The Trouble with Demons by Lisa Shearin

and the backs of his hands were scored with deep scratches. Demon claws.
    I grimaced. “Mychael, shouldn’t you get those taken care of instead of talking to me?”
    “Talking to you is more important.” He glanced down at his hands and smiled a little. “They look better than they did. I’m a healer, remember?”
    “Aren’t demon claws poisonous or something?”
    “Not a Dagik’s. I’ll be fine.”
    He said that as if I were the one in bad shape.
    “Has anyone inside the Saghred been talking to you?” he asked.
    I knew who he meant. Sarad Nukpana. A goblin, the blackest of dark mages, and a proverbial mad genius. He wanted the Saghred and me to wield it for him. Thanks to me, he was trapped inside the rock. Thanks to him, I was now at the top of the goblin king’s most-wanted list. But Nukpana hadn’t been the one speaking to me.
    “I’ve been dreaming about my dad,” I murmured.
    My father, Eamaliel Anguis, was an elven Guardian whose soul was trapped along with thousands of others inside the Saghred. He’d been the stone’s protector until about a year ago when the Saghred decided to turn its protector into its next meal.
    Mychael’s voice was low and controlled. “What kind of dreams?”
    “Just talking kind of dreams.” I held up a hand, stopping his next question. “No, I don’t remember any of them. And no, I haven’t felt manipulated by ‘evil forces.’ ”
    “I didn’t imply that you were.”
    “Then you’re the only one on this island who wouldn’t think so.” I sat up, the front legs of my chair slamming into the floor. “That demon had himself an audience when he said he was
    ‘honored by my presence.’ I think Carnades won himself a dozen or so more converts to his Lock-Up-Raine Club.” I ran my hand over my face; it came away with dust from the dirt storm Vegard had kicked up. Great. “And the Volghul said that if I came to him, he’d let Piaras and Talon live.”
    Mychael went dangerously still. “He wanted you?”
    I waited a few heartbeats before answering, a little taken aback by his intensity. “He didn’t tell me what he had in mind, and I didn’t ask. From the look on his face, he was going to enjoy it and I knew I wouldn’t.”
    The air around Mychael flared with power. It was magic, definitely lethal, and its target was that purple demon. Then in a blink of an eye, the aura was gone, clamped down tight by the sheer force of Mychael’s will, only to be replaced by something more primitive, more male.
    “Are you all right?” he demanded.
    “Shaken up, but he didn’t lay a claw on me.”
    The power still flowing from him swept over my skin, and I forced back a shiver of pure sensation.
    Mychael realized what he was doing and resisted touching me, even though not touching me seemed to take as much effort as not going after that demon. “Raine, I want you to come back to the citadel with me. You’re not safe on Phaelan’s ship.”
    I’d stayed in the citadel since arriving on Mid a few weeks ago, but the past few days I’d been on the Fortune . The accommodations Mychael had provided for me had been luxurious, but with guards posted outside my door, a gilded cage was still a cage. My family doesn’t do cages very well.
    “Mychael, I’m not safe anywhere, and you know it. Vegard never leaves my side, but if it makes you feel better, post a couple more Guardians, though with literally all hell about to break loose, I doubt if you can spare them. I may not be any safer on the Fortune , but I’m happier. If I can’t be safe, I’ll take happy.”
    Mychael sat back and raked his hand through his hair. I knew I’d been one exasperation right after another since the day we’d met.
    “I won’t allow myself to be locked up,” I told him.
    “I would never lock you up. You know that.”
    “If I went back, you wouldn’t let me leave, so what’s the difference?”
    “You’d be alive.”
    “Possibly.”
    “No, definitely.” Mychael said it as if he