“MADDY! GET AWAY!”

There. It was clear as a bell that time. I stared at the portal.

“He’s there,” I said to Nathaniel.

“Who is where?” he said.

“Beezle is inside the portal,” I said, and I was sure of it, and I knew that it didn’t matter how it had to be done but I was going to get him out.

I walked toward the portal, as if in a trance, my heart beating faster and faster until it was galloping in my chest. Beezle. I could get Beezle back.

“Madeline!” Nathaniel cried, and he sounded alarmed.

I felt his arm around my wrist, grasping, trying to yank me away.

I pulled my arm free, turned back to the portal. Nathaniel grabbed me again, twisted me around to face him.

“Madeline, what in the name of all the gods are you doing? You cannot just walk into that portal without knowing what may be on the other side.” He shook me a little, his hands on my shoulders. “How am I to face Lord Azazel if you mindlessly walk into harm?”

I pushed his hands from my shoulders, furious. “Don’t treat me like a child. You’re only worried about how Azazel would punish you if I’m killed. Beezle is in there, and I need to find him.”

Nathaniel’s eyes were cold and furious. “Think, Madeline. The gargoyle may not be inside the portal. It may be a trap that is laid for you.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “If he’s there, I have to help him.”

“You fool,” he spat. “There are terrible things that you cannot even conceive of in other worlds. And contrary to what you may think, I would not relish the thought of your being devoured by a monster, or captured by a demon tribe.”

My face reddened. Even if I didn’t like Nathaniel, I should probably stop acting like he had no feelings. “All right, maybe you don’t want me to get hurt. But if there is a possibility, even the tiniest possibility, that Beezle is in there, I have to go to him. I have to get him back.”

He’s the only creature in the world who has ever really loved me, I thought.

Nathaniel looked at me a moment. “You are going to go in there no matter what I say, are you not?”

I nodded.

“Then take my hand,” he said.

There was a time when I would have done anything not to touch him. But for this, for Beezle, I put my hand in his willingly.

We stepped into the portal, and as we did I heard Beezle’s voice screaming, “Maddy! NO! IT’S A TRAP!”

Well, of course, I thought. I knew it was a trap. I just didn’t care.

And then the portal was pulling us through, and I was in agony. I had traveled via portal a few times to my father’s house, and it was like having my head squeezed between two cinder blocks. Nathaniel gripped my hand tighter. My eyes felt like they were going to burst from my skull, and a moment later, we were out.

I felt Nathaniel’s grip on my fingers loosen and I landed flat on my face in something soft and wet and foul smelling. I gagged and lifted my head, spitting out mud.

“Is there some reason why you can’t follow the most basic of instructions? What don’t you understand about, ‘Maddy, no, stop, it’s a trap’?”

I wiped mud from eyes, pushed myself back to my knees, and looked for the source of that very familiar and beloved voice.

Beezle was inside a tiny metal cage on a little grassy hillock about ten feet away from me. He didn’t look much worse for the wear, but he scowled at me ferociously.

“Your gratitude is overwhelming,” I said, picking myself up from the muck and looking around.

We seemed to have landed in a swamp. I stood ankle deep in rushes and lily pads, and enormous mossy trees dangled their branches over the water. The air was gray and misty and filled with a sulfurous odor. After a few moments my eyes began to water.

“And what did you bring him for?” Beezle said, jerking his thumb toward Nathaniel.

I looked in the direction that Beezle had pointed and realized that Nathaniel had flown out of the portal. He hung just above the water, angelic white wings outspread, not a speck of mud on him.

“I hate you,” I said, and the bastard had the audacity to smirk.

I began to slog toward the shore and the little cage in which Beezle was trapped. Nathaniel fluttered ahead of me and landed next to Beezle’s cage, examining it carefully.

“So where’s the big reveal? How come you were so all fired up that I shouldn’t come and get you?” I said.

Beezle sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and pointed behind me. “Because of that.”

As he said it, I became aware of fine earthquake tremors in the ground, and the water lapping against the backs of my legs. The scent of sulfur grew stronger, and Nathaniel stood up, eyes hard and watchful.

I huffed out a deep breath. “It’s something huge, isn’t it?”

Beezle nodded. “Yup.”

There was a sound of several limbs splashing in the water. “Is it all squishy and tentacly?”

“Yup.”

