Vivian looked scared, but Oliver gestured with a sarcastic motion that it was okay with him. Pierce closed his eyes as if pained. The arrangement wasn’t anything I could hold them to, and I didn’t expect them to honor it. Right now, all I wanted was a shot at getting the curse shifted from me back to Ku’Sox.

“So where is the little genetic designer dump of a demon?” I said, liking the insulting moniker that Al had given Ku’Sox. I had no idea how I was going to do this, but knowing where he was would be a start.

Vivian looked to the closed, locked double doors. “Just follow the screaming.”

A quick breath slipped in and out. “And Ivy and Jenks? I’m going to need their help.”

No one said anything. My heart seemed to stop when they both looked at Pierce.

“Ku’Sox has them,” he said, and I quivered, fear sliding through me. “I opine he’s not killed them outright, but is keeping them intact to call you out.”

Twenty-eight

The vivid maroons and contrasting golds of the carpet had dulled to a gray smudge under the choking dust from broken concrete. It didn’t help that the light was almost nonexistent as I strode through the hotel lobby, the ambient sun not able to reach deep enough into the large building to make a difference. Everywhere around me, people were quietly crying, whispering, or staring blankly as they huddled under yellow blankets pulled from hotel rooms, sitting against the walls or in informal groups in the middle of the floor. It was quiet. There were no more decisions to be made. They were down to just existing, shocked into a blank state, their minds as dull as the carpet, coated with the remnants of destruction. It stank of cracked rock and terror that had lost its ability to motivate.

But as I headed for the sun past the glass doors, a head lifted, awareness seeping in to show their individual fears and thoughts, like my feet pulling the dust from the carpet, leaving a bright and shiny trail of where I’d been. My jaw set and my arms swung a little harder. Demon witch. Clearly I’d been recognized, and I squared my shoulders. So I was a demon. Suck it up and deal with it. I was going to save their asses.

“Don’t pay them any mind,” Pierce said as he paced beside me, his dusty coat almost the same color as the carpet, the sooty gray fading as it rose until it regained its original brown at his shoulders. “They’re scared.”

“So am I,” I admitted, staring straight ahead. I was scared and angry that Ku’Sox had been holding Ivy and Jenks for three days, hurting them to ensure I’d come to him. At least my mother was okay, having been in jail when Ku’Sox destroyed a huge chunk of San Francisco. She was still there, thank God, but at least now she knew I was back in reality. For a while.