Page 41 of Eat, Slay, Love

I’m still standing exactly where I threw it, chest heaving, palms tingling, every nerve in my body lit up and frayed and devastated.

“Well,” Leo says at last, staring at the ruined television with mild interest, “that escalated.”

“Mayari.” My mother’s voice slices through the room. “Explain.”

My mouth tastes like metal. I swallow it down. “I will,” I say, forcing steadiness into my tone. “But you’re not going to like it.”

Before my mother can respond, my father steps forward. His gaze moves past me, taking in the rest of the apartment. The maps taped across the hardwood. The chalked runes spidering out across the floor. The bowls of powders arranged with obsessive precision. The red circles and black Xs. The reinforced salt lines threaded with iron. The diagram of the soup kitchen block marked with civilian density by time of night, three evacuation paths drawn in careful blue.

His expression shifts. “Alunsina,” he says quietly. “Look.”

My mother follows his line of sight. For a moment, she just looks at the room. Then she looks at me. Calculation flickers across her face.

“We will discuss this later,” my father says, and there’s no arguing with the finality in his voice. He takes my mother’s arm.

She resists for half a second. Then she allows herself to be led out.

The door closes again, softer this time.

I let out a long, slow, painful breath.

My brothers remain. All four of them drift fully into the living room now, their attention turning from me to the mock battlefield I’ve built across my floor.

Gabriel crouches near the largest map, fingertips hovering over the block grid. “You marked civilian density.”

Raf picks up one of the bowls and brings it to his nose. “Salt. Iron. Eggshell.”

“And something that smells like Lola’s spice cabinet from 1948,” Leo adds, wrinkling his nose.

Andres nudges one of the chalk symbols with the toe of his boot. “You were preparing for something.”

“Both of us were,” I say, defending my demon. My poor, devastated demon, whose wife was slain by my mother. “We were preparing to destroy Belvedere.”

All four of them look up at once, and the temperature in the room seems to drop.

“He’s coming tonight. Halloween night,” I continue, pointing to the map at my feet. “To that soup kitchen.”

Raf straightens slowly. “How do you know?”

“One of his lieutenants told me before I killed him. And Jonah has been tracking rot patterns in that neighborhood for decades.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightens at the name. “Mayari,” he says carefully, like he’s trying not to step on a landmine. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I have never been clearer,” I shoot back. “And you’re going to hear me out. Sit down.”

They don’t sit, obviously, so I keep going.

“You all know how our magic works. Demon registers as demon. We sense the signature, and from the time we’re children, we’re taught what that signature means.”

“Corruption,” my father had called it.

“Danger,” I say now. “Something that needs to die.”

No one argues.

“But our magic has never actually told us any of that. It only tells us if there’s a demon. Everything after that is what we were taught.”

Raf’s expression shifts.