“How did this happen?” Soraya asked. This was part of the job—asking questions. Cutting a threat off at the knees was important, yes, but gathering information to prevent future threats was crucial too.

“I’ve always enjoyed walking. Helps to clear my head sometimes. Lostwood is a quiet place. Peaceful. Serene. One day I found something in the forest.” Seela’s gaze had returned to her, but her eyes seemed to look right through her, to another place and time. “It was…beautiful.”

“A golden liquid? One that glows?”

Seela’s eyes grew wider. “Yes! How did you know? Have you seen it?”

Soraya ignored her questions. “You drank it?”

Seela nodded. “A bit. It was sweet, like honey. I felt instantly…better. Happier. Like all my worries were small enough to stuff in a thimble. I felt physically stronger too. Rejuvenated. I was planning to run back to Seer to tell Sunny about it. I wanted her to try some, to experience what I had. But then…”

Her lips pursed, and though Soraya couldn’t see her teeth, she knew they were grinding together like a millstone crushing grain. “I know this is hard, but I need to know what happened to you. How you…how you became…”

“The nightdemon?” Seela said with a smirk. “No point in pussyfooting around the issue at hand now, is there? You need to know how I became a fanged, clawed, tailed monster skulking in the night, right?”

Soraya nodded.

“Simple. I got bit.”

“Bit?”

“By a rat.”

Soraya blinked, trying to make sense of the woman’s words. “You mean when you were drinking the gods—the golden liquid?”

“Just after maybe? The bastard attacked me like it thought it was an apex predator and not a tiny, squirmy little vermin. I kicked it twenty feet and it slammed into a tree, but then the damned critter shook itself off and got back up like it was nothing. Its eyes were glowing the same color as the damn liquid, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“When did you begin to…transform?”

Seela breathed out bitterly. “That very night. I came straight home and told Sunny the whole story. She thought I was daydreaming; except she couldn’t deny the punctures where the rat’s teeth had pierced me. She bandaged me up and applied a salve. We closed the Minx for the evening and almost caused a riot, and then went to bed. I awoke in a sweat, the pain in my leg as fierce a thing as I’ve ever experienced. I thought it was infected, so I went downstairs to get some more salve, but then—” She bit off the words, closing her eyes. When she opened them, Soraya expected them to be tearful from the memory, but instead she saw only steel. “Have you ever wanted to stab someone in the heart?” When Soraya cocked her head to the side in confusion, Seela continued. “I mean, have you ever wanted to hurt someone? Someone who’d hurt you, or hurt someone you loved?”