Page 64 of Demon and the Raven

“Well, of course she was thrilled. In her mind, there was no murder in her town.”

“Even though there’s been two.”

“Two?” Amanda asked me.

“I need to tell you what happened to a friend of mine.”

“Okay.”

Once I was done, Amanda raised her hand.

“Knock it off.”

“I thought nymphs wore short togas and hung out with goats who play flutes.”

“See?” Lorne said pointedly. “I’m not the only one.”

Before he’d met Nott, he’d thought the same thing.

“That’s one version,” I explained to my friend. “And those are satyrs, not goats.”

“Which is so very important to point out,” Amanda said sarcastically.

“Anyway, the truth of the matter is that most nymphs are hunters who cross planes to do so and are quite formidable.”

“Got it,” Amanda replied, rolling with the new knowledge. Once you believed in magic, as she had for years, and in witches and mages and land that could be communed with, acceptance of other truths was not far behind. “Go on.”

I told her what happened to Nott and about something coming through the rift and destroying it in the process.

She gave that some thought. “And she said it was something other than the things she normally deals with.”

“Correct.”

“Which are?”

“Every kind of fae you can imagine.”

“Well, I can’t imagine much because I don’t know many, but what about a magic user? Like a witch or a mage. Would the rift burn up over that?”

“No, because others like that have come through.”

“And we know it’s obviously evil, or it wouldn’t have killed your friend,” she concluded, looking at me. “Yes?”

“That’s a reasonable assumption.”

“So then what do you think it is? Could it be something like that warlock who wanted to come into our world through the portal on Corvus?”

I couldn’t tell Amanda about gods and goddesses. That was forbidden to discuss with the mundane, or non-magical humans. Lorne had a pass because he was my mate. So I’d told her what I could and changed the mountain god Threun into a warlock. “I don’t think whatever this is has those kinds of magical powers. Maybe it doesn’t have any at all.”

“But you don’t know for certain.”

“I don’t. Not until I see it.”

“Let’s put a pin in that,” Amanda said, sounding distracted.

“You have a thought.”

“What? No,” she rushed out, shaking her head. “No, no.”