After their excursion to Alcatraz, Cloud got paged away to another mission in the city. Naomi, Makani, Alex, and Logan returned to their previous mission: a late-night snack at the Pancake Palace. Even at midnight, the place was full—or perhaps because it was midnight. Luckily, Sera and Kai had already secured a table.

“Sorry we’re late,” Naomi said as she sat down inside the banana-yellow booth. Subtle this place was surely not. “Will the commandos be joining us?”

Tony, Dal, and Callum—aka Kai’s commandos—had been working with Sera and Kai tonight.

“They went back to the office and ordered hamburgers,” Sera replied.

“A wise choice,” said Kai.

“Kai is positivity scandalized about even setting foot in this place,” Sera said, smirking at her fiancé. “He considers it too garish.”

“Garish? No, I believe the word I used was—”

“There are children present, sweetheart,” Sera cut in.

Her gaze shifted pointedly to the little boy and girl in the neighboring booth. What were they even doing up at this hour? In any case, both kids were gaping at Kai, their eyes as wide as the pancakes on their plates.

“You have fans,” Sera told him. “Give them a smile.”

Kai flashed the kids a big dragon smile. Nervous, ecstatic giggles burst from their mouths, then they hastily looked away.

“I’ll admit this place might be a tad over-the-top, but it has the best pancakes in the city,” Sera said.

“A bit over-the-top?” Kai glanced down at the animated pancake on the front of the menu. It was waving and winking at him. “How can I not be scandalized? This place is not dignified for a dragon.” His gaze slid from Makani to Logan. “Or even an assassin.”

Makani eyed the flashy neon sign on the window that advertised all-you-can-eat pancake platters. Smiley-faced silverware skipped around the pancakes in some sort of country dance.

Makani shrugged. “I’ve seen worse.”

Sera nudged Kai. “Hey, why don’t you think Alex and I would be embarrassed about the apparent lack of dignity here?”

“Because this place was your idea,” Naomi reminded her.

“And we have no dignity to speak of,” Alex told her sister, chuckling.

“So true,” Sera said dreamily. She opened her menu. “Look here, Kai. Sausages, bacon, and hamburgers. There’s plenty of meat for you to eat, just like I promised.”

He looked somewhat mollified. But only somewhat.

After they’d all ordered and their blue-haired fairy waitress sauntered away, Naomi said to Kai, “Right before we came here, we cleaned up Alcatraz for you.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a problem.”

“No one was.”

“Escaped convicts and beasts from hell had taken it over, killed all the guards, then freed the criminals imprisoned there,” Alex summarized.

Kai’s jaw cracked. “I warned the Council that their security measures were insufficient for a prison which held that caliber of criminal.”

“Honestly, Kai, no security measures are truly sufficient to withstand an invasion from hell,” Naomi said.

“Perhaps you should start from the beginning,” Sera suggested.

So Naomi told them about their mission at the gala and their fight with the demon Dandrion.

“On our way to meet you, we ran into some hell beasts. That’s when we met your Red Knight,” she said to Kai.

“Oh?” His face was perfectly neutral, as though she’d just told him they’d picked up a bag of sugar at the grocery store.

“Yes, he was tracking the hell beasts and a group of criminals who’d escaped from hell.”

“We went to Alcatraz with him to force out the convicts who’d taken over the prison,” Alex said.

‘Force out’ was good. She and Makani had literally forced them out with a flash flood.

“I got to blow up the water tower,” Alex told Sera. “I think that beats the time you burned down the old brick tower.”

“Was that really necessary?” Kai said with strained patience.

“I find such condemnation ironic coming from someone who regularly collapses buildings and shifts into a dragon to step on his problems,” Alex shot back.

Kai snorted.

“And besides, I wasn’t the only one causing magical mayhem,” she added. “Makani helped.”

“I’d hardly call controlling the stream of water to follow a precise, predetermined path ‘magical mayhem’,” Makani said.

“Makani and Alex used their elemental magic to direct the stream of water from the water tower into the prison, breaking all the windows,” Naomi explained.

“Breaking all the windows?” Sera repeated, shaking with suppressed laughter. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

“My life was simpler before you and your friends waltzed into it,” Kai told her.

“Simpler.” Sera smirked. “But less exciting.”

Kai’s laugh was something between a growl and a purr. “Indeed.”

“The water killed the beasts. We took care of the convicts,” Naomi continued. “We tried to question their leader, but he escaped through a transportation glyph.”

“I really hate those things,” Sera said.

“So do I,” agreed Alex.

“The beasts and the hellish escaped convicts must be connected to the demons. Somehow. What I want to know is how the convicts escaped from hell.” Naomi frowned. “I’ve long since sealed any tears in the veil.”

The waitress arrived with their food. Burgers, sausages, bacon, eggs, and potatoes dominated the guys’ plates. Sera had ordered Belgian waffles topped with strawberries and a generous helping of whipped cream. The dish came with bacon on the side. When Sera scooped the bacon strips onto Kai’s plate, he gave her a look that was almost sappy.

Alex and Logan shared, sampling from each other’s plates.

