The creature suddenly lunged for me, grabbing my upper arms before I could stop him. I should have been afraid, should have been screaming my head off or trying to cower behind the furniture. But I wasn’t.

I was just angry.

“Let me go.”

He did not let me go. But he did crow. “There it is! There, once more, the goddess peeking out. Your mask is slipping tonight, Cassandra.”

I tore away, causing the hazy arms to momentarily go up in smoke, before reforming again at his sides. “I don’t wear a mask.”

“You’re nothing but a mask. Your whole life has been a mask. The poor, downtrodden Seer, afraid of all those terrifying vampires—when you could have stalked and killed and eaten any one of them! The defenseless runaway, cowering in the night—only nobody hurt you, did they?” He sat on Rhea’s chair and crossed his ghostly legs again. “It’s something I have noticed throughout my life: predators tend to sense a greater one, and to steer clear. Tell me, were you jumped a single time, while on those dangerous streets? Were you mugged? Beaten? Something worse? No?”

“Why are you still here?” I demanded, going to the wardrobe and flinging it open.

Only to discover that I’d had my ration of dresses for the day, and was all out.

“To tell you what I came to say.”

“Haven’t you already?” My God, it felt like he’d been talking for a year.

“No. As I said, when I arrived earlier today, I was… surprised. I did not expect what I found—”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“—but you needed to be warned about the current situation—and about the one you call Pritkin.”

I’d been trying to hop up to see if anything had been stashed on the top shelf, but at that I stopped and looked at him. “Come again?”

“He is like you—he has not embraced his other nature. He was born of multiple strands that were meant to be intertwined like a rope, to make it strong. But instead, he has shredded it, pulled it apart, locked much of himself away. It weakens him, it always has, but he was strong enough in other circumstances to compensate. He cannot do that anymore.”

I leaned back against the wardrobe and crossed my arms. “Seems to be doing okay to me.”

“Yes, to you!” the demon snapped. “To you who hides as efficiently as he does! Neither of you see what you are, and are so closed off, so sure you’re right that—” he got up again and moved closer to the bed. The darkness there allowed me to see what I hadn’t before: what appeared to be genuine emotion on his face. There was frustration and anger, but also regret, and something that I thought might be fear.