To my parents, and to my brother,

who are nothing at all like Megan’s family

The problem with writing lists of people to thank is that I’m always convinced I’ll leave someone out, someone obvious and important, simply because I do things like that. So if I do somehow manage to not mention you here, you’re probably the one who occupies so much room in my mental “I’m Grateful for These People” list that somehow my eyes convince me your name is here, even when it isn’t.

That being said, I’m going to do the best I can. This book would not exist without my husband and his generous willingness to do his own laundry and go to bed alone so I can stay up late working. It couldn’t have been written without the patience of my two little girls, who don’t mind letting Mommy finish her paragraph before getting them juice or cookies or whatever else it is they want. I have to thank my best friend Cori Knell, who proves what a great friend she is by spending hours on the phone with me discussing what she read; and my other best friend Anna J. Evans who spends hours emailing me about what she’s read. Then there’s the whole Team Seattle crew, especially Caitlin Kittredge and Mark Henry, for always being there to boost me up when I’m down, and Jackie Kessler, my fellow Satellite Seattle-r. The League of Reluctant Adults, of course, who make everything more fun. Thanks also to Carole Nelson Douglas—you know why—and Maria Lima, Jill Myles, Karen Mahoney, Sherrill Quinn, Christine D’Abo, Kelly Maher, Sierra Dafoe, Red Garnier, Fae Sutherland, Kirsten Saell, Seeley DeBorn, Jane Smith, Bernard DeLeo, Justin Coker, Michele Lee, Bernita Harris, Miss Snark and the Snarklings, Evil Editor and the Minions, the ladies at Bitten by Books, the ladies at Urban Fantasy Land, and all of my blog readers; I will never stop being amazed and grateful that you take the time to visit me and comment.

Special thanks of course to my agent Chris Lotts, my editor Paula Guran, and Jennifer Heddle (and all the folks at Pocket); and to Todd Thomas, Esq., for reading the scenes involving legal matters, fixing my wording, and advising me that while the scenario may be a bit unusual, it’s not impossible. Any errors made with anything legal in this book are mine and not his.

Megan slammed on the brakes, sending Rocturnus’s little green body flying into the windshield. She barely paid attention. Demons were tough. He’d be fine.

Better than the demon inside the nondescript tract home in front of her, if she hadn’t made it in time. She didn’t need her psychic abilities to know that.

She grabbed Roc by one scrawny arm and yanked him off the dashboard, her gaze focused on the house. To her panicked brain it seemed to loom in front of her, tinged with the awful blankness of death. Her shoes slid in the hard-packed snow covering the lawn as she ran as fast as she could up to the front door, still dangling Roc from her hand. Nobody could see him but her anyway.

“Hello? Hello?” The old paint on the front door flaked off under her pounding fists. She barely heard her own voice over the blood rushing through her veins, the screeching wails of her inner voice. “Please, open up!”

She lowered her shields as far as they would go—so far she picked up faint images from the houses on either side—but still received nothing from the house before her. No sounds, no pictures of a napping resident dragging him-or herself out of bed, or of someone singing in the shower. Nothing at all.

“Oh, God…” Megan stepped back from the door and looked at the wide windows next to it, white and empty. The folds of the drapes were like a TV test pattern: no signal.

Nothing moved on the pale winter street except Megan, her shouts echoing through the crisp air as she tried the door one last time. She had a tire iron in the trunk…but no. Shattering the big front windows would alarm the neighbors.

Still carrying Rocturnus, she rushed off the porch, only to slip and fall flat on her face. Pain blossomed in her mouth as her teeth sank into her tongue. For a moment her vision blurred; her eyes stung with tears and icy wind.

This isn’t the time to start crying! She hauled herself to her feet and started moving again, careening around the side of the house to the back, where a snow-dusted red swing set added the only spot of forlorn color to the winter-dead yard.

The back door refused to yield to Megan’s kicks and shoves. The windows in the back were smaller than those in the front; even if she managed to break one discreetly, she couldn’t fit through it.

Rocturnus would, though…

She looked down to find him glaring at her.

“I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking,” he said, squirming from her grasp. “Let go of me, I’ll get the door open for you.”

“How—oh, right.” At least the blush warmed her face a little, although she already felt like her nose had fallen off. She resisted the urge to check. Too undignified, even when no one was looking.

Rocturnus disappeared. A second later the door clicked. Megan turned the knob and officially committed a crime: entering a stranger’s home without permission.

Her skin prickled. Something in here did not feel right at all. A musty, unpleasant smell like moldy leftovers hung in the air. She reached for the little tube of pepper spray attached to her key ring, but she’d left the keys in the ignition.

Megan sighted a wooden block holding a number of knives on the kitchen counter. She grabbed what appeared to be the largest. Nobody was in the house, she knew that. But it somehow made her feel safer, stronger, to have some kind of weapon. She held the big butcher knife in front of her as she trod carefully through the kitchen and into the beige living room beyond, her gaze cast down, trying to delay the moment when she’d actually see the damage.

She looked up. Worse than she’d imagined.

On the floor at her feet a long green finger rested in a pool of crimson blood, the lurid colors an obscene mockery of the cheerful Christmas decorations on the walls and tables. A foot protruded from under the couch, while a messy pile of green flesh and red…she didn’t want to look at the rest of it, didn’t want to see the rest of it, but her eyes refused to close. Blood splattered the walls and furniture and even the darkened Christmas tree by the front window. Here and there more…pieces: clinging to a picture frame, flung under the tree, hanging off a pine branch like a homemade ornament crafted by Ed Gein.

“I’m too late,” she said. Her voice disappeared in the accusing silence. “Again.”

“It’s not your fault. You came as fast as you could.”

Megan nodded, but knowing she’d done her best didn’t help. Thinking of how she’d abandoned a client in the middle of a therapy session in her desperation, and how her partners would feel when they found out…that definitely did not help. And the pain in her tongue and elbows from her fall put a nice miserable cap on the whole depressing mental ensemble.

“Even if you hadn’t been working, you probably wouldn’t have made it. I guess he”—Rocturnus indicated the remains—“didn’t have much warning either.”

“Just like the others.”

The demon nodded.

Tinsel glittered in the faint air flow from the central heating, like tiny swords waving in the air. To any other human the room would have looked perfectly clean and friendly, a family home anticipating Santa’s visit in eleven days’ time. Human eyes wouldn’t see the carnage, human bodies wouldn’t feel the demon blood seeping into their clothing as they sat on the couch or squelching between their toes as they stepped in it. Human noses wouldn’t smell that horrible odor in the air.