Thomas drew a breath. If they hadn’t known the demon was bad to the bone already, now they sure did.

“I don’t understand why trapping the demon here would be considered a punishment,” said Isabelle, finally. “Why wouldn’t he want to stay here? Wouldn’t this be a big playground for him?”

Micah turned to her. “We suspect the beings we refer to as ‘demons’ live in a world not much different from ours. They have a culture, a society, laws, everything we have. They mate, they have little baby demons they raise to become big, bad demons. It’s their home. Here they’re just aliens, without freedom, family or friends. Think about it. Would you want to spend your life completely alone in a foreign world? This demon is essentially in exile.”

Isabelle hugged herself. “It’s just strange to think of them that way, as anything more than primitive monsters.”

Micah pushed a hand through his hair. “We believe their society is fairly complex, but we don’t know for certain since no human or witch has ever been through a doorway that we know of.”

“But we know they have prisons, just like we do,” said Stefan tonelessly. “In this case, the Duskoff pulled an inmate from one of them. It freed him. I’m sure he has been contenting himself here well enough.”

Contenting himself. Yes, killing people.

“How long has the Duskoff known the demon still resided on this side of the doorway?” asked Thomas. His voice sounded wooden to his own ears because he suspected the Duskoff could’ve stopped the demon long before now…if they’d bothered to try.

Stefan looked up, focused his gaze on Thomas’s face and laughed bitterly. “Since it stole our library.”

“Explain.”

“We had a collection of books—ancient texts on demons the Duskoff has possessed since the Middle Ages. The demon divined the location of the books and came one night. He broke through our magical defenses and stole them all.”

“How long ago?” His voice sounded like the lash of a whip in the small room. His fingernails dug into his palms as he fought to restrain himself.

Micah had found at least thirty-five murders of non-magickals the demon may have committed, aside from the two witches, in the time since the Duskoff had brought him into this world.

Stefan blinked, and then gave a slow, self-satisfied smile. “Twenty years ago.”

“You bastard!” yelled Isabelle right before she rushed him.