Chapter
Twenty
“I’ve emailed it all over to you, Ethan,” Julia tells us. “And I’ll send anything else I get.”
“Thanks Jules. Keep us updated,” he says.”
“I will. I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tonight,” she says with a laugh. “Your dad and Harold are helping me look into this. Don’t worry, Harold doesn’t know that Anora is a witch. But I showed him the data I found from the autopsies and he definitely agrees something else is going on. His money is on a demon. I’ll call you if anything else happens and keep me up to speed on your end too.”
The call ends, and a collective silence falls over the table. We sit there looking at each other for a moment before Ethan speaks.
“I think the best thing we can do is get a good night’s rest and start fresh in the morning.”
“Sleep?” I ask dubiously. “You really think we can sleep after we just found out there’s a Freddy Krueger type demon out there killing people with their worst nightmares?”
“You’re still recovering from the incubus stealing your energy, babe. You need to rest before you get sick again. We can take shifts if that makes you feel better.” He makes a face. “Because it would make me feel better.”
“I think I’m with Anora on this one,” Sam chides. “And now I can’t even think of what my worst fear is. How would I die?” Eyes wide, she looks at us. “What’s your worst fear?”
“Something bad happening to the ones I love,” I answer with no hesitation. “How would that kill me?” I shake my head. Maybe I don’t want to know.
“Being eaten alive by worms,” Nik says, face sullen. “And it’s not as an irrational fear as you may think. The way the Fae punish wrongdoers is to bury them in the earth and let nature—the thing we were supposed to protect—betray us.”
“Guys,” Ethan interjects, “This demon is only killing every three days. W e have two more days until we have to worry about it.”
“Only every three days?” I ask with a shrill laugh. “Better than every day, right?” I quickly suck in a breath and look at everyone gathered around the kitchen. I love Ethan more than life itself and Nik feels like a brother. Or an uncle? He is older than me. Either way, he’s family now. And Sam, as much as she pushes my buttons, is family too.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Ethan says with confidence. He believes it and deep down I want to believe, but what if we can’t? What if we can’t find the demon before the time is up? One more person will be killed and Stephanie will take the video of me killing demons with a magical freaking fire-sword to the Order. What they’ll do with that, I’m almost scared to ask.
It’s actual video proof of someone doing magic. The public might be quick to say it’s photoshopped, but with vampires coming out, I know there are others who are more open to more supernatural beings, like witches.
“We’re going to go about this like any other case,” Ethan goes, his voice calm and level. “So for tonight, we are all going to get as good of a night’s rest as we can and will regroup in the morning. We’ll hit the books right away.”
“Okay,” I say, knowing he’s right. The demon just had a kill and won’t come after someone tonight. That alone gives just a bit of comfort, but knowing that my forty-eight hours are ticking away as we speak doesn’t sit well with me. “Do you know of any demons who feed off fear?”
“There are quite a few,” Ethan says ruefully. “This demon, however, has to be powerful to be able to get into somebody’s nightmare and have it physically affect them to the point of death.” He gets up, goes into the library, and returns with his laptop. I push food around on my plate while I wait for him to open the email from Julia. He moves the computer to the middle of the counter so we can all see. Julia did an impressive job organizing everything and highlighting any similarities in the reports.
“The woman who was killed in a plane crash but not a plane crash,” Nik starts. “Was she a hunter too?”
“Not one in the Order,” Sam answers. “But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a hunter. If she was, David and Julia will find out. And if she’s not…well, there goes the theory that this thing is only attacking hunters and we’ll have to find another connection.”
“Sometimes the only connection is poking around something that doesn’t like to be poked,” Ethan reminds her. “Patrick looked into whatever attacked Hector and that could’ve been enough to piss off the demon.”
“Aren’t we poking around?” Nik asks with a nervous laugh. “Making us the next victims?”