“I don’t think there’s any demon left,” Jasper said. “But I’ll leave that to your talent to decide. Granny Abels is still here and still breathing, though.”
“By all the hells!” Silas shifted behind Darien’s shoulders, tense, no doubt eager to go see.
Well, Darien was pretty freakin’ eager too. He leaned aside, got an elbow under himself. “Go check, Silas. I’m fine.”
Silas leaped over to kneel beside Jasper, power spilling green from his hands. “By all the gods, she is alive. And I don’t sense any demon in her. Old traces, yes, deep and dark, but nothing active.”
Darien pushed up to sitting. “Will she live? Wake up?”
“I don’t know.” Silas glanced back, shock on his face. “This is unprecedented. No one has ever held back a host from the pull of the hells. Alive or dead.”
“I guess I’m an overachiever.” Darien rubbed at his face gingerly. The pain was fading, leaving a tight heat like a bad sunburn.
Grim said at his elbow, “Another way to put it would be reckless, untutored, full of raw power and not a lick of sense.” Sharp cat fangs prickled the scorched skin of his wrist, then the lick of a rough tongue felt almost as punishing. “Why did you do that, boy? You want to scare Silas within an inch of his life?”
“I wanted to save her.” He pulled his wrist away and shoved to his knees. Silas hurried back to give him a hand under his elbow, and he made it to his feet. With Silas’s help, he walked two steps and stood there, looking down at the old woman’s body. “She didn’t summon the demon. She didn’t trade safety for power or make some stupid, greedy mistake. She was minding her own business and the demon just came along and took her over, like—” Like the ghosts did to me, back when this started. But worse. The ghosts had driven him half crazy, but they’d never owned him the way the demon had possessed her.
“Yes, of course, that makes it all fine,” Grim muttered, but he head-bumped Darien’s shin.
“We should get her inside,” Jasper said. “To bed, probably. Give her… water? What does one do to treat exposure to a hell?”
“We could call Anya,” Darien suggested. A Healer might know how to help.
But as Jasper and Silas knelt to lift the old woman, she moaned and opened her eyes and shrieked, “Who are you? Don’t touch me!”
Jasper yanked his hands back at her hoarse-voiced cry. “Sorry. Trying to help.”
She scrambled backward up the steps and crawled through her open doorway. They followed her, trying not to crowd her. Silas held his hands wide, and Jasper locked his behind his back. Darien just tried to stay on his feet.
The interior of the house was dim, scented with a dozen herbs and flowers. Granny Abels hauled herself up into a big armchair in the front room, and they stayed in the entry, snowy boots on the tile, eyeing her. All except Grim, who paced over and sat in front of her, feet neatly placed, tail curled over his toes. “Don’t be afraid, mistress. We really are here to help.”
She looked the cat up and down, her gray hair standing in a bedraggled halo around her head, her skirt ruched up around her legs. Then her gaze tracked from Grim to Silas, to Jasper, to Darien standing in the doorway, and Pip, sitting at his side. She ran her tongue across cracked lips and blinked hard, her expression faraway, flinching, twitching. Finally, she said, “If you’re telling the truth, come inside and shut the door and stop letting the heat out.”
Darien managed a couple of steps and pushed the door shut behind him. Granny Abels cleared her throat, her breathing still echoing fast and loud in the quiet house. Jasper shifted foot to foot. Silas peered around while looking like he was trying to be subtle. After a moment, Granny Abels said, “Someone going to explain this to me?” She raised a bushy eyebrow at Jasper. “You, young man, you look like you have the most sense of the bunch.”
“I don’t want to alarm you, ma’am.”
She cleared her throat. “I woke on my own front step, my nose full of foul smoke, feeling like I’ve been left in the oven too long, with a voice in my head that I almost remember and loathe. And he doesn’t want to alarm me.” She waved a hand at him. “I’m eighty-three and many things in my life have alarmed me. But I faced every damned one of them. Tell me what’s going on.”
Darien was just as happy to let Jasper tell her everything they knew from the moment the demon appeared in Hutchins’ backyard. Pip pressed close to Darien’s calf, while he focused on staying upright, leaning against the wall. Silas raised an eyebrow but didn’t hurry over to help him, so apparently he managed to look better than he felt.
When Jasper was done, the silence hung heavy in the room as they waited for Granny Abels to react. She stared at the floor, her mouth working like she tasted something nasty. When she looked up, it was Darien she focused on. “Let me get this straight. There I was, unconscious, headed for a hell, with your boss over there planning a mercy killing at best, and you somehow saved me?”
“I guess?” He shrugged. “I tried.”
“Kinda looks like you succeeded, huh?” She tugged her skirts straighter. “I’m… not sure what to think.”
“How do you feel?” Silas asked. “Any aftereffects? Do you remember the demon?”
“Feel?” She seemed to look inward and her eyes darkened. “I’m not sure. I can’t seem to find—” She clamped her mouth shut, her lips a flat line, and her expression turned bleak through several slow breaths. Then she shook her head as if setting a thought aside and said, “What I feel is parboiled.” She touched her face. “Like a bad sunburn.”
“Me too,” Darien admitted.
Granny Abels pointed imperiously at a shelf. “Over there, the blue bottle with the white stopper. Label says, ‘soothing lotion.’ Bring it here.”
Silas and Jasper glanced at each other, then Jasper fetched the bottle to her. She poured some onto her palms and smoothed it over her face, sighing as if with relief. Looking up, she raised one eyebrow at Darien. “Well, young man, don’t you want soothing?”
“I… guess.” He went to her and held out a hand.
Grim rose on his hind legs to sniff the lotion as she poured it into Darien’s palm. “Reminds me of something.” His tone had the hollow quality that Darien had figured out went with his Foresights. “Smells safe, good…”
When Grim didn’t go on, Darien cautiously dabbed a touch of the cream on his cheek. It had a faint grassy scent with almost an onion undertone, but sweet coolness trailed under his fingers, easing the tight heat. He quickly smoothed the lotion over his face and neck, then both hands, and took a deep breath as the burn eased. “That’s wonderful, thank you.”
“I may not have much power,” she said, “but I know my herbals.”
Silas said, “I don’t mean to cause you more pain, but can you tell us anything about the demon? Do you remember any details? Every little bit might help.”
“I was in the kitchen, stirring a pot on the stove, and I looked up. There were eyes at my window—” She broke off, swallowing hard. “No, I remember nothing more.”