I tried to reassure her. “I don’t think it was fully aware. The connection I sensed wasn’t like the one Jenny has with Artemis. More like someone stirring in their sleep.”
“What is this thing, Temple?” Annette asked. “What’s it going to do when it wakes up?”
I held my book flat. The pages turned so quickly, they created a wind on my face. “There’s no R’gngyk in any book I’ve collected.”
“Dude, come on,” said Ronnie, like he was afraid I’d call R’gngyk’s wrath down on the van.
“How about we give the ancient god of shoggoths a nickname?” Jenny suggested. “Just to be sure we won’t accidentally draw its attention. How doesRingosound?”
My mind had already strayed. In my memory, I watched Morgan complete the ritual again. He’d given twelve drops of blood in total.
The blood hadn’t shaped or powered the magic. It had simply sizzled and vanished: an offering, then. A small but symbolic sacrifice. Twelve drops, given several times each week, multiplied by however many kids Alex Barclay had recruited into his little cult . . .
Alex had been trying to rouse R’gngyk slowly and gently. Now he was running out of time. If he didn’t yet know we’d spoken with Morgan, he’d find out soon enough, and things would get far more dangerous. If small sacrifices weren’t working quickly enough, he’d escalate.
Annette’s phone made a shrill triple beep. It repeated the annoying sound four more times before she managed to switch it off. She tapped her cracked screen and swore. “Something set off one of the security alarms.”
Sweat dripped down my face, stinging my eyes. My breathing quickened.
“Sage,” guessed Ronnie. “What’s he doing?”
“I’m pulling up the camera feeds,” she said.
Sharp, burning pain made me gasp. “He’s trying to set me—to set the shop, I mean—on fire.”
Ronnie accelerated. “I thought your place was protected from fire and things.”
“Mundane fire, yes,” I said. Or it had been, back when I was strong and healthy. “Other types, it depends. And our defenses have been weaker as of late.”
“Sage doesn’t know magic, right?” asked Jenny. “This has to be Alex working through his minions’ bodies.”
“Minions?” Ronnie grimaced. “Really?”
“Do you have a better word?” Jenny snapped.
Ronnie pursed his lips. “If they’re being controlled, I’d go withthralls.”
Jenny started to argue, then sighed. “You’re right.Thrallsis better.”
I leaned forward in my seat. “Annette, describe the flames.”
“Orange and red.” She held the phone at me.
I struggled to focus, to separate my senses from the house’s. Her damaged screen showed a partial pixelated image of the child trying to destroy my home, and the small fire he’d started on my porch.
“Not fairy fire or chaos fire, then.” Fairy fire would have more green and gold, and chaos fire would have killed Sage the moment it started. My fingers curled and tightened on my seat.
“We’re almost there,”said Margaret, whispering to me alone.“Just breathe.”
No matter how far I traveled, I never lost my awareness of the house. Most of the time, it faded into the background. I could feel the state of my home, but I didn’t notice it any more than I noticed my own heartbeat.
Now the sensations of my flesh and blood blended with those of brick and concrete and fire.
My boundaries were slipping. I was losing myself.
I thought back to the night my father and sister had taught me to separate the house’s pain from my own. I’d woken up crying during an unusually nasty hailstorm.
“It hurts.”I remembered crawling under my bed to try to escape the sensation of inch-and-a-half hailstones pounding my head and back. When that didn’t work, I fled to my big sister, Kitty. She would know what to do.
