I floated over dagger-sharp teeth that seemed large as mountains as they closed in slow motion behind me. The pendant was caught on the bottom row, next to a space where a bottom canine tooth was missing.

I struggled to move but it was like in a dream where your arms and legs feel like they’re moving through molasses. When I screamed there was no sound. The light from Rufus’s basement snuffed out as Purrberus’s terrible mouth closed. The marble had vanished.

There was nothing but this giant span of darkness that went on forever.

A loud cracking noise happened, like something exploding between my ears. I woke up in my own bed at Addison’s house, Clyde curled up by my feet. It took me a moment to remember what day it was. Addison walked in with a box of doughnuts.

There was a moment of pure joy as I hugged him. I tried to ask about the heart attack, and his hospital stay, but my voice came out too weak.

“I’ve been home for a while,” he said. “We’re celebrating you today.”

He handed me a doughnut and my parents appeared in the doorway. Horror rolled over me.

They don’t look right, I tried to say. Clyde yawned and stretched. He had three heads.

“There was some confusion,” Addison said. “Your parents are here to pick you up.”

They looked like freshly dug up corpses. Dirt crumbled from their hair and clothes onto me and my bed.

“We’ve missed you,” my father said. My mother smiled. She had no teeth.

No no this can’t be right, I want to stay here, I tried to say but my mouth still wouldn’t cooperate. My body felt leaden.

“Have a doughnut, Coralie,” said Addison. He turned to my parents. “I guess the cat’s got her tongue.”

There was another BANG. I was with my friends, the ones Addison called vagrants. We were in a park where there were families having picnics and children playing.

“Coralie,” one of them was saying, “check this out.” He was an older kid named Elias who had been to juvenile lockup.

I turned. Mister Gentry’s pendant dangled in front of my face.

“Those stupid people just wandered away and left their stuff,” Elias said.

Some Jenelle police were talking to a man and a woman further down the path. They looked at us but were too far away for me to see who they were.

Instantly they were much closer.

Rufus and Roanna. “We will press full charges,” they said.

“Crimes against magic users can put you in prison for life,” Roanna said.

“Or get you executed,” Rufus said.

“Here,” Elias said, tossing the pendant at me. It slipped through my fingers as the police grabbed my arms. Handcuffs clinked.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I argued, engulfed in terror, but my voice was drowned out in the crowd that had gathered to watch. My friends were gone.

“Prison for life!” some of the crowd chanted. “Execution!” others shouted. Rufus and Roanna stood at the front, with him holding the pendant.

Another bang.

I was sitting in the hallway outside the school principal’s office where my mother was in a meeting explaining why I was missing so many days. Their drug use had gotten bad. It’s why we kept moving place to place.

My mother was screaming at the others. She grabbed me and we left through a labyrinth of damp, underground corridors with peeling paint and cobwebs. The puddles grew and became deeper with murky water. The water rose higher and higher as the corridors became narrower and narrower. There was nowhere to go.

Something grabbed my legs and dragged me under along the walls. It pulled me all the way to some kind of pitch black, flooded boiler room. Masses of rats squealed and skittered above me.

“Coralie will have to stay here because she missed so much school,” my teacher said, seated at her desk that towered high above the water.

My shoes were gone. Something slithered around my ankle and tugged my foot. Water sloshed all over my face, getting in my mouth.

Another bang.

I woke up again, this time curled up on the couch in Addison’s library. Someone was knocking on the door. I vaulted off the couch to answer it.

“Hold on, Coralie,” called Addison, and tossed me a piece of sausage.

I caught it in my mouth. My tail wagged so ferociously I knocked over Addison’s #1 Wizard coffee mug and broke off the handle. My tail…

The door opened. A shadow fell across the threshold.

“We’ve been expecting you,” said Addison.

Mister Gentry glided into the room, his bony fingers stretching towards me. “Aw, look at the cute little puppy dog. Let me see the interesting collar you are wearing!”

Terror crashed over me. I whined and scrambled to hide behind the couch.

“It’s okay Coralie,” said Addison. “Come have a piece of sausage.”

Sausage was too good to pass up but Mister Gentry was one of the most terrifying things I’d ever seen. Addison coaxed me out and gave me a bite but quickly grabbed me while I was distracted. I had been tricked by food again.

