“You think that’s why I’m angry?” I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tight. She tensed, then relaxed and returned the hug. “My friend from almost forty years ago is working through his apocalyptic To-Do List. Temple is growing visibly weaker with each day. I don’t...Ican’tlose you, too.”
She pulled back, pursed her lips, and nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said again, this time without the bitterness.
“You’re right, though,” I said. “Stupid, reckless, impatient...Why didn’t you wait for me?”
She turned away. “You saw what he did to Morgan.”
“That doesn’t excuse— Oh.” The realization knotted my heart. In her own messed-up way, she’d been trying to protect me. “You went there to kill him.”
“I went to do what needed to be done,” she said quietly.
“Listen to me, Annette Thorne. You have people who love and depend on you. People who need you. I need you to start protecting yourself as fiercely as you protect them.”
“You know that’s not how our jobs work,” she said.
“Maybe that’s not how it worked when we were young,” I corrected. “It’s how things are going to work from this moment onward, or else I will personally break both your legs and keep you confined in your bedroom until this is over.”
She raised her hands in surrender. “You win.”
“How bad is the pain?” I asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Liar. How close was it?”
“When he hit me with his tentacle, I thought it was over,” she admitted.
My mind locked, momentarily overcome by a series of disturbing images. “Please tell me you’re talking about a literal tentacle and not some weird succubus sex metaphor.”
“He grew a tentacle to replace his missing arm. It’s strong as hell, stretches at least ten feet, and it’s the only part of him that seemed to register any serious pain. It also hits like a truck.” She rubbed the back of her neck.
The hearth devil peeked out from the kitchen. “It was an arm, not a tentacle, dumbass. They’re two different things. Tentacles are mostly smooth, with the suckers on the flat part at the end. Arms are lined with suckers, like on an octopus. That’s what Alex had.”
Annette and I both stared at him.
“You think hearth devils can’t watch the fucking Discovery Channel?”
“Ronnie,” I yelled.
“Sorry.” Ronnie hauled Hob back into the kitchen.
“We arenotkeeping the hearth devil,” Annette said to me.
I smiled. “Agreed.”
She brushed off her jacket and combed her fingers through her hair the way she always did when she was unsettled. “How’s Morgan?”
“Sleeping, just like Sage and Squidward.” I headed for the stairs. “Come on. I know you want to check on him.”
“Squidward?”
“The cat you left on our back step. Temple was studying him.”
Both boys—and the cat—had their own rooms. We passed Squidward’s first. The house had grown him a space the size of a walk-in closet. An old, folded blanket sat untouched on the wood floor. A small window gave a view of the front yard.
“Nice wainscoting,” said Annette.
Vertical cedar boards covered the lower half of the walls. The upper trim was a wider board with black characters burned into the wood. “Temple’s work. He inverted the containment ring from the pills. It goes up and around the doorway to form a complete circle. Well, a complete rectangle. It should block out Ringo and Alex.”
