“Gran?” I whispered her name and she appeared right in front of me. I squeaked and stumbled back into Feish, nearly taking us both down. “Don’t do that!”

“Where have you been? Two of those demons took Eric!” Gran scolded, wagging her finger at me. “I couldn’t stop them! If I’d been alive, I could have stopped them, but all the protections on the house have faded with my death.”

A stream of profanities lined up at the tip of my tongue, but I bit them back, swallowing them for later. “Look, I have the chains. They’ve been made into a knife.”

I tucked my own weapon away and pulled out the knife that Crash had been making. Gran ran a hand above it and then jerked back as if she’d been burned. “Demon steel. That’s very bad.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Bree, whoever made this . . . it’s a weapon used in sacrifices. A weapon that could kill a ghost.”

My jaw dropped. Eric’s words filtered back to me. “Eric said he could see you because he’s sort of a ghost too. Is he dead? Have I been hanging out with a dead man and didn’t know it?” But how could that be? I’d practically squeezed him in half in the closet.

“Bigfoots are complicated. They’re both physical and ethereal. It’s why they’re so hard to find in their other form. They can literally disappear. But it’s also why they are so rare. They don’t procreate well.” Gran sat on the top step. “A weapon like this would draw blood on him like nothing else would and would ground him here in this plane long enough to kill him. But it would have to be made by a master smith. Someone who has both the physical skill and the magic to bend metal to his will.”

I did a slow turn to look at Feish, my heart rate soaring. “Is . . .” I wanted to ask if Crash was the bad guy. If that demon had shown up to deliver the metal rather than attack him. Was he the one who wanted to kill Eric? Had we been working against each other without realizing it? I just couldn’t get the question out. I didn’t want to know. I mean, I did, but I didn’t.

“I need to take the knife back to him. He’s awake!” Feish held out her hand, but I saw the fear in her eyes. I shook my head.

“Feish, he was going to kill someone with this!”

“Not the Boss.” Feish waved her hands in front of her, but I saw the uncertainty in her eyes.

I bit the inside of my cheek, thinking fast. “Gran, what’s going on, why would someone want to kill Eric, and where would they take him?”