Eleven

Um, Jenks?” I said, taking a stumbling step back into a cloud of pixies now seeking shelter with me. “Tell me the sun is up.”

“The sun is up,” he said, hearing the panic in my voice and knowing what that black bubble had been about as much as I did. “Damn, Rache. You telling me that’s not a bird?”

Ivy shoved Trent off her and got to her feet. Trent was next, and we walked backward to the car, the pixies retreating with us as they continued to shout insults at the bird. The sun was up. It couldn’t be a demon. But it wasn’t a bird, either, and I didn’t know if that scared me or simply made me angrier. An ignorant bird eating people might be forgiven, but not if it was another intelligent being, demon or not. My instincts screamed demon, but the sun was up. This isn’t possible. Maybe it’s a really bad witch Trent thinks is a demon.

The cloud of pixies behind me started talking, too fast for me to follow, shrilling about Ku’Sox and fables and the past coming to life. “Kill it!” the head pixy shouted, and the snick of Jenks pulling his sword rang in my ear.

“No!” he yelled, and they halted, hovering behind me. “It’s not a bird! You can’t fight it as if it is!”

My mouth went dry as the stork croaked, eying me as it jumped from rock to rock, coming closer. Crap, it was getting bigger, too. My thoughts went to the petroglyph of the bird with a figure in its beak, and I paled as the memory of a pixy scream echoed in my mind, the bird gulping it down. “Uh, guys…,” I stammered as I turned, seeing Trent and Ivy still standing there, scared pixies wreathing them. “We’d better get to the car.”

We ran. Arms pumping, I followed Trent and Ivy down the hill to the car, hitting the rocks and jumping over low walls to make a beeline for it rather than the safer, serpentine route. I could make only one circle. We all had to be in it, Vivian included. Behind me, the bird squawked, and the pixies scattered with shrill sounds of panic as heavy wings beat the air.

“Make a circle!” I shouted as I saw Vivian, awake and standing next to the open trunk, my scrying mirror in her hand, her mouth hanging open as she gaped behind us.

“Make a friggin’ circle!” I shouted as the path became level and I ran on pavement instead of asphalt. The heat ballooned up, almost a wall. Ivy and Trent reached the car first, landing against it to turn and stare. I didn’t look as I skidded to a halt beside them, searching my pockets for chalk that I didn’t have. I had been hunting pixies, not a friggin’ day-walking demon!

It couldn’t be. But I’d seen its eyes. It had made a circle.

Behind me, the bird croaked out a weird call. It echoed in the heat-beaten stillness as if coming from time itself. Leaning into the car, I found my bag, and digging through it for my chalk, I thought about my scrying mirror in Vivian’s hands. Did Trent swipe my chalk, too?