No way we could fight this beast. Had the Nuckelavee's rider stopped rocking back and forth like a corpse and sat straight on its skinless horse, it'd have crushed through the library's ceiling. Being big didn't make it slow either. That fin-legged horse outpaced vehicles if it wanted. When the monster struck, it did so in an instant.

Joints cracked as the rider spun its body 360 degrees and swung its arms at every bookshelf in reach. Dominoes after dominoes toppled over around me. Half-a-dozen paperbacks hit me in the chest while a crackling tome punched my skull before the wooden frame holding them collapsed on top of me. I'd have died had Siris not pushed me away from the books and below an empty shelf space (thanks for that, man).

I lived, but I couldn't see anything, not even with the night vision potion, and those heavy books hurt my chest. I could barely breathe. Every time I tried to inhale, my lungs felt like my ribs were stabbing them, though it wasn't just the books. Didn't I also breathe in the Nuckelavee's poison? If I got the mortasheen now, nodular lesions would form in my lungs before I painfully suffocated as Mrs. Turner did.

I didn't want to die. Unfortunately, without the right breathing technique, I couldn't focus on channeling enough aether. Sorry, but my inner Zen needs fresh air!

Luckily, my fingers found my plastic bag, my Magia Phone, and my rod while touching around in this dark coffin of a toppled-over wooden frame. Once I grabbed my rod, Siris came closer.

"Things aren't looking good, boss," he said.

"No, they don't. But my necklace looks pretty!"

I clutched my rod and despite my lack of breath, I got in enough concentration that I made my mother's necklace shine for a brief moment. White ripples of aether poured over every nook and cranny of the toppled-over bookshelf, stroking it like a doctor searching for a patient's weak spots. There was a small hole in its side. I got my arm under it and, through a mix of muscle power and aether channeling, I lifted it a crack up so that I saw Darcy fight the monster.

She stood two shelves away from me, her feet apart shoulder-wide, one hand on her bracelet and the other forming a white line reaching to her staff. Her staff wasn't held in her hands. Instead, a white aether line connected to her familiar Lyfa pressed the staff's iron end into the Nuckelavee's exposed flesh.

The monster screamed, yet twitching muscles showed that its paralysis wouldn't last.

Darcy, seeing me from the corner of her eye, made a gesture, and part of her life energy cloud flew over to me and gave me the strength to lift the wooden frame off my neck. I stood up.

"How can I help?" I yelled.

Darcy closed her eyes and focused her mind on the staff pressed against the Nuckelavee, but just as I asked the question, her white aether line disappeared and her weapon dropped to the ground. Lyfa disappeared, too, and Darcy's eyes widened. She punched her bracelet, but the owl familiar didn't return."What are you trying to do, young Miss?"

A man with holes in his pants and stains on his plaid suit stood in the doorway. He greeted us with a toothless smile that disappeared when he saw the Nuckelavee.

The homeless man from before was back. No idea how he got past the police tape, but when I tried to remove it, the Veil activated itself as he watched me. Now, his presence blocked Darcy's magic.

Which meant we were going to die!

The Nuckelavee was the only one of us not restrained by the Veil. Normally, monsters had to wear a glamour where mundanes might see them and only affect them in ways that could be explained otherwise. The Nuckelavee had no such restrictions now. The gigantic undead centaur and the tiny mortal man eyed each other with mutual curiosity as the monster slowly approached its victim.

I had to do something. Quick.

I didn't have much life energy, let alone breath left, but I did have my plastic bag. And I had one Molotov cocktail left. I wasn't terribly athletic. Even Simon at least played baseball which I didn't do. I had no idea how far I could throw a bottle when I truly needed to.

What I did was a split-second decision with more guts than wits behind it.

"Hey, ugly water horse-man!" I shouted. "I'm over here!"

Even though the Nuckelavee understood no English, it turned in my direction.

"What are you doing?" Darcy asked.

I lit the bottle's fuse. "Testing a theory!"

I reached back and focused on the Nuckelavee the way a pitcher focused on his team's catcher. When I tossed the bottle, it slipped out of my hand. I expected the cocktail to crash and burn before my feet, but that didn't happen.

Invisible white lines corrected my course and made the bottle somersault through the air with the grace and elegance of a dancer. The homeless man watched the spectacle with shining eyes. His presence didn't make my magic go away. The more he watched it, the more the bottle gained altitude and the more my magic grew. The Molotov cocktail hit the Nuckelavee's exposed horseback and lit up its flesh like a torch.

The monster barely even noticed its burning flesh, but that wasn't what I counted on. What I counted on was what happened next. Smoke billowed from the angry demon that, mildly annoyed at my attack, raised its arms and prepared to squish me.

