“You need to get going,” Flores said. “Take a left into the hall, then two rights and another left. That’ll put you in the parking lot. But you’re on your own from there.”

“Thank you, Officer Flores.” I glanced back at him over my shoulder on our way down the aisle. “Be careful.”

He nodded, and we left him in that room full of empty cells, clearly trying to decide how best to proceed, armed with knowledge that could get him killed.

We took a left turn and two rights and were halfway to that last hallway when a soft thwup from a room ahead and to my right drew me to a silent stop in the middle of the hall. Something growled—a thick, guttural sound—and then I heard the distinct, grisly tearing of flesh.

Chills shot up my spine.

“Shit,” Finn whispered with Officer Jennings’s voice as my heart began to pound deep within my chest.

I’d just recognized the room ahead as the police station lobby—where I’d exorcised a demon a quarter hour earlier—when a man in an unembroidered navy cassock stepped into the doorway, one hand pressed to a wound in his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers, and his face was already pale. His focus found me without even veering toward Finn, Melanie, or Anabelle.

“You killed them,” the man said, and before I could object or ask who I’d killed, he spoke again, a thin line of blood leaking from one corner of his mouth. “You killed them all with that little demonstration. You killed them the moment you opened your mouth.”

And finally I understood. “Deacon Bennett?”

“Nina…” Terror and confusion rang in Melanie’s voice.

“Deacon Bennett was a demon,” I explained, without taking my eyes from the monster. “She lost her host, but now she’s found a new one.” And she’d slaughtered everyone I’d left alive in the lobby. Because I’d told them the truth.

Anabelle’s breathing quickened and Finn tensed at my side. “Nina,” he said. Time was running out. We needed to make a move. He was looking to me for a signal.

“Bennett is gone,” the possessed cop said, still clutching his chest wound. “Half a human-lifetime spent elevating myself in her skin, campaigning for deacon, and some snot-nosed assassin child ends the whole thing in five minutes.” He gasped, and when more blood dribbled down his chin, I realized Bennett’s new body was dying. Soon the demon would be free to search for another host. And again, I would lose the opportunity to purge the monster from our world and send it back to hell.