Ryder’s hands clenched into fists and his thigh muscles bunch under his jeans. He was a coil, a spring, a bomb ready to go off.
“She passed out,” I said. “Xtelle said another vortex is going to open.”
“Xtelle?” He wasn’t tracking details.
“Right there in the demon trap.”
She waved.
“Don’t break the line,” I said.
The EMTs pushed through the front door with their equipment.
“Back here!” Ryder yelled.
“All right,” Mykal, a vampire who was one of our best EMTs, said. “Go ahead and move to one side so we can get a look.”
I stood and pulled Ryder up with me. I forced both of us back one step.
“Does she have anything to do with this?” asked the other EMT, Steven, who was a human and well-versed in the secrets of Ordinary’s citizens. He tipped his head toward Xtelle while Mykal quickly took Delaney’s vitals.
“We don’t think so,” I said.
“She’s a demon, right?” Mykal asked.
“Yes. We have her contained.”
“I see that.” He nudged the dragon pig. The dragon pig growled.
“You can come with her to the hospital, okay?” Mykal patted its little head. The dragon pig oinked and hopped up off her legs so they could move her onto the gurney.
“One of you riding with us?” Steven asked. The dragon pig jumped up onto the foot of the stretcher and settled in, eyes glowing. “Other than this guy?”
“I am,” Ryder said, just as I said, “He is.”
“Where will you be?” Ryder asked me.
“Here. I’ll take care of Xtelle. Keep me in the loop with Delaney.”
“What about the vortex?”
“We’ll handle that when—if,” I clarified, “it happens.”
The EMTs were already halfway to the door.
He glared at Xtelle, then turned his searching gaze on me. “If you want—”
“Go. She needs you.”
He frowned, but gave in and jogged after them.
As soon as the door closed, I turned on Xtelle. “Tell me everything you know about Delaney being tied to the vortexes. Now. Or all those promises of letting you leave Ordinary alive are off the table.”
I pulled the fold of very thin cloth out of my front pocket. The flower inside those folds was dried, having been pressed for a century or more in the center of an old poetry book from a long dead, very sad, peasant girl who had also been a demon killer.
I’d found the book months ago, looking for anything that would free Delaney’s soul.
“That is a very rare flower,” she said. Her voice tightened, each word clipped, as if she were facing down a viper that would strike if she so much as breathed too loudly.
