Ismail Akeem danced convulsively in a circle and writhed in pain as he disgorged one spirit after another from his tortured body. The spirits howled and wailed as they descended on their terrified victims and devoured them.

All of this I saw in those first few seconds. After that, the battle dissolved into chaos. There was so much juice coursing through the place and so many mind-twisting spells in the air it was difficult even to think, let alone make sense of what was happening around me. I would remember the sound. It was like the shriek of ravaged metal and lost souls, and it went on and on and on.

Honey stayed with me. She sang her wind-chime war spells and laid about her with her silver sword. We left a trail of the dead and dying behind us as we fought our way to the tower. I didn't feel like climbing it again, so I spun my levitation spell and fired the Mossberg down at the gangsters who came after us as I rose into the air.

I half expected to find another thug battalion on the roof, but I guess Papa Danwe was running low on guys who had enough juice to make a difference. The roof was deserted. I continued up to the small platform where the crystal sphere was suspended above the silver bezel. I could see the fairy magic warding the device this time, and I knew it would be impervious to both magic and physical attack. I landed on the platform, and Honey and I got to work.

It was a little like I imagined defusing a bomb would be. The warding spells were woven around and through the apparatus like tiny, intricate threads. I reached out with my mind and the changeling's magic and began unweaving the spells thread by thread. The terrible sound of the battle below cut through the roof and set my teeth on edge. The juice rose like heat from a burning building and lifted all the hair on my body like a static charge.

I'm not sure how long we were at it, but after a time we had undone most of the warding spells. As the threads were pulled free from the whole, they fell apart and the juice evaporated into the air. I'd just isolated the few threads that remained when Honey cried out in alarm.

"Domino, below you!" she yelled. I looked. Papa Danwe was rising through the hole in the roof on an unseen wind. His arms were stretched out to his sides, and he held his walking stick in one hand and Frank Seville's severed head in the other. Frank's head burst into flame, and the Haitian sorcerer hurled it at us. I got my shield up just in time as the fire exploded into us.

Sorcerers' duels are mostly a matter of who can flow more juice and who can spin that juice into combat spells more quickly. If anything, speed is more important than power. With each spell you cast, you have to decide whether to attack or defend, because you can't cast two spells at once. If you can spin attack spells quickly enough, you can force your opponent on the defensive, even if the spells aren't all that strong. All of this has to be done with spontaneous magic, of course-you can't recite quotations quickly enough to spin spells in a duel.

I knew Papa Danwe could tap more juice than I could in this place. In fact, I noticed immediately that our juice was running pretty thin. I also discovered in that first exchange that he was faster than I was. A lot faster. I had two things going for me, and I'd have been toast without either of them. The first was Honey and the second was the fairy magic I'd stolen from the changeling.

The Haitian had warded himself against fairy magic. I wasn't sure how he'd arranged it, but it seemed like a prudent thing to do given what he'd been up to. He'd cut a deal with the Seelie Court, but in the underworld any deal can go wrong. So the bad news was that Papa Danwe was protected. If he hadn't been, Honey and I could have swatted him around like two cats playing with a ball of yarn. The good news was that his protections against fairy magic weren't nearly as good as his defenses against sorcery.

I poured all the juice I could pull up from our tags below into the bare minimum of static defenses that would prevent the Haitian's attacks from instantly reducing me to meat pudding. Whenever I got a second to go on the offensive, I picked away at his defenses, just as I'd been defusing the wards on the gate machinery.

That's what I was doing, but none of it was apparent to the naked eye. It looked like I was just getting my ass kicked. Even this was an advantage, though, because the sorcerer didn't know what I was doing, either. He was protected, but he didn't have any fairy magic of his own.

Papa Danwe's initial assault knocked me from my perch on the platform, and I tumbled to the roof of the factory some twenty feet below. He came after me like a seagull swooping in for a bread crumb on the pier. His attacks were relentless, pummeling me with spell after spell, knocking me from one side of the roof to the other. Honey did what she could, lighting him up with ineffective glamours and wailing away at him with her tiny sword. It was enough to occasionally distract the sorcerer, and I seized each opportunity to pull loose one more thread.

In the end, I just ran out of juice before Papa Danwe ran out of protections. It got harder and harder to keep my defenses up, until finally, I couldn't keep them up at all. The Haitian saw the moment when it came. He grinned evilly, picking me up with a telekinesis spell, lifting me slowly into the air about level with the sphere at the top of the tower. Then he slammed me down into the rooftop with all the strength he could muster.

I managed to get my legs under me before I hit. They shattered on impact, but better them than my back or neck. My body was completely numb from all the juice I'd been flowing, so there wasn't any pain. I levered myself up on one arm and tried to spin one last spell, but I was dry. I was done.

Honey screamed and dive-bombed the sorcerer, but he intercepted her with a writhing bolt of electricity that arced from his outstretched hand. The force of the spell sent the piskie cartwheeling through the air over the edge of the building, and she plummeted, smoking, to the ground below.

Papa Danwe was in the mood to talk some more. He hobbled forward and stopped about ten feet away. "I been looking forward to tasting your juice," he said, licking his cracked lips. It was pornographic, and my stomach turned. "I heard so much about you, that you become so strong." He spat. "I heard wrong. You are weak. You have nothing for me." He cupped his hands before him and they began to fill with baleful juice that sizzled like acid. He started giggling as he came for me.

Then a ball of liquid fire burst over his head and poured down on him, scouring the thin, dry flesh from the back of his skull and one side of his face. It would have devoured him completely, but he reacted quickly, extinguishing the fire with protective magic. He turned slowly and I followed his gaze to see Terrence Cole's wide head poking through the hole in the roof. Papa Danwe roared in pain and fury and unloaded on his erstwhile lieutenant.

Terrence didn't run. He came all the way out onto the roof and pushed forward, knocking aside his boss's attacks and pummeling the sorcerer with his own. He took one step at a time, bent forward as if battling a gale-force wind.

I reached out and untangled the last knotted threads that protected Papa Danwe from what I could do to him. When his defenses had burned away into the ether, I poured out the fairy magic inside me and turned him into a toad.

Terrence stopped and stared. I collapsed onto the roof and rolled over on my back, staring up at the starless, electric-orange L.A. sky. Terrence started laughing. I tried to join in but I didn't have it in me.

After a while, Terrence's laughter subsided. "What you want me to do with the frog, Domino?" he asked. I turned my head and looked over at him. He'd caught the toad and was holding it up, peering at it curiously. It struggled in his wide hands and its mouth opened and closed spasmodically.