“Cute, Slayer,” Kai told Logan when Alex fed the assassin a bite from her fork.

“It’s not too late to kill you, Drachenburg,” Logan replied serenely.

After just a few bites of food, Alex already looked better. The color was returning to her pale cheeks. That last battle had really wiped her out.

Naomi was feeling pretty wiped out herself. She grabbed a bowl of fairy root flakes and sprinkled them all over her pancakes.

“Does that taste good?” Alex asked her.

Naomi squirted whipped cream onto the pancakes. Then she sprinkled on even more fairy root. She took a bite and declared, “Now it tastes good.”

Alex cut off a piece of Naomi’s pancake. “Wow. That has got to be the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. I think my teeth are going to fall out.”

“More?” Naomi asked her.

“Yes, please.” Alex cut off another piece from the pancake. “Sera, you have got to try this.”

Sera took a tentative bite from Naomi’s pancakes. Her lips pursed together. “Whoa, that one bite is like two hundred percent the recommended daily sugar intake.”

“Not for a fairy,” declared Naomi.

“You’re only half fairy,” Sera pointed out.

“Which only means I need more sugar to compensate.”

The sisters laughed.

“So, Kai,” Naomi said between bites. “How did Cloud come to be working for you?”

Confusion crinkled Sera’s brow. “Cloud? As in Cloud Silverstride?”

The last time Sera had seen Cloud, she and Naomi had just discovered that he’d betrayed them.

“Cloud is Drachenburg Industries’ Red Knight,” Naomi told her. “The question is how that happened.”

“I needed someone to track down hell beasts,” Kai said. “And he was desperate to work off his sentence while breathing fresh air rather than remaining holed-up in a cell in Atlantis.”

If they’d captured Cloud a few months later, he might have ended up in the Alcatraz prison rather than the Atlantis one. As a prisoner of Alcatraz, he’d have faced the same choice its other prisoners had: join hell’s convicts or be killed by them. That might have led him down the path of destruction rather than the path of redemption.

“Cloud has skills,” said Kai. “He has inside knowledge of the supernatural criminal underground. Mostly the magic drug dealers, but he has contacts with other crime syndicates as well. Those connections and skills paid off tonight. He was able to track the convicts and hell beasts to Alcatraz.”

“We took care of that for you, Drachenburg,” Logan reminded him. “Expect an invoice from me.”

“He’s even more of a mercenary than we are, Alex,” Sera laughed.

“Well, he has to be if he wants to afford those fancy cars he shows off to naive, impressionable women,” Alex said, fluttering her eyelashes.

“And you think you’re one those naive and impressionable women?” Naomi asked her.

“Of course. People say those are my best features.”

When they were all done laughing, Naomi asked Sera, “How was the party?”

“We struck out. No signs of anything remotely hellish or demonic. Just a lot of supernatural elite from old magical dynasties rubbing elbows and making smalltalk.” She made a sour face.

“You must have been miserable.”

“Five minutes after we arrived, I was already praying for a demon to unmask itself. Or for one of the party guests to go batshit magic crazy. Or for monsters to crash the ball. Something—anything—to spare me from the dull monotony and false pleasantries.”

“Next time you attend a fancy party, I’ll go with you,” Alex promised her sister. “We’ll set the table runners on fire. It will be fun.”

Sera laughed. “Or we can get Naomi to spike the drinks with some of those happy fairy drugs. Everything is more fun with happy fairy drugs.”

Naomi took a big bite of her fairy-approved pancake. “Definitely.”

“Out of curiosity, what exactly does fairy root do to you?” Alex asked her.

“Besides making everything taste like two hundred percent sugar,” added Sera.

“It’s a cleanser,” Naomi told them. “It replenishes your energy and refreshes your aura.”

Naomi took a few more bites of pancake. It was taking the edge off her low energy. Makani watched her, nodding in approval. Dragons always approved of eating.

“With Dandrion gone, that brings us from four down to three demons left on earth,” Naomi said.

One of those three demons was causing trouble in the city. There was nothing fun about a demon’s beasts attacking innocent people, but as long as they did it, at least there was a trail to follow.

The other two demons hadn’t made so much as a peep since they’d escaped hell two months ago. Demons weren’t subtle beings, but somehow, inexplicably, these two were keeping their heads low. Victims had been found with the marks of every other escaped demon. These two hadn’t attacked anyone, at least as far as the enforcers could tell. It was as though they had simply vanished into thin air.

But the demons had to be here somewhere. As long as they remained on earth, they needed bodies to possess. And they needed to feed on magic. There should be a trail of dead bodies left in their wake, something to follow. And yet there wasn’t. How could two demons go by unnoticed for this long?

Six phones chimed simultaneously. Everyone at the table pulled theirs out.

“Another potential sighting,” Kai said. “Near Atlantis.”

So far, all the demons had been found within San Francisco. Naomi had thought the demons were planning something in the city. Something terrible. Well, it looked like that terrible thing had finally gone global.

Naomi slid out of the booth. “Maybe we’ve finally found our incognito demons.”