When the smoke touched the ceiling, my theory got confirmed. This library was abandoned but still maintained. It still had shelves with books in them and functioning doors. And it still had sprinkler systems.

Torrents of water splashed down as if someone cranked up a shower and cascaded against the demon's dirty, poisonous, undead hide. The rain poured against my body, soaked into my clothes, and washed the putrefying mortasheen out of my lungs. Because unlike the hestermoan Mrs. Turner got, the mortasheen could be cured by elements antipathic to the Nuckelavee.

The homeless man had run away. Now that we supernaturals were among ourselves, I felt like being in a quippier mood.

"Welcome to the mortal world, undead horseman," I said. "Nice that you visit us, but dirtballs like you normally take showers here."

Yeah, my superhero one-liners were cringe, but I was a novice. Besides, Siris told me I needed them to calm down and to upset the baddies.

I could breathe. And I enjoyed the demon's screams. Its jackhammer-loud death cries pierced even my covered ears and likely woke up Summer Hill's town square. But while I'd suffer hearing loss soon, I enjoyed the monster's wailing. That's for Dad, sucker.

The Nuckelavee sledgehammered the ground before its feet. It didn't die yet. We had to destroy its head before the sprinklers stopped and it could regenerate again.

"Let me finish this," Zane said behind me.

Darcy jumped to the side as she saw the tall, dark-haired ninja changeling. I had to admit, I was a sucker for guys in soaked shirts, although his leather jacket ruined the effect, the sponge-wet scarf and misty glasses gave him an air of mystery.

Zane pushed me aside. He leaped like a bullet through the rain. Reacting to his superhuman pace, Nuckelavee's horse swallowed him in a single bite.

Of course, he didn't die. It was just a glamour illusion trick and the real Zane was behind the rider, planting a bomb against its head. A burning fuse hung out of a casing made of ceramic, presumably to avoid having metal that might harm him.

Time to run! Barely after I turned around, I heard the demon's screams again followed by an explosive bang rivaling its death cries. Overpressure shockwaves produced a wind that slammed a small shrapnel piece into my back and made me stumble.

My head buzzed. Hopefully, I figured out an eardrum-healing potion today. At least the Nuckelavee rider now lacked a head. The demon reared up one last time and tore apart the ceiling with its arms before it toppled to the ground like a felled tree. Its skeleton dissolved into a puddle of green ectoplasm washed away in the water.

Darcy panted and so did I. We needed two minutes, maybe three, to take a small nap after all that.

The viscous green substance that used to be the Nuckelavee crawled closer to me. The sprinklers ran out of breath, yet the drizzle that kept pouring from them made the slime flow closer and closer.

I forced myself to my feet. Two of her potion flasks had been emptied. I opened one of them and let the green liquid pour into it before sealing it once more. At least I ended the day with a little reward.

Zane didn't flinch. With his changeling night vision, he approached Darcy and me despite the broken light. Sprinkler drops rolled off his duster flapping in a black cloud like the water wasn't even there.

With one hand, he tossed back Darcy's staff. With the other hand, covered in dozens of bandages to prevent him from touching metal, he pulled out a revolver, gripped its rubber grip, and pointed its barrel at me.

I raised my hands in surrender. "No fist bump for having slain the monster together?"

"I'm not trying to hurt you," he said.

"Newsflash, supersonic pieces of metal hurt!"

I hate my lack of spare time. Had the universe given me more time to practice using firearms, I'd be carrying a gun myself. But I wasn't and now, I was as dead as a doornail.

Zane shot.

My breath froze. I covered my face, knowing that it was too late, knowing that whatever bullet he had shot had already hit me and that I'd bleed out soon. Only I didn't bleed.

I turned around and realized the mare lying behind me, an iron bullet in its head.

"You could've warned me, you know?" I asked.

He didn't lower his gun. "I needed to make sure it stays dead."

"Lemme guess, your godmother's divination predicted I'd be here?" I asked.

"Kept myself in the background," he said without confirming or denying my question. "You levitated in front of a mundane."

"I can demonstrate it again if one time wasn't enough."

He cocked his trigger.

I wanted to ask how he found us, but the question might have been redundant. This was the second time he showed up in a location where the Erlking was demonstrably involved. Since I didn't know what the Erlking's real name was or what he even was, there was a good chance that this man was him. He evidently had connections to the Fae realmand nothing made it impossible for him to grab the creepy book. While thepossibility had to be considered, it couldn't hurt to ask. "How did you find us?"

"Tryin' to catch the Erlking, just like you," he said. "My hometown also got attacked by him. I hate people who do this."

"And what do you want from me?"

"You made a bargain with him and survived. That's pretty impressive, people will get angry. You might need some help."