Standing across from the person-sized monument cemented to the ground, I exhaled. The monolith was covered in a black smut from bacteria and city pollution, making it look like a fallen angel. That the figure was bowed weeping over a sword held horizontally in his hands as an offering only added to the creepy feeling. There was a bird's nest wedged into the fold of the wings as they curved around the body, and the face didn't look right. The arms, too, were too long to be human or Inderlander. Even Jenks didn't let his kids play around this one.

"Please let me be right," I whispered to the statue as I mentally moved the white rill of salt from this reality to that of the ever-after. I staggered as most of the energy pooling in my center was yanked out to force the shift. The media in the pot sloshed, and still not having found my balance, I set it down in the snow before it spilled. My eyes went to the green candles. They had turned eerily transparent, having been moved to the ever-after with the salt. The flames, though, existed in both worlds, adding their glow to the night.

The power from the line began to build again, the slow increase as uncomfortable as the first quick influx of tapping a line, but the ribbon of salt had been replaced with an equal amount of ever-after reality arching high to close over my head. Nothing more substantial than air could pass the shifting bands of reality, and because I set the circle, only I could break it—providing I had made it properly to begin with.

"Algaliarept, I summon you," I whispered, my heart pounding. Most people used all sorts of trappings to summon and contain a demon, but seeing as I already had an arrangement with it, simply saying its name and willing its presence would pull it across the lines. Lucky me.

My gut clenched when a small patch of snow melted between the warrior angel and me. The snow steamed, the cloud of reddish vapor billowing up to follow the confines of a body not yet taken shape.