“Thank R’gngyk for small blessings. How did you even find out about Annette?”
“Isaiah...he peeked in your notebook last week. He didn’t mean anything by it. We just thought—we wanted todosomething, you know? To get out there and fight demons and—”
“Potentially destroy everything I’m trying to do.”
“I’m sorry. We were trying to help. And we did get away. No harm, no foul, right?”
“The three of you will do triple rituals nightly until you’ve atoned. And if any of you everthinkabout pulling a stunt like this again without permission, I will personally feed you to a shoggoth.”
CHAPTER6
Jenny
Thirteen minutes passed from when I received Annette’s text to the moment she pulled into the shop’s back lot. Thirteen long, helpless, worried minutes.
Her message had said only,Coming home. Hurt. Need help.
For Annette to admit needing help meant it was serious. Possibly life-threatening. I’d written back asking for more information so I could be ready, but she hadn’t responded.
I was at her car door, first aid kit in hand, by the time she killed the engine. She grabbed her things from the passenger seat and climbed out, grimacing in pain and completely naked.
“What happened?” I’d seen plenty of injuries over the years. Annette’s weren’t the most gruesome, but she’d certainly earned an honorable mention. Her face, neck, and shoulders were red and blistered. Mostly second-degree burns, though several of the blisters were broken and bloody. Both eyes were swollen nearly shut. Her shoulders and chest had been burnt as well, along with one of her thighs. These burns weren’t quite as bad, but they had spread across more of the skin.
“Holy water.” She hissed as I took her left arm to help her.
I looked her over as we walked. Blood trickled down her skin from the burns, but there were no deeper wounds, and I saw no signs of broken bones, but the burns were clearly agonizing. Her breathing was quick and tight and shallow, and her heart was running at double its normal speed.
The back door swung open to let us inside. “Thanks,” I said. “Start the shower. Cool but not cold.”
I guided her into the nearest bathroom just as the ceiling vent kicked on and water began to spray down. I set Annette’s things on the little shelf next to the sink, then checked the temperature of the shower. “This will help with the burning and get rid of any holy water still on your skin.”
She climbed in, trembling, then gasped as the water struck her burns. “Putain de merde!”
I grabbed two extra-strength painkillers from the first aid kit. “Take these.”
She leaned out to take them from my hand, popped both pills into her mouth, and dry-swallowed them in one gulp. Then she yanked the shower curtain shut.
“Who did this to you?” I asked. Now that she was home and safe and there was nothing immediate for me to do, my emotions had begun to bubble up. Fear and worry and anger, all cracking the calm of my initial crisis response.
“Kids. Three of them.” Her heart rate had slowed slightly, but it was still dangerously high. “They jumped me when I was on my way back to my car.”
“If they had holy water, they knew what you were and how to hurt you.”
“They were there to kill me. I think it spooked the little shits when their squirt guns didn’t melt me like the Wicked Witch of the West.”
My fists clenched. I’d used the exact same tactics once during my Hunter days, decades past. I’d chased a pair of leech-faced soul-sucking demons into a dead end behind the food bank back home. While I kept them busy, my friends had attacked from the roof with squirt guns and water balloons.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have gone with you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, the words tight with pain. “I’m a grown woman. I’ve been taking care of myself my whole life.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You’re a badass demon detective who doesn’t need anyone. I still wish I’d been there.”
“Having you there would have made it a lot more entertaining,” she admitted.
The water stopped. She shoved the curtain aside and let me help her out. That more than anything else told me how much she was hurting.
She was shivering harder now. The heat kicked on in response to her trembling.
