“Ah. Yes…?”
“The way you elongated that gives us no faith,” Quinn said, hands flipping as he tied a ribbon onto a stake.
Seiji hemmed and hawed as he admitted, “What I actually have is a very, very old field notebook from my master’s master. I’ve scanned it into a digital version. Frankly, I’m terrified of the original copy going missing and us all being fucked.”
“But it isn’t typed, just scanned?” Gwyn thought on that for a bare quarter of a freckle past a hair. “What if I go through the scans and try to type it all up?”
Child, why would you volunteer to do that?
“Oh, great idea,” Booker said. “Information will stick better in your head that way.”
“It would,” Seiji said. “Booker, you want a copy too?”
“Sure, would love to read it.”
Clearly, I wasn’t geeky enough for this present company. Staring at possibly illegible handwriting for hours at a time and typing up what you think it says? Hard pass.
We kept tying. Writing. Lord have mercy, we were going to be here until midnight.
It did bring up a question. “Seiji, do you think we’re really going to use all of these?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “That’s the problem. I really don’t have any sense of scale for the area, so we might only need half of these. We might need them all. I erred on the side of caution and kept receipts.”
“Gotcha. Then should we try to get all of these done today?”
“Hmm, no, I think about half to start. If we run out, I can always bring the supplies with me. This is something we can do as we go.”
A second thought occurred to me. “Uh, do we have to collect these things after we’re done?”
Seiji hesitated. Hesitated so long it felt like he wasn’t sure how to answer. Then his eyes went up to meet Lachlan’s. “It depends. On what’s down in those mines.”
Lachlan came around to stand just behind his chair, placing a hand on his shoulder. It was me he addressed and his tone was apologetic. “Thing is, mate, that might well be a full-fledged demon down there. Not a traditional demon—a soul gone bad—but something else, something older. A remnant of a monster’s soul.”
Everyone stilled. I questioned sharply, “Now hold on. I thought you didn’t know what was down there, just that it’s evil.”
“Oh, it’s evil.” Lachlan made a face, but his eyes were worried and fixed on Seiji. Then he looked at Davina, sitting at the head of the table. “Gone into those mines three times. No trace of bones, scat, or water. No sign this thing was coming up topside, either. There’s also no souls in the mines. The ones we saw the first time? Gone.”
Davina’s face scrunched into a wince and got stuck. “Gestation period?”
“Maybe.”
“Fuck my life.” She collapsed dramatically backward, head barely hanging on by the neck.
I kinda followed this, but it was Brandon who fired off the next question. “What does gestation mean?”
Davina rattled off the answer, head still hanging backward like a demented cryptid’s. “The oldest beasties, they do die and lose their mortal forms, but they can also form up a new one. Takes a long while, generally decades, but if the conditions are right and they’re left alone, they can do it.”
“Like a caterpillar creating a cocoon?” Quinn’s expression was alarmed, only his alarm was growing into oh-fuck-no. “Only this one’s underground and it’s just percolating into a glob of evil?”
I fucking hated my life just then. “Next question I don’t actually want an answer to: Seiji, if it’s a demon, can you kill it?”
Seiji gave a sad shake of his head, a wince crinkling up one eye. “Sorry, no. If it’s still in gestating form, maybe? Between Lachlan and me, at least, I think we could do it.”
“Depends on how strong and fully developed it is?” Eli guessed.
Seiji shrugged.
Quinn waggled his phone in the air. “Do we need to tell Sylvia?”
