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“Look at us,” I said. “We’re doing the same old things we always do. Approaching this problem the same old ways. But it’s not enough. Can’t you see that?”

“What are you saying, Jin?” Gabriel said, quietly but without any hostility.

“Just that—Rose is pushing herself to her limits, stretching herself in ways she never had to before, to tackle this thing. Because it’s not like anything we’ve ever had to tackle before. If we want to support her, we’ve got to do the same thing. Think outside the boxes we’re comfortable in. Look at what’s really happening and where we can make a difference even if it’s hard—with eyes wide open, without any blinders. Stop running in circles we already know haven’t gotten us anywhere.”

For several seconds, the others kept staring at me. Then Ky let his hands come to rest on the desk. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m just covering the same ground over and over again here.”

“So what does that mean?” Damon demanded, but even he looked a little subdued compared to his earlier furor. “What exactly should we do?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just think it needs to be different. Bigger. Better. Maybe… Maybe we need to start by getting out of this room and actually interacting more with these Assembly people. They’re the ones Rose has to be working with. We’re pissed off that they don’t respect us, but we haven’t encouraged much of an alliance between us either, have we?”

“No,” Gabriel said grimly. “We haven’t.”

Seth pushed away from his blueprints. “I’ll find out which of the officials are overseeing the cage reconstruction and start from there.” He glanced at me. “Did you want to come with, or…?”

“I think that’s as good a starting point as any,” I said. The glow in me ebbed again, but the flicker of it was more buoyant now. More hopeful. “I’ll just have to see where I can get to from there.”

Chapter Eighteen

Rose

Normally when I ventured into the side hall where the Assembly had set up rooms for the recovering witches I was met by only quiet stillness and maybe some murmured voices. The women who until recently had been virtual slaves to their consorts and the demons weren’t really the boisterous sort. So my heart started beating faster the moment I heard footsteps rushing over the floor. A sharp sobbing carried all the way to the stairs. I hurried out of the stairwell and around the bend.

Thalia was hustling between one of the rooms and another, her brown-and-silver hair flying astray, her frown digging furrows at the corners of her mouth. She stopped when she saw me, one hand on the doorframe. The sobbing was fading, but someone else was speaking in a low frantic babble I couldn’t make out much of.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Word went around that the demon is coming toward the city,” she said. “That it looks like it’ll be here soon. And if that wasn’t frightening enough, I think some of the witches most recently in contact with them can already feel its approach. They weren’t ready. It’s brought a lot of the fear and anguish back up. I’m doing what I can.”

“Are you okay?”

She nodded with a jerk of her chin. “I’ve had a few weeks longer to get my head on straight compared to everyone else here. A good thing, I suppose. Not that I’m pleased about the news, but I’ll cope.”

She slipped into the room, and I followed. The space had been set up like my and the guys’ room upstairs, with six cots in two rows. Lesley was already inside, kneeling next to one of the cots where Eloise was sitting, hunched over and hugging her knees. The middle-aged witch had her gnarled hands clenched together in front of her calves, and her shoulders quivered, but she was quiet right now. Lesley wove patterns in the air over her back at a soothing rhythm.

Thalia made for a bed in the corner, where Crystal was perched with her head in her hands. The young witch was muttering a jumbled stream of words, none of which strung together to make any sense that I could decipher. “The Cliff—they would—if it sees—feel it now—can’t stay—where—coming, coming—I wanted—oh—”

“Hey, now,” Thalia said in a soft voice, sitting next to Crystal. She squeezed the other witch’s shoulder and then moved her hands in a calming spell of her own. Crystal’s muttering slowed, but Eloise started crying again with hitches of breath. Across the hall, someone let out a brief thin shriek.

The other two witches who were in this room looked all right, if unnerved. I darted to the second dorm room. Caroline’s bright blond head was bent next to Selena’s, the elderly witch rubbing red-rimmed eyes. Caroline cast an uncertain glance toward a younger woman who’d pressed herself against the opposite wall.

“It wants us,” the other witch said, in a thready voice that made me suspect she was the one who’d shrieked. “It won’t stop until it’s completely consumed us.”

I skirted the cots to reach her, taking her hand in mine. This situation didn’t require the same sort of magicking as the kind I’d been working with the recovering witches before, but I knew forms for relaxing, for settling nerves. And there was plain old human comfort. I squeezed her fingers in what I hoped was a reassuring grip and looped my arm through the air to draw a shimmer of calm down over both of us. Because I was going to need plenty of fortification to be at my best too.

“We’re not going to let it hurt any of you,” I said in my most confident voice. “Every witch in the country will stand up to protect you. Itwon’thave you. I swear it.” And if I broke that promise, it’d be over my dead body.

The witch bowed her head, her breath still coming out ragged. “You don’t know what it’s like. You haven’t felt it the way I have.”

I hadn’t and yet I also had. I knew what it was like to taste the essence of that monster from the inside out.

“I know how far we’re willing to go to stop it from getting to you again,” I said. “We can beat it.” We just have to figure out how.

She didn’t look completely convinced. On one of the other beds, another witch rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. A tremor ran through her body. My gaze locked with Caroline’s where she was still sitting with Selena. Caroline didn’t speak, but her wide eyes asked enough of a question on their own. How in the name of the Spark could we help all of them even now?

Inspiration tickled through my thoughts. “There are magicking supplies down here, aren’t there?” I said. “Get me powdered lavender and chalk—whoever’s up to it.”

A witch near the door hustled out. I kept weaving my spell of calm around the woman with me until the other witch returned. I grabbed the bag of purple-gray powder from her and motioned Caroline over.

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