Davis nods. “You all get some sleep now. We’ll be in the cruiser just outside until six, and someone will take over for us then.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Their departing footsteps are loud with crunching glass. I take Nai Nai’s arm and help her up the stairs to the apartment. We turn on the light and sit in the living room together.
“Amherst wants to bring us back to a Boston safehouse, and I think that’s best, but I wanted to talk to both of you first,” I say.
Ace is shellshocked. He swallows thickly and nods. “Yeah, whatever you think is best.”
Nai Nai is quiet as she thinks. She looks up at me, her brow furrowed. “Why would he attack the shop?”
“To show us he can do whatever he wants,” I say. “What does it matter? He proved we’re not safe here.”
She smirks. “What’s the point of that?”
I calm my lizard brain down and think it through. “He wants us to leave. He wants us back in Boston.”
She nods sagely. “Why?”
I start thinking like Lei, like Shang.
They need us under their control. In their custody. They may have been aiming to do that tonight, but when the alarm wentoff, they changed plans. This is a small town, and covering up our disappearance here would be harder. They have nowhere to hide, and it’s hours back to Boston. The chance of successfully holding on to us here is a lot lower.
But they have to know we’ll go to a police safehouse when we go back…unless that’s exactly what they want. If they have someone inside the force who could help them, we’d be in one of their dungeons before the end of the first night. There’s a large international airport, and hundreds of ways out of the city if they need. They have a lot more resources to get what they want.
“They’re trying to corral us into their cage,” I say.
“Are we farm animals?” Nai Nai asks, defiance in her voice.
“No way,” Ace says.
I shake my head. “But this location is compromised. It’s not safe for us here.”
“It’s not safe there, either,” she says. “And they don’t have a big brooding fire demon down in Boston.”
“Oh! Let’s just take Raul with us!” Ace says with a giddy smile.
I drop my head. “He can’t leave. He’s magically bound to this location.”
Nai Nai pulls a sheet of paper from her cardigan pocket and folds it open. It’s neatly organized with runic designs and a list of materials. She looks up at me with a crazy gleam in her eyes.
“We can make it safe here, with his help.”
It’s the protection we would need against Lei—against anyone who would do us harm. I snatch the page and trace the lines as I work out all their meanings. It’s diabolical. I never thought to combine runes like this…
“But Rhaz-aul…”
I groan.
“His name isn’t Raul, that’s gonna keep throwing me off. It’s Rhazan.”
“Period,” Ace says with a broad grin. “Definitely a demon name.”
“But anyway, there are these magical police that are watching him. If he were on this side whenanyof this went down,” I say, gesturing to the page Nai Nai has constructed, “he’d be in deep shit. Like, sentence-extending shit, or worse.”
“Sentence?” Ace asks.
I wave him off. “It’s a whole thing. I’ll let him tell you.”
