‘What the hell?’ I stare, dumbfounded.

Then the smell finally hits my awareness. It reeks here. The windshield is splattered with Mom’s rotten eggs. Old yellow-and-black goo oozes across the windshield like a giant bird dropping.

The smell.

They’re running from the smell. They’re running with the same terror that the hellions did from the demon in the Pit when he hissed at them. Does the smell remind them of their evil bosses? Do they assume an angry demon lord is coming when they smell rotten eggs?

I stare at my mother as she walks toward me with eggs in each hand.

She may be insane, but she has seen and experienced things. Things that other people haven’t understood.

By the time she reaches me, the hellions have all run off.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

I nod. ‘How’d you do that?’

‘It does stink something awful, doesn’t it?’ My mom wrinkles her nose at me.

I stare at her, speechless, before I let out a weak laugh.

Chapter 22

22

I walk into the grove with my mother. Another woman follows us a few steps behind.

I turn to her and say, ‘Hello.’

She bows her head slightly. She looks about the same age as my mom and wears a midlength coat with a hood that covers her head. Beneath the coat, a dress falls to her ankles and drapes over her slippers. There’s something familiar about her dress, but the thought flitters through my mind and gets pushed out by bigger things.

‘She’s with me,’ says my mom. I’m not sure what to make of her. My mother usually doesn’t have friends, but it’s a whole new world, and maybe I don’t know as much about my mom as I thought.

The grove is quiet except for the crunching of our feet and the sound of someone running toward us. I look back and see Raffe fast approaching on foot. He’s almost invisible with his dark trench coat and cap. He must have come running when he heard me scream during the hellion attack.

Both my mother and her friend freeze when they see his figure, but I put out my hand and nod to show that he’s with me. They continue into the grove while I drop back to wait for Raffe.

My mom looks back to keep an eye on us and doesn’t even try to be polite about it. She’s fully vigilant, scanning the shadows. Good for her.

‘You all right?’ His voice is soft, almost apologetic. I wonder if he thought that it would be better for me if the hellions didn’t see him fighting for me. There were too many for him to kill them all, so a lot of them would have escaped and told other hellions. Or maybe he couldn’t afford to have Obi and the others see him fighting full force.