Rae was watching me suspiciously, eyes narrowed. I could practically hear the gears turning in her head.
“Well?” I nodded my head toward the cemetery gate. “Would you like to lead the way home?”
She folded her arms. “Why did Kent summon you?”
I sighed heavily. So nosy, this one. Endless questions. “For the same reason his father and his grandfather summoned me. They needed protection from the Eld.”
She gulped. She shot a nervous glance over her shoulder, toward the chapel, where the body of the beast lay.
“How can something like that exist?” she said softly. “It seems like they’d be killing people all the time, that they’d be seen.”
“People go missing all the time in the woods.” I stood beside her, and she looked over. Her eyes drifted down my body, lingered over my chest, and very pointedly avoided looking between my legs, despite that I’d already buttoned up my jeans again. I grinned. “The Eld are attracted to magic. Unless a human is unlucky enough to come across one deep in the forest, it’s unlikely the average mortal would ever encounter one. Eld won’t bother to come hunting in human cities unless they have a good reason.”
“Then what’s their reason?” she said. “They’re coming after me because I have the grimoire, I get that.” She didn’t get that, but whatever. “But were they only coming after Kent because he had the grimoire before?”
“Start walking, and I’ll keep talking,” I said, giving her a nudge in the direction of the gate. “The sooner we get the grimoire out of your hands, the better.”
She pouted, but she was obedient for once. The buttons on her sweater were ripped off, so she tugged it tightly over her chest and folded her arms to keep it closed. We left through the gate together, not a single car in sight as we made our way up the road toward her home.
“I need to know how to protect myself from those things,” she said suddenly. “You said they might not stop hunting me, so…”
“Move away from Abelaum,” I said. “That’s the best thing you can do. They’ll hunt you wherever you go now that magic has touched you, but living in Abelaum is like sticking your hand straight in a beehive and wondering why you’re getting stung.”
She looked at me in alarm, but I was just trying to be honest. There was no point in lying to her that things would somehow get better once the grimoire was gone. She’d be slightly less attractive to the Eld, but the Hadleighs were a whole other problem.
“I can’t just move,” she said. “I don’t…I don’t have the money yet…”
“Then stay in at night. Board up your windows. Burn rosemary and sage from sundown to sunrise, Eld hate the smell of it. And stay away from the goddamn Hadleighs.”
She frowned. “Why? If Kent is a magician, maybe he can help me!”
I scoffed. “Not a single member of that family is interested in helping anyone but themselves.”
Her frown deepened into a glare. “They’ve been kind to me. You’re just saying that so I’ll feel like I have no choice but to accept your bargain.”
“Do you want to know what Kent really does?” I stopped walking, hot with frustration. “Do you want to know what his Historical Society” — I put massive air quotes around the fabricated title — “really is about? There are far worse things in Abelaum than monsters. You know the legends. You’ve been to the church. The Hadleigh family isn’t interested in helping you. They’re interested in furthering their own power.”
She bit her lip, arms still folded. I couldn’t fault her suspicions — she knew I was a demon, of course she’d believe I was a liar. But it didn’t matter if she believed me. As long as she heard me. As long as I could reassure myself I tried to warn her.
Guilt wasn’t an emotion that was natural to demons. We simply had no room to learn it. If a young demon fucked up in Hell, they’d likely find themselves dead, slaughtered by someone more powerful than them, or executed by a Reaper if they really pissed someone off. There was no room for guilt. Get away with it, or get it right the first time.
Feeling that annoying, needling, uncomfortable press of guiltiness now, only served to show I’d been on Earth far too long.
I didn’t owe this woman a damn thing, but it sure as hell felt like I did.
She’d stopped walking. She was staring at me, a little way ahead of me on the road, arms clasped around her drooping sweater, shivering in the cold. It made me want to hold her, wrap her up, warm her. Fucking hell, I’d gone soft.