Free A Devil in the Details by K. A. Stewart

left my mouth. I lay awake a little longer, just listening to her breathing in the dark. After a while, I could swear our hearts beat in unison. The house did its nightly creaking and groaning around us. Down the hall, I could hear Annabelle mumbling in her sleep. She gets that from me.
    My big secret—probably not that well kept—was that I hated Mira’s magic. The passive spells were one thing. The protective stuff on the house, some hocuspocus on my armor, was simple stuff. It lay in wait to be triggered. But the active spells, such as the scrying she’d done tonight, drained so much out of her.
    If I hadn’t come home, how long would she have held that circle closed? There were horror stories, things I’d gleaned from Ivan and others, of magical addicts, casting and casting until their life was literally drained away into their craft. I didn’t think Mira would go that far, but I worried. I never wanted her to sacrifice so much for me. I wasn’t worth it.
    Regardless of what I’d seen in Mira’s salt scrying, there was nothing I could do for Miguel at this exact moment. And with a job on the horizon, I would need all the rest I could get. But oh how I dreaded sleep.
    The dream came like it always does. Well, not always, but a good seventy-five percent of my nights are spent fighting old battles.
    I’m not sure where I was. It was dark. It’s always dark in my dreams. Snow crunched under my boots, and I could smell pine needles. Maybe I was back with the president again, my blood draining into the soil of Camp David.
    I didn’t feel injured, though, just cold. And everything was so quiet—quiet enough that I could hear the breathing to my right. The breaths were large, pumped through massive lungs. I knew those breaths. I’d felt them on my face, over my chest. And if they got that close again, the pain would follow soon after. I reached for my katana to find my hip bare. I was unarmed.
    “I know you’re there.” My voice echoed as if I were inside a jar—or a cave maybe. I’d never fought underground, but who said dreams had to make sense?
    I was answered by a low rumbling growl, distinctive in pitch and tone. It’s the one sound in the world that makes my guts turn to water and my legs go all quivery. I turned to keep it in front of me—or where I thought was in front of me. I couldn’t get my bearings in the all-consuming blackness.
    “Just get it over with. I don’t like playing games.” It did, though. I knew it just as surely as I knew what waited out there in the dark. It would play with me, even after it got its claws on me. It would toss me in the air and bat me around like a cat with a mouse.
    The growl came again from the front, but the attack came from the rear as I had known it would. Even knowing it, I couldn’t turn fast enough; I couldn’t strike hard enough. The red eyes and silver claws seemed to float from the endless night, and swept toward me in a beautiful and deadly arc. And there was nowhere for me to go when the Yeti struck home.
    To my credit, I no longer lurch from bed yelling and waking the whole house up, so my eyes merely popped open, following the slow spin of the ceiling fan as my heart pounded in my ears. In her sleep, Mira snuggled close, perhaps sensing my distress, but when she found my skin sweat-soaked, she frowned faintly.
    “Shhh . . . Sleep, baby. It’s okay.” That seemed to be all the reassurance she needed, and the creases on her brow smoothed. For my part, I lay awake for another hour, counting revolutions of the fan and waiting to see if the Yeti would pay me another visit.
    The night officially sucked.

6
    T he cannonball landing in the middle of my bed announced dawn’s arrival. Annabelle giggled, proud of herself. “Mommy, come turn cartoons on for me!”
    Keep in mind, my daughter is quite capable of manipulating the television on her own. I’m pretty sure she could program the DVR. But it is always more fun to have Mommy or Daddy do it for