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of myself in a knife fight. I patted the dagger sheathed inside my kneehigh boot, thought of the other two tucked in my purse. In my world, “be prepared” was more than just the Boy Scout motto. No, I was worried there might be a supernatural force driving this killer, a force darker and more deadly than anything the norms could imagine.
    A month ago, a really nasty demi-demon named Pryce Maddox had attempted to lead demons out of their own plane to overrun the human world. Pryce called himself my cousin—a far-fetched claim—but even if we were related, he was a thoroughly rotten branch of the family tree. Believing that an ancient prophecy pointed to his own ascendancy over both the demon and the human realms, Pryce had busied himself freeing the Morfran, a spirit of insatiable, destructive hunger that’s the essence of all demons. My Cerddorion ancestors had imprisoned much of the Morfran deep underground in an old slate mine, binding it inside the stone. Pryce had discovered the spell to release it, and he believed various signs indicated the time was right for him to set the Morfran free. As the Morfran fed, demons would grow stronger—and the demon plane would no longer contain them.
    Free-floating Morfran takes the form of monstrous crows that rip and tear at their victims with cruel beaks. Crows are carrion eaters, and Boston’s two thousand zombies looked like an all-you-can eat buffet to the ravenous Morfran. Pryce sent the spirit there to feed. At an open-air concert, to celebrate Paranormal Appreciation Day, the Morfran had attacked, killing nearly a dozen zombies before I managed to trap it again. Or most of it; some of the Morfran got away. And when the Morfran possesses a human, the spirit drives that person to kill—over and over and over.
    If the South End Reaper was Morfran-possessed, could Pryce be behind it? The last time I’d seen my demi-demon “cousin,” he’d been lying on the ground, alive but little more than an empty shell. During our fight, I’d killed Pryce’s demon half, leaving his human form comatose. And then Pryce’s body had disappeared. The two human cops who’d been guarding him were dead, every drop of blood sucked from their bodies. It was how the Old Ones, those über-vampires my roommate Juliet feared, killed their prey.
    It seemed clear the Old Ones had taken Pryce—but why? Demons and vampires didn’t get along. Even if the Old Ones could revive Pryce, what would they want with him? Pryce was thoroughly evil and cared for no one but himself. Besides his ambitions to subject the human world to demons, he’d tried three times to kill me—and that was to test whether I was “worthy” to be raped and forced to bear his child. Personally, I hoped the Old Ones had drained Pryce dry, as they’d done to those cops. I hoped I’d never see or hear of Pryce again. And I hoped the South End Reaper was just some run-of-the-mill psychopathic killer, with no ties to demi-demons, the Morfran, or the Old Ones.
    But as we drove through the night, the voices on the radio edging toward hysteria, a quieter voice inside me whispered that any such hopes were utterly foolish.

3
    GWEN GREETED ME AT HER FRONT DOOR WITH A WARM hug. Hints of Italian herbs underlay her expensive perfume. My throat got a lump as it hit me how much I’d missed her. It had been too long. The strength of her hug showed she thought so, too.
    She stepped back and offered a hand to Kane, welcoming him. Nick, Gwen’s husband, repeated the routine—a hug for me, a handshake for Kane—and took our coats.
    “Where are the kids?” I asked, stepping into the living room. As soon as I cleared the doorway Maria, my eleven-year-old niece, rocketed over and threw her arms around me. I stroked her fine blonde hair and kissed the top of her head. She was getting so tall.
    “I see you found Maria,” Gwen said. “The boys are already in bed.” The boys meant Zack, six, and Justin, who was two. “That’s why I