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Huh. I hadn’t heard any of the faction members describe it like that before, but I couldn’t say the insight helped any. A drunken demon lumbering around the city sounded even worse than a sober one.
“Drunk could also mean more erratic and harder to control,” I pointed out.
“Well, maybe. I don’t know what they acted like when they moved away from the portal to do whatever they do in that aberrant realm. Occasionally they drifted into what looked like a bit of a stupor, but that wasn’t consistent enough that I’d stake anything on it.”
A stupor. The word sent me back a few hours to my hurried ministrations with the recovering witches as they’d panicked—sending a cloud of calm down over them. An idea prickled up from the back of my mind. We’d tried shoving the demon back, and we’d tried subtly maneuvering it into a trap, but we hadn’t attempted to lull it. There wouldn’t have been much point in simply slowing it down temporarily as an effect by itself, but maybe in combination with the other strategies we’d been developing…
“Does that get you anywhere?” Dad asked with apparent curiosity.
I wrenched my thoughts back to the present. I had no interest in discussing my uncertain ideas with him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll see. Anything else about them, or their power?”
His mouth tightened. “I don’t like to think about how it felt, having that energy in me. Like this constant tremor of wrongness I could never completely ignore. But you must know about that at least as well as I ever did.”
His tone was prodding. My back stiffened. “I don’t think you want to go there with me,” I said.
He kept looking at me intently. “It can’t have been that bad. You didn’t have any idea until I told them. Enough to light up your spark that much more, but not enough to poison it.”
“You had no right,” I said. “To do that to me—to do that to my mother… You couldn’t have known what it would do. You brought a monster’s essence to me, let it touch me, before I was evenborn.”
My voice was shaking by the last word. I clamped my mouth shut.
“I did know,” Dad started to say. “I told them—I wanted to stop him, to stop the whole—”
“Shut. Up,” I bit out. “I don’t want to hear about it. Your explanations have changed so many times, I can’t possibly believe any claim you make. So stop trying to explain. It’s never going to be forgivable, no matter what you say.”
His expression wavered. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?” he said quietly. “I’ve seen it in you already—how important your magic is to you. How much it means to you to wield that power. You’re the witch you are because of what I gave you, Rose. Everything you’re capable of is thanks to that.”
“I amnevergoing to thank you,” I snapped before he could go on. “Don’t you dare try to tell me who I am.” A quiver ran through my body. I didn’t think we were getting any further here—and I wasn’t sure I trusted my reactions enough to try. “That’s enough.”
I spun on my heel and stalked out. Ruiz followed, shutting the door. I didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to risk seeing that she agreed with him, even a little.
Even I wasn’t totally sure he was wrong. The power I had, the exhilaration of that magic, the awe I’d been able to inspire in others… I couldn’t say that hadn’t meant anything to me at all.
“What now?” Ruiz asked.
“I think the first part of that conversation might have sparked a little inspiration,” I said. “I should talk to the Northcotts and their advisors—and my consorts.” Ky would want to be able to share his perspective based on his research, certainly. I headed toward the main doors. “We’ll need to confirm the status of the cage reconstruction, and—”
A figure in enforcer clothes burst into the hall, her gaze wild as it search the hall and snagged on us. “Lady Hallowell,” she said. “Investigator Ruiz. Your presence is requested right away. The demon has sped up its approach. At its current pace—it could be at the edge of the city within the hour.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rose
When we made it to the main Assembly building, it looked as if the entire staff was flooding out under the thickly clouded sky. Enforcers were scrambling into the cars parked along the road, and more vehicles were pouring from the underground parking garage. Ruiz’s hand clamped around my arm as a humid wind whipped through our hair.
“Come on,” she said. “There’s no time for meetings now. Whatever ideas you have, you’ll have to share them over the phone while we head out to intercept it.”
A breathless minute later, I found myself crammed in the back seat of a small sedan with two enforcers, another at the wheel and Ruiz beside him. The car’s wheels squealed against the pavement as we swayed around the bend. The growl of the engine sounded nearly as anxious as my thudding heart.
“Do you know anything else about what’s going on?” I asked the other enforcers. “What’s the demon doing? Has it hurt anyone else?”
“We just got the report to move out,” the woman next to me said. “From what I heard, it’s been picking up speed for the last several minutes without any signs of slowing down. I didn’t hear any new casualties reported, but if it reaches the fringes…”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence. My fingers curled around the door handle as if it could provide some comfort. “No one has any idea what changed—why it’s in a hurry now?”
The enforcer shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard about.”
