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My stomach twisted, but what he’d said was true, and really, if we didn’t step up then the recovering witches would be facing the demon in even more dire circumstances before the night was over.
I set my jaw. “Okay. I’ll rally them as well as I can to tackle the demon with us. I don’t know if that’s going to be enough power even then, though. We need a strategy for how we use that power, or…”
I trailed off at Gabriel’s expression. He looked as if the words he needed to say left a horrid aftertaste in his mouth.
“Brimsey has a strategy,” he said. “And it’s not for those witches to just fight alongside us. He thinks—and some of the accounts in the Frankfords’ files do seem to support the idea—that the demon will be particularly interested in feeding off the energy of the witches it’s familiar with. That the monsters have developed a ‘taste’ for those witches’ specific magical ‘flavor.’ He wants to make a few adjustments to Seth’s cage, and then we use them as bait. They draw it in and then slip away once it’s trapped.”
A jolt of revulsion rushed through me. It’d been bad enough thinking about asking Thalia and her charges to go up against the creatures that had tormented them. To encourage them to let the fiend feed off them again, to put them in an even more vulnerable position than they’d been before when at least the barriers on the portal had kept the demons distant…
But at the same time this plan made a sick kind of sense.
“What do the other officials think about the situation?” I asked. “Has anyone come up with another option?”
“Not as far as I can tell,” Gabriel said. “They all appear to be flailing with panic. Brimsey thinks our best chance of getting some kind of action pulled together is if you can convince the witches to participate and then join him presenting the proposal to the Northcotts and the others. As soon as possible.”
Of course. I didn’t need reminding of the urgency of the situation. I exhaled, a prickling ache filling my lungs.
I hadn’t come up with any better plan on our drive here. Every moment we delayed, more people were dying out there. I didn’t think we were going to get through the night without every one of us making sacrifices—even those who’d already given up too much.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go talk to them. Thank you for going to Brimsey—for working something out for when I got here.”
“Is there anything else we can do right now?” Jin asked.
I hesitated. “Talk to the other guys. Tell them what’s going on. Seth won’t be on his feet for a little while, but it’ll make more of a statement if I come to the meeting with as many of you as possible. And maybe Kyler can find some data to back the idea up even more. Jin, you could at least talk to Seth and see if he has any specific ideas for engineering the cage the way Brimsey is thinking. Someone’s going to have to go out and gather the pieces…”
Logistics the Assembly would worry about once we settled on this course of action.
It would have been a comfort to bring one of my consorts down to the recovering witches’ rooms with me, but there wasn’t much they could contribute there. Those women trusted me. If I was going to make this ask, I had to be brave enough to face them on my own.
Gabriel squeezed my arm one last time, and he and Jin hurried off. I turned back to the stairwell, my heart heavy as I started to put together the pitch I’d need to make.
It’d only been maybe five hours since I’d gone down to the lower floor to help calm the witches who’d been so wrenched by the demons’ approach. Some of them might not even be able to handle coming that close to it. But I guessed we didn’t need all of them participating. As long as some were able to find the strength…
Thalia came out of the lounge room as I crossed the hall. Her face was drawn.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she said. “If you’re back already, and—a few of the women aren’t doing so well.”
“It’s bad,” I confirmed around the lump in my throat. “I need to talk to all of you. Can you gather everyone—everyone who can manage it—into the lounge?”
She nodded, her mouth tightening more at my tone. As she hustled into the nearest dorm, I went into the lounge room and let myself sink into one of the armchairs. That was where my cousin found me a moment later.
“Rose!” Naomi said, clasping my shoulder, sounding both hopeful and frantic at the same time. “What’s going on? Everyone came charging in—they haven’t wanted to stop to tell me anything—”
I looked up at her. “I’ll be explaining when everyone’s here. I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight. I wouldn’t blame you if you grab Aunt Ginny and Aunt Irene and get out of here.”
Naomi gave a disbelieving laugh. “We wouldn’t consider that for a second. We’re here, and we’re fighting this thing.”
Those words managed to hearten me a little, but it was hard to hold on to that assurance as the recovering witches started to file in through the doorway. I stood up, taking a spot at the front of the room, unable to ignore the halting footsteps, the hunched shoulders. Half of the women here looked as if they’d just been through the same battle I had. I caught myself worrying my lip with my teeth and forced myself still.
Thalia came in with a dip of her head. This was all of them. A dozen witches the Frankfords’ faction had manipulated and abused, some of them for decades.
My hands intertwined in front of me, clenching tight.
“This is going to be hard for me to tell you, and hard for you to hear,” I said. “I’m so sorry about that. I wish we’d never ended up in this horrible position. The one thing I can offer to keep in mind while I explain is that there may be a way you can help, even if it is horrible. And whether you’re able to do that is up to you. No one is going to force anything on you.”
The witches stirred nervously in their seats. “Just tell us,” Eloise said, her face pinched and pale.
I dragged in a breath. “Our most recent attempt to contain the demon failed. It’s pushed into the city now. We don’t know what path it’ll take or how far it’ll go, but right now it’s destroying everything around it, and the sooner we can act, the better.”
