She left the bus at a downtown stop and walked through the mostly empty streets of the city to her hotel. She wondered vaguely if the demon might be tracking her still, but she no longer cared. She almost hoped it was, that it would come for her again and she would have another chance to face it. It was a perverse wish, unreasonable and foolish. Yet it made her feel better. It gave her renewed strength. It told her she was still whole.

But no one approached her or even tried to speak to her. She reached the hotel and went into the lobby and up to her room, locking the door behind her, throwing the deadbolt and fastening the chain. She stripped off her ruined clothes, showered, and climbed into bed.

There, in the warm enfolding dark, just before she fell asleep, with images of Arid and Boot and Audrey spinning in a wash of streetlight shining brightly through her bedroom window, she made herself a promise that she would see this matter through to the end.

Wednesday,
October 31

Chapter 18

When Stefanie Winslow woke him at midnight, John Ross was so deeply asleep that for a few seconds he didn’t know where he was. The bedside clock flashed the time at him, so he knew that much, but his brain was fuzzy and muddled and he could not seem to focus.

“John, wake up!”

He blinked and tried to answer, but his mouth was filled with cotton, his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, and there was a buzzing in his ears. He blinked in response to her words, recognizing her voice, hearing the urgency in it. She was shaking him, and the room swam as he tried to push himself up on one elbow.

He felt as if he were drugged.

“John, there’s something wrong!”

His memory returned through a haze of confusion and sluggishness. He was in his bedroom—their bedroom. He had come back there after his lunch with Nest, to think things over, to be alone. He had thought about her warning, about the possibility of a demon’s presence, about the danger that might pose to him. The afternoon had passed away into evening, the weather outside slowly deteriorating, sunshine fading to clouds as the rain moved in. Stef had come in from work, stopping off to deliver a message from Nest and to see how he was. She had made him pasta and tea and gone out again. That was the last he remembered.

He blinked anew, struggling with his blurred vision in the darkness, with the refusal of his body to, respond to the commands from his brain. Stefanie bent over him, trying to pull him upright.

The message from Nest …

That she was going to West Seattle for a meeting with a sylvan. That the sylvan had seen the demon she was looking for. That this was her chance to prove to him her warning was valid. Her words were coded, but unmistakable. Stef had asked him if he knew what they meant, and he had, but couldn’t tell her, so he had been forced to concoct an explanation.