“I’m running out of arm,” I said, knowing we still needed the third symbol for the third piece of the Oris Clef.

“No worries. We’ve got your whole body to work with.”

“Great. If the demon-killing gig goes under, I can always join the circus.”

He tapped my other arm, and I held it out, ready for yet another demonic tat. “You gonna let me do it this time?”

“You know how to call up the symbols?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted, though I realized it would be a good idea for me to figure that out. I wasn’t sure where one went to learn basic body-map-symbol-raising skills—maybe a Learning Annex course?

Wincing a little, I once again smeared the flat edge of my blade with the blood, then passed the blade to Clarence, who drew the blood down my forearm, all the while muttering the strange, foreign incantation. I cringed, anticipating the familiar burn as the blood seared a new locator into my flesh, then exhaled as another swipe of my blood over the by-then-visible design quelled the pain.

“What is it?” I asked, peering at the strange, geometric marks now burned into my flesh. An odd square, the lines inside seeming to collapse in on themselves as with a spiral descending to a point. A triangle in which another upside-down triangle was embedded. And a design that seemed to resemble a tic-tac-toe board, with dots in the outer squares and the image of an eye in the center.

“The three pieces,” he said, voicing what I already knew. “Each design represents one of the three pieces of the Oris Clef.”

“And all three images rose on my arm,” I said thoughtfully. “So that means the pieces still exist. That they’re in this dimension.” My learning curve about the Rand McNally me thing was pretty steep, and one of my first lessons was that my hyped-up blood could only latch onto things that were in this dimension. No locating lost relics that had been hidden forever within the demon realm.

I scowled down at the image burned onto my flesh. This next bit was the part I really didn’t like. “You ready?”

“Go on in,” he said.

I nodded, disconcerted by the fact that Clarence was now my anchor back to reality. Before, I’d believed he worked for the angels. Now I knew the true nature of the creature who was watching my back.

No helping it, though. Trying not to think about what could go wrong, I closed my palm over the square, then waited for the sharp tug near my navel.

It didn’t come.

I looked up at Clarence and shrugged. “You sure you got that incantation right?”

“I did,” he said, bouncing a bit in agitation. “I know I did. Try again. Try again right now.”

“Right.” This time, I went with the next image—the triangle. Again, nothing. “No way,” I said, thinking of Rose and the way Johnson was surely going to freak out completely if I returned to the motel without even a solid lead. “Something’s wrong. You did something wrong.”

“Try the last one,” he said, his voice tight.

I wasn’t expecting anything, but I did what he asked, slapping my hand over the tic-tac-toe board—and getting yanked off my feet by the hard jerk of an invisible thread pulling me down, down, down into the board.

“Clarence!” I called out as I clutched his hand tight. I’d done this twice before, and I still wasn’t used to it. I knew that when I was finished on the other side, I could touch my arm again, and the portal would reopen and Clarence could pull me back. I’d never actually done that, having missed my return journey both times before. But I knew how it worked, and intellectually, I was with the program.

Emotionally, though, I felt all alone and lost in the rush of wind as I moved through dark, swirling mists and thick, velvety blackness.

This was the scariest part. The nothingness. The loneliness. This was where I feared getting stuck, and until I passed through to the other side, I was pretty much a wreck.

In front of me, the darkness began to move. At first, the changes were difficult to discern, but the mist moved as well, and soon I could see the mists mixing with the black, faster and faster, until the mists and the blackness formed a vortex, and I was sucked in, closer and closer, until I was finally thrust through the middle and emerged into a blinding white light.

I blinked and realized I was looking at a huge expanse of sky. I shifted, rolling over, and discovered that I was floating above rocky terrain into which someone had carved buildings. I tried to shift to get a better look, but I couldn’t manage. Not this time.

I was looking—or trying to look—at the place where one of the pieces of the Oris Clef had been stashed. On my last two trips I’d been dumped unceremoniously into the middle of the target location. This time, however, I couldn’t even get a clear view, much less get close. Somehow, the relic was being protected even from me and my supersecret decoder skin. And didn’t that suck the big one?

I frowned, trying to find some additional clue. Because if I couldn’t get there through a portal in my arm, I was going to have to use the old-fashioned method of taking a plane. But to where? Buildings carved into rock weren’t common, but they also weren’t rare, and without some idea where exactly the key was, I could be bouncing all over the globe trying to find my vision. Good for frequent flyer miles, not so good for my sanity. Or my sister.

Trouble was, I saw nothing. I was too far above the site, and yet I had no range of motion. Nothing, that was, except for flipping over and looking at the sky again. And since I had no better idea, that was what I did right then. Maybe the sky held a clue. But when I looked, all I saw was a whitewashed blue that shifted to black as the sun set before my eyes.

The stars came out, winking and twinkling, and I lay there, floating on a current of air and thinking that I had never once in all my life seen the stars so clearly. After a while, they didn’t even look like stars anymore. They looked like drawings. Like sketches. And soon all that was left as I looked was a square chunk of space that was filled with what looked like a hand-drawn map of the very stars I’d been watching.

And that, I thought, was weird.

I tried to commit the image to memory, but visual recall was never my strong suit, and before I could even take a second look to bolster the image in my mind, that damn tug was back, as if a giant hook had emerged from my gut, grabbed hold of the skin around my belly button, and pulled me back inside. Hard and fast, and there was Clarence, both hands holding tight to my own, and his face beaded with sweat.

“What?” I asked in alarm. “What happened?”

“Felt like I was losing you a couple of times.”

“I couldn’t get a good view,” I said. “It was like the place was protected or something.”

