No way, no time, no how. And especially not here. I didn’t believe in collateral damage.

The demon knew. He shrugged elaborately, his lips split into a feral grin, and he dove into a group of students.

I screamed the word I rarely used except in cases of extreme rage and near-death experiences. That word and the half a dozen armed Guardians who’d caught up with me made the kids around us scatter in a panic.

The demon was snatching up students, taking them about a dozen feet into the air and dropping them on the crowd below. The kids couldn’t see him, but they knew their classmates weren’t jumping and falling by themselves. Some of the ones he dropped landed on other students, knocking them to the ground; others he dropped landed unmoving on the cobblestones. All of them were in danger of being crushed underfoot if the students stampeded.

I felt Vegard and his boys pulling together some serious kick-ass magic behind me. It got the demon’s attention, as he dangled a young student by the scruff of the neck. A pretty, dark-haired human girl. I recognized her. Katelyn Valerian, the archmagus’s granddaughter.

The demon looked at me.

And then he roared and materialized in all his demonic glory in the middle of the Quad.

The students’ screams were deafening as they panicked and ran-or tried to. There were too many of them and too little open space. I didn’t blame them for running, but I also didn’t want to be trampled. I wanted that demon.

Someone beat me to it-and that someone wasn’t Vegard.

I knew that voice.

A rich baritone of staggering strength and power pierced the chaos, his spellsong dark and discordant, the notes booming and harsh. A long-fingered hand extended above the crowd toward the demon, fingers spread, helping him focus his spellsong.