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“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “But you couldn’t really explain the feelings even if you wanted to, could you? There’s something at a gut level that you can’t simply lay out with logic.”
“Where are you going with this?”
My mouth twisted into a crooked smile. “That’s why I can’t justify to you why I have five consorts, Mr. Brimsey. It felt right. It would have felt wrong to not be with all of them. I could give you a long story about childhood bonding and trust and finding strength in each other, but in the end it’d still come down to that. I love all of my consorts. We all know it’s best when the six of us are together. I don’t really see how our decision is any business of yours when it hasn’t hurt you or the Assembly.”
“It’ll draw attention from your unsparked neighbors.”
“Oh, I’m sure it already has. But, you know, that kind of distracts them from thinking about what witchy things might be happening on the estate. There were plenty of rumors about the mysterious Hallowell family before I ever laid eyes on any of the men I’m consorted with.”
Brimsey couldn’t seem to think of any way to counter that point. He sank back in the seat in sullen silence.
“For now, your private life is not what’s most important,” he said after a few minutes. “Once this catastrophe is dealt with, I expect you to participate in some discussions with my department to ensure our society isn’t compromised.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll talk to your people.”
It wasn’t quite a victory, but at least the tension in the jeep felt a little less judgmental now.
Investigator Ruiz had been talking with someone on her phone. “We’re coming up on the nearest observation point,” she said, lowering the phone to her lap. “The creature should be in sight shortly.”
The driver slowed the jeep as we ascended a low hill. Before we’d even reached its peak, a surge of unsettling energy wafted over me. The energy’s off-kilter pulse raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made my stomach lurch. All at once, every nerve in my body screamed at me to run in the opposite direction.
Brimsey’s hand tightened around the door handle. He might not have had any magical sensitivity of his own, but he was hardly numb to the demon’s power.
I rubbed my arms, leaning forward to peer more intently out the windshield. We crested the hill, and the demon came into view.
I flinched at the sight of it, even though it was at least a quarter mile away still. A huge form was making its slow lurching way across a farmer’s pasture. Even hunched over, its body was nearly as large as the delivery truck parked near the barn. A red-orange glow flowed over its skin, coiling and churning and never ceasing to move.
The thing traveled at a gait that was somewhere between a human crawl and an ape’s knuckled lope, its features a similar mishmash of almost-human and animal and aspects that looked completely alien. Spikes with a metallic glint jotted from its curved back over a barrel chest. Its arms and legs bent in impossible ways. They each had an extra joint, I realized as nausea gripped my gut.
Its face was turned away from us, but the pitch-black eyes that had peered at me from the portal were burned into my memory clearly enough.
The dissonant energy the demon gave off had heightened in the air. My whole body had tensed against the urge to flee. When I managed to tear my gaze away from the creature, it settled on the patches of rotted vegetation left in the demon’s path. Even as I watched, it hesitated for a moment, turning its head as if trying to get a read on the landscape around it, and the plants around it shriveled and grayed.
“Spark help us,” Brimsey murmured. He’d seen the demon in the cave, but not out in the open like this, not until now. His face had completely blanched.
A farmhouse stood on the other side of the barn. A different sort of horror gripped me. “What about the people who live there? The demon must have crossed paths with some unsparked locals. If they start reporting it to their law enforcement and their news—”
“No one has reported it,” Ruiz interrupted in a flat voice. “We’ve managed to evacuate most of the residents in its path so far. There haven’t been many of them. I don’t know how long the Assembly can keep up a story to divert them, but for now, it’s been enough. And the power the demon gives off seems to make anyone traveling by turn away before they get close enough to see it.” Her own hands were clenched on her knees, the knuckles white.
“You’ve evacuatedmost?” I repeated.
She wet her lips. “We weren’t quite fast enough when it emerged. And in the middle of the night, at one point it changed directions abruptly, and we couldn’t act in time… There have been five casualties so far.”
Five deaths. Five innocent people dead, on top of all the witches whose lives had been ruined, thanks to the Frankfords and their faction’s greed.
“There are two squads keeping watch,” Ruiz went on with a motion of her hand. A gray sedan was parked near the top of another low hill beyond the farm. Another, this one black, was poised in the distance beyond the fields. “We have three other vehicles maintaining the evacuation.”
“The locals are being taken to a community center in one of the nearby towns that we have access to,” Brimsey said, with a waver to his words as he stared at the demon. “We’re keeping them fed and looked after.”
Right. As well as confused and away from their homes, while that thing left a path of destruction across their properties.
“What if it heads toward one of the towns near here?” I said. “We’ve been lucky so far that it’s stayed in the less inhabited areas. We can’t count on it remaining there forever.”
“We’ll do our best,” Ruiz said, but her expression looked haunted.
“We’re hoping we’ll have a proper plan of action before it comes to that,” Brimsey added. “Which is why we broughtyouin. Have you gotten any inspiration?”
He managed to sound like an ass even while he was terrified out of his wits. I might have turned to him with a sharp retort, but at that moment the demon’s head swiveled toward us. My back went completely rigid.
