Bec and Lord Loss move on eventually, up another set of stairs, to a different part of the demon master’s palace. Blood drips from his doughy flesh as he floats along, but it’s not his own. Bec is silent, head bowed, brooding.

I’m thinking about Bo Kooniart. It seems like a lifetime since I last saw her, racing back into a demon-infested town in search of her horrible father and pain of a brother. Bo was one of the actresses in Slawter, a movie about demons made by a crazed director who decided to use real-life monsters in the name of art.

I despised Bo. Her father, Tump Kooniart, was a powerful agent, which was the only reason she and her brother were cast in the film. He was working in league with the director and Lord Loss. He thought the Demonata would spare him and his children. He thought wrong.

Bo was a spoiled, snobbish, sneering little brat. But when the demons ran riot and our lives hung in the balance, she acted selflessly, heroically. We might not have escaped without her help. Then, rather than follow us to freedom, she went back to try to rescue her father and brother.

I assumed Bo had been killed along with the hundreds of others who died, but Lord Loss must have spared her and taken her to his own universe, where he could torture her at his leisure.

When I realized Bo was still alive, trapped in that chamber of nightmares, I felt that I was directly to blame. Lord Loss authorized the attack on the film set in order to wreak revenge on Dervish and me. All those people died because of us. Bo is in torment because of me. I feel compelled to cross and break her out. But I don’t dare, not until I’ve decided what to do about Bec. I might get away with one sneak attack on Lord Loss’s kingdom, but never two.

The tour continues. Bec is quiet for the most part and looks gloomy, but I’m sure I’d look a lot worse in her position. How can she walk alongside that beast so calmly? Unless she’s considering joining him…