“It means you face a great challenge ahead.”
“We have to get out of here,” I say, insistently, figuring the challenge is going to be evading the patrolmen.
“What do I owe you?” Kiki asks, unclasping her necklace.
I shake my head. “Come on, Kiki.”
The seer pauses, studying the pendant on the necklace.
“Let’s go,” I urge.
To her credit, the seer tucks the pendant in Kiki’s hand. “You’ll need that,” she says. “A mother’s gift is never thrift. Her love transcends and all does mend, nothing will it ever rend.”
Kiki’s eyes widen and fill with liquid. “My mother used to say that.”
“This is a traditional frost fae gift from mother to daughter. Your story is written in the crystals of this snowflake.”
“What do you see?” Kiki asks.
The seer gazes at it again. “I see a brave woman, your mother, who made a great sacrifice to keep you safe for as long as possible.”
“What sacrifice?”
“Her life.”
“Does that mean that the demon didn’t kill her?”
“No, it didn’t kill her,” she pauses as though she’s going to say more.
“Kiki, we should go.” I gently plant my hand on her shoulder.
“As for payment, what I told you means you owe me freedom.” The seer’s cat-eyes volley between us. “Both of you.” I open my mouth to urge Kiki outside when the seer says, “But for now, a fish will do.”
Kiki stares at me expectantly, those glittering eyes making me succumb to the seer’s desire for payment.
I sigh and toss a fish on the table. “Just means less for you,” I say to Kiki.
By the faint smile on her lips, she knows that I’m lying.
“A striddly. Thank you,” the seer says, before pulling back the correct tapestry and ushering us into the dark night.
Kiki keeps up as I wind through the crooked lanes, weaving a careful route to the Roost, dodging checkpoints and patrols.
We turn another corner, and I stop short. Kiki does not. A woman lays splayed on the ground. A gauzy blue-black figure hovers over her.
Before I can warn her away, she strides forward.
At the sound of Kiki’s approach, the demon, with pus oozing from ash-like skin, turns its hollow gaze on her. Kiki’s eyes flash. The demon tilts its gruesome, rotting head. It’s so nasty, I worry bits of brain will land on Kiki’s boots.
She doesn’t waver. Her eyes are like ice, like death itself.
I shiver.
She pulls something from her pocket along with her knife. She slices at the demon and it hisses loudly while it launches forward as though it’s going to smother her. The substance oozing from its limbs and splatters with the movement.
Blade in hand, I lunge, but just as I’m about to strike, the demon hovers a moment longer and then its blue-black form disappears into the backdrop of night. Dumbfounded, I stagger back.
Kiki steps toward the woman, whispering comfort. How did she manage to slay it without slicing its head off? Maybe a Terra method?
Together, we link our arms in the woman’s and lift her to standing. I recognize her from the market at the base of the Roost. The eggs she tries to sell on Sundays are hardly bigger than skipping stones. She has a home and family to feed—twin sons if I recall.
We walk toward the gates when a whistle blows and a bright torchlight flashes. “You there,” a guard calls from beneath a lowered helmet. “It’s the demon hour.”
The woman startles, wresting herself from our arms. The guard pursues her as she rushes toward the gate, while the other guard catches sight of us.
I glance over my shoulder, wondering if we were better off sheltering with the seer after all, but the entrance to the Roost is only several paces away. I take Kiki’s hand in mine and once more, we run.
Chapter 8
Ineke
Compared to New York with its smooth, tall skyscrapers, lifting upward and only broken by slivers of the sky, Raven’s Landing is a chaotic mess of squalor and shambling buildings.
What Soren calls the Roost is just as bad. At a sprint, we pass doors hanging loosely from their frames. The slats comprising the walls leak slender shafts of light and the faint, yet doleful lament of the inhabitants.
Soren’s footfalls thunder while mine patter up the dirt lane. The patrol chases us, but if my heaving chest upon our rapid ascent is any indication, they had reason to give up. I’m not used to these hills or the dirty air here.
At the top of the village, the houses don’t huddle together quite as densely.
Soren finally slows. “We’re almost there,” he says in a low tone.
He lets go of my hand when he pushes open a door and pulls me inside, leaving me cold. A candle flickers to life. He rubs his hands together before making a fire.
The room is only large enough for a small hearth, a chest, a bed lifted off the floor on a wooden platform, a chair, and a modest table beside it, upon which rests the candle.
“I don’t call this home,” he says, washed of the warmth in his voice when we were by the sea. “But it’s better than sleeping under the pier.”
“I hope that woman made it home safely,” I say.
The desperation in her eyes still clings to me when I used the talisman from Heather against the demon.
“She had no business out during the demon’s hour,” Soren says in a hard voice.
“We didn’t either. Shouldn’t we have explained to the patrol that she was a victim of—?”
“In another city? Perhaps. In ordinary circumstances? Yes. In Raven’s Landing, the rules are simple, when the bells toll and the drums roll, get inside.”
“In that case, I’m less concerned about the demons and more
