“Those who can do hellfire can also suspend it?”

There wasn’t much Darius was scared of, but clearly hellfire was high on that short list.

“As far as I know, those who work with hellfire can only blast it, not control it. Think of an extremely powerful flamethrower with three settings—destruction, massive destruction, and total destruction. It gushes out, along with the conjurer’s power and energy, eats everything in its path, and then goes out. If that were the case here, we’d see melted walls from the blast radius.” I shook my head, noticing the fire pattern winged up in some places to form a V. “No, this is a normal kind of fire, created with magic instead of sticks and matches. This fire was kept on a tight leash.”

I traced the fire patterns in the air with my fingertip, noticing how the burn marks stopped at the same place near the ceiling on all the walls. I ducked and ran my fingers along the floor before knocking. “Heat weakened the properties of the wood, but it didn’t ignite. It was not an efficient fire.”

“What does that mean?” Darius asked, following me to the doorway of the room that had held the book. The floor in this room had been destroyed, and remnants of the framework and the ground below showed through. A picture was starting to form.

“An efficient fire is one without much smoke. It is mostly flame. You see, smoke is actually fuel for the fire, in gas form. If a fire isn’t efficient, that means it’s creating a lot of fuel in the air. Here, the floor’s smoke-damaged but mostly intact, which suggests an inefficient fire. But these walls say otherwise.”

The living room was about the same, with the right side of the room worse off. Warning shivers raced across my skin. I did not like the look of this one bit.

I worked toward the kitchen at the back of the house. “When fire is burning wood, the actual wood is not aflame. Rather, it’s the air right at the surface. There is the tiniest gap. If you see a burning log, the outside might be charred, but if you stop the fire, the middle of the log will be fine. In essence, it’s the smoke that’s burning. The heat changes the wood’s properties, which creates chemical gas, which then fuels the fire. The more heat, the faster the burn. Long story short, the massive amount of heat in this house should’ve burned the floor as badly as it did the walls. But the floor is fine in some places, and not in others. Our very tricky mage could float fire. He kept it off the ground in some places, but let it burrow in others. How? Why?”

I let out a breath as I broke out in a cold sweat.

“He controlled all this magically?” Darius asked. I felt a tug on my belt as the floor bowed under my feet. It didn’t break, though.

I touched Darius’s hand attached to my belt just to assure myself I wouldn’t fall in. “This belt better be quality, Darius.”

We edged forward another few feet, and I answered his question. “Yes. He controlled it very well, or else…” I cut myself off as a light bulb snapped on in my head. Air filled my lungs in relief. “He must’ve laid down a type of magical floor. I’ve never seen one used as fire retardant, but it could work, I suppose. The floor’s probably messed up in a couple of places because the mage didn’t root the spell.” I scratched my head. “I should’ve asked Callie about mages who don’t root spells. Usually that’s a rookie mistake. The one in the Realm wasn’t rooted, either, though that one had some power behind it. Strange.”

I rubbed my temple, thinking this through. I couldn’t do these spells on my own, but my magical encyclopedia was extensive. If it hadn’t been, I’d be dead twenty times over by now. “So he creates the magic buffer first, protecting the ceiling. The layer for the floor comes next, but that spell can’t be interrupted by walking through it, so he’d have to do this room by room. The fire seems moderately controlled, which is hard for a human to do. It would take the highest level of power. Or…” I tapped my chin in thought.

“Or?” Darius asked, a captive audience.

“Or it would take the right knowledge and a boost of power. The unicorn blood is the boost. The knowledge and sustained increase in power could come from a demon. Is our tricky mage playing host to a demon? Curious minds want to know.”

I saw the hole from which I’d retrieved the sack of spells. Not burned.

I turned back toward the living room, more pieces of the puzzle fitting into place. “I bet he was in here looking for something”—the book of spells, most likely—“and whatever he wanted wasn’t there, so he freaked out.”

I stepped too far into the living room. The sound of cracking wood made me flinch, but it was too late. The floor gave way. My foot went down.

My hands came up to protect my face. Gravity ripped at my body, but my backward fall was cut off abruptly—pain cinched my stomach and air greeted the crack of my ass.

Darius held me in the air by my belt.

“Once again, this strange form of security has proven effective,” he said. He didn’t sound taxed. “And Reagan, you should know that I only buy the best quality.”

“It seems so, yes. Fancy putting me down?”

I appreciated that he set me down gently. I didn’t appreciate the smile on his face.

“Suddenly you gain a sense of humor?” I dusted myself off out of habit.

“I have always enjoyed circus performers.”

“Lovely.”

Back to analyzing the hole in this room, it seemed I had missed an item hidden in the floor—why else would another cubbyhole exist? Judging by the lesser destruction in this room versus the other, I’d taken the most valuable prize. That was good to know. “Our mage has a rage problem. He wanted something that wasn’t here, so he fried the place. Childish.”

“Possibly that was the demon at work.”

Who had taken the item from this room?

Another light bulb went off.

“Could be,” I answered Darius, marching toward the door. His reflexes were as fast as ever, thankfully, and I didn’t have to rip out of his grip, or pull him behind me. “Depends on the demon. With all the mage’s power, though, that demon must be constantly trying to take over.” Outside, I swung my gaze to the side. No curtains moved. “I bet the mage is playing the dangerous game of demon pack and play.”

“What is that?” Darius followed me across the dead grass and to the neighbor’s house, my original destination.

“He creates a spell to contain the demon in a circle of some kind, one that can coerce the demon into giving information or power at the mage’s behest. Those spells are extremely complex, require a lot of power, and unwavering confidence and focus to maintain control. When the mage needs to take the power on the road, like he clearly did here, he performs a forced possession, pulling the demon into his body. At the end of his errand, he uses an exorcism to put it back into the circle. There are a few very dangerous points. Getting the demon into the body without it escaping, getting the demon out of the body and back into the circle, and keeping the demon from overtaking the body while the possession is in progress. Lots of work, but our mage clearly thinks it’s worth the crazy power boost. It’s just a matter of time before one of those three issues goes wrong.”

“Or else the circle falters.”

“Or that, sure. The demon could eat away at the circle over time, and if our mage is primarily concerned about the more dangerous situations, maybe he gets complacent with the finer details and upkeep. But wow. A true demonic possession for power. I haven’t seen this in a while. It totally fits, though.”

I felt the wards protecting the property, paltry things designed by a hack.

Or maybe playing with the powerful mage had made me forget what lower-level magic looked like.

“You have magic, you know all about magic…” Darius paused beside me, watching me feel my way around the spell. “Reagan, I have never heard a mage speak like this. The Banks are at the top of the power spectrum in the area, and they have never sounded this confident and insightful. In addition to being extremely aroused, I am certain you could be the best mage I have ever met.”

“My mother thought the same thing. Had she lived longer, she would’ve taught me more. But her time was cut short.”