his fingers. Then I scurried through the balcony doors into the house.

I found myself inside a cavernous bedroom, decorated with restraint and neutral colors, like the rest of Merrimoth’s home. Automated ceiling sprinklers doused everything with circular sprays of water. I stumbled across polished wood flooring, frantically looking for a way out, and found more than I wanted: three cameras on tripods, a bed outfitted with black rubber sheets, an object that I initially thought was a curly dildo (and upon closer inspection, was, I thought, a butt plug with one end shaped like a pig’s tail), and a gleaming, shiver-inducing metal speculum. I scurried around a black leather swing hanging from an exposed beam and darted into the hallway.

Silver fog eddied around my feet as I galloped down the main stairwell and rushed through the living room. The layout was disorienting. Lon and I had only been in this room a few moments before Merrimoth went apeshit earlier and chased us upstairs. I finally spotted a pair of glass doors. My fingers shook as they flipped a dead bolt and flung the doors open.

A small set of stairs led to the beach. Trudging over wet sand, I slipped the bulky Lupara inside my jacket and scoured the shoreline. Lon’s golden halo hummed in the darkness. He was still hanging in the sky over the foaming water, though he’d descended a bit. If he dropped a few more feet, I could reach him . . . if he weren’t suspended a few yards out over the ocean.

Minutes ago, the crashing tide would’ve pounded me to a pulp against the rocks here, but now the water was eerily still, silver fog clinging to the quiet surface. I plodded into the winter-chilled water. My steps left dark holes in the foamy surf. Utterly surreal. I marveled at the way the splashes around my watery footprints hung in midair, how they deepened as I waded knee-deep. Farther away, somewhere beyond Merrimoth’s house, I could hear the surf pounding: my moon magick apparently had limits.

Lon was above me now, his black peacoat billowing at his sides like the wings of a fallen angel. I focused on climbing the rocks to reach him, a task more difficult than I initially thought. They were slimy with seaweed, rough with broken mussel shells, and it didn’t help that shivers racked my body. When I got to a point where I could stand without falling, I stretched and nabbed Lon’s ankle, then tugged. He moved a few inches. Holy Whore—it was like pulling a box of bricks out of the sky. I tugged harder and, with a series of groans, dragged him through the air, retracing my steps to shore.

My lungs felt close to bursting and I was seriously dizzy from the amount of Heka I was using. But I knew that once I let go of the moon magick, Merrimoth would inflict some sort of insane Narnian winter across the beach. Maybe even turn us into frozen statues. Or set us on fire. I shoved Lon closer to the ground, leaning across his back, then finally sitting on him when that didn’t work.

Screw David Merrimoth and screw Dare for calling me up in the middle of the night to bind him. As I considered whether I had the strength to wrangle Lon up the driveway and into the car so we could just get out of there, a figure materialized in the shadows beneath the stilted house.