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Iwas trying to be patient, but every man has his limits. I’d poked at the second computer in our rinky-dink office for a while, peered at the maps Seth was making notations I didn’t totally understand on, and went out to grab us coffees and then lunch at places nearby that had nothing to do with the Assembly. But even walking on the streets of downtown Portland outside wasn’t enough to distract me.
Rose was out there fighting that… thatthingthat had practically made me piss myself just looking at it through the portal a month ago, and I was stuck here playing food delivery boy.
Not that I thought I’d really be all that much use out there on the battlefield either. If I would have been, I’d have argued a hell of a lot more. The last thing I wanted to be was a liability to her. So delivery boy it was.
In the middle of the afternoon, I stalked down the hallway to peer out the streaky window there. A car honked on the road below. There was still no sign of the witches who’d headed out en masse this morning. No sign of Rose. If the Assembly officials still dicking around here pretendingtheywere so useful knew anything, they hadn’t bothered to keep us in the loop.
I had people I could talk to who knew other people. I could have scrounged up some guns or maybe other types of handheld weaponry. The pistol I’d gotten in New York hadn’t helped us much against even the Enforcers, though. And during that first meeting, the Assembly assholes had mentioned that their enforcers had tried a certain amount of non-magical firepower against the demon. Bullets had bounced right off its freakish skin. It figured.
When I wandered back into the office, Kyler and Gabriel barely looked up from their respective computers. Jin and Seth were sitting on the couch together discussing something about “angles” and “patterning,” like they were going to crochet their way out of this problem.
I’d just dropped onto the end of the couch beside them when one of the officials—that Brimsey guy who always got an expression like he’d bitten into a bruise on an apple when he looked at us—peeked in at us as he meandered by down the hall.
In what was not quite my finest moment, a comment shot from my mouth before I had a chance to think. “We’re not here for you to gawk at. If you’ve got some news, spit it out.”
His mouth tightened, and he strode off without a word. Brilliant strategy, Damon. Way to win them over.
But let’s be real. Winning people over was Gabriel’s job, and maybe Jin’s. Mine was to stop them from getting away with bullshit.
True to form, our recently returned leader shifted in his chair to look at me. “I think we’re better off giving them at least a little benefit of the doubt,” Gabriel said.
“I think he’ll survive the occasional jab,” I said.
He shrugged. “I hate them too. Hate them all you want. I just figure we’ll have an easier time when we leave here if we keep the peace while we’re with them.”
The most annoying thing about Gabriel was that he almost always had a good point. I scuffed my feet against the floor with a scowl. I was supposed to be keeping the peace withhimtoo, even though he’d taken off on all of us after stomping Rose’s heart to pieces. Even if he’d left for good reasons in the end, it’d still gotten stomped on.
She was the one who’d asked me to keep the peace, though. I could do that for her.
Ky glanced over too. “Why don’t—” he started, but before I could find out what our Brainiac was going to suggest I occupy myself with, a scramble of footsteps sounded in the hall outside.
We all jumped up. I made it to the doorway first. A few of the Assembly officials farther down the hall were hurrying to the staircase. Something was up.
I didn’t wait to discuss it—I hustled right after them. The other guys kept pace. We rushed down the stairs and spilled into the front hall just behind the officials.
The enforcers who’d left that morning were coming in. The bunch I saw was clustered around one woman who was limping, her mouth twisted with pain. I caught sight of another witch with a blotch of eerie gray across her cheek as if the skin had rotted. My stomach lurched.
Where the hell was Rose? What had that fucking fiend done toher?
Her black hair gleamed between two of the enforcers just coming through the doors to join the crowd in the hallway. I leapt forward, pushing through the chaos as gently but quickly as I could. In the space of a breath, I took in my consort’s face—paler than usual but unharmed—and her posture—all body parts apparently in working order, if weak. Then I pulled her into my arms.
She hugged me back, her fingers digging into the fabric of my T-shirt. Her breath came out ragged. A quiver ran down her back, and my teeth gritted.
The other guys had caught up. “Is she okay?” Seth asked.
I nodded. At Gabriel’s gesture, I eased both Rose and me back against the wall, farther out of the way of the enforcers still streaming into the building. Babbling voices echoed around us, but there was only one person’s account I really cared about.
“What happened, angel?” I said. It hadn’t been good—that much I could tell.
“I don’t know,” she said against my chest. “I don’t really understand… The plan didn’t work. Not completely. We started to push the demon back, but even with all of us there, it was stronger. And I think we made it mad.”
A chill coursed down my back. All those enforcers and Rose and the best plan they’d come up with, and the demon hadn’t even been slowed down. What was it going to do now that they’d shown their hand?
“There’ve got to be other things we can try,” Jin said, trying to put an optimistic spin on the situation as always. “If you found a strategy that worked a little, you can build off of that.”
“I hope so,” Rose said. She raised her head a bit, but she sounded doubtful. Her eyes were so distraught that my heart wrenched. “That wasn’t even—”
“Lady Hallowell!” One of the officials who’d set themselves up in charge from the beginning—Remington—pushed over to us through the crowded hall. She motioned toward the stairwell. “We need to talk about what happened out there. As soon as possible.”
