“And to me? Or will your ambitions overwhelm your instinct for survival?”

“I will pledge myself to you as well. The path is clearly more favorable for us with you in charge,” Mausya said.

“Too bad it wasn’t so clear before,” Senka noted with a pointed look at the younger Elder’s stump.

“I lacked vital data. Now I have it. This will grow back, eventually,” Mausya said, moving the remains of her arm without visible pain.

“So what now?” Gault asked.

“Now, I get back to America, hopefully in time to help destroy the demon my Chosen is facing,” Tanya said.

“Correction, Sweet Blood. Now we head back. I would not miss seeing a demon incarnate in person for anything,” Senka said.

Chapter 26

“Hello? Mr. Gordon?”

“It’s Chris, Detective Schulz.”

“Ah, Chris. Listen. I’ve been interviewing the patrol officers who responded to calls on the various houses,” Schulz said, voice tinny on the phone.

“Anything pop out at you?

“Well, not a lot, but something else came up during a conversation with one of the officers. Officer LeBlanc was noting that one of the houses, up in the northern part of Burlington, was actually kind of mess three months ago, but then the calls and complaints stopped coming about two weeks ago. The thing he said that concerned me was that it was good timing because he got really busy about then with a missing persons report.”

“Missing person? You see a connection?”

“Yeah, I kind of do. A Dr. Paul Cavanaugh disappeared from his home in Winooski two weeks ago and there has been no trace of him since. No credit card use, no banking access, cell phone usage, and certainly no GPS hits on his phone. Thing is, he was a professor at UVM. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He taught some of those Community Development, Applied Economics courses that your guy, Declan, takes.”

Chris went from interested to laser-focused in a split second. “Omega?”

“Father has been auditing a class that was supposed to be taught by Dr. Cavanaugh. He likes it a great deal. Teaching assistants covered for the first week and then the university hired a substitute professor, a Dr. Deva Lilt. I am currently researching her backstory but I am already finding enough discrepancies to raise concern.”

“Ah, the computer is on the call too?” Schulz asked.

“I am on all calls,” Omega replied.

“Where is your father now?” Chris asked, ignoring the side conversation.

“He is heading for the class in question. I have already alerted him and he is now joining us on this call.”

“Chris? You on?”

“Hey Declan. Detective Schulz is on with us too.”

“Thank you for finding this, Detective. I was on my way into class. I never would have suspected Professor Lilt. She’s really interesting,” the young witch said.