And on top of all that, a detail from Halloween night nagged me: Merrin’s death. He was a despicable person, and he got what he deserved. But I couldn’t stop obsessing over it, and this unnerved me. At first I thought that I was having guilt issues, but after a few days of replaying his death inside my head, I finally identified the real problem: I didn’t kill Merrin with my own hands. I used Chora to kill him. My parents did the same thing years ago—summoned a demon to do their killing for them. Logically I knew that the circumstances weren’t the same, but I couldn’t stop making the connection, and it troubled me more than I liked.

But there was only so much worrying you could do before you just had to accept what life throws at you and move on, because some things were going to be out of your control, and others can’t be fixed or changed. And for everything I’d lost over the last couple of months, I still had a lot. More than I expected, actually.

Lon turned and watched us with amusement as Jupe lowered himself into a runner’s crouch at my side. “First one there gets to ride shotgun. On your mark, get set . . .”

Go.