The ground floor was filling with smoke, and as they reached the base of the staircase, Alex saw the stained glass windows glowing with the light of flames. The demons had set fire to the entrance of Il Bastone.
“They’re trying to smoke us out!” said Turner. He already had his phone in his hand, dialing for the fire department. “Where’s your extinguisher?”
“The kitchen,” Dawes said on a cough and ran to retrieve it.
Alex turned to Mercy and Tripp. “Go out the back. And stay together.
Wait for me outside, okay?”
“Okay,” said Mercy with a firm nod. “Move,” she told Tripp.
Il Bastone’s smoke alarm began to beep, a plaintive, wounded bleat. Alex waited only long enough to see Mercy and Tripp start down the hall; then she was racing toward the kitchen. She intercepted Dawes and grabbed the extinguisher. She’d had to use one when Len had started a grease fire in their apartment kitchen when he was cooking bacon, but she still fumbled with it.
Turner seized it from her hands.
“Come on,” she said.
She threw open the front door. Flames had consumed the grass and hedges. They were roaring up the front columns. Alex felt as if she were burning too, as if she could hear the house screaming.
The demons stood in the firelight, and behind them, their shadows seemed to caper and dance. She heard the whoosh of the fire extinguisher as Turner fought to damp the flames. But Alex didn’t stop. She strode toward the demons.
“Alex!” Turner shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? This is what they want!”
The thing pretending to be Hellie grinned. She looked leaner now, hungrier. More like Alex. But not quite. Her hands curled into claws. Her eyes were dark and wild, her mouth crowded with teeth.
“You want me, you bargain knockoff?” Alex demanded. She dragged her tongue across her wrist. “Come and get me.”
The thing ran at her and then shrieked, darting backward, its grotesque smile fading. Alex saw her own shadow had shifted, as if she’d grown a hundred arms—not arms, snakes. They hissed and snapped around her, lunging at the demons, which cowered away from her.
“Alex,” said the thing called Hellie—and she was Hellie again, her eyes that stormy watercolor blue and filled with tears. “You promised you would protect me.”
Alex’s heart twisted in her chest, the grief too powerful, too familiar. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
The serpents wavered, as if they sensed her hesitancy. Then Alex breathed in and coughed, tasting the smoke on the air, the cinders of her home burning. She heard the crackle of rattlers, their tales shaking with her rage, a warning.
“Last call,” she snarled at Not Hellie. “You’re going back where you came from.”
Hellie’s eyes narrowed. “This is my life. You’re the impostor.”
Fine. Maybe Alex was nothing more than a thief who had stolen someone else’s second chance. But she was alive and Hellie was dead and she was going to protect what was hers—even if she didn’t deserve it, even if it might not be hers for much longer.
“This isn’t your life,” she said to the thing that wasn’t Hellie. “And you are trespassing.”
One of the snakes lunged forward, its bite so fast Alex didn’t see more than a blur, and then the demon recoiled, clutching its smoking cheek.
“You can’t banish us that easily,” Hellie whined. She looked almost like Len now, hair straggly, forehead pocked by acne. “We know you. We know your smell. You are nothing but a stepping stone.”
“Maybe,” Alex said. “But right now I’m the bouncer and you better run.”
Alex knew they hadn’t gone far. Their demons needed freshly harvested misery to survive in this world. They’d be back and better prepared.
She heard sirens wailing down the street, and as she turned, she saw the flames were no longer lapping at Il Bastone. The front of the house was charred and spattered with foam, the stone around the doorway blackened and smoking, as if the building had exhaled a deep sooty breath. The fire on the hedges and grass had been extinguished—flattened by Turner’s roots.
The mighty oak. As she watched, they seemed to retract. Her snakes had vanished too.
She couldn’t untangle the mess of fear and triumph she felt. The magic had worked, but what were its limits? They wouldn’t be safe until those demons were back in their jar with the lid screwed on tight, and just how were they going to manage that? And how were they going to explain this to the Praetor and the board? She’d been bold enough claiming Il Bastone was her house, but she wasn’t even a member of Lethe anymore.
“Find the others,” said Turner. “I’ll talk to the hose haulers. I called it in and I’m still police even if you’re both…”
“Banished?” offered Alex. It was possible the Praetor wouldn’t even realize they’d been at Il Bastone since the fire had started outside. But if he took more than a cursory glance inside, he was going to see the leftovers of their dinner and anything else they’d left behind. She wasn’t sure how serious Anselm had been about criminal trespassing and she didn’t want to find out.
Mercy, Tripp, and Dawes were waiting in the alley, stamping their feet in the cold.
“You’re all right?” she asked as she approached.
“Alex,” said Tripp, bracing his hands on her shoulders. “That was sick.
They actually ran from you! Spenser looked like he was going to shit himself.”
Alex pried his hands free. “Okay, okay. But they aren’t done with us.
We all need to stay alert. And you need to remember that’s not Spenser.”
“Absolutely,” said Tripp with a somber nod. “Still fucking cool.”
Mercy rolled her eyes. “How bad does the house look?”
