“Now, it’s time for you to meet your teacher.” I lifted my hand, and waved at Marcus, who was taking a break from sparring with Allie. As he signaled that he would be right over, Ana snorted. “I know him. He’s the one who brought us here after that bitch Jessica killed Dani.”
“Then, he was your escort. Now, he’s your teacher.”
“Hey, Ana,” Marcus said as he approached us. “Ready to train?”
“Is that what this is? Training class time?”
Marcus and I exchanged a look. “For the first week, we’re going to play this loose. Then we’ll put together your actual schedules for the rest of the semester. Sound like a deal?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“So, is that a yes? I was thinking we’d do a quick run-through, and then I’ll get you sparring with Mindy.”
Her mouth hung open. “Today?”
I laughed. “You’ll do great. I promise. Find me later and tell me about it, okay?”
“You really want to know?”
“Of course I do. That’s what we’re here for.”
“Oh. Well, okay. That’s cool.”
She flashed me a tentative smile before following Marcus into the room. She had a long road. She didn’t really trust us—who could blame her?—and she had terrible self-esteem. But she’d opened up, at least a little, and we’d had an actual conversation.
So maybe I wasn’t going to totally suck at this job after all.
10
Ispent the morning doing admin work until I thought my brain would explode. Then I checked on Timmy and Stuart, before snagging Allie and Eliza as co-escorts for our first patrol with the newbies.
“First question,” I said before we piled into my ancient Odyssey van, “where should we go to look for a demon?”
Allie and Eliza both tightened their mouths, as if desperately trying not to blurt out the answer. The other three looked at each other, clearly bewildered.
“Um, Hell?” Ren suggested.
“Not a bad answer,” I admitted. “The downside is that to get there we’d have to open a gate, and that’s never good. Any other ideas?”
Once again the kids stared at each other as if I’d asked them to calculate pi to the twenty-seventh place.
“No worries. Let’s go at this another way. Who knows how the demons become corporeal?”
That time, all three hands shot up. “Ana?”
“They live in the, um, ether. Like the air around us. And when someone dies, they go into the body.”
“Good. Who wants to add to that?” I picked from the two hands that shot up again, calling on Bruce.
“But they can’t enter the faithful. Those souls fight, and there’s only a short window. So the demons usually get battled back.
“Yes. Exactly. Good on you guys.”
“Marcus told us some stuff in the van. And I learned a little from the Hunter who recruited me,” Ren said.
“Good. Then you’re more prepared than a lot of recruits. Plus, atForza West,you don’t have to learn Italian. Always a perk.”
The mansion was located on cliffs that overlooked the ocean, and I navigated the van down the winding street as I talked.
