“I’m not his girlfriend,” Sora said brusquely.
Her quick response was like a little stab in Daemon’s chest. But he smiled through it.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, casting her eyes downward in a manner that was demure yet slightly flirtatious at the same time. “I just assumed.”
He cleared his throat. “Right. Well, um, I was actually wondering if you could direct us toward the Society of Taigas’ command center here?”
The girl’s mouth twisted a little in confusion. Then Daemon remembered he was in civilian clothes, that hideous turquoise-and-coral shirt again. After the Paro Village incident, he and Sora had decided to switch to “normal” clothes so it wouldn’t be obvious that they were taigas. But that made it so this girl didn’t understand why he’d need to find the Society post.
He laughed as if embarrassed. “I’m just coming through Kaede City, and I heard there was a taiga outpost here. I’ve always wanted to see a real live taiga in person.”
She smiled then. “Boys. My little brother is obsessed with the taigas too. But I didn’t expect it of you. You’re so . . . strapping. And handsome.” She twirled one of her ribboned braids around her finger.
Daemon could feel Sora’s amusement through their gemina bond, the hop and skip of a smirk.
“Er, thank you,” he said, tracing the tines of a comb decorated with tiny seashells that looked like lemon drops so he wouldn’t have to watch the girl ogling him. “Do you know where the Society’s post is?”
She nodded eagerly. “By the harbor. There’s a tall wooden building, all black. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” Daemon said.
“Anytime,” the girl said. “What are you doing tonight? I finish work at four o’clock. . . .”
“I, um, will have left town by then. But have a nice day!” Daemon hurried away.
Sora caught up with him and shook her head, that smirk he’d felt plastered on her face. “You don’t even have to do anything, and girls fall at your feet, don’t they?”
Daemon threw up his mental ramparts for a moment, so Sora couldn’t sense what he was feeling. “Not all the girls,” he said.
There was an awkward silence. At least, Daemon thought it was awkward. Maybe Sora wouldn’t notice.
Then suddenly, the sky exploded.
Sora dove for cover. Daemon threw himself over her. Screams engulfed the marketplace.
Green mist burst from the explosion. It billowed everywhere, filling the air and blotting out the sun.
Daemon could hardly hear over the pounding of his heartbeat.
“A bomb?” Sora asked, as she clambered back into fighting stance.
He leaped to his feet too. “Possibly—”
The mist started to move. Not innocently like a bank of fog, but with determination. The clouds of green streamed together, hissing loudly and drowning out all other sound.
“This is really not good.” Daemon drew his bo from the holster on his back. But despite standing ready to fight, he gawked at the sky, unsure of what to do next.
The fog formed into a massive serpent. Its body stretched several miles long, with scales glistening like green drops of dew.
A girl nearby shrieked. All the color drained from her face, and she fainted, knocking down her entire display of hats.
The snake circled above Kaede City, red eyes narrowed and glowing. It opened its jaws to reveal a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, icicles reflecting the cowering sun.
“Luna help us,” Daemon said. If ever there was a time he wished he was better at magic, this was it.
Sora looked over at him, sensing his doubt through their gemina bond. She punched her fists to her chest.
It reminded him that he wasn’t alone. Daemon saluted back, then spun his bo in his hands. Whatever was coming, they would handle it together.
The mist serpent snapped its teeth, and he jumped as the sound ricocheted through the air like a thunderclap. The force of it sent tremors through the city. Flowerpots careened off window ledges. Pedestrians fell to their hands and knees in the street.
The marketplace erupted in confusion and noise.
“What was that?” a woman behind Daemon shrieked.
“The gods are punishing us!” someone else yelled. “I told the mayor he needed to be more generous with his gifts to the sea!”
Rumbling came from down the road that led into the marketplace. The sound grew louder and louder, until it rattled the stalls, shaking wares off tables and drowning out all the shouting.
A large black orb shot toward the far edge of the marketplace. A collective, high-pitched, insect whine filled the air.
Holy heavens. Daemon nearly dropped his bo. The bug boy had seemed so much less threatening on the road, when he was far away.
“Run!” Panicked shoppers and vendors screamed and fled, shoving each other, abandoning baskets, and tripping over fallen wares. Hundreds of thousands of cockroaches rushed at them, like a black-brown tsunami of antennae and legs. Then a second surge of them came, this time carrying a boy on the crest of the wave.
“Nines,” Sora cursed.
“I guess we won’t have time to warn the taigas,” Daemon said, tightening his grip on his bo. “It looks like the ryuu are already here.”
The cockroaches scurried over Daemon’s feet and up his trousers. He tried to bat them away. They crawled in spirals around his entire body and skittered across his shoulders and up his neck, and he gagged as their aggressive little antennae waved in his face. Around him, people screamed and moved in frenzied jerks as they tried to shake off the roaches. Tables crashed, and stalls collapsed into one another.
Daemon swiped at them with his bo, sending cockroaches flying into the air.
“Try to get everyone out of the market safely!” Sora shouted to Daemon. “I’ll focus on the bug boy.”
Daemon nodded. He wanted to fight too, but part of being a taiga was knowing what was more important for the people they were protecting.
Sora ran off in the direction of the ryuu.
A cloud of wasps swarmed toward the screaming people, who were shoving each other and falling down in their hysteria. “Daggers,” Daemon cursed. If he didn’t do something soon, the stampede would kill someone.
I need to make a path for evacuation, he thought. Until there was a space clear of insects, the vendors and shoppers wouldn’t know how to exit. They’d trample each other to death.
Daemon stashed away his bo and shut out the feeling of tiny legs crawling all over him. He grabbed at the silk scarves on the racks near him and flung them like nets, taking swathes of wasps with them. Then he snatched a tarp from the top of a fallen stall and threw that at the wasps too. Finally, he hurled a pot full of simmering miso soup, dousing the insects’ wings so they could no longer fly.
“This way,” he yelled to the terrified marketplace. He waved his arms, directing them toward the space temporarily free of wasps.
The people closest heard him and began to run. The rest followed. The girl from the comb stall paused for a second before him, her face streaked with tears. She pecked him on the cheek, then fled out of the market.
Daemon stood a little taller. But he couldn’t bask in the pride of doing his job, not when Sora was fighting something as formidable and unknown as a ryuu.