Jessa Slade: Forged of Shadows

Much love to my family for their enthusiastic support during the “Year of the Book.”

Deep appreciation for all the great folks at NAL for “Year of the Book: Part 2,” especially Adam Auerbach and Anthony Ramondo for this cool, sexy cover, and copy editor Michele Alpern for reminding me about antecedents.

Deeper bows yet to editor Kerry Donovan and agent Becca Stumpf, who answered all my curious (sometimes anxious) e-mails during the wood ducklingesque transition from writer to author.

Big, big thanks to my mentors (who don’t really know they’re my mentors), including Michelle Buonfiglio and Sue Grimshaw, for making books smart and superfun, and the PASIC authors for their knowledge and generosity.

Credit (and kisses) to Rainstick Cowbell for the Seduced by Shadows theme song.

And to all the readers, thanks for giving the words a place to go.

Gray dust clogged the frigid air. Filthy snow lay all around, streaked with ash and blood and some odd fibrous, gelatinous mess.

He put his hand to his aching head. Bone pulped under the tentative touch and he winced. His fingers came away slimed with crimson and gray matter.

That couldn’t be good.

Stones rained around him, and he choked on the acrid stink of demon- realm winds. Dimly, he remembered. He’d been trapped there, his soul bound into the Veil by that bitch talya and her lover.

But here he was, back in the human realm. His pores beaded with sulfur as his demon ascended, struggling to protect his all-too-human flesh from the stoning.

It coiled through him, the demon, and tightened its grasp.

He’d fleetingly—so fleetingly—hoped to be freed from it after all the long centuries of slavery. Now a slave again.

He tried to weep, but the acid sting of birnenston tears only burned furrows in his cheeks.

He wanted to succumb to the pounding stones, be buried forever. But the demon yanked him upright, shedding dust and ice and blood like some terrible birth cowl. He clenched his teeth, resisting the demon’s intangible grip, but his head ached all the worse and he could summon neither wit nor will. The demon awkwardly coordinated his limbs into a shambling gait.

Worse than a slave.

As the demon rode him like a dumb animal away from the collapsing building—the site of his desperate bid to free the world from the chains of helpless good and hopeless evil that bound it—Corvus Valerius could not decide whom he hated more: the malevolent djinni that had brought him back from the dead, or the bastard league of the teshuva who’d had the chance to kill him once and for all and had failed.

Four months later

What would Jackie Chan do?

Not for the first time, Jilly Chan wished she’d been born with the ass- kicking aptitude of her Hong Kong movie-hero namesake. Lau-lau always said denying her heritage would get her in trouble. She just hadn’t realized trouble meant dead. Duh. How many times did the universe need to hit her in the head with a brick before she learned to duck as quickly as Jackie Chan?

“Dee, Iz, don’t move.” She edged in front of the two kids. As if her five-two self could hide them. Maybe the darkness of the Chicago alley at night would work in their favor.

“What is that?” Iz’s teen voice cracked, which lately made him swear. But he obviously realized they had bigger problems than his impending manhood. Such as their aforementioned impending deaths.

“Did it escape from the zoo?” Dee clutched Jilly’s shoulder.

Jilly elbowed them both backward. She hated retreating, but the thing at the mouth of the alley had them blocked. “I don’t know what it is. But it isn’t friendly.”

“You can tell by the way it drools,” Dee agreed. “Eesh. Is it burning holes in the pavement?”

“Nothing that big has mandibles,” Iz squeaked, stuck on panicked puberty. “Only insects have mandibles like that.”

“Tell that to Supersize- Me Drool Boy over there,” Dee said. “I bet it eats know- it-all nerds for its midnight snack. Which would be, oh, right about now.”

“Fly vomit could, in sufficient volume, theoretically dissolve concrete.”

“Oh, gross, Iz-kid.”

“Quiet.” Jilly took another step back, shooing the kids along behind her.

The creature didn’t move, but a flash of orange eyeshine gave her the sinking feeling it could see in the dark. And it was looking right at her.

A chill that had nothing to do with the rude March wind traced her spine and wrapped around her chest. “Dee,” she said softly, “my cell is in my right pocket.”

With her gaze locked on the thing, she never felt the teen’s nimble fingers in the puffy material of her coat. Hmm. She’d better have another talk with the girl, make sure she wasn’t keeping up her old skills. Assuming a not-worst-case-scenario outcome to tonight’s adventure, of course.

“No sudden moves. No loud noises,” Jilly said. “It doesn’t seem ready to attack.”

“Yet.” Iz’s voice dropped an octave.

Behind her, Dee muttered, “Hello? Why won’t this thing— Help? Jilly, I think the battery—”

A hideous screech blared through the alley, and they all flinched. But it was only the cell phone, feeding back. The signal spit and gibbered, far too loud for the tiny speaker.

The thing in their path took a shambling step forward. It paused in the narrow cone of light cast by the neon sign on the corner of the building.

“Turn the phone off,” Jilly and Iz hissed in unison.

Jilly claimed no particular knowledge of entomology. She knew two kinds of city bugs: the fast ones and the ones she scraped off the bottom of her Wescos. But Iz was right. The thing coming toward them had the basic look of something caught between her treads.

“I bet this is what got Andre.” Iz’s voice broke off. “Now do you believe me something weird’s been going on? Now you see why we had to come out here?”

“Iz-kid, I’m seeing it, and I still don’t believe it.” Jilly stretched her arms. At least she could make herself wider, if not taller. “I want you two to make a run for it the second I yell ‘go,’ okay?”

“Run for it?” Dee asked. “You’re kidding me.”

It wasn’t interested in the kids, Jilly told herself. It had never once looked away from her. How flattering. “I’ll scare it. You guys get clear of the interference and call 911.”

“Scare it?” Iz sounded even more doubtful than Dee. “How?”

Dee squeezed Jilly’s arm. “Just say ‘go.’ ”

For once, Jilly was grateful for the years on the street that had sharpened the teen’s self- preservation instincts. “Dee,” she warned, “take Iz too.”

“As long as he’s fast.”

“Andre could outrun any cop in the precinct,” Iz said gloomily. “Bet it didn’t help him none.”

“Ready?” Jilly stiffened, preparing to . . . She hadn’t quite worked out that part yet, but it had something to do with kung fu. Or maybe tai chi. Whichever. “One. Two . . .”

And before she could say “three—go,” two more of the humanoid insect things loped into the mouth of the alley.

“Uh, Jilly?” Iz tugged her sleeve. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to scare them now.”

She could distract one with the half-assed assault she had in mind. Three, no way. “Change of plan. Head to the back of the alley, to the fire escape. There’ll be an access door on the roof that leads into the building.”