“Greg.”
“Look Greg, we’re not going to hurt you. We’re just trying to find out who might’ve wanted to harm the coven. Tell us what you know, and you can go about your day.”
“I know you. You’re the witch bonded to Samael.” His gaze dropped to my arm and I nodded.
“Yep.”
Strangely, this seemed to relax him. “That means you have the demons backing you up, right?”
“To a point.”
“Okay. Okay.”
Terrified. The kid was terrified, and not just from the claws Kyla had flashed.
“You saw something, didn’t you, Greg?”
His eyes filled with tears and I glanced around. Across the road, a lace curtain shifted in one of the windows facing us.
“Let’s get off the street. You had lunch?”
He shook his head and my stomach rumbled at the thought. It was close to 3:00pm already. I gestured for him to follow us to my car. Now that he’d figured out we weren’t going to hurt him, he relaxed enough to glance at the coven as we passed it. Fury flashed across his face.
“I hope you find who did this and make them pay.”
“That’s the plan.”
We picked up burritos from the Mexican place on Duke Street and took them to Central Park. I handed the kid his Pepsi and we sat on a bench, watching a group of human kids play some game that involved a lot of shrieking and running.
I took a huge bite of my burrito. Flavor exploded in my mouth. “Mmm.” I swallowed. “You wanna tell me what you know?”
Greg put his burrito down and picked up his soda. “There’s this witch… her name is…wasMaribel.”
“You have a thing with Maribel?” Kyla asked, reaching across to grab the guacamole.
“No. No. She’s taking a few college classes at the human college. And I’m still in high school.”
His shoulders hunched and I sighed. “You had a crush on Maribel.”
He glanced up at me. “Yeah. I’d see her around sometimes. We talked about music. I knew she thought I was just a kid, but she was always nice to me.”
“Okay. Did you come by the coven that night?”
He nodded. “I had… flowers. I was going to tell her how I felt. To convince her I wasn’t just a kid. They were violets. Her favorite,” he said softly.
Kyla stretched out her long legs. “That says a lot, you know. When a guy knows enough to give you your favorite flowers.”
Greg eyed her. “You think?”
She nodded and he attempted a smile. Obviously there were no hard feelings about the way she’d accosted him on the street.
“So you showed up with your flowers,” I said. “And then what happened?”
“I saw this car. I’d seen it a few times before, but I hadn’t really noticed. A few guys got out of the car and walked up the street toward the coven’s house.”
“How many guys?”
“Ah, three.”
