I was so surprised at his tone, I nearly looked away from Baigujing, but he reached up and propped my chin back into place.
“I’m serious,” he said. “She’s bad news—extremely bad. I don’t think we’re ready for her yet. Find whatever human she’s lurking too close to and then we can make sure their paths don’t cross.”
I looked around the edges of the factory for a night watchman or a delinquent tagger sneaking onto the property. Nothing. The demon didn’t look like she was hunting down any intruders.
Wait.
She wasn’t pacing back and forth. She was walking around in a circle, her eyeless gaze fixed on a small shape on the center of the floor.
A little girl of five, looking too scared to cry.
“Damn it!” I screamed. “Damn it damn it damn it! There’s a kid with her! Like with her!”
“What?” Quentin sprang to his feet and nearly clocked me in the jaw with his skull. “How did she get her hands on a human so fast?”
“I don’t know, but we have to get there now!”
“I don’t know where ‘there’ is!” You’re the only one who can see her from this distance!”
I grabbed Quentin’s shoulders and pointed him toward the derelict building. “I’ll guide you! Just start jumping!”
Quentin made a handhold for me to climb on his back. “You have to give me some indication of where I’m trying to land!”
“About half the distance to my house, but in this direction! Go, damn it!”
Quentin and I took to the sky. The natural curve of his leap made it easy to fixate on our target while we sped through the air. The skeleton had stopped wandering and was now crouching directly in front of the catatonic child, contemplating. Any number of thoughts bounced inside its empty, polished skull.
“Hurry up!” I shouted into Quentin’s ear.
“We’re not flying! I can’t change direction or speed in midair!”
I cursed, and then cursed again even louder as we overshot. “That factory we just passed!” I yelled. “Second floor, the biggest room!”
“I saw it,” Quentin grunted. “Hold on.”
We came down in an empty municipal baseball diamond that might have been in the same town as th
e factory. Quentin took the landing much harder than on the bridge. We slammed into the ground, gouging up fountains of dirt and grass. Before the debris even settled, Quentin had us back in the air, on a smaller arc in the opposite direction.
This leg of our journey took much less time. As the building loomed near, Quentin stuck out an arm to act as a battering ram. I buried my face in his shoulder as we made impact with one of the huge glass windows.
I heard us burst through and land on the other side as easily as if it were a pane of sugar. Quentin held my head down while shards tinkled around us, to make sure I didn’t catch an eyeful.
Once it was safe he patted my knee. I got up and took a measure of our surroundings.
The hall we were in had been stripped of equipment a long time ago. Exposed I-beams buttressed walls of cinderblock that had never been painted. The dust under our feet was thick enough to pass for light snowfall.
I found the child in the center of the open space. She looked scared out of her wits, but whole.
Standing over her in a flowing evening gown was a beautiful, shapely woman. With no lips. They were simply missing. Her teeth, otherwise perfect, lay bare to the world, giving her the same insouciant smirk as a poison bottle.
She reached out and brushed a nail down the little girl’s cheek. A razor line of blood followed it, and the girl cried out in pain.
“Get away from her!” I shrieked.
“Or what?” said the demon. “I’m not afraid of either of you.”
Her voice was like nothing so much as a pepper grinder. She compensated for her liplessness by rolling her tongue to make certain sounds, the same way a ventriloquist did.