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some little thing.” She took a few steps toward him. “Make sure it goes right.”

    The demon snarled. “You think I am capable of failing?”

    “You haven’t gotten us the ring.”

    He grimaced and spun like a dervish, coming to a stop a moment later. “Ask me for what
can
be obtained and I shall bring it to you.”

    Evie rested her fingers on her chin for a moment. “I want a house. Bigger than this one. Everything in it new and beautiful.”

    His ugly face contorted. Aliza realized he was smiling. “Where would you like this house? Europe? The Caribbean? An island of your very own?”

    Evie pointed out the window. “Here. Next door.”

    Aliza’s heart swelled. Nothing like having your pride and joy close.

    The demon snorted. “Humans.”

    “That’s not all.” Evie lifted her chin. “Inside the house, I want something special waiting for me. A man.”

    Shock coursed through Aliza’s blood. “Evie child.”

    She turned. “Don’t look so freaked out, Ma. I’m not a kid anymore. Being trapped in stone was like prison. I have needs. And I want to take care of them.”

    The demon chortled. “Tall? Dark? Dumb? At least make it sporting.”

    “I want the blue-eyed half-breed.”

    “Half-breed what? Fae? Varcolai?”

    “Seminole. The Mohawked one who came here with the comarré and the vampires.” Evie snatched a crystal orb from the nearest bookshelf and conjured a picture of the man, holding it out to the demon. “And I want him under some sort of spell so he can’t refuse me.”

    He leaned as far as he could, studying the image, then snorted. “Spells are your language, witchling, not mine. If you can’t control him, that’s of no concern to me.”

    “Witchling?” Evie moved to within inches of the aquarium’s edge. Her knuckles paled from squeezing the crystal sphere. “I know enough to contain you, demon, and enough to destroy you as well.”

    His red eyes glowed. “You amuse me with your threats.”

    “Build me the house, hell spawn.” Her shoulder jerked. She crossed her arms. “Then bring me the man.”

    He shrugged. “As you wish.” And disappeared.

    Doc shot up out of the bed, his heart racing, his body strung in the halfway state between man and beast. The sheets lay in damp shreds around him, the casualty of a varcolai’s night terror.

    “You okay?”

    He looked up, still trying to bring his breathing back to normal. A fully corporeal Fi sat on the dresser across from the bed. Her legs were curled beneath her, her eyes as round and worried as when she’d been stuck in the time loop, forced to repeat the night of her murder.

    Murder. The word pulled a shudder through his body. He ignored the sudden urge to check his hands for blood. To wipe the imagined wetness of it from his muzzle. “Fine,” he whispered through a split upper lip and teeth too long for a human mouth.

    “Is that why your claws are out and your eyes are all yellow?”

    He concentrated for a moment, and the signs of his true leopard self melted into full-on human. “Just a bad dream. Sorry for chasing you out of bed.”

    She shrugged. “Once you’ve been dead a few times, the self-preservation instinct kicks in automatically.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as her mouth thinned. “You’ve been having bad dreams a lot lately. Ever since you went through the smoke.”

    He’d realized that a few days ago but hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. Walking through the witch’s spelled smoke might have given him the ability to shift into leopard form again, but he’d known there would be a price to pay. Anything that involved the witches did. “Naw, that smoke was cool. That movie we saw tonight really freaked me out.”

    Her brows rose incredulously. “I’m a ghost, you’re a shape-shifter, you live with a cursed vampire, and a zombie movie freaked you out. Honey, I love you, but that’s a bold-faced lie. What gives?”

    He dropped his head into his hands, rubbing the stubble