The forest fell away into a black ocean. The rocky hill, gone; the ground below, swallowed. Only the people and the charged sigils remained. My mother, father, Lon—all of them—glowed like X-rays in the darkness, transparent as the Æthryic demons trapped at the cardinal points of the circle. They were stars floating in space.

Heka poured out of me, then like a crack of lightning, returned, kindled. It surged inside me, ready to be wielded. I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried. Somewhere in front of me a bright pinpoint of light glinted in the black void. Vivid electric blue. A thrill rose up in my chest at the sight of it.

This was my power. This was what my parents wanted. Their new Aeon of magick. The summoning symbols didn’t have to be written out by hand. I made them appear, just like I did back in the Hellfire caves with the incubus.

I spotted movement; Lon’s transparent form was dashing toward me, his fiery halo crackling around his head like white fire. “Get back!” I warned. He stopped immediately, with Frater Blue cowering at his heels.

My father’s charged summoning seal illuminated the ground; something was manifesting in the space above it, obscuring the sigils so that I couldn’t read them. But it didn’t matter. I pictured it clearly in my mind, just as I’d memorized it. And I willed it onto the blue circle of light. Black shapes fell away, leaving behind a scrolling map of bright blue ancient sigils.

The white demon’s form was almost solid inside my father’s summoning circle.

Time was up. I reached out with my mind … and pushed.

The blue seal spun on its side and crashed down onto the ground. Moon-kindled Heka streamed out of me, faster than the blood flowing down my body from the open wound on my breast.

“NIVELLA THE WHITE,” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The black void disappeared.

And when it did, Nivella flickered out of my father’s seal, and reappeared smack in the middle of my blue trap.

A chorus of startled cries rang out around the circle.

Twice my height, she had skin so pale that her muscles and organs were visible beneath. She opened two large pink eyes and blinked. Her horns spiraled high over her head, just as they were drawn in the engraving in Lon’s book. She stretched four arms out like Kali ready for battle. Long, thin fingers stretched on her hands, each tipped with white claws. But in the place of her index fingers were crystal talons. Three. The fourth hand bore a stump of hollow flesh, its missing talon in my mother’s shaking hand.

“Who summoned me?” Nivella asked in an unfamiliar voice that skittered down my spine. I caught a glimpse of her serpentine tongue.

My father’s neck craned to see the demon as my mother dropped the glass talon. It rolled on the ground near her feet, leaving a trail of my blood behind.

“I did,” my father called out to the white beast.

Nivella tilted her head, puzzled, and looked at my father.

“No, you did not,” she replied without emotion. “But I remember you, mage.”

“I called you,” I shouted.

Nivella’s eyes blinked slowly, then fixed on me.

“Mother of Ahrimam,” she said, bowing her head reverently. “How may I serve you?”

Holy fucking shit. How many times had I heard that phrase and assumed the worst? It wasn’t a slur—it was a title of respect. What the hell had my parents drawn down from the Æthyr when they conceived me? Did they even know?

No time for that. The more pressing question was something much simpler: What in the world did I want from Nivella? Now that I had her, I didn’t know what to request. My mind emptied, then flashed back on the original reason I’d spent the last couple of weeks hunting her ass down. She was a witness. And though I wished like hell that she could recount a story with a different ending, I had to hear it.

“Do you know the couple in front of me?” I asked.

She glanced at my father, then my mother. “Yes, I know them. They summoned me many times, years ago.”

“For what reasons?”

“They questioned me the first two times I was summoned. The third time, they took my talon by force and trickery. The next three times, they called me to aid in the harvest of Æthyric energy.”

“How?”

“The woman slaughtered three people with my stolen talon and I collected the energy at the moment of death and fed it into the couple.”

“Enola,” the caliph cried. “You were one of my favorite adepts. Your parents would roll over in their graves if they could see what you’ve become.”

The Luxe leader stepped forward to stand beside the caliph. “I demand your parents’ lives,” Magus Zorn said in an icy voice, “as payment for the atrocities they’ve committed against the occult community.”

“No,” Nivella said, her voice sharp. “ I demand the lives of this couple as payment for deformation and harm to my corporeal body. They stole what was mine. I want it back, and I want their lives with it.”

My father backed away. Lon blurred past him, darted down, and scooped up the glass talon at my mother’s feet. Her leg flew out to kick it from his hand, but he jerked back in time. Frater Blue, still under Lon’s sway, put himself between them to defend Lon. With a wild growl, my mother’s head snapped back in my direction.

“ OH-REH-REH-HEH!” she screamed, her voice high and crazed.

One of her hands flew around my neck, choking me. She straightened the fingers on her other hand and reared back, as if she meant to crack open my bleeding wound and rip out my heart. But before she could, Lon grabbed her hair and snatched back her head violently. Her body snapped with it, as if her bones were made of rubber. He flung her roughly to the ground. The angry screeching sound she was making abruptly stopped. She didn’t get up.