Biblical demons were not creatures Linus had encountered. He didn’t know anyone reliable who had interacted with them, or angels either. Creatures suspected of those designations were routinely debunked by the Society after they had been captured, killed, or brought in for examination. With Faerie leaking into this world in slow degrees, there was no shortage of the strange and miraculous, and that didn’t touch on Earth’s natural wonders.
Turning that over in his head, Linus asked, “The demon in the maze is separate from the shadow cats?”
“Yes.” A flicker of hesitation marked her next words. “The shadow cats are guardians.”
“They’re aggressive toward outsiders?”
“Yeah.” She ducked her head. “That story I told you about when I was a kid wasn’t true.” She picked at her nails. “They’ve got a thing about the stairs. They hang out there a lot. Once a shadow cat did trip a guest. She fell and broke her leg.” She risked a glance up at him. “It sounded like the kind of thing you wanted to hear, so that’s what I told you.”
The dart of her eyes, the careful phrasing, made him wonder if she wasn’t still attempting to read him.
“Your grandparents took care of you. They loved you.” Linus regretted the fresh wash of tears down her cheeks, but he had to fill in the blanks. “Why did you lie to us about your homelife?”
“They warned me,” she whispered, barely a sound. “Grams told me if…” She swallowed. “She told me if the worst happened, to take their emergency money and run.” A brittle apology tipped her mouth. “When you showed up flashing Benjamins, I figured the fatter my cushion, the more comfortable I would be until I got back to Mom.” She shrugged. “She’s in Oregon.” Her bottom lip trembled. “She hated it here, hated her parents too.” She squared her shoulders. “That’s why I can’t let Grams and Gramps down. I’m all they had left.”
“I understand you want to honor their memories,” he countered, “but why stay down here? Why not move to a room upstairs? You’ll be safer there.”
Barring the vampires in residence, of course.
“The maze extends five more floors below this one. The demon has never escaped its room, but I can’t tell the shadow cats to stay and fight in case it does. They’ll just follow me out.”
That, at least, explained how the shadow cats gained access to the house from the basement.
“You’re the bait,” he realized, not for the demon itself but for its jailers.
“Sure.” A frown gathered across her forehead. “I guess.”
“This complicates things.” Linus shared a lingering glance with Hood. “Any ideas?”
“Don’t talk over me like I’m not here.” Her voice trembled. “I’m not a dumb kid. I get a say in this.”
“You’re in more danger than you know,” Linus warned. “We can’t, in good conscience, leave you.”
“You don’t get a choice.” She reached behind her and drew a gun she pointed at him. The weapon shook in her grip, but she switched off the safety, and her finger brushed the trigger. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m not going anywhere until this is over.”
A sigil could put her to sleep, but he would have to get close to draw it on her, and he might not survive the attempt. Better to withdraw now than risk leaving with more holes than he arrived with, which would not amuse his wife.
“All right.” Linus raised his hands. “If you feel that strongly about it, we’ll go.”
“Thank you,” she breathed, more tears falling. “I’m sorry about this.”
Careful not to spook her, Linus rose and climbed up to join Hood in her sleeping area.
“Here’s my card.” He tossed it down to her. “Call if you change your mind.”
Angling her body to keep the wobbly barrel aimed at them, she fumbled the card into her pocket.
Linus kept his hands where she could see them. “Will you answer one more question before I go?”
“It depends.”
Fair enough. “Have you been to the library lately?”
“Not since I was a kid.” Her confusion rang with honesty. “I read ebooks on my phone.”
“Thank you,” he said, and left before her fear got the better of her.
As Linus and Hood ascended to the basement, the door concealing Kylie slammed closed behind them.
“The kid’s brave.” Hood exhaled once the danger had passed. “I’ll give her that.”
“Determined too.” Linus shut the door leading into the subbasement. “I have the supplies for what we’ll need to extract her in my kit.”
Hood took the pantry exit. “What did you have in mind?”
“I have the proper herbs for a sleep potion. It’s vapor, not an ingestible. I can brew it, pour it into a thurible, and set it in the subbasement entrance. We can collect her once she’s unconscious. That way no one gets hurt.”
