Phillip eased the bullet loose in a spurt of fresh blood and felt his own stomach flip. Liam hissed through his teeth and squeezed fists around his jacket, then slowly slumped back.

Phillip discarded the bullet, then cleaned the wound up once more. “It’s LaVerne, by the way,” he said, while Liam straightened up and tested his shoulder. “The third Andrews sister.” A trust offering.

Liam smiled. “I guess I’m more a fan of Bing Crosby.” He moved his arm in a slow circle, still wincing, but he was looking less waxy now, at least. “Not bad. You a medic?”

Phillip wet his lips, hesitant. “Engineer.”

“Really!” Liam sat back with a grin. “Theoretical physics. Princeton.”

Phillip let out a low whistle. “You study with Einstein? I usually don’t give you theoretical boys much credence, but I gotta say, his theory of relativity . . .”

“How about you? Let me guess . . . Mechanical engineering?”

“Electrical,” Phillip said. “Digital computing, radio waves, circuitry, I design it all.” Or he did, anyway. Dimly, he wondered if he’d ever have the guts to design something new again.

“Frequency generation? I’ll have to pick your brain about something I’ve been working on later. I’d love to see—”

“Enough.” Simone pulled up a chair from the projectionist’s desk and sat across from Liam, her rifle resting in her lap. “You said you had answers.”

Liam exchanged a glance with Phillip, like he was asking for help. But Phillip knew better than to go against Simone’s will. Slowly, Liam nodded, clammy sweat gathering on his brow.

“I do. But they aren’t gonna be answers you like.”

CHAPTER TEN

SIMONE

Simone was not what she would call a patient person. Nor a particularly credulous one. And while Liam, the idiot American who’d attached himself to them like a nettle, was doing his best to explain, she only grew more impatient and fed up.

“And these demons are crawling out of another world?” Simone asked. She’d seen the demons for herself, and yet. It was far easier to believe that he was as deranged as he appeared than that he was capable of summoning creatures out of the ether.

Liam slumped against the wall with a tired smile. “They despise our world because of what Sicarelli did to them, so they’re determined to destroy every human they encounter. They’re especially attracted to the energy signature of fear and pain.”

“Is there any other way to feel when confronted with a demon?” Phillip asked.

Liam tipped his head, conceding the point. “But it’s not just the creatures. It’s the energy that suffuses their world. I can harness and channel it in interesting and painful ways.”

“Dark energy,” Phillip said, with an eagerness that made Simone roll her eyes. “That unaccounted-for mass weighing down the universe. You’re saying it comes from the same place as those . . . those things?”