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“That should protect you from getting glamoured,” she says. “It will only last twenty-four hours, but you should be out of there long before then. I’d give you the bottle just in case, but if they caught you with it—”

“They’d kill me.”

She shakes her head. “They’d torture you. Forever. And they’d probably use you to torture Daemon, too. There’s a reason witches aren’t supposed to be in Hell. We know too many spells and tricks to be manipulated. Most pets get mind-swiped at the end of every night.”

When I stare at her blank-faced, she adds, “The incubi use their glamour to make the humans forget what happened. They wake up safe in their beds with no one the wiser.”

That makes sense. I should have guessed as much.

Still lying down, I blink a few more times, trying to adjust to the darkness. And then my phone rings. I grasp for it, digging my hand between the squishy couch cushion to peel it free. When I see Dad rather than Christopher pop up on screen, I sigh in immediate relief, answering it seconds before it would go to voicemail.

“Where are you?” Dad asks, voice frantic. “Christopher is worried sick.”

Of course he is.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask, and I can’t hide the irritation from leaching into my voice—not about Christopher, and not even about the situation I’ve found myself in. I’m irritated with him. For not standing up for me—for never standing up for me any time my mom or the coven could see it. Hell, even when he defended me against my sister or healed me in his office, it was when he knew he wouldn’t get in trouble for it.

My God, he’s a coward.

“You’re with Minerva,” he says.

I don’t deign him with a response. Wherever Dad is, someone sighs in the background. I can only guess it’s Christopher, and he has me on speaker. If my eyes could physically roll to the back of my skull, they already would have.

“You need to put this to rest already,” Dad says. “We all tried to help him—”

“I’m not giving up just because you and Christopher have decided Daemon isn’t worth the effort anymore. I’m going to go to the club, figure out who actually committed the murder, and convince Salios to honor our original deal.”

“You’re not going back to that club,” Dad snaps. “You’re not Daemon’s prostitute. I won’t let you pimp yourself out for a man who almost killed you.”

Let.

I grit my teeth. “I’m not a child, and you can’t stop me.”

“If you do this, know that you’re choosing him over this family. I will never speak to you again.”

“Then you’ll never speak to me again.” I hang up, wishing more than anything he were here in person so I could flip him off. Setting the phone aside, I force myself to sit up only to find Minerva looking at me—assessing me is more like it.

“I was wrong about you,” she says finally, a hint of a smile toying at her lips. “People rarely surprise me. I’m glad you have.” Before I can press her on what’s surprising, she chants in Infernal, and a black door opens—almost identical to the one Daemon summoned in his bedroom. Shadows seep from it in a way that feels ominous.

“The portal will close behind you,” Minerva warns. “I’ll reopen it at sunrise and hold it open for as long as I can. Please don’t be late. I can assure you I wish to be caught as little as you do.”

I nod and tug my cloak a little closer, not wanting to think about what’s beneath—or rather, what isn’t. Tossing the hood over my face, I step up to the doorway. A black knob gleams in the lamplight. Before I can second-guess myself or chicken out, I wrap my fingers around it and turn.

One moment I’m stepping into darkness. The next, I’m falling to my bare knees, nearly scraping them against a red and sandy road made of cobbles. Club music perforates the building in front of me, and when I glance up, I see the metal door, the raised glyph written in Infernal that only an incubus can open. According to Minerva, the ward stops non-incubi from teleporting inside as well, otherwise she would have summoned a portal directly to the third floor.

Muggy heat has me sweating, but I don’t disrobe. I can’t. My cloak has ambrosia hidden in the internal pockets as well as Daemon’s scroll. As I climb to my feet, I catch the black door vanish in my periphery, trapping me here until sunrise.

This is it. No turning back now.

I swallow, peering over both my shoulders for someone to find me—or something, I suppose. When no one comes, I lay my head against the building and contemplate prematurely downing another vial of ambrosia. At Minerva’s insistence, I took one almost an hour ago, and it alleviated the worst of my soreness, but it’s still tempting to drink more, if anything to take the edge off what I’m about to do. But I don’t know how long I’ll be in the club, and I don’t know if I should be rationing the stuff. Already, there are only five vials left.

Claws dig into my shoulders.

Someone whirls me around until my face nearly collides with a toned, dark red stomach.

I peer up, and up, and up into the face of an incubus who’s as tall as Daemon in his demon form. He has thick red horns that curl backward, an angular face that’s equal parts beautiful to terrifying, and serrated teeth that glisten when he opens his mouth.

Faster than I can track, his tail whips around me, knocking the hood from my face. He licks his lips with a forked tongue. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing stuck outside?”