“Whateverit is?” My eyes widened. “It’s not a ghost?”
“I’ve never seen a ghost do something like this.”
He pointed to the dark sky, highlighting how the howling wind wasn’t a classic scare tactic.
“It literally choked me two seconds ago,” I said. “If it could do that, couldn’t it… Mess with the weather?”
“It touched you after not making physical marks on a person after months of haunting. It’s one thing to push something over in our plane of existence and another to manipulate weather. To trap people in a dark void.”
“Nico!” Rae called as she stepped back into the circle. Her hand shook as she held her phone. “Matches.”
Nico heaved out a sigh and did what he was told. I tried to catch his gaze again, desperate to get him to continue what I suspected he was getting at: they were wrong.
He didn’t think this was Arnold. And if this wasn’t Arnold, would it matter if the bones burned?
It took three tries for Nico to light the match. He shielded it with his hand for as long as he could before dropping it into the grave.
Rae recited something from her phone, stumbling over her words. She glanced at me between lines, and I kept my eyes on her, willing myself to feel as strong and stable as her wide stance.
The flames in the grave crackled.Sparks flew as if the bones were firecrackers that couldn’t get off the ground. Jonah peered inside, a frown on his face as he said, “It’s not working!”
“Of course not, silly,” the distorted voice said.
A shadowy figure stood at the edge of the salt circle. It almost had a face and body between the clouds of black.
It reminded me of the edges of a nightmare. When you couldn’t tell if something was real or not, but it didn’t matter, because the fear was real. The fear tasted of something that could change your palate forever. Even if I woke in my warm bed and this had all turned out to be a nightmare, it would change me forever.
“None of it ever did,” it said.
Then, with ease, it stepped into the salt circle.
FIFTEEN
Demons werethe most elusive of paranormal entities. And the Guild did everything in its power—which was dishearteningly limited—to record every instance of them.
What little I understood of them was from a couple of paragraphs of explanation in the Guild’s database. Protections such as salt circles didn’t limit them, and our version of EMFs couldn’t detect them.
Like spirits, demons siphoned their energy from fear and anxiety. They could convert said energy in a far more efficient manner than spirits. Producing shows of excessive power.
The demon stayed in the salt circle for a couple of seconds before blinking away. Its purpose hadn’t been physical harm—no, it seemed to have had its fill of that tonight. This demon had finally revealed itself to us to incite more fear.
“Back to the house,” I ordered in a near whisper while staring at the spot where the demon had stood.
The wind stopped swirling; night now cloaked in a deafening silence. Since the truck’s lights had blown,visibility remained low. Everyone became shadowy outlines. For a breath, we all stood frozen, wordless as reality sank its thick claws into our veins. Our attempts to solve this case had been ineffective from day one. We’d been as clueless as children playing a game made for adults.
“Now!” I moved first. Nico, Jonah, and December snapped out of their collective shock. The guys scrambled to the truck while December became my shadow.
Frog and Kat were nearby, spooked but stable enough to have only wandered a couple of paces away.
Octavia stood, gaze locked on the unearthed grave.
“Octavia!” I called, but she didn’t move a muscle until I jogged over.
She flinched when I placed a hand on her elbow. I pulled back, holding my hands up. Octavia wore thousand-yard stare, eyes as dark as an infinite void.
“You’re here on solid ground,” I said, lightheaded and weak in the knees. “I’m here with you, and I’m going to walk with you through it all. You hear me?”
“I hear you.” But instead of waiting for me to walk with her, Octavia started for Frog on her own, determination returned.