Clarence ran stubby fingers through his sweaty mass of hair. “So now we know. We’re more careful next time.”

I swallowed. Next time. And there would be no avoiding it. I had to play along because if I didn’t, Rose was dead.

“Could you see anything?”

I told him, trying hard to describe the strange image in the sky and the unusual buildings in the hillside. “They were all carved into the stone,” I said, my eyes closed so I could picture it better. “But one building seemed to emerge from the top. I think I recognized it.”

His eyes lit. “You know the location?”

“No, I mean the type of building. It was one of those—what do they call them?—like in Chinese action imports. Once Upon a Time in China and all that.” Movies & More, my place of employment before I got into this new demon-killing gig, had a huge collection of Asian action flicks, and I loved them all. For that matter, with my sword and magic map arm, I almost felt like a character out of one of them. The tragic heroine trying hard for redemption, and in those movies, the good guy always won.

The thought gave me a moment of peace. At least until I remembered the demons whose essence I absorbed daily. Maybe I wasn’t so much the good guy after all.

“So that’s it,” I said with a shrug. “Like I said, I couldn’t get close. Is it enough? Can you figure out where it is? Do you have a jet? A private plane?”

“I think perhaps a bridge will do the job better.”

I frowned. A bridge was the name he’d given to the way I’d always gone through my arm to end up at a place. “I just told you it didn’t work.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t conjure another bridge. A stand-alone. Using the map on your arm as a destination marker.”

“That will work?”

“Possibly,” he said thoughtfully. “Possibly.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. On the one hand, I wanted to get the damn relics and get it over with. On the other, I didn’t want to be walking a bridge through other dimensions if we weren’t absolutely sure where I was going to come out on the other side. I mean, I’m a big fan of Space Mountain and all, but the dark on my freaky arm bridge isn’t just an absence of light; it’s an utter void, without time or space or light or anything, and you’re all alone, trapped with the thought that if the other side of the bridge closes off, you’ll be stuck there forever, lost in nothingness for eternity.

Talk about your scary bedtime stories.

“Clarence,” I said, this time more urgently. “You won’t do it unless you’re certain, right?”

“Hmm?” He looked up at me, distracted. “Oh. Right. Of course.” He tapped my arm. “The protections are a bit troubling, but on the whole they were to be expected. No, it’s the other two images I’m worried about. Or the absence of images.” Without asking, he yanked my arm toward him.

“Hey!”

“Touch them again.”

I did what he asked, even though I wanted to smack him for bossing me around. Then again, bossing me around was what he did best.

We both looked at my arm. Nothing.

“Maybe there’s an order,” I said. “Maybe after we get the piece from the buildings in the hill, the other images will pop to life.”

His eyes went wide, impressed, and he tapped the side of his nose. “Listen to you,” he said. “You just may be right.” He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled noisily. “Okay, I’ll do some research, find the location, and we’ll put together a game plan for going in.”

I cocked my head, taking devious pleasure from the fact that I was about to antagonize him. “How come we need a game plan? The pieces are under guard, right?”

“We presume so,” he said, looking puzzled. “It is also possible they are simply well hidden.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t considered that maybe the pieces were basically buried treasure. “But if they are guarded, then aren’t we on the same side as the guards? We’re all the good guys, right? Trying to keep the pieces away from the demons?”

Uncertainty played over the lying little frog’s face. Then it cleared, and he sucked in a breath, going, “Ohhhhh. I see your confusion.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, wanting so badly to tell him that I knew the truth that my stomach hurt. I wanted to scream at him. Instead, I said, “Confusion?”

“If they exist, those who guard the pieces will be neither good nor bad, neither friend nor foe.”

“Huh?”

“They have one purpose only,” Clarence said, “and that’s to keep the pieces safe. Warriors,” he said, “who would not give up the pieces even to the Archangel Gabriel himself.”

I hated the fact that I didn’t know if he was telling me the truth. Because what he said sounded perfectly reasonable. “But then why are we even going after them? Won’t these warriors keep the pieces out of the demons’ hands?”

“With the approach of the convergence, the demon population is desperate. Many will be willing now to try anything to obtain the Oris Clef and the power it wields. Their assault will be brutal and deadly, and if the relic is there, the demons will find it, warrior guards or not. Make no mistake, Lily, either as to the extent to which the demons will go or to the breadth of their power.” He drew in a breath. “The only way to protect the pieces is to take them. Take them, and destroy them.”

I knew damn good and well that he had no intention of destroying them, and his smarmy “beat the demons” attitude made me want to gag. At the same time, it occurred to me that Kokbiel and Penemue probably weren’t the only ones looking. Surely there were other big-shot demons looking to be king of the universe. An inconvenient fact that still brought a smile to my face. Bring them on. The more I killed, the more powerful I’d become.

Except how did those demons know where to look? The question turned my smile to a frown, and I posed my question to my demonic froggy handler. “I mean, they don’t have my arm,” I said in conclusion. “So what are the demons using to find the relics of the key?”

“You,” he said. “The demons will seek out you.”

I swallowed. I was strong—and getting stronger—and I had that nice immortality thing going for me. But that didn’t mean I was invincible, or impervious to pain. And being immortal didn’t mean I couldn’t lose. It only meant that if I did lose, I’d have a long, long, long time to think about it.

Not that I intended to show any fear or doubt in front of Clarence. Instead, I shot him my best haughty look. “I’m ready.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “But we’re not taking any chances. You’re too important,” he added. “That’s why you’re not doing this solo. Lily, my girl,” he said, his eyes bulging with pleasure, “from here on out, I’m teaming you up with a partner.”