“I hate my life,” I said, and as I turned I conjured a ball of nightfire and threw it.

I had a sense of something massive, an enormous twostory shadow that trembled and pulsed and oozed, and then the ball of nightfire hit it and it opened its enormous maw and howled in rage.

Its howl created a gale force wind that tossed me back several feet. I landed on the hillock beside Beezle’s cage. He seemed nonplussed.

“I think that just made it madder,” he said.

I pushed up to my elbows as the creature came forward, sniffing for me with a long, elephantine nose. It had several small eyes but the orbs were covered in a milky white film—the creature was blind. The nightfire did not seem to have damaged it in any way.

“Do you think you could manage to defeat this thing quickly so we can get home?” Beezle said. “I never did get my doughnut.”

“Only you would think of doughnuts at a time like this.” I came unsteadily to my feet and pushed out my wings. “Where’s Nathaniel?”

“Got tossed that way when the monster started yelling,” Beezle said, pointing behind him. “Not such a smartypants with those wings now, is he?”

There was no sign of the angel. Behind the hillock was a tangle of trees and darkness, surrounded by mist.

“How come your cage didn’t get tossed, too?” I asked.

“It’s attached to the ground. Um, maybe you want to direct your attention to the giant monster squishing toward us? It seems to have caught your scent.”

“Yup, right on that,” I said.

I tried to get a good look at the creature as I readied my magic. The shifting clouds of mist made it difficult to get a clear view. There was zero sense in trying to overpower it—the creature was the size of a building and had about twenty tentacles with which to grab and crush me. I couldn’t blind it, because the monster was already blind.

“Any idea what this thing’s weakness is?” I asked Beezle.

He put a claw on his lower lip like he was thinking. “I’m not sure, but I think most monsters dislike fire.”

“Fire. Right. I don’t know how to make regular fire.”

Beezle snorted. “Are you sure about that? You do have a heartstone now.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Umm, heartstone? Power of the sun inside you? Did you get denser while I was away?”

The monster squished closer. I tried not to gag at its scent. If I still had the abilities that I’d had when Evangeline possessed me, I’d be able to take down this creature without blinking.

I knew that I had a heartstone, but I didn’t see how that would help me. I didn’t know half of what I was capable of doing. If Gabriel were with me, he could help me. But Gabriel was gone, and Nathaniel had disappeared, and the only being around to help me was a snorting little gargoyle who seemed to think that I was acting dumb by not using a power that I didn’t even know I had.

Beezle huffed. “Whatever you’re going to do, I’d advise you to do it now.”

“Better to try than to be eaten, I guess.”

Lucky for me the monster moved at the pace of a slug. I gathered up my magic, and then I did something that I had only done once before. I thought about my heartstone, about the pulse of sunlight that burned in the core of me, and I drew on that power. As I did, I felt heat burn inside, a beam of sun that traveled through my blood and veins and muscles and penetrated the source of magic inside me.

My magic burst open like a flower blooming at its touch. I knew what to do, knew as easily as if the knowledge had always been inside me and was simply waiting to be awakened—as maybe it was.

The monster crept closer. Its tentacles lashed out, seeking me. It opened its horrible mouth, a mouth filled with rows of tiny serrated teeth that shifted back and forth like the blades of a power saw.

I held out my hand in front of me, pushed the power down my arm and through my fingers. An arrow of flame shot from the tips of my fingers into the creature’s mouth and disappeared into its throat.

“Bull’s-eye,” I said, satisfied.

“Nothing appears to be happening,” Beezle said.

“Wait for it,” I replied.

The monster had stopped, and if a horrible, squishy, tentacly thing with a dozen blind eyes could look confused, then that was the look on its face. Its arms waved about listlessly.

“Still waiting,” Beezle said.

I looked at him. “Have a little faith.”

And just as I said that, the monster emitted an enormous sulfurous belch, and then burst into flames.

It screamed in rage and pain, and the smell of its burning flesh was horrible. A flaming tentacle lashed out, and I was forced to run backward toward the trees in order to avoid it.

“Oh, sure, just leave me here!” Beezle shouted after me.

“You’re safe enough,” I shouted back, but as I retreated a little ways into the cover of the trees, I wasn’t sure about that. I was hoping that the cage would provide some protection should one of the monster’s burning arms smash into it, but maybe the force of the tentacle would knock Beezle’s cage off its mooring and into the swamp.