When I woke, the powdered donuts I scarfed down on the way over made a valiant charge up my esophagus and made a daring escape out of my mouth. My entire body convulsed, curling like a pill bug as I tried desperately to stop the return of my food. Alas, no success on that front.

The right side of my face was a fine latticework of pain, the prickling spikes of agony rising and ebbing with every beat of my heart. I couldn't remember exactly how I'd managed to end up face down on concrete, and the harder I searched for the memory, the foggier things seemed to become. I laid my head back down on the concrete, noting as I did there was something sticky in my hair. Oh well. I could do my thinking from here just fine.

I inched away from the reeking puddle of my own sick and took stock of myself slowly. My arms and legs moved just fine when I tested them. A little stiff and sore, but they seemed completely functional. No bits or bobs missing. All ten fingers and toes were accounted for, though my left wrist pinched some. Something hard and oddly shaped was digging into my stomach, but it wasn't cutting me, so I didn't panic right away.

I opened my mouth, working my jaw, which hurt like hell and almost resulted in another disgorgement. Okay, lesson learned. Face hurts. Don't move it much.

I tried to raise my head next and received only a railroad spike of pain through my temple for my trouble. God, what had I done to myself? Had I fallen? Hit something?

The memory finally bubbled up through the murk and I stifled a groan.

Huber. Huber had been waiting behind me with a pipe wrench and he'd hit me. He was the wendigo or at least in league with it. I'd been an enormous idiot and I'd fallen right into a trap.

The room around me was saved from being pitch dark by an LED camping lantern placed in the far corner near a mini-fridge. I tried not to think too hard about the fact that my tender bits might end up inside of it in short order.

I needed a plan. I had to get out of here before I became this thing's next victim.

"Lash," I thought desperately. "I really need to talk to you."

She appeared almost at once in all her furious glory, her beauty not at all tainted by the fact she'd donned an old-timey black and white striped prison uniform complete with cap, manacles, and ball and chain. She stood in a spotlight of her own making. If I'd felt more like myself, I'd have rolled my eyes. This was all a bit on the nose, wasn't it?

She quirked an imperious copper brow at me. "So now you're talking to me?"

I scowled at her. "You think now is a good time to be churlish? I'm about to become wyld fae filet mignon. You want to argue? We can do it later when we're both more likely to come out of this alive. Or don't, and watch me get carved up like a Thanksgiving roast until I expire and you slide back into your coin. Have fun with the monks."

"What are you proposing, my host? Will you finally take up my coin?"

I was ashamed to admit it, but at that moment, it was really tempting. There was no telling when Huber was going to get back and, on the rare occasion I'd ever thought about it, death by monster wasn't the way I'd thought I'd bite the big one.

I stalled, rather than give her a direct answer. It wasn't as if I had to say it when she could just lift the thought out of my head as if I'd spoken it aloud.

"We'll talk about it later. Tell me what you can about our current situation. How badly am I hurt?"

Lash circled me, swapping her prison gear out for her toga on the second go-round. I closed my eyes in an effort to block her out for a few seconds. I didn't need the additional dizziness I'd get from watching her.

"You most certainly have a concussion. Thus the headache, nausea, slowed cognition, dizziness, and partial amnesia you suffered upon waking. I'd wager that you have a hairline fracture on your right cheekbone and bruises from the impact with the pavement. The cuff on your left wrist is cutting off your circulation slowly."

I tested my left wrist and, sure enough, heard the distinctive rattle of handcuffs. These weren't the fun, fuzzy kind I'd tried out once with Nelson either. They seemed to be the genuine article the police used, which meant they were carbon steel and almost impossible to escape without super strength or a key. It appeared to be attached to some sort of metal pole that ran the length of the wall. I tested my strength against it, just in case it was wobbly, but only succeeded in wrenching my wrist.

I stilled with a grimace. "Is he here?"

"No," Lash said after a moment of thought. "Your other senses cannot pick up much beyond the electric hum of the refrigerator. However, the remains of another woman are being held here, though the smell is being masked by the dye in your hair."

So that's what the sticky stuff in my hair was. Upon waking I'd assumed it was blood. Huber had dumped a metric boatload of hair dye into the bedraggled mop of hair I sported. I was relieved to find that it at least hadn't been hacked off yet like Claudia's had been. Vanity should probably be the least of my worries at this point, but it still gave me some measure of comfort, so I'd cling to it.

"How did this happen?" I wondered aloud. "I mean...it was Huber. I've known him for months now and he never seemed..."

"Aberrant?" Lash concluded dryly. "He wouldn't. You met him in the midst of spring. I told you that wendigos hibernate and emerge only during the winter months. The spirit would be so faint as to be untraceable unless its host's safety was threatened."

