Lon took a couple of quick turns, and traffic became sparse. We sped through the edge of a residential neighborhood, then the four-lane dropped to two. Woods lined either side of the road. It was a straight shot, but hilly. My stomach lurched. Memories of Jupe speeding up the Halloween ride at Brentano Gardens filled my head.

As we headed toward a short bridge that stretched over a dry riverbed, one car flew past us in the opposite direction. Then we were alone. Just us and the green sedan. Lon could outrun it in the SUV out here on the straightaway. Easily. You don’t pay six figures for German engineering without some perks. So when he yelled, “Brace yourself!” I didn’t expect him to stop.

Brakes squealed on asphalt. Both my palms hit the dash. The green sedan sounded like a flock of screeching harpies as the car slid across the pavement behind us. Time slowed. I saw Lon watching the rearview mirror intently. I silently thanked providence that we were in a vehicle built like a tank and not in my tiny car.

Without warning, Lon hit the gas and whipped into the opposite lane. He stopped on a dime, right before the bridge. The green sedan rotated sideways as it skidded past, their front bumper missing my door by an inch. An angry face stared back at me through the windshield. The sedan’s back wheels flew off the pavement and it slammed into the concrete road barrier, then careened backward over the bridge into the dusty riverbed below.

Lon jumped out of the car. I hustled out to join him and peered over the siderail. The drop to the riverbed wasn’t far—ten, fifteen feet, tops. The green sedan sat at the bottom, haloed by a cloud of dust. It was too dark to see much, but I was pretty sure the engine was smoking. The back end of the car was smashed against a concrete girder below the bridge.

The driver’s door opened with a squeal. A short figure stumbled out.

“Merrin, you demon-fucking piece-of-shit warlock!” Lon shouted, then pulled up the shotgun, nestled the butt against his shoulder, and took aim.

I lurched sideways a couple of feet and covered my ears as the blast went off. All this time we’d been trying to find the magician and now he was hunting us down? That figured. When I peered down into the riverbed, he was ducking behind his car door. I knew Lon wouldn’t really shoot him. We might need the guy. Or maybe not . . .

The golden thread caught my eye. It wasn’t pointed above the treeline anymore. It had lowered and leveled out, and it was much, much brighter. Jupe was close. They must have landed just ahead. I squinted at the quiet intersection in the distance.

“Monte Verde!” I shouted at Lon, maybe a little too loudly, because my ears were ringing again. First the damn wards, and now the shotgun blast. I was going to be deaf before the night was over.

Lon glanced where I pointed, then gauged it against the gold thread.

We both peered down at Merrin. He was drawing something on the hood of his busted-up sedan. “He’s doing magick,” I said.

Lon racked the shotgun and blasted it over Merrin’s head. He flattened against the ground. Good enough. Someone would be calling the cops after hearing all that. Lon and I retreated to the SUV and took off. I knew which way to turn on Monte Verde due to the line of gold light, and there was no need to check house numbers once we got closer. Situated at the end of cul-de-sac in a heavily wooded lot, the small two-story home stood out like a circus tent, striped yellow and red. And the golden thread was heading straight for it.

Hiding in plain sight. No abandoned cannery, no deserted warehouse—just a house in the suburbs, tented for pest control. Brilliant.

Lon sped down the block and braked hard in the short driveway, slamming the SUV into a plastic trash can as we came to a sliding stop. I threw off my seat belt and pushed the door open. A tall wooden fence lined with trees shielded Ms. Forsythe’s backyard from the neighbors on either side, one of which had a For Sale sign staked out front. Big lot. Lots of trees. Very private. A great place to hide kids. Even better when you’d traced out spells over the tent to keep things quiet and ignored—I could see the Heka all over it.

Now that we were here, the golden thread was much tighter, and the angle wasn’t as level as I thought it should be. I dashed to the side of the house. Lon unlatched the gate. The hinges squeaked when it he pushed it open. We craned our necks, looking upward in the night sky, searching the trees. No, not there. The roof.

We crept inside the fenced backyard and skirted the house. Streetlights provided little illumination here, casting lacy shadows on the damp grass. At the back of the home, where it was even darker, Ms. Forsythe’s possessed body stood on the edge of the sloping tent-covered roof, one broken arm wrapped around Jupe’s shoulders. Blood soaked through her poncho and stained Jupe’s shirt. Her free hand—the one that wasn’t damaged in the free fall onto my lawn—was clamped over Jupe’s mouth.

A single loud sob escaped my mouth when I saw him.

He was conscious, standing on his own, to my great relief. And a bright golden light shone from beneath the waist of his jeans, just over his hip. My golden line of magick was connected there. He squirmed and tried to break away from the demon, who bent to speak into Jupe’s ear. Whatever was said, it stilled him.

I held up my finger and showed Jupe the golden thread, smiling tightly. I tried hard to sound braver than I felt. “You left bread crumbs, Motormouth.”

Lon raised his shotgun. The ghoulish specter of Ms. Forsythe shifted position, just slightly. Enough to show us that she could snap Jupe’s neck. “Please lower your weapon,” the demon said in the teacher’s voice. It didn’t sound quite right. The accent was rough and stilted. But it was English, not the Latin that he’d spoken to Merrin inside the Silent Temple.