“Go on and take what’s yours, demon lord,” Addison said.

Mister Gentry grinned. I snarled and snapped as he removed the pendant.

“Be nice, Coralie,” Addison said. “We’ll get you a new one.”

Another bang. I lay somewhere in cold darkness, my body too heavy to move, my brain too tired to think.

Something heavy-sounding rolled slowly behind me, like the biggest bowling ball in the universe. Moments later I heard it roll the other way. Back and forth, the same rumbling noise, sometimes closer, sometimes further away.

I forced my eyes open. A gigantic blue sphere rolled into sight. I stared at it for what seemed like hours, waiting for it to move. It had been doing that since I came here, forever ago.

It rolled towards me. My body was still too sluggish to get up.

A deafening bang sounded inside my head. For a second I thought I had been jolted out of my skin. Several bodies bumped into me from all directions, then disappeared. Muscle cramps made me gasp in agony, but the pain soon became duller until it faded. I was desperately thirsty.

The darkness dissolved to hazy blue. I floated along until I was rudely dumped on Rufus’s filthy basement floor, narrowly missing a pile of my own puke.

Rufus, Jamison, Yvette, and Tobin all lay slumped over nearby.

Purrberus hacked like she was coughing up a hairball. The marble, now shrunk to normal size, bounced in front of me and zipped into the glove I was still wearing.

A group of figures clad in purple and black robes emerged from Purrberus’s mouths, twelve altogether. Their faces were hidden. Roanna and a man who looked like a younger, brawnier version of Rufus were with them in shackles. Purrberus sat down and began grooming herself with all three tongues.

“How nice of you to return,” Mister Gentry said to me with a sweeping bow. “Our guests are from the League of Demon Lords.” He explained they were there to bring Roanna and Harte to justice and that I’d better make myself comfortable.

Harte. So, that’s who the lookalike was.

One of the demon lords stepped forward and announced that “the court is now in session.” There was a deafening CRACK like an infernal gavel. At first I thought the ceiling was caving in.

“Mister Gentry, Lord of Purrberus,” the demon lord said. “State your complaint for the League members to hear.”

“I demand to know who my accusers are!” said Roanna, arrogant as ever. Aside from her messy hair and rumpled clothing, you’d never suspect she had just eaten alive by a demonic feline.

“You,” Rufus growled to her, “and my cousin are in big trouble.”

“Can’t wait to hear this,” Ruddy said.

“Quiet!” the lords said in eerie unison. “The accused does not get to make demands.”

“I order you to release me and return my property or else,” said Roanna as she struggled against her captors. “It’s mine, I made it.”

“Or else what?” Yvette said in a faint voice. “You’ll obliterate everyone?”

“You’re alive, Yvette,” I croaked.

“Barely, not that you care,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” I started to say but Tobin interrupted.

“I care, Yvette,” he said, putting his paw on hers. “We’ve all just been through some hellish experiences.”

“Oh, Tobin,” she sighed dreamily. “I would’ve been more scared if you hadn’t been there with me.” Her whiskers quivered, and they touched noses.

I can only guess what they might have seen inside Purrberus, the nightmare world.

“Disgusting!” crowed Ruddy.

Jamison holstered his baton and dusted himself off. “So much for my sidekick.” Tobin glared at him.

“QUIET!” thundered the demon lords as one murderous voice. “Mr. Bridger will sit down until this court has been adjourned.”

“I have nothing to do with this case. I was called in as a third party,” Jamison scowled. He jammed a torrowroot in his mouth and chewed, all brown spit and grinding teeth.

Ruddy’s putrid face lit up at the sight of the torrowroot. “You could do a fellow a favor and toss a sprig of that my way.”

“You and those creatures assaulted me and my hell realm with a weaponized faerstone,” said Mister Gentry to Jamison. “Among other things.”

The undead invertebrates came out of hiding with loud hisses.

“I was just doing my job. Let’s not forget you tried to strangle me, and on top of that, how was I supposed to know that triple-headed monstrosity is a hell realm?” Jamison said. “Why do you let it wander around?”

Mister Gentry crossed his arms. “I would hardly call it wandering. Purrberus was simply looking for her lost tooth. She even split herself in three to expedite her search.”

Rufus frowned. “Lost tooth?”

