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vampire?”
    I shook my head and stepped aside.
    “Oh, Hades,” Juliet said when she saw him. “
That’s
what you bring me? He doesn’t look like he’s got a full pint in him. Where do you find these norms?”
    The grim-faced Goons stepped into the apartment.
    The guy’s eyeballs bulged when he saw Juliet reclining on the sofa. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “
You’re
the vampire? Wow.” He rushed inside, already unbuttoning his shirt. Then he paused. “Um, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.”
    Juliet looked at him like he was a bug she’d enjoy squashing under her stiletto.
    The Goons flanked the door, arms folded, and stared straight ahead.
    “My name,” the scrawny guy said, baring a chest that made me think of those novelty rubber chickens. “It’s not Norm. It’s Marvin.” He rotated his hips in a circle, then winked. “At your service, baby.”
    Juliet rolled her eyes, but her fangs extended.
    I fled into the kitchen. Before the door swung shut behind me, chicken-chested Marvin gurgled out an ecstatic moan.
Eww.
Maybe I wasn’t so hungry after all.

3
    A BOOK LAY ON THE KITCHEN TABLE, EXACTLY WHERE I’D LEFT it hours ago. Its pale leather cover looked cadaverous under the fluorescent lights. No wonder—the book was bound in human skin. I walked by, trying to ignore the waves of malevolence that radiated from it, and went to the freezer. Nothing like a pint of chocolate ice cream to help you cope with a demonic book written in the language of Hell.
    I got a spoon and sat down at the table. I pried the lid off the pint and dug in. Rich, sweet chocolate melted on my tongue as I eyed the book. I didn’t want to open it. But I wanted even less to keep picturing Simone Landry sniffing around Kane. Juliet was right, damn it—Simone was after my boyfriend. I needed to see him, talk to him. Until I could do that, anything was better than thinking about Simone. Even trying to read this damned book.
    The Book of Utter Darkness
and I had a long and unpleasant history. Its pages contained both the history of the demon races and prophecies about how the centuries-long conflict between demons and humans would end. My race, the Cerddorion, was presented as the main obstacle that stood between demons and their goal of taking over the Ordinary, the humans’ world. Mabhad stolen the book from the demons. During the years I was her apprentice, she’d forbidden me to even look at it. Ten years ago, when I was eighteen and near the end of my training—and thought I knew everything—I’d broken the rule and taken the book from its shelf in Mab’s library. The result: I’d accidentally conjured a Hellion. Difethwr, the Destroyer. The demon that killed my father.
    On that terrible night, the Destroyer had marked me, creating a bond between us. For years, the demon mark on my right forearm had subjected me to intense rages that I struggled to control. Two months ago, I’d killed the Destroyer. Although my arm still bore the mark—a bright-red scar two inches long that resembled a burn—the rages had died with the Destroyer. For the first time in more than ten years, I finally felt like myself.
    After my father died, I’d vowed never to touch the book again. But the book wasn’t done with me. When a demonic force started feeding on Deadtown’s zombies, reducing them to puddles of black goo, Mab summoned me to her home in Wales, saying it was time to continue my training. What I hadn’t counted on was that my training would involve studying this book—or trying to.
The Book of Utter Darkness
was written in an ancient, demonic language I didn’t understand. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the book tried to trick anyone who attempted to read it. It was almost like a living being—one that hated me and would do everything in its power to defeat me.
    At Mab’s insistence, I’d brought the book back from Wales. I would love to burn the thing, but Mab wouldn’t let me. “There’s much the book has not yet