The spirit-a gray, haglike thing-recoiled, but then I felt more cold hands behind me and gave a quick glance back. Five more spirits-more than I’d ever taken on at once. I spun around, but my initial attacker’s position was better, giving it a solid hold on me. I didn’t break free of its grip entirely, but I struggled like hell, accidentally hitting a small table with a ceramic pitcher on it. The pitcher hit the floor and splintered into sharp, aqua-colored fragments.

The spirit pushed me up against the wall, its skeletal hands clutching at my throat while it stared at me with empty black eyes. It floated such that while it kept me pinned, it stayed out of reach of the athame. It wasn’t out of the reach of the wand, however.

Its ghostly companions drifted over, ringing us, as my oxygen began to dry up. Black stars sparkled in my vision, and I tried hard to focus on what I needed to do.

“Be careful,” warned one of the observers, “or you will kill her.”

Hecate, I prayed in my head, open the gates. On the edge of passing out, I felt the snake on my arm tingle. I used that power, letting the farthest limits of my mind brush the Otherworld. I became the gate, a conduit of passage running from my soul to the snake to the wand. The hands on my throat wouldn’t let me speak, but the banishing words burned in my mind. It was good enough.

The wand’s power flared out at the spirit holding me. It realized too late what had happened and vanished with a piteous scream. One of its counterparts started to move toward me and got sucked away with the other. The other four kept their distance. Meanwhile, I had backed up as much as possible. I needed to open the gates again, but my body informed me I had to allow a moment’s recovery time before going a second round. My throat hurt inside and out from where the spirit had choked me, and the room spun around as I staggered. I took deep, shaking breaths in an attempt to recover what I’d lost.

Two more spirits bore down on me but hesitated a little this time, still keeping some space between us. They circled me, like dancers or boxers, each of us determining what the other would do. Just then, my mom came out of the kitchen holding my iron athame. Screaming, she drove it against one of the other spirit’s backs, hacking away. Iron hurt gentry-not spirits. All her actions did was annoy it. It turned slightly, and with one oh-so-casual gesture, it backhanded her with enough force to throw her against the far wall. She hit the wall and slid down into an unmoving pile.

I yelled my fury, charging the spirits around me. Strong emotion is better for physical attacks but not mental ones, and I lost whatever grip I’d momentarily had on the Otherworld. The athame caused some damage to one of the spirits, but the other dodged. It hit me hard, shoving me into my entertainment center. The sharp corners dug into my back, but the adrenaline pumping through me wouldn’t let me feel it. Not yet.

I muttered another incantation to Hecate and felt the power shoot up again. The spirit who had thrown me drifted forward. The gates swung open, and I banished it away. Moments later, its injured counterpart followed. That left two.

One of them swooped in, reaching out for me. I ducked past it, hitting the floor, where I half-crawled and half-rolled out of its grasp. My connection to the Otherworld had slipped again; I needed it back. I kept ordering myself to focus, but then I saw my mom lying in the corner. I couldn’t get past that. I went after the spirit again, and it hissed angrily as the athame dug into its upper body. I was sloppy, however, and gave one of its hands the opening to grab my wand hand and shove me against the wall. The wand fell to the floor. A moment later, the spirit’s other hand twisted my other wrist until I dropped the athame as well. The last spirit floated up and added to the wall around me. Walls were really starting to piss me off lately.

They had me now, trapped and defenseless and injured. I didn’t know what exactly they could do, however. Earlier they’d worried about killing me, yet they could have no romantic interest in me. What could they My patio door opened, and an elemental walked in. An elemental made of mud, of all things. Its body was very solid, very human, and very male. Oozing, brown-gray sludge dripped off it and onto my carpet.

I renewed my futile efforts to break from the spirits. Volusian’s words came back to haunt me. More organized attacks. The spirits couldn’t have sex with me, but the elemental gentry could. It had sent its minions to subdue me first. Clever.

“Where are the others?” asked the elemental, an almost comic look of astonishment on his face as he glanced around the room.

“She banished them, master,” whispered one of the spirits.

“You really are lethal, aren’t you?” The elemental approached. “I hadn’t believed the stories. I thought sending these six was overkill. Still. I guess even you have your limits.”

I sneered at him. “Don’t talk to me about limits. You can’t even cross to this world in full form.”

A look of displeasure crossed that dripping, muddy face. Power was a matter of pride among the gentry. His inability to cross over fully was probably a sore point. Raping me was undoubtedly a way of compensating for all sorts of deficiencies.

“It won’t matter,” he said. “Once I beget Storm King’s heir, all gentry will pass into this world, smiting the race of humans.”

“Okay, Mr. Old Testament. I can’t honestly believe you just used ‘beget’ and ‘smiting’ in the same sentence.”

“So brave and brash. Yet it won’t-ow!”

I couldn’t free my upper body, but the elemental was close enough that I flipped my lower body upward and kicked him. I’d been aiming for the groin, just like with the Gray Man, but caught his thigh instead. The guarding spirit restrained my legs.

The elemental narrowed his eyes. “You make things difficult. This would be far easier on you if you would submit.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“She will submit, master,” intoned a spirit. “Her mother lies there on the floor.”

I stiffened in the spirit’s grip. “Don’t touch her.”

The elemental turned and walked toward where my mother had fallen. Almost gently, he leaned down and picked her up in his arms. “She’s still alive.”

“Leave her alone, you bastard!” I screamed. I strained so hard, it felt like my arms would tear from my shoulders.

“Let her go,” ordered the elemental.

“Master-”

“Let her go. She will not do anything, because she knows if she so much as steps in this direction”-the muddy hand slid up to my mom’s throat, leaving a dirty trail wherever he moved-“then I will snap her neck.”

The spirits released me. I did not move.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said. My voice was hoarse from the choking and screaming. “I’ll tear you to pieces before I send you to hell.”

“Unlikely. Not if you want this one to live. Come,” he said to one of his servants. “Take her.” There was a tradeoff, and now a spirit held my mother. “If Odile Dark Swan so much as looks threatening, kill this woman.”

“Odile Dark Swan always looks threatening.” The spirit spoke in a deadpan, nonsarcastic voice. Apparently this elemental’s minions had as good a sense of humor as my own.

“You know what I mean,” snapped the elemental. He came closer to me, so only a few inches separated us. “Now. I will let you live. I will let your mother live. All you have to do is not fight me while I do what I’ve come here to do. When I am finished, we will depart in peace. Do you understand?”

Anger and fury were raging in me, and I could feel tears burning at the edges of my vision. I wanted to reach out and claw his eyes. I wanted to kick between his legs until no one could tell if he was male anymore. I wanted to deliver him to Persephone in a pile of body parts.

But I was scared. So scared that if I even blinked wrong, they’d break my mother. She already hung uselessly in the spirit’s arms like a rag doll. For all I knew, she could have been dead, but something told me she wasn’t. I couldn’t gamble if she might be alive.