“Brewing potions is witch territory, isn’t it?”
“This particular blend is one necromancers employ during voluntary resuscitations.”
“No offense to you or to Grier, but I don’t get it.” Hood let them into the kitchen proper. “How does a person of sound mind and body decide it’s prime time to get murdered and brought back as a bloodsucker?”
“Humans will do anything for more time.” A smile curved his mouth. “Even give up what they have left.” He shut the basement and pantry doors behind them. “You have fae blood. You’ll live ten times what the average human will or more. You’ll live twice as long as Grier and me.”
Old creatures had trouble weighing time. It slid through their fingers like water. Only mortals clutched at each individual drop rather than let it fall.
Hood twitched his shoulders as if discussing age made him uncomfortable. “Do we have to worry about your concoction?”
“No,” Linus murmured, resting his hand on the pantry knob. Fingers drumming, he considered his options. “It only affects humans.”
Gwyllgi from both Hood’s and Lethe’s bloodlines were half gwyllgi and half warg. Wargs were half human and half wolf, but gwyllgi were half fae and half creature. Both possessed too little human blood for it to bother them.
“You don’t have to worry about locking her in,” Hood said, reading him easily. “She pulled a gun on you to win a standoff, yeah, but she doesn’t strike me as malicious.” He washed up and dried his hands. “More like desperate. Her grandparents might have loved her, but they messed with her head too.”
As his mother’s sole heir, Linus recognized the Oliphants had groomed Kylie to step into their role, whether she realized it or not. And he understood the crushing weight of obligation that came with it.
But what, exactly, did their duties to the creature they believed their ancestor entombed entail?
“There must be more to it.” Linus scrubbed his hands. “Her presence alone, even with the shadow cats, wouldn’t deter a creature worthy of this construct. She’s keeping secrets.”
Before dusk, they needed answers, and there was only one place to get them.
“We need to return to the Oliphants’.” Linus claimed a bottle of water from the fridge, passed it to Hood, then selected another for himself to wash the dust down his throat. “Kylie claims this is a family tradition, which means the information is getting passed down through one medium or another.”
“The tapes and photos might be the extent of it. Oral traditions are common for this sort of thing.”
Hunter families often took their secrets to the grave. Hood was right about that. Without knowing more about the Oliphants, it was hard to decide where they fell on the spectrum of indoctrinated humans.
“Kylie believes she’s all that’s standing between a demon and its escape.” Linus unslung his kit from his shoulder and rested it on the counter. He flipped it open then arranged his supplies, including a resin and bone thurible hung from a silver chain. Certain he had all he required, he selected a pot to heat the ingredients. “The Oliphants, the later generations at least, might not have been indoctrinated into our world beyond their small corner if they believed that was true.”
Humans accepted angels and demons without much fuss, but the shadow cats weren’t common lore. In fact, he had no idea what they might be without further study. There was too much overlap in such areas to be certain from a glance. Or a scratch.
“The religious angle,” Hood agreed. “Their home was decked out in Catholic paraphernalia. They might have shared the burden with their priest.”
“Or they might have feared confession would get them excommunicated and kept silent.”
Religion often wasn’t the most forgiving institution, despite tenets espousing the contrary.
With the brew simmering, Linus turned the stove on low, covered the pot, and gestured to Hood. They returned to the cottage in silence befitting the tomb it had become for its former inhabitants.
Linus wiped off the sigil sealing the house, and the magic dissipated in a rush of stale air. This time when they opened the door, the scent of decomposition curdled Linus’s stomach, and he wished he had taken a deep breath on the porch.
No matter how often he had been in the presence of violent death, he never got used its sensory horrors. He hoped he never did. No one whose duty was to stand for victims should become numb to their plight.
“The vampires had the advantage of knowing what they were searching for,” he said, “but they still had no luck.”
“Let’s see if ours is any better,” Hood sighed, his gaze drawn to the dead, and began to search.
Kylie had given them a place to start with the family-history angle. It was more than they’d had on their last visit. But it didn’t explain the vampires’ interest in the house, its resident haunts, or its caretakers.