Lon crouched over the captain’s body, checking the wound.

“Oh, God,” Jupe whispered. “Is he alive?”

He had to be: I could still see the man’s halo, though it had shrunk considerably.

“Unconscious, but he’s got a pulse,” Lon confirmed. After the boat rocked again, he said, “No other injuries I can see.”

I hastily stripped the orange bandana off the man’s head—nearly bald up there, just as I suspected—and pressed it against the wound to stanch the blood. It was bleeding like crazy. “Hey, Captain Christie, wake up,” I shouted into the man’s face, hoping that the bump on his head might’ve cancelled out the effects of Jupe’s knack. No such luck. “Should we slap him? Shake him?”

“If he’s got a concussion . . .”

I shook him a little anyway. He didn’t respond.

“Oh, God,” Jupe moaned. “This is all my fault. What if he doesn’t wake up—what if he dies? Is it getting worse?”

I followed his troubled gaze down to the blood staining the bandana. “He’ll be okay, Jupe. Promise. It looks worse than it is.” Surely.

Thunder rumbled through my bones. Too close. Way too close. The boat swayed, taking my stomach with it. The captain’s body almost rolled away. Lon and I fell over him. I grabbed his legs, and Lon, his shoulders.

“I hate to point out the obvious, but we’re on a boat with no captain in the middle of a storm.”

“Two storms,” Lon pointed out.

“What should we do?” Kar Yee asked, looking at Lon, then me. “Magick?”

It wasn’t night, so my Moonchild ability was out. “I don’t know any spells that will”—I waved my free hand above the captain’s coma-like face—“bring him back to consciousness.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not a demon. I don’t have a healing knack. And even if I did, he might still be under the influence of Jupe’s suggestion.”

“Oh, God,” Jupe murmured, his face tight with worry. “What have I done? I’m so sorry, Dad.”

“I know you are, I know,” Lon said softly. “But we can’t turn back time, so let’s just concentrate on what we can do, okay?”

“Okay.”

My eyes met Lon’s across the portly captain’s prone body. “Can you pilot a boat?”

“If you count a rusty bass boat with an outboard motor. Kar Yee?”

“Me?” Her tone was somewhere between indignation and disbelief.

My ears translated this as one big hell no. In the years I’d known her, she mostly viewed transportation as something done by other people at her request: call taxi, ride in taxi, pay taxi. She’d only bought her first car a year ago—if she could get away with riding around in a gilded litter carried by four underpaid shirtless men, she would.

“One of us better figure out how,” I said.

“Steering in a straight line on a sunny day is one thing,” Lon said. “Piloting through squalls and rough water takes skill. I think we’re going to have to call for help.”

Jupe whipped out his cell. “No signal. Hotlegs is offline, remember?”

“We can use the VHF radio to call the Coast Guard,” Lon said.

I handed Kar Yee the bloodied bandana. “You and Jupe stay here with the captain. Make sure he doesn’t roll around or anything.”

Lon and I trekked upstairs to the salon. I opened the door to the deck and was punched in the face with rain. We were in the middle of a raging storm, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The sky was the color of a newly paved parking lot. A fierce wind blew across the deck, sending a wall of briny spray over the railings as it battered the grizzly bear design on the red-and-white California state flag hanging above the parlor. The boat seesawed, caught in an army of angry waves attacking the stern. I gripped the doorframe to stop myself from sliding.

“I’ll go alone,” Lon shouted over the wind and rain, trying to pull me back into the salon.

I pictured him falling overboard and shook my head. “Come on, before it gets worse.”

We clung to the outside of the cabin and clattered up metal stairs. Lightning streaked across the bow of the boat as we cleared the top step, illuminating the surface of the ocean, a million peaks of rippling waves. The thunder that followed—not more than a second or two behind—was so loud, I hunched over, as if shielding myself from dynamite. But what scared me more than the brewing typhoon was Lon’s face. This was clearly the last place he thought we should be with all this lightning.

But neither one of us was willing to sit around belowdecks, waiting for the captain to die while the yacht crashed into the rocky shoreline.

A canvas Bimini canopy on metal poles, which looked about as strong as an awning over a restaurant patio, covered the bridge where Captain Christie had been steering the boat. It kept the storm off our heads, but not off our clothes: fierce winds blew torrents of rain beneath it.

An outdoor lounge area sat at the back of the bridge, complete with built-in chaise longues, a dining table, and a really nice gas grill set into a granite countertop. “Jesus, he’s living large up here,” I muttered to myself.

“Don’t touch anything metal,” Lon shouted.

“College-educated adult,” I reminded him. “Not your teenage son.”

He feigned deafness, gesturing to his ear while surveying the bridge. But my attention shifted to my feet, which were now standing on a circular design in the center of the bridge. About the size of a car tire and painted in tinted shellac, the wheel-like pattern resembled a stylized compass. And to the undiscerning eye, that’s all it was—because the sheen of the shellac did a great job hiding the glow of Heka.

I tugged Lon’s sleeve and pointed down. “Center of the ward.”

Lon nodded and started to look away, then halted, staring. He saw it now, too: this was no ordinary protective ward, but a very specific one. “Æthryic demon seal? He’s protecting the boat against demonic attack?”

“Apparently so.”

Lon steadied himself on the rocking deck and bent to inspect it. “Christ, this looks familiar. What class of demon is this?”

I shook my head. But this was not something I saw every day—or at all, actually. No one on this plane, human or Earthbound, should need ongoing, permanent protection from anything Æthyric. Especially not a specific class of Æthyric demon. Even my magical order’s temples didn’t have specialized protection like this.

So why the hell did Captain Christie need it?

“Later,” Lon said, pulling me away from the magick-charged seal. As he did, the boat lurched and nearly knocked us both on my ass, so I did my best to put the seal out of my mind and focus on the more pressing task at hand.

A steering wheel sat in front of a panel of instruments that couldn’t have possibly been more foreign to me. I blinked rain out of my eyes and spotted something that looked like a CB radio. Lon was already ducking down to peer at the screen, where a digital light shone.

“Channel number,” Lon shouted, squinting at the screen as he swooped dripping locks of hair back from his forehead. He fiddled with a knob and the volume increased so I heard a voice being transmitted as if through sandpaper static. Sounded like weather bulletins.

“What channel is the Coast Guard?”

“Damned if I know,” he said. “Supposed to be some emergency button . . .”

I pointed at a red button. “Like that one?”

If we weren’t about to die, he might’ve laughed. All I saw were his merrily narrowed eyes, the slight uptick of the corners of his mouth . . . a barely there smile some people might not even notice. Not me. I lived for that smile—my smile—and when I saw it, I relaxed. Just a little. Everything would be fine. This was just a crazy story Jupe could tell his Earthbound friends at school.

Raindrops crested over Lon’s high cheekbones and dipped into the deep hollows of his cheeks. I pressed my hand against his face—

Then the bridge exploded.