“Order in the demoniacal court! The League would like to hear how the defendant’s hell realm lost a tooth,” said one of the lords.

Rufus frowned harder. “So would I.”

“The human sorceress and her friend wrenched it from my dear kitty’s middle mouth and thought that I would have no idea that a piece of it was missing, or that my own realm wasn’t running smoothly. I’m not Lord of Purrberus for nothing, you know,” Mister Gentry said.

“I did the pulling,” Harte said, puffing himself up. “Roanna wasn’t strong enough.”

Roanna looked furious. “All you did was use a pair of fireplace tongs. I did the hard part.”

“So that’s how those got broken,” Rufus said, eyes narrowing.

“The League would like to hear what the sorceress means when she says the hard part,” the lords said.

“Yes, go on,” said Rufus. “I would like to hear this too.”

Ruddy craned his neck from under his trapdoor among the wreckage of the smashed bookcase. “I tried telling you those two were up to no good, but you ignored me as usual. I’m surprised you took me seriously when I told you about the pendant she made.”

“Making enchanted jewelry is what she does for a living. You told me I needed to locate a pendant to fix that thing coming out of the wall,” Rufus said to Ruddy, pointing to the corner of the basement. “I barely knew what I was looking for.”

“That thing coming out of the wall is a cat hair,” said Mister Gentry, “left behind when your ex-wife and her boy toy lured Purrberus here with their pathetic summoning magic.”

“I told you it would probably be black and that it would reflect no light, because that’s how the demon cat’s tooth looked,” said Ruddy.“I thought I was being helpful.”

“I had to practically torture that tiny bit of information out of you, you stinking, useless bag of putrefied flesh,” Rufus said to him. “I knew you were hiding something far more serious from me, so you can rot down there forever for all I care.”

Ruddy gasped. “You promised to let me go if I told you!”

“Well, you left out some important information,” said Rufus. “Do you know how many evil pendants there are in the world?”

“If I ever get out of here,” Ruddy said, “I will knock you unconscious with the Chimbrelis and eat you slowly, starting with your toes.”

Rufus looked enraged.

“Speaking of,” one of the lords said, “the League would like to hear how a tooth became a pendant.”

“Why should I tell you any of my methods?” Roanna scowled. “Those are trade secrets.”

I don’t know how she dared become more defiant with each question since I didn’t even dare move an inch from where I was, next to my pile of half-dried vomit.

“You can tell us or we can begin pulling out your teeth,” said one of the lords.

“Perhaps we will do that anyway,” said another.

I wish I could’ve seen the expressions on the League’s hidden faces at Roanna’s look of pure horror.

Before Roanna could even get a word out, Ruddy blabbed that she owned a jewelry store in Kitlo called Conjurer’s Carats, that she made custom pieces for magical purposes, and that she had even admitted to him her plan to set the tooth into the pendant in order to hide it.

“Roanna and Harte threatened to obliterate me if I told anyone any of this,” he grinned, his coal eyes aflame.

The League convened for a moment, then turned back to Ruddy.

“Ruddy,” one of them said, “do you have any more information for us?”

A sneaky look came over the ghoulmon’s face. “Maybe. What’s it worth to you?”

Again the League gathered together. “How would you like to be a charter member of the League of Demon Lords?”

Ruddy whooped. His head smashed the top of the trapdoor as he bounced up and down in what I guessed was excitement. “Would I get to wear purple and black robes?”

The League assured him that he would. He double-whooped and smashed his head over and over, until they commanded him to stop or the offer would be revoked. I hoped the trapdoor chains would hold until his membership became official.

Ruddy went on to describe the ritual (“plenty of old fashioned gibberish and fancy hand waving, I wasn’t impressed”) and how it didn’t seem to work at first, and how drunk they were and what a waste of good alcohol it was, and that they wouldn’t share any of it with him.

One of the lords asked Roanna and Harte what spell they cast.

“Something to call nightmares,” Roanna said in a tone I thought was rather dismissive.

“Well, it worked,” I muttered. All of them stared at me.

“Coralie, you have made Purrberus and I feel downright unwelcome,” said Mister Gentry.

I knew the sad look on his face was just an act. My insides shriveled up.

“They made quite a racket too, stumbling around down here when I was trying to sleep,” said Ruddy.

