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The demon was bleeding profusely, moaning and writhing still, but with most of the fight gone out of it. “I’ll go back,” it promised, trying to kick itself away from the
chalk line. “I’ll go back.”
“Santiago,” I barked hoarsely, pointing to Tansy with my bad hand.
“Fuck.” He paused, a lit match in his fingers, then snuffed out the flame. He rounded the inside of the circle, sidestepping Gamigan, and lifted Tansy forcefully off the ground.
Which was the precise moment she bit him in the neck.
Santiago bellowed, shoving her mouth away while trying to get her out of the protective circle. This was one last hurrah from Gamigan, using the hold it still had over her to try and save its own hide. Tansy bit him harder, blood dribbling down her chin, further staining her pretty blue sweater.
I acted without thinking.
One minute I was in Wilder’s arms, watching a sorority girl try to bite out Santiago’s throat, the next I had my one good arm around her midsection, yanking her off him.
I didn’t even recognize the ferocious growl that came out of my mouth as a sound I was capable of making in human form. It echoed off the walls and up into the night. A moment later a coyote called back, a long, mournful wail mingling with my own enraged cry.
Everything hurt.
I was on fire down to my very cells, and beyond that my atoms might as well have been exploding. It was agony to even think of moving, and yet I used what strength I had left and pulled Tansy off of Santiago, throwing her onto the dusty ground, where she immediately fell limp, as if she’d been nothing more than a doll the whole time.
I collapsed, landing hard on my ass, staring straight ahead of me but focusing on nothing.
“Genie?” Santiago had his hand on his throat, and when I glanced down, I noticed I was covered in droplets of it.
“Finish it,” I breathed, wiping blood from my cheeks.
He nodded, and with his hand still on his throat he kicked Gamigan onto the chalk line, then lit a match using only his teeth. He tossed it onto the herbs, and within seconds the entire pentagram—blood, piss, demon, and all—was up in flames.
Santiago hopped over the line, staggering a little, and plopped down next to me in the dirt. We watched in dizzy silence until the flames hit the salt line and the heat made the small hairs on our face and arms curl.
In the distance I heard sirens coming.
By the time the police arrived, the fire had dwindled away to embers, and all signs of the demon were gone. Tansy was sobbing, trying desperately to get Santiago’s blood out of her mouth, and Cash was sitting on the farthest bench from all of us, saying nothing, just holding his phone in his hands with 911 still showing on the screen as the last call dialed.
Wilder came to stand behind Santiago and me, putting his hand gently on top of my head.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“This? Yes.”
But I thought of what Gamigan had shown me, and what it had said, and I knew that we weren’t out of the woods yet. At least I wasn’t.
Not by a long shot.
Chapter Thirty-Four
A week later, I was with Detective Perry when the forensics unit exhumed Alexandra Walker’s body from the basement of the Delta Phi house.
My nose was still bleeding from the dimensional rift I’d needed to open to help them locate what was left of her corpse.
That demon sure liked hiding shit in the folds of space-time.
“Just…explain it to me one more time,” Perry asked.
We were sitting on the hood of his shitty sedan, watching as the coroner’s van took Alexandra away. Police tape stretched across the front of the Delta Phi house. A notice of chapter closure was posted on the front door. Looked like sisterhood could survive a lot, but not dead bodies, a murder arrest, and girls being trapped inside the walls.
And here I’d just avoided sororities because the fees seemed ridiculous.
