Medial—temporary demons on this plane of existence. Stronger than the initiates and born of powerful magic that could keep them around for weeks, and even months.
Blood-born—the worst kind of demons to possibly deal with. Why, you ask? Because they weren’t created; they weren’t called forward; they were born. Born of a witch and given life so they could torture and kill, so they could drive fear and darkness into the world. They had a mind like any creature, but they could be solid or they could be incorporeal, which made them deadly as all get-out.
The only good thing was that the blood-born demons tended to be tied to a single place. Tethered like junkyard dogs. The demon in the Hanging Tree downtown was one of them; it couldn’t leave.
And I was pretty sure the same was true of the demon in the Sorrel-Weed house—which meant it was a blood-born demon too. It could bark at us and be as angry as it pleased, but it was stuck. And unless someone was dumb enough to go into his space, they were good.
Yet here I was, dumb as could be.
“Duck, duck, duck,” I whispered under my breath and Robert’s hand tightened on mine. My energy spiked, and I unintentionally pushed it into Robert. He groaned and tugged me sideways.
“Friend,” he said, and clacked his teeth together. The energy pulsed around and between us, suddenly darker than before, and it was as if I were drowning in water that was deep and cold. I didn’t let go of Robert, just gasped his name, and he tugged me upward out of the cold and into his arms.
Arms. Not bones.
I blinked up at him to see those icy blue eyes staring down at me. “Hey, Robert.”
“What are you doing wasting your energy to make me solid for a few minutes?” He helped me stand, his long dark hair pulled back from his face which allowed me to see the lines of his jaw and the concern in his eyes. I didn’t know why he’d suddenly become solid—as in, not just a skeleton—but the wild guess that wanted to come to the front of my mind was not one I liked. So I pushed it away.
“Well, I thought we could go on a tour, you know, like a date.” I grinned, knowing the grin was giddy with fear. “What a lovely house, don’t you think?”
Robert’s eyes slid past me to take the space in. “The house is lovely, but you need to work on your destination dates. This is terrible.”
I laughed, and the laugh was eaten up by the house, the positive energy sucked up like chocolate milk, but I didn’t care. “I just need to tuck this stuff”—I tapped my hand on my bag—“somewhere up in that room across from Gran’s.”
Robert blew out a breath and tugged me forward. “Quick then, in and out. Let’s go.”
We hurried upward—Robert doing as much pushing and pulling as I was doing walking—trying doors until we found the right one. The one that Matilda liked to stand in and mock Gran.
I half expected Matilda to be there, but she wasn’t. The room was empty. A small writing table was pressed against the wall, just to the side of the window, like Gran had said. Only . . . it wasn’t visible from Gran’s window. How had she known it was there? That thought caught me off guard, there and gone in a flash.
I pointed at the desk. “There, we can move that under the window.” It was my turn to drag Robert across the room, and he helped me lift the simple desk and position it just under the windowsill.
I dug around in my bag and pulled out the yellow envelope holding the pages written in Goblinese and the silver coin. Folding it in half, I tucked it into the desk drawer. “There. Nice and safe. Just another day and a half and—”
“Breena,” Robert said my name softly, “you need to turn around.”
As I gazed out the window, the skin on my back prickled as if I’d been touched with electricity. The glass reflected something behind me in the doorway of the room that should not have been possible. I mean, obviously it was because it was there, but I didn’t like it. “Maybe I don’t want to.”
“I don’t much want to look either, but here I am, looking,” he said.
I forced myself to glance over my shoulder. A mass of darkness filled the doorway, moving like smoke, only thicker. Way thicker than smoke.
“Oh, no, I don’t like that,” I said.
Robert backed up so that we were side by side, still holding hands. “I never much liked demons either.”
The darkness let out a low rumbling laugh that sounded less human and more animal. “Fools to come to me.”
I nodded, so beyond fear that my mouth took over when I probably shouldn’t let it. “Fools, yes, for sure. We should just go now. Robert, what do you think?”
“Going would be good.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, unless you want to stay for tea and biscuits?”
I looked at him, and I think I might have managed a single eyebrow quirk. Maybe it took bowel-twisting fear to give me that ability. “Tea and biscuits.”
“With honey?” He shrugged. “I mean, if we’re staying, we might as well be comfortable.”
“You will not stay. I will devour you!”
Oh, I got what Robert was doing. I winked at him. “You know, that bedroom on the first floor would be perfect for my office. I could put a giant Jesus picture right in the middle of the wall. Maybe throw in a few statues of Saint Michael.”
The demon hissed and spread out in front of us. “Insolent.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it even though my legs were jelly and I was pretty sure I’d never been so afraid in my life. “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”
“No, it’s really not. I was there,” Robert confirmed. He grinned at me, laughing, and those icy blue eyes glittered with humor. “It’s a family trait, I think.”
The room went from bright and airy with sunlight spilling through the window to a darkness so complete, I couldn’t see in front of me.
“Oh shit.” I stumbled, barely able to keep my feet under me. All around me was darkness, death, despair. It crawled into me and reminded me of my lack of worth.
I was past my best before date.
I hadn’t even been able to conceive a child.
I was out of my league with Crash. Corb was using me.
This job wasn’t meant for me. I was going to get my friends killed.
No good.
Too old.
Out of shape.
Useless. Beneath notice. A joke.
Scared.
I was so scared that everything around me was a lie. That everything I was, or thought I was, was some fantasy I’d built on a stack of beliefs that weren’t even real. My heart slowed as tendrils of darkness wrapped around it and squeezed. Tears leaked from my eyes.
One less of your kind.
Sadness crushed me, and I bowed under the weight of the darkness and the truths it spoke to my heart. Truths I’d been trying to ignore, trying to re-write.
Glass shattered behind me, and a warm breath of spring air spooled in around me, cutting through the black weight that had taken hold of me. An arm wrapped around my waist, and then I was falling through the air, floating. Maybe I was dying. You saw a bright light when you died, from what I understood, and bright light burned my eyes . . . except I’d almost died just a week ago, and I’d seen nothing of the sort then.
This light . . . it encompassed everything. I couldn’t see anything outside of it, but I sure as hell felt the ground as I landed flat on my back, all the air rushing out of me, showing me that I was indeed still alive. At least for the moment.