"So it acts a bit like you?"

"I am nothing like a wendigo," Lash hissed, fury almost sparking from her eyes.

I backpedaled at once, afraid that pissing her off at this critical juncture was going to end up getting me killed. "Okay. Got it. But how did it get into Huber?"

"I'd imagine that his friend Jacob passed less than peacefully during their annual trip to the Huron Mountain Range. The area is subject to lake-effect snow from nearby Lake Superior. It wouldn't have been difficult at all for the pair to be snowed in for longer than expected, resulting in one man cannibalizing the other to survive."

I shuddered. "So what's up with the hair dye? Obviously wendigos of yore didn't really require the dye job before chowing down on the locals."

"I'd almost certainly say its pathology is being affected by the host."

I refrained from trading another comparison between her and the wendigo. Lash was almost certainly acting on my pathology as well, given that the shadow of a Fallen was whipped up from an imprint of the Fallen and the attributes unique to its host. The Fallen would have appeared differently to little Harry than it did to me. I shuddered to think of that. At two Harry was just barely starting to get his own autonomy. What sort of damage could Lash have inflicted on him, if she'd fallen into pudgy toddler hands instead of mine?

Lasciel continued on, either not hearing or willfully ignoring my dire musings.

"So, the logic bears out that you have twenty to thirty minutes or less before Huber returns to finish the job."

"What makes you say that?"

"Unconsciousness after concussive blows is generally brief. I'd say you've been out for ten minutes or less. Long enough for the dye to be inexpertly applied, but not long enough for it to have processed fully. It can take anywhere from thirty to forty minutes, and we've lost ten, at most. He'll come back to rinse your hair, dry it, and then to kill you."

Experience thus far had taught me to expect life to shortchange me whenever possible, so I leaned toward a twenty-minute reprieve instead of a full half an hour.

I tugged on the cuffs again, trying in vain to worm my hand through the minuscule gap and only succeeded in hurting myself further. I hadn't practiced a lot of offensive magic thus far, so my tools to handle the current situation weren't ideal. Even if I was trained and ready to handle that sort of magic, it would still have done me relatively little good. I was just as likely to blow my own hands off as I was to sever the pipe or cuffs.

There had to be a way. Claudia had escaped sometime after the hair dye had been applied. Maybe she'd waited until Huber had been busy with her hair to make her escape. I didn't see it as much of an option either. I'd foolishly revealed my powers to him and he'd be expecting an attack. He'd probably just beat me unconscious again before carrying out his weird pre-killing ritual.

"Any chance you know how to escape cuffs?" I ventured.

"There are several methods. But only one way to escape them without tools. You'd need to dislocate your thumb in order to slip the cuffs off."

"Great, tell me how."

Lash's palpable hesitation drew my eyes upward. Her face was pinched with concern. "Your resistance thus far has been amusing, Molly. Admirable, even. But you cannot hope to escape this situation alive without aid. Summon the coin. I will show you how. Wendigos are strong and fast and regenerate quickly. You don't have the necessary tools to end it's putrid existence. If you take up my coin you will have access to a battle form."

Tempting. So, so tempting.

She leaned forward imploringly, offering me a hand. "Please, my host. This ignoble end does not suit you."

Images came, filtering into my mind instantaneously. I could see just how easy it would be. One incantation. A considerable but not completely unmanageable effort of will and the coin would appear in my hand, the full power of the angel within mine to wield. It sounded good right about now. Too good.

"Get thee behind me," I muttered.

Lasciel's eyes hardened and adopted the color of glacial ice. "On your own head be it."

She stood by watching through pitiless eyes as I struggled to sit up. I almost lost the remainder of my breakfast twice more before managing to get myself propped up on one elbow. Something kept digging into my front as I tried to assume full sitting position. I fumbled to reach the shape pressing against my abdomen with my uncuffed hand and, after a little effort, withdrew it. I squinted in the gloom, heart leaping right up around my uvula as I realized what the shape was.

The hammer! Huber hadn't discovered my makeshift weapon when he'd knocked me unconscious. That meant there was still a fighting chance.

I managed to sit all the way up with difficulty and scooted my body around so I faced the corrugated wall of the storage unit. I balled the front of my coat up tight and shoved it between my teeth as an extra precaution, just in case Huber was still hanging around here someplace. I bit down as hard as I dared and fought the urge to screw my eyes shut tight. If I only wanted to go through this once, I needed to get it exactly right. There'd be no going into this blindly.

"The thumb?" I checked.

"Yes but-"

"Good."

