Sebastian is helping a woman who is shaking and sobbing into his shirt.
Wylder staggers, his hair matted with the blood caking the side of his face.
Rowan sways, then takes a knee rather than assplanting.
Orion’s ghost tiger disappears down one of the maze pathways.
And Asher limps toward me looking as confused as the rest of the people. “What the hell just happened? Where did they go, and why would they leave? They were kicking our asses.”
I stare at the fallen townspeople, at the empty demon hosts that have been left behind. “I don’t know.”
But something about Asher’s question strikes a chord with Sebastian. He straightens, his face pale, expression tight. “Guys, we need to get to our cars. Now!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Wylder’s Jeep lurches hard to the right, the tires spitting gravel as we tear out of the Fall Festival parking lot. Festival traffic clogs the narrow country road, a procession of SUVs and minivans crawling toward us with their hazards blinking.
“Move!” Wylder slams his palm against the steering wheel.
Sebastian’s voice cuts through the distance as I hold up my cell and he talks over the open speaker. “Asher was right. Those demons were winning and could’ve kicked our asses and been done with it.”
“Then why didn’t they?” Rowan asks from Sebastian’s car.
I grip the dashboard as Wylder swerves around a pickup truck towing a hay wagon. A horn blares behind us.
“Because they were keeping us busy.” Sebastian’s engine roars louder, and dust and dirt kick up in a cloud in front of us. “We’re the only witches invested in opposing the demons, and we were all focused on stopping the siphoning and demon crowd control?—”
The McLaren’s tires grip the gravel shoulder as Sebastian’s sports car veers sharply onto what looks like a farm field access road.
It hits me then… what Sebastian is getting at.
“It’s a shell game.” The words scrape out of my throat. “We’re busy here, and the real threat is a demon incursion flowing through a rift somewhere else.”
“Hold on.” Wylder cranks the wheel hard, following Sebastian’s path. The Jeep bounces violently as we leave the road for a dirt track.
Asher grabs the back of my seat and curses. “Define ‘hold on’ because I’m already—shit!”
We hit a rut. My teeth clack together as I’m slammed sideways into the door.
My bell is truly rung, and I slide half my phone under my leg, so I can hold on to the holy shit handle and the dash with both hands. “Geez, guys. It won’t matter if we figured it out if we die before we get there.”
“Sorry, you’ll have to tough it out.” Sebastian’s breath comes fast. “Cutting through the fields over to the town line will cut five minutes off our time.”
He launches his beautiful car into a fallow field, dirt exploding up in massive mud clots.
Wylder floors it. The Jeep’s engine growls, and we’re airborne for a heartbeat before crashing down. Everything rattles—the frame, my thoughts, my bones.
“How do you know where to go?” Rowan asks.
Sebastian cuts across the field at an angle, heading for the road visible in the distance. “I don’t—not definitively—but I’ve been monitoring the tears in the veil, and the most vulnerable section falls right at the heart of the largest ley line instability. I’m betting that’s the breaking point.”
Orion leans forward between the seats. “If Tharuzel breaks through, what then?”
“Then we’re fucked.” Sebastian doesn’t soften it. “A demon lord on this side of the veil with unrestricted access toEmberwood’s ley lines? He’ll have enough power to tear holes between realms wherever he wants.”
The McLaren bumps and crashes over the uneven field before us, and I wince, watching bits of Sebastian’s undercarriage and trim snap and fling off to the side. If it hurts me to see his beautiful car getting abused, it must be killing him.
Still, if he’s right, lives are at stake.