“What was the purpose of casting the spell?” asked another lord. Mister Gentry turned away from me.

“Purpose?” Roanna said.

“Yes,” said one of the lords, “what was the rationale behind calling a nightmare here?”

Roanna stood straighter. “To show that I could.”

Rufus’s mouth hung open again.

She gazed at him. “I stand by what I said. Your magic isn’t that difficult.”

“Don’t forget I helped,” said Harte.

The League rumbled in discussion.

“What happened after Purrberus arrived?” asked a lord.

Harte said, “We tried to send it back but there was a bit of a struggle, so I grabbed the closest thing, which were the fireplace tongs.”

Rufus shook his head and mumbled something I didn’t catch.

The League and Mister Gentry, who was loudest of all, wanted to know why.

Harte glanced at Roanna, as if hoping she would give him the answer. “To...injure her?” he said. “I don’t know what happened after that because I was eaten by it.”

“So you admit you intentionally pulled out Purrberus’s tooth?” said Mister Gentry. “You meant to hurt my kitten?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Roanna said.

Mister Gentry and Purrberus growled. Goosebumps popped up all over me.

“Did you call Purrberus with the intent of pulling her tooth?” asked Mister Gentry.

Harte answered. “No. We called it to see if we could. At first I was just using the tongs to drive her back, because it wasn’t responding to that part of the magic. So then I got the idea to grab her by the tooth with the tongs instead. I really had to put my back into it.”

Show-off. Roanna had terrible taste in men.

“Where did you take the tooth after you removed it?” a lord asked Roanna.

“I didn’t take it anywhere,” she said in the same haughty tone. “I didn’t need to since I’ve still got some equipment here. Anyway, I had to do something with it since I very well wasn’t going to put it back.”

“I told you this already,” Ruddy complained to the League. “When am I getting my robes?”

“I should have obliterated you in the beginning!” shouted Roanna.

“Rufus should have divorced you sooner,” Ruddy said.

“You don’t like Rufus anyway, so why should you try to help him?” Roanna said.

“You weren’t the least bit concerned when the demon kitten ate your boyfriend,” Ruddy said.

“I was concerned,” Roanna said. “I screamed.”

“Do you deny any of what has been discussed?” one of the lords asked Roanna.

“Of course not,” she said, her head held high. “Why would I? I have a business license and furthermore, why shouldn’t I be proud of my accomplishments?”

“I’m proud of your accomplishments,” said Harte.

His goo goo eyes made me want to throw up all over again.

“Shut up, “she told him. “It’s your fault we’re in this mess.”

“It was your idea to summon that thing in the first place. ‘How hard can it be?’ you said,” Harte replied, looking betrayed.

“She also said that necromancy is for freaks,” Ruddy said excitedly. “And that summoning demons is entry level magic.”

The League thanked Ruddy for being an expert witness.

Rufus was rubbing his temples.

“Necromancer, the League would like to know where you were the night the accused entered your home,” said one of the lords.

He crossed his arms. “I was away on business.”

“What kind of business?” another lord asked.

“Consulting,” he sighed. “For the family of a deceased person, concerning a matter related to their untimely death. I can’t give you any more details to respect their privacy.”

“How did you know someone had broken in?” asked the lords.

Rufus gestured vaguely around the basement. “I found empty wine bottles in the trash and my spell books were out of place. At first I thought it was the rat,” he said, with an accusatory glare at Yvette.

“I’m surprised he didn’t blame the empty wine bottles on me,” Ruddy said. “I had an alibi, I was locked in my trapdoor dungeon. He never lets me out anymore.”

Yvette wrinkled her pointy snout. “Why would I touch any of that? Your magic is revolting.” Then she looked curiously at Rufus. “Is it still considered breaking and entering if you let yourself in with a key?”

“Interesting question,” one of the lords said.

“What do you mean by that, rat?” Rufus said.

Yvette shrugged.

Rufus’s lip curled. “What else do you know, rat?”

“Stop calling me that or you won’t get any more information from me,” she hissed.

“Don’t let him get to you, my love,” Tobin said to her, rubbing her shoulders. “Rats are beautiful, but not as beautiful as you.”

“Gods, that’s gross!” said Ruddy.

