Corb struggled, his eyes suddenly wide with what could only be fear. “No! Not the fort! Darv, not the fort!”

Darv dragged the two men toward a large black van I hadn’t noticed. He shoved them in the back while Corb continued to freak out (I could hear him yelling even after the doors were shut), then reversed over several graves and drove away.

Tom and Eammon stood on either side of me. “Sarge put the others out with a spell that wasn’t one of Tom’s, so he’d bought it from someone else,” Eammon said. “Smelled heavily like fish, so I assumed again it was Crash and his pet. Sarge no doubt did it so the trainees wouldn’t tell us it was him and Corb that knocked them out.”

“Not Crash then after all?” I asked. I wanted to quip about what you get when you make assumptions, but I managed to keep it to myself. I’d save that one for later.

“Oh, he’d come by too, earlier,” Eammon grumbled. “But he did nothing but just throw a fit, and then he left. I thought it was him when the fighting started. Assumed.”

“Why would they set me up like that? To make you angry with me?” That made little sense, at least to me. “And then there’s Joe.”

“He’s missing too,” Tom said, and I shook my head.

“Joe was working with Corb,” Eammon said. “He’d be here if he weren’t dead.”

I glanced at Eammon, thinking it through. “Joe was out watching Eric when I got there, and then he shot at Eric as I was trying to get him away from the demon who’d appeared. The demon took exception and I think it ate Joe.” That was my gut instinct anyway. My guess.

Eammon’s mouth dropped open and he spluttered. “You survived a demon?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” I said, irritation flowing through me and out my mouth along with the words.

Eammon held up both hands in mock surrender. “Not because of what you’re thinking. One of us, fully trained and comfortable in the shadows, would struggle with a demon. Joe getting eaten is less surprising than you surviving.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell them it was the second demon I’d dealt with. Nope, I was going to hold that close and let them underestimate me.

“Joe was trained by Corb,” Tom said. “Easy to believe he’d been working with them. Helping them keep track of Eric. Damn it, I can’t believe we didn’t see it coming!”

Eammon rubbed a hand over his face. “All of this—the fight at the Hollows, tying us up after, chasing you off, it was done to keep us busy, and not looking at what was happening,” Eammon growled. I looked down at him.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand why Sarge and Corb would want me out of the way, or at the worst, try to make it look like it was my fault that the others got hurt by Crash?”