I drew the hammer as far back as my arm would go and then brought it back down with all my might, barely stopping myself from chickening out at the last second.

The hammer struck bone. There may or may not have been a crack. I wasn't sure, because my vision flashed white for a second and the buzzing of static filled my ears. A metallic tang flooded my mouth as I managed to tear through the fabric of my coat in one spot to bite my tongue.

When I came fully back to myself tears streamed down my face and a whimper was easing out from behind the fabric of my coat. I didn't even try to look at the damage I'd just done to my hand. Instead, I focused on easing it from the cuff centimeter by centimeter until it came free at last.

My legs wobbled and threatened to go out from under me. I couldn't see through the haze of tears. Still, I staggered forward, mechanically inching my way to the door until the pain lessened to a point where I could think. Thank God that Huber had chained my non-dominant hand, or opening the door would have been a nightmare. As it was, it was more difficult than I could have ever dreamed.

When I'd shoved it part of the way open I squeezed through and into the thin, crisp air outside the unit. The light felt like a stab to the retinas and I stood blinking for several uncomfortable seconds while I struggled to adjust. When the spots and tears had both receded to a point to let me see, I got my first clear glimpse of the outside world. Lash was right. Not a lot of time had passed. The sun still wasn't peeking out from beneath the clouds yet. The glass from earlier was still thick on the ground. And someone was waiting at the end of the aisle, a bag of tools in one hand and a stained Tupperware container in the other.

Terror gripped every muscle in my body. Huber was back. Shit, shit, shit.

His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of me frozen in the doorway of his unit.

"I suppose I should have expected this," he called to me in a placid tone. "You are a witch, after all."

"Wizard," I snapped, well aware I was being churlish.

Huber just gave me another eerie grin. Then he began to change.

His bones popped and snapped, his arms and legs elongating, skin stretching taut. muscle seeming to shrivel almost to nothing until all I could see was ashy skin over pale white bones. Huber's clothing tore and fell away as his trunk shot up several feet and became skeletal as well. By the time it was through morphing the thing was well over seven feet tall, emaciated, and gaunt. It looked like someone had stretched Huber on a rack, killed him, and left him to rot for about a hundred years. The only thing that looked alive about this thing was the eyes. Glowing vermillion eyes that burned with hunger and hate that was fixed solely on me.

Its mouth opened wide, exposing a row of sharp, glistening teeth and a hair-raising shriek echoed around the lot. The sound spurred me into furious motion and I pelted down the row as fast as my legs would take me.

Even at my peak, my five-minute-mile wasn't going to beat this thing. It took to all fours at once, its jerky, spider-like movements sending cold fear sluicing down my spine. I barely made it half the length of the row before its shadow loomed over me, one of its hands reaching for me. In mere seconds I'd be flipped like a flapjack and slammed down onto the pavement. Then scything jaws would rip my throat free and I'd forget about pesky things like breathing and screaming.

The word came flying out of my mouth without conscious thought, the accompanying hand gesture completely foreign to me as my magic surged to the fore.

"Kaen!"

There was a sound like a shotgun blast, the air heated and the taste of sulfur lay heavy on my tongue like I'd just stepped into the world's smelliest sauna. The wendigo let out a shriek that threatened to burst my eardrums. I couldn't see it through the sudden haze of smoke. Acting on the theory that it couldn't see me either, I drew a shaky veil over my head and pelted toward the entrance again, counting on the acrid bite of sulfur to bamboozle its superior sense of smell.

The next hour was a blur, with only a few details that stood out to me. I remembered sneaking into a cab under a veil behind some poor sap and scaring the life out of him when I jumped out of the car ten minutes later when we got near enough to the Cook County Morgue for me to walk. I somehow managed to steer myself one-handed through Chicago traffic without being pulled over while my entire world listed and pitched like a ship at sea. And I somehow managed to sneak into Anna Ash's building without dripping too much blood on the carpet on my way up.

Only one thing was clear to me. It was time for me to leave. I'd known that already but had been too selfish to act until now. Staying near other people was going to put them in danger, whether from Lasciel or another supernatural threat I managed to attract. I had to clean up, rest a bit, and then come up with some excuse to give Anna so I could slip away.

It was going to hurt. Hurt a whole lot, because the women of the Ordo, and Anna especially, had become a second family to me. But just like my real family, they were much better off without me.

Clutching my injured hand to my chest, I countered Anna's wards and stepped inside the apartment.

And found Torelli waiting just inside the door, big monkey paw wrapped around Anna Ash's throat, the barrel of a Magnum pressed against her temple, and a big shit-eating grin slathered all over his face.

"Let's have a talk, Carpenter."