Yvette ignored the ghoulmon. “Why did Roanna still have the key to our house?”

“An excellent question,” said another demon lord.

“Our house?” said Rufus. “You’ve been squatting here for months. At this rate I should just have the exterminator toss you out.”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable question, and if you haven’t tossed me out by now you probably never will. Besides, it’s obvious you’re still in love with Roanna, even though she treats you terribly,” Yvette said through her tiny sharp teeth.

Rufus’s mouth hung open.

I saw Roanna’s smile. It was hateful.

“Speaking of rates, that’s going to cost extra,” said Jamison.

“Don’t worry my sweet, I would never let James do that to you,” Tobin purred, wrapping his arms around her and leaning in for a smooch. “Or he’d have to exterminate me too.”

“Honestly Tobin, after everything we’ve been through together,” Jamison said. “Cailreth Army, our nights at The Half Elf Taproom...”

“Get a room,” said Ruddy.

“The League is still curious as to why the accused had a key,” the lords said as one.

“I’m curious too, since you won’t even give me one,” Yvette said.

“None of your business!” shouted Rufus. “Since when are you allowed to cross-examine me, rat?”

One of the demons reminded him not to raise his voice while court was in session. Yvette and Tobin began making out. Ruddy angled for a better view of them.

Rufus turned to Jamison. “YOU. Don’t you dare cash that check the rat gave you. And get that stuff out of your mouth. You have no right to be spitting inside another wizard’s laboratory!”

Jamison spat to the side. “Your lab is a wreck that needs to be condemned. I hope you have insurance. Anyway, what about money owed to me for my services? I was sent to help contain your situation.”

Rufus fumed. “I didn’t authorize any of this, so tear up that check. In fact you should be the one paying damages which include emotional damage, spitting on the floor, loss of books, artifacts, furniture.”

“What about the demon and his freaky hell world cat, are you going to sue them too?” said Jamison with a smirk. “The kid is the one who called us on your Chimbrelis.”

“I’m fifteen years old, not exactly a kid,” I said.

“QUIET!” the lords roared. “Settle it with your insurer, necromancer, and get rid of the torrowroot, exterminator.”

“My laboratory,” groaned Rufus. “What about Roanna and Harte breaking into my house?”

“That’s a matter for your local Calare,” one of the lords said.

“Perhaps she should turn in her key,” said another.

I thought Rufus was going to keel over.

“I acted in self-defense. I have done nothing wrong!” said Roanna, sounding every bit like she hadn’t learned a thing since stealing Purrberus’s tooth.

“When can I go home?” I said to nobody in particular.

Everyone turned and stared at me.

“SILENCE,” the League of Demon Lords said together.

A malicious smile twisted Mister Gentry’s grotesque, sharp-toothed mouth even more.

“I wouldn’t have been eaten by that thing and arrested by the League if it wasn’t for you pushing me to go along with your ridiculous schemes, Roanna,” grumbled Harte. “Your parties always did end in disaster.”

“It’s your own fault you were caught,” Roanna said to Harte. “You didn’t run when I told you to.”

“I never heard you tell me to run,” said Harte.

“The accused will refrain from chit chat,” another demon said.

He outlined the charges against Roanna and Harte: grand theft, demonic animal abuse, as well as interdimensional laws they broke such as transporting stolen items across realms and accessing unauthorized portals.

The rest of the lords nodded. “The League finds both of the accused guilty. Further, we acknowledge the pendant actually belongs to Purrberus. The punishment for both is one life term in the Netherrealms per offense.”

Roanna and Harte had the colossal gall, as Addison would have put it, to look surprised.

“What a relief. I’ll never have to deal with you or my cousin ever again,” said Rufus, but he didn’t really sound like he meant it.

Mister Gentry held up the pendant. It seemed to pulse with triumphant malevolence. “I hope we have gotten through to you, magic users, in spite of what Addison says or does. The pendant was never any of yours.”

He plucked off the pendant’s chain and flicked it away. The black rectangle lay flat in the palm of his hand, and he crushed the gem with a sharp snap like a sprung mousetrap.

Plumes of black smoke seeped out between his fingers, swirling together and flickering like miniature storm clouds. Slowly he unfurled his hand. In it lay Purrberus’s restored tooth.

