“Ha!” Merrimoth’s joyful voice called out from inside the house. “I am God—no, the Devil himself. I’ve never felt so alive!”

And I’d never felt so angry. Come to think of it, I’d felt nothing but hate for David Merrimoth since I met him at the Hellfire caves several months back. Not only because the elderly Earthbound tried to feed Lon to a caged Æthyric demon in a fighting ring, but also because he wanted to herd me into an Incubus orgy.

“Stay right there, won’t you?” Merrimoth hollered from inside the house. His batshit-crazy laugh was lost in the crackle of flames that licked around the window frame.

Lon pulled me to my feet and craned to see inside the window. “He’s going downstairs.”

Heat from Merrimoth’s fire caused sweat to trickle down my back. We weren’t circus lions. No way was I jumping through the ring of a window on fire, but I wasn’t going to stand there and wait for Merrimoth to come back and shoot us. I gazed at the balcony and resigned myself to a tightrope act. “I’ll go first. Wait until I’ve crossed.”

“Like hell. I’m not going to stand here and watch you fall. We both go.”

Fine. If our combined weight destroyed the ledge, maybe I’d get to give him an I-told-you-so on the other side. I flattened my back against the house and gingerly sidled onto the cedar ledge. My heart drummed inside my chest as salty ocean air filled my lungs. I stretched out an arm and guided myself forward with an open palm on the siding for balance. One step . . . two steps. . . . The ledge creaked.

“Slow, Cady,” Lon’s voice said somewhere behind me.

I was inching forward one foot at a time—how much slower could I go?

Something fell on my face. A sharp pinpoint of cold. Then another. Plop.

“Shit.” So much for clear skies. A handful of plops, then the heavens just opened up without warning and dumped a torrent of winter rain.

“Keep going,” Lon said.

Christmas was next week, for the love of Pete. I should be wrapping presents right now and preparing myself to meet Lon’s extended family—not running from fire and tightroping across the side of some nut-job’s house in a storm.

At least the anger was motivating. Three more steps and we were halfway there. Or were we? It was hard to tell—I couldn’t turn my neck to look back or I’d lose my balance. Blustering wind thrashed my hair and fanned a hard sheet of rain across my face. Vertigo turned my knees to jelly.

“Ignore it!” Lon barked at my side.

He was right. Too late to turn back now. I had to press forward. Had to make it. All I needed to do was slide one foot, fingers reaching, slide second foot, and repeat. But during the next step, I felt the house rumble against my back.

“What was that?” I whispered.

Something behind us, on the safe little island of roofing we’d left. I’d fall if I glanced back. Lon must’ve detected something with his knack because his hand suddenly gripped my shoulder. All my muscles went rigid as a breath stuck in my throat.

A gun’s report cracked the night air.

My back stiffened. Fingernails gouged the rain-slick siding, scrabbling for purchase. Lon swore indecipherably.

“You couldn’t hit a buffalo with this old thing,” Merrimoth’s voice shouted into the storm.

“Keep going,” Lon said to me. “The Lupara’s out of shells now.”

I drew harsh breaths through my nostrils and took an indecisive step. Then another. Lon was saying something behind me again, but I blocked him out. Three steps to the balcony. I extended my arm. I could do this. Two steps. Almost there. My fingertips reached for the wooden railing—

Glass doors swung open.

A green halo swam in front of my eyes as Merrimoth burst onto the balcony. The gray-haired Earthbound was in his early seventies. He wore perfectly ironed gray slacks and a white shirt that gaped open three too many buttons to expose a plush thicket of curly gray chest hair.

“How stupid do you think I am?” he said breathlessly as rain soaked through his shirt. No horns, no fiery halo. He definitely wasn’t transmutated, so how could his knack be potent enough to create fire?

“Merrimoth!” Lon shouted. “Let us inside. We’ll discuss this like adults.”

“There’s nothing to discuss, m’boy. Dare wants to sic his hounds on me? And not even worthy hounds—Jonathan Butler’s privileged ragamuffin son and his witchy Sheba, barely old enough to tie her own shoes, much less bind me properly. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that little stunt you pulled in the Hellfire caves. Dare blamed me for the vermillion binding circle you broke. He flayed me for it.”

The crazy Earthbound held out an upturned palm. My rain-bleary vision took several seconds to register that his hand was striped with pink scars.

“Dare said I couldn’t touch you or I was out of the Hellfire Club. But I don’t need them anymore, not with power like this!” The beginning of a laugh was choked in his throat as his gaze narrowed and landed on Lon. “Get out of my brain, Butler. I feel you poking around. You want to know how I started those fires? I’m not telling. But remember that my knack always went both ways—hot and cold. Would you like a demonstration?”

“Merrimoth—”

“Look at you, little birds perched on my house. The footing on that ledge looks awfully dicey. Would be even more precarious if the temperature dropped a few degrees . . .”

The rain surged and swirled as the Earthbound flicked his wrist. A volley of cold, sharp raindrops flew against my body and pinged off the house, sounding like a thousand marbles had been scattered into the wind. Hail. He’d frozen the rain around us.