“They try to recruit him,” Darci said.

“Right there? Right in front of Gordon?”

“They have their own language, sort of a trade tongue, with witches,” Declan explained.

“And you know it?” Schulz asked in a disbelieving tone. People hated to be wrong, or have their veracity questioned. You never knew what might come out of a little tone of disbelief.

“Yup,” was all the kid said. Schulz waited. The kid waited right back. Darci’s face was carefully blank, but Schulz thought he caught one micro flicker of a smile. A proud smile.

After the moment dragged into several, the deputy was the one who broke the silence. “He’s a special class of witch, our Declan. But you’re not asking about dealing with a demon who is strong enough to kill openly.”

Schulz couldn’t stop his own flicker of a frown. He conducted interviews as he saw fit. Having the deputy in the room went against his instincts, but his lieutenant had insisted. For his own safety. Which, upon seeing this young man in person, he found hard to fathom. Inside a locked interview room, inside a police department, full of armed men and women.

With a mental sigh, Schulz went along with her comment. It helped that the boy had given her a surprised glance at her statement about the demon’s strength.

“What? You think I don’t pay attention when all of you are in the same room and talking shop?” Darci asked her nephew.

“It means something? That it murdered two people?” Schulz asked.

“Demons come here by finding a passage to this realm. Almost always by some form of human invitation,” Declan said. “They come here in a non-corporeal form, you know, like a ghost. They possess the weakest human they can find—weak morally or emotionally—and use that individual to commit mayhem. What I felt in that office was a magnitude or several greater. I didn’t see it, but if it was anything less than a slaughterhouse in there, I’ll eat my left shoe right here and now.”

Schulz felt his eyes narrow a bit. “How could you know that? You’re not wrong, so there’ll be no shoe eating, but there’s no way to know that without looking into the office.”

They glanced at each other, the deputy and the college kid, a question on his face and a nod back from her. The kid held out his hand to the deputy and she in turn pulled out a pen and her notebook.

Taking a page from the notebook, the young witch drew a quick, yet accurate circle. Then he drew odd letters and symbols around the circle, both inside and out. When he was done, he handed both pen and pad back to Darci. Then he leaned across the table, slowly, deliberately, and plucked something from Schulz’s shirt. He held it up. A hair. Short, brown. One of Schulz’s own.