Jenkins glared at me, liking me even less. “I can assure you, Ms. Kingsley, the demon is contained.”

I bit my tongue to stop myself from reminding him of several incidents of “contained” demons escaping and wreaking havoc. He didn’t strike me as being open to constructive criticism.

The door mechanism made a few clicking and ratcheting sounds, then Jenkins swung it open. It gave a sigh when it opened, as if the room behind it had been vacuum sealed.

I’d thought the containment center staff not wearing gloves was unprofessional. Brother, I hadn’t known what unprofessional was until I stepped into that room.

Lisa Walker was strapped onto a sliding steel table. At one end of the table were a pair of heavy metal doors that led into the oven. She was positioned so that her feet faced the doors. So that she could stare with her wide little-girl eyes at the oven that would burn her alive if I failed to exorcize the demon.

Tears had matted her eyelashes and the fine yellow hair that framed her face. Her whole body was shaking with terror, and pity stabbed through me so hard I had to fight not to put a hand to my chest. I reminded myself that I could very well be looking at a demon giving an Oscar-worthy performance, but the pity didn’t go away.

If the child wasn’t possessed, she might never recover from this trauma. If she was possessed, then this was a new low for demon-kind.

But Lisa Walker’s pitiful little frame wasn’t what horrified me the most. No, what horrified me the most was that her parents sat huddled together on a bench at the other end of the room. Mrs. Walker’s eyes were swollen with tears, and Mr. Walker’s face was pale and tense.

I whirled on Jenkins. “You’re letting the parents watch? Are you nuts?”

Exorcisms are never a pretty sight. There’s usually a lot of screaming and cursing. From the demon, not from me. And about seventy-five to eighty percent of demon hosts end up dead or catatonic when the demon is cast out. So far, no one has come up with a reliable method of predicting which hosts would survive intact.

“She’s their daughter,” Jenkins said, drawing himself up to his full, not very impressive height. “If you fail, they’ll have to sign the consent form.”

I looked at Lisa Walker and a very unpleasant lump formed in my throat. I hate demons with a passion. And I don’t like the legal ones much better than the illegal ones. But even I wasn’t sure I could sign the order to burn an eleven-year-old girl alive to destroy the demon. Especially not if the girl was my daughter!

“You could have had them sign the consent beforehand,” I muttered, disliking Jenkins now as much as he disliked me.

“They’d want to say goodbye.”

I glanced over at the parents, who hadn’t said word one to me. They couldn’t even bear to look at me. Can’t say I blamed them. I wished I’d worn a conservative business suit after all. I don’t think my jeans and sweater gave them great confidence in my competence.

But the worst thing I could do now was make them wait and worry any longer, so I settled my shoulder bag on the floor and slipped out of my full-length leather coat. I glanced around for somewhere to put it, but there wasn’t anywhere, and Jenkins didn’t offer to take it for me. He was being juvenile, but then I’d insulted his facility more than once. I’d probably have been juvenile in his shoes, too.

I laid my coat carefully on the floor, which was spotless white tile anyway, then unzipped my bag. A muffled sob from Mrs. Walker made my shoulders hunch. There were only three times in my career when I’d faced a demon I couldn’t cast out. But none of those three had been in execution states, and none had been inhabiting adorable little girls. If I failed, this was going to suck on so many levels…

The execution chamber was so spare and sterile there was nowhere to put my candles except on the floor. I could have asked Jenkins to get me a couple of tables, but it didn’t matter where the candles were, and I was betting all of us wanted to get on with it.

Every exorcist has a ritual he or she performs to get into the trance state. Some are really elaborate, with chants and special clothing and incense-the works. Mine is disarmingly simple. I place vanilla-scented candles all around the room, then turn off all the lights. Then I stand over the demon-possessed body with my hands about six inches above it and just close my eyes.

Usually I’m already starting to slip into the trance after my first deep breath. Today I was having a harder time. Jenkins had taken to fidgeting with his ID badge. The noise was slight, but annoying. And I could hear Mrs. Walker’s persistent sniffles. I imagined the table sliding into the oven with little Lisa Walker on it. I imagined hearing her screams.

I took another deep, vanilla-scented breath and reminded myself that, in these enlightened times, they’d anesthetize her before sliding her into the oven — there would be no screams. But that didn’t make the image any more bearable.

The pressure was like nothing I’d ever felt before, and something akin to panic stirred.

Then Lisa Walker spoke.

“What’s happening?” she asked in a quivering little-girl voice. “Mommy?”

It broke what little concentration I had, and my eyes popped open. I met the gaze of a pair of redrimmed eyes of cornflower blue. So innocent-looking. But her words and her voice were so patently pathetic, so manipulative, that they gave me pause. So I watched closely, and something stirred behind those eyes. Something not so innocent. And I knew that they were right, that there was a demon inside this little girl. A demon who had no qualms about using the body of a child like a disposable plastic cup. When it found a more suitable host, it would slither out of her body, not caring that it might leave her dead or brain-damaged.

I gave the demon a nasty smile. “Fatal error,” I told it in a low whisper that I hoped to God the parents didn’t hear. “You should have kept your mouth shut.”

The Cupid’s bow mouth widened. I closed my eyes. And the trance took me immediately, fueled by my anger. Distantly, I was aware of that little-girl voice making pathetic noises, pleading with me and with its mommy, but I was too far gone to hear the words.

In my trance, I see with my otherworldly eyes. Everything looks different. Simpler. I can’t see things. All I see are the living, and I see them as patches of primary colors. People show up as blue in my otherworldly vision. Jenkins was a dark, solid blue, like a person at rest. If he felt any strong emotions about this whole procedure, I couldn’t sense it. The parents, on the other hand, were a mess, their auras roiling with every shade of blue imaginable.

But on the table under my hands, the aura glowed blood red. A demon aura, so overwhelming there was no sign of human blue beneath it. The aura squirmed, and I realized that the body was struggling against the restraints. The demon saw its destruction coming and was making a last-ditch effort to escape. I hoped they hadn’t gotten squeamish when they’d secured the restraints. The supernatural strength of some demons is enough to bend steel, but even an inexperienced staff would know that.

I heard the distinctive sound of groaning metal. Alarm trickled down my back. This thing was strong. And desperate. Behind me, someone cried out. The yellow tint of fear blended with the blue of their auras to make the humans look almost green.

Just like everyone has their own ritual to get into the trance, everyone has their own mental image they use as a metaphor for casting out a demon. Mine is wind.

I imagined a gust of hurricane-force wind hitting that red aura. If it had been your average, run-of-the-mill demon, that one blast would have been enough. But this fucker was tough. The aura didn’t waver, and I heard an echo of laughter ringing in my ears.