Page 8 of Eat, Slay, Love

So, bleeders do exist. How about a demon who was warm? I ask the chat.

Why, thinking of banging one?

Never in my 131 years of life have I encountered a warm, bleeding demon

Same for me, in my 67 years.

I fucked one once. it was like fucking a popsicle. He didn’t bleed when I killed him afterwards

I had more of a popsicle experience. At least it was a huge popsicle

Jeez. At least Jonah would be warm. Wait, what?

Temperature difference helps me identify them in crowds, and it’s always cold

My forte lets me confirm manifestation state. Fully manifested demons run cold. Always.

I frown at the second iteration of forte, brushing aside the old sting the word still manages to summon. There’s no way this could be mine. Forte is a word—and a possibility—I gave up on a long time ago.

Every slayer family inherits a foundational discipline, the basic structure that governs what their magic can do. The Magdangal line’s is energy. We sense the supernatural energy demons give off. We can manipulate energy, shape it into containment, and, when necessary, force it into something lethal.

But a forte is different. Sometimes, a slayer develops a specialized refinement of that same inherited magic, something uniquely theirs. My mother, for example, can gauge a demon’s raw magnitude the moment she encounters it, instinctively knowing how powerful it is. My brother Rafael can feel how long a demon has existed.

Mine never came.

Neither did Gabriel’s, but somehow that never seemed to bother him the way it bothered me. I spent years waiting for mine to surface. Every strange flicker of magic, every new sensation, every birthday—I wondered if this would finally be it, if this would be the year. If I would finally have the thing that made my magic distinctly, uniquely mine.

Eventually, my family stopped wondering. Then they stopped asking. And sometime after that, so did I. And after sixty-seven years, I learned not to think about it at all. I learned not to hope for one. Until, maybe, now.

I type again. Has anyone ever sensed something different from demons? Energy patterns? Not in terms of magnitude, like weaker or stronger. Just… different.

The replies slow.

Different how?

Clarify.

My magic hadn’t reacted to Jonah the way it was supposed to. I could sense him—there’s no mistaking the signature of a demon—but beneath that recognition, something had felt wrong. Or maybe different really was the better word. It hadn’t surged with the clean, righteous clarity it always did when facing something that needed to die. It buzzed and skipped beneath my skin instead, an insistent warning I didn’t know how to interpret. Like it is right now, and almost exactly how it did a decade ago.

I set the phone down slowly, because even I’m not sure what I’m asking anymore. Could it be related to my forte? Could my magic be trying to tell me something? What is wrong with it? Could it really be my forte surfacing after all this time? And if so, what specifically is it reading? I make a note to call my brothers after⁠—

“Yo, Lara Croft,” someone to my right calls. “Our Halloween party ain’t ’til next week.”

I look down, forgetting that I am, in fact, wearing a skin-tight leather catsuit at three in the afternoon. “Just… breaking it in.”

“Mom,” a little kid whispers loudly. “Is she a supervillain?”

I’m actually the superhero in this story. I flash him a smile that shows all my teeth.

“Hey, Catwoman,” Betty calls from the serving line. “You gonna sit there lookin’ pretty all day, or you wanna help?”

“I—” I glance around, suddenly hyperaware that I’ve been sitting in the corner for hours, looking like someone trying to rob the place. “I’ll help. Of course, I’ll help.”

Betty jerks her chin toward a plastic bin near the sink. “Grab an apron and a hairnet from over there.”

I pull the dull white apron over my leathered torso and stretch a translucent hairnet over my hair, and then I instinctively brace myself.

Someone whistles.