Stefan’s Blitzkrieg spell was air magic, with extra runes for lightning, and extra runes for making it stronger and wider than a normal spell.

It was ridiculously simple because you didn’t have to aim it. Shit, you couldn’t aim it if you wanted to. The only slider on this thing was volume. You could cast a weak version that would summon two or three lightning bolts close to you or turn it up to eleven and wipe out a whole trailer park in one go.

You could pick a general direction to point it, but once I let this thing go, I had no way to know how far it would stretch in any particular direction. But I was looking at a sea of demons charging out of those portals. Surely any human left in this area had already been ripped apart by now.

I was too cautious at first, not even using enough magic to get the storm started, then I heard Randy grunt from a claw strike and the anger surged in.

This spell worked really well with anger, and once you got it going, it had a mind of its own. I immediately understood why grandpa chose this thing when he lost his temper, and immediately understood why it was so hard to stop.

And yeah, like most of the dangerous stuff, casting it felt great. I hadn’t really felt the addictive pull of magic lately, casting the same three or four spells over and over in my day job, but casting this big, juicy attack spell hit all kinds of pleasure centers in my brain, briefly making my face light up with confidence and joy.

So much power, surging through me so fast, I felt like a force of nature. I felt like a god.

And for a few precious minutes as I cast that spell, we were winning. Thousands of dead humans, thousands of smashed robots. Billions in property damage, but for a second, I was winning, blasting a whole army of demons while I held both arms out, like the power was an orchestra, and I was conducting the storm.

It only lasted for a minute or so, but it felt like hours. Bolt after bolt of white lightning flashed in a broad swath in front of me, blasting demons and buildings and the bodies of the dead.

I must have desecrated a hundred corpses with that spell, as I called down destruction on the fallen soldiers who died at the Avery checkpoint, dragged from their shelter and pulled apart by Hunters, hopefully already dead before they got blasted and burned by me.

I asked Azael about that and got a rare answer. He said whatever sins I committed that day; I had claimed no innocent life with my spell.

* * *

Magical healing was much faster than conventional medicine, but for every person Cecilia and Simon were able to help, two others came through the door.

Some of them came through under their own power, hit by stray bullets or falling debris. Some of them were brought in by soldiers and first responders, and far too many were brought in by family members who had to be told their spouse or child was already dead.

Most of the healing was simple. Even those who had serious injuries only had bites, cuts, avulsions and broken bones, all things that were relatively easy for magic to heal.

But in some people, the shock of those simple injuries had triggered other conditions like strokes or heart attacks, killing them before the healers could intervene, or leaving them with brain damage too complex for spells to heal.

Simon and his students were able to heal a good seventy percent of people who came in and get them down to the shelter under Berkeley Street, but that still left dozens of people stuck on olive drab cots, struck down by organ damage or internal injuries that needed advanced treatment at a real hospital.

Lydia had been following Evelyn around like an intern shadowing her, reaching out to grip her hand or grab her arm when she needed magic.

Evelyn and Lydia healed twenty people together, before they both had to sit down and rest. Evelyn was quite powerful by the standards of the Newbury Tower magic program, but healing takes a lot of magic, and can quickly wear a witch out, even when she’s got access to a demon power source.

Exhausted, Evelyn said, “Go help someone else.”

Lydia ran over to help Simon, but he waved her off. Simon was skilled, not powerful, and most of his healing didn’t take much power. He was handling patients with delicate injuries, using an ancient monitor and a set of fiber optic cameras to identify and repair crushed blood vessels and severed nerves.

Simon would have spent the rest of his life in a work camp if he had tried this in a real hospital, but there are special rules for healers who help out during emergencies, and none of his patients complained.

Simon handled a dozen tricky cases that would have left people dead, blind, or crippled for life, and most of them never even knew it was magic.

Lydia stood alone in the middle of the ward for a moment, waiting to see if any other student would be brave enough to pair up with her. And when no one stepped up, Cecilia Hardy said, “With me,” and held out her hand.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Cecilia said, as a spark of magic flashed between them. “I don’t hate you, demon. And as much as I want you out of that boy’s life - at the moment, I am glad you’re here.”

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* * *

The Hardy Witches had been in Boston since it was a horse trail. A bloodline even older than mine, rumored to be the first family who brought faeries to America.

The Hardy family was bound by pacts with faeries the way my family was bound to demons - so similar, in fact, our respective handlers went to some lengths to make sure our ancestors never met.

Faeries and demons had been at war for a thousand years before they finally worked out a peace treaty, shortly before my first ancestor sold his soul to Baalphezar, basically just both sides promising to leave each other alone, a treaty that was routinely violated in small ways, but never seriously enough to jeopardize the whole thing.

This treaty should have kept me and Denise far apart for our entire lives, but Denise had been carefully exempted from the faerie pacts that had bound previous generations, while I had rather abruptly broken the demon contract that bound me, leaving us free to swap magic with each other and damn near fall in love.

My old Master had seen this as a unique opportunity, offering to let me sign a new contract and live my life more or less as a free man, as long as I promised to have lots of awesome magic babies with Denise, and sign all their souls over to him.