“Open up, Purrberus,” he said. The demon kitten did so.

The Lord of Purrberus set the tooth in its spot in the hell realm’s mouth with reverence. He spoke some strange language that was probably older than time. There was a sound like static.

It was done, the tooth restored. The kitten mewed and headbutted Mister Gentry, causing the chandelier to come crashing down on the broken stone slab.

The infernal gavel crashed again. “Court is adjourned,” said the League. “Mister Gentry will arrange for Ruddy to receive his robes and join the League.”

With Roanna and Harte screaming and struggling for their lives, they floated back into Purrberus's open mouth and disappeared.

“Very well,” said Mister Gentry. He waved his fingers and Ruddy’s trapdoor chains unraveled themselves.

“Hey!” shouted Rufus. “I didn’t say you could leave.”

Ruddy climbed out. I prayed to whatever deity might be paying attention that the ghoulmon had forgotten about me, with his threats to eat everybody’s eyes and toes. I shuddered violently at the thought.

He ignored Rufus. Instead he faced Mister Gentry and asked, “Why didn’t you recognize me? We’re kindred.” He sounded hurt.

Mister Gentry peered into Ruddy’s face for several moments and then grinned. “Of course we are kindred. I didn’t recognize you in that body.”

“Then you know my real name isn’t Ruddy. It is just what I called myself while in this meat suit. My true name must not be spoken,” the ghoulmon said slyly.

Mister Gentry nodded. “I know the name, but I won’t speak it because great calamities will happen and then the world will be destroyed.”

“Speak it, speak it!” not-really-Ruddy shrieked with excitement.

“Shut up,” said Rufus. “Your powers are not that spectacular. You decided to possess a man who died drunk in a public fountain!”

“Give me a break. It was my first time possessing someone,” he scowled.

“What about the daily preservatives I give you? Without them you’ll rot away,” Rufus said.

“What about how you just decided to keep the body after you were supposed to cremate him,” said not-really-Ruddy.

“It worked out well enough for you, dimwit, considering you hijacked the man I was trying to communicate with, and wreaked so much havoc all over my house I needed to put you inside the trapdoor,” Rufus said. “But by all means, go rot away inside the demon kitten until the end of time, if that’s what you want.”

“As much as I hate to say it, the necromancer is right,” Mister Gentry said quickly. “Why don’t you leave that body behind. That way I will always know who you are, and nobody will have to smell the stench of incense and whatever else you reek of.”

Ruddy agreed. The body he was inhabiting began to shiver. A squirrel-sized, dark purple skinned creature with a wizened, mischievous face and cricket legs leaped out of the corpse’s mouth, which flopped heavily to the floor with a splat. The creature hopped atop Mister Gentry’s shoulder.

I cringed. Rufus looked grim.

“Wait!” said Astrid. “What about us?”

“What about you?” Mister Gentry said. “You zapped me with the exterminator’s weapon. Don’t I look enough like a bug to you for that to matter?”

“We regret our actions and don’t want to stay here in the realm of the living,” she said. The other undeads agreed.

Mister Gentry decided to let bygones be bygones with the bug zapping baton incident, and invited them to start new undead lives inside another realm.

“We have one more matter to settle before we leave,” said Astrid. She confronted Rufus about how he changed their forms into what they became, and why he placed them in the glass prisons.

“You were my early student projects. Theoretically you shouldn’t have lasted this long. I’m sorry you don’t like being what you are. Necromancy is part of what I do,” he sighed. “And those are terrariums, not prisons. I put you there so you would be safe from Yvette.”

Yvette broke away from Tobin’s passionate embrace long enough to sputter a protest about not being so depraved that she’d eat an undead anything until he started kissing her again.

“You acted with courage. I hope you get home soon,” Astrid said to me. The undeads and I said goodbye to each other, and Mister Gentry waved them and former-Ruddy into Purrberus’s center mouth.

I heard the little purple demon whooping as he leapt into the darkness.

Mister Gentry put his face extra close to mine. I was paralyzed, staring at the rows of needle sharp teeth in his mouth.

“You are but a cog in the cosmic machinery that returned what was stolen. I regret that you made it so difficult for us because of the choices you made,” he said. “Give Addison my regards.”

There was an ear-splitting crack from everywhere, and the demons were gone.