It was not a serious offer. Just a desperate demon stalling for time, trying to hide how much I had hurt him when we fought on Earth, but the point was made. Denise’s family was a faerie project just like mine was a demon project, and the product of that union would be… something new on this Earth.

Everybody knew Cecilia Hardy was bound to faeries, but Lydia didn’t realize how literal that was until she took her hand, and realized she was not alone in Cecilia’s head.

Cecilia Hardy was old and smart, and she had leveraged her family legacy for every drop of influence she could buy, doing jobs for anyone or anything that needed her, until every faerie, every djinn, every elemental prince, and every church on the planet owed her a favor.

Cecilia was about half as powerful as her daughter, just nicely above average for the Newbury magic program, while Denise was considered exceptional, and my powers were off the scale.

That’s why I could get away with using all these big, sloppy attack spells, while everybody else had to be smart.

Cecilia had a reputation for being smart, but not particularly powerful, which means she could routinely surprise bad guys by pulling out feats of magic that should have been impossible for her.

Denise didn’t like to talk about it, maybe she didn’t even know the details, but Lydia learned the truth when she took Cecilia’s hand. It wasn’t literal possession, but Cecilia Hardy had basically turned her body into a ride sharing service for faeries.

Young Cecilia had wanted to be a magical superhero almost as badly as I did, and she was willing to do whatever it took to make it into the big leagues. She would never have been powerful enough to make it on a Bluestar team, so she turned herself into a kind of consultant who was on good terms with all of them, particularly with the young, attractive men.

Arthur was officially connected to the Bluestar program back then, but Cecilia was always the first one to pick up the phone, and she was far and away the most fun to deal with - a genuine bombshell in her 20s and 30s, wearing a tweed skirt that showed off her legs, and a blouse that always seemed to be missing a few buttons, whenever she needed help from a man.

Cecilia didn’t spend much time in the field, but if you called her with a question, she always knew who to call, and she always came back with the right answer, faster than anybody else.

And it turns out, for most of those fancy superhero meetings and brainstorming sessions, Cecilia had a faerie looking through her eyes, the same faerie who was riding around in her body, at the exact moment she reached out and took Lydia’s hand.

Azael let me see the hilarious look on Lydia’s face, as a demon and a faerie suddenly found themselves connected inside the same witch - a direct treaty violation that no longer applied to Lydia, since she didn’t really have a Master anymore. But the faerie inside Cecilia didn’t know that, and she did not immediately identify Lydia as a friend.

Lydia came this close to being vaporized on the spot by a faerie princess, before Cecilia jumped in and explained the situation, letting the faerie confirm that this demon was no longer connected to Hell, and was no longer representing anyone bound by the treaty.

Cecilia spent the next hour healing people, assisted by a demon and a faerie, perhaps the first caster in a thousand years to draw power from both at the same time.

And when she was done helping the last patient she could help, Cecilia sat down on one of those indestructible army chairs, and Lydia took a place beside her.

“Why did you do that?” Lydia asked. “Why did you reveal me to her?”

“You would have been revealed eventually. Your boy is too close to my girl, so I had to let my allies know you’re not a threat. You won’t be going to any faerie rave parties, but they won’t immediately kill you, if any of my contacts catch you with Denise.”

“And the kind of bond you have with her… Cecilia, why do you let them do that to you?”

“People needed me,” Cecilia said, “and I wasn’t powerful enough. I was never powerful enough. I knew I would be vulnerable out in the field, but you can’t just dial in to your friendly neighborhood hero and tell him how to build a demon trap over the phone. You have to go with him, and when the bad guys come to stop you, you can’t just stand there looking pretty while he does all the work.

“I almost died a dozen times, before I finally accepted Leeta’s offer, and let her start casting directly through me. She became my best friend, but then there were days when she wasn’t available, and I had to open myself to whichever one of her sisters would answer my call.

“Faeries really are like children, no matter how old they get - spoiled, whimsical children who have never had to grow up. Ride with them too long and you start acting like a faerie yourself - pampered and vain - playful, and irresponsible, giving in to every impulse with no thought to the consequences. Even Denise is like that sometimes, and it breaks my heart to know she got it from me.

“Leeta’s one of the best of them, and it’s hard for me to say no to her, after all the things she’s done for me. I used to let her ride around in my body while I slept. I’d wake up and find myself standing in front of my mirror, dressed up like a doll and posing for her.

“It’s hard to explain, how something can be innocent and terrifying at the same time. I won’t blame anyone who wants to judge me, but there are a lot of people alive today who wouldn’t be, if I hadn’t taken that deal. A lot of good men would have been torn apart by monsters, if I didn’t have Leeta fighting inside me.

“I know Leeta loves me, and that’s why I believe it, when Denise says you love that boy. But love doesn’t turn poison into wine, it just makes it easier for the poison to go down. After all these years, Leeta is still a child, who can’t really understand why she’s bad for me.

“The difference is, you know you’re poison for him, and you stick around anyway, telling yourself how much he needs you, while you push everyone else away.”