A Knight Of The Word

Bait.

Nest Freemark considered the implications of the word as calmly as she could, which wasn’t easy to do. The thought that she had been dispatched to Seattle to find John Ross, not with any expectation she could influence him by virtue of well-reasoned argument, but solely for the purpose of influencing his dreams and forcing him to rethink his position at the same time she was being put at risk was almost more than she could bear.

She fumed for a moment, then wondered haw the Lady could know how her presence would affect things. Could she know the dream would be changed in a way that would make Ross reconsider? If the Lady knew what the dream was, it wasn’t such a long shot she knew haw to change it.

Nest put her face in her hands and closed her eyes. She was jousting with shadows. She was just guessing.

She left behind the dream and its implications and went back to what she knew. There was a demon, The demon was in Seattle, The demon was after Ross. The demon was someone he knew, probably well. The demon was determined to claim him— so determined it had been willing to attack and kill another demon who challenged it for possession of his soul.

So far, so good. Nest nodded into her hands. What else?

The demon had recognized Nest and decided she was a threat. But not enough of a threat to do anything about her until after she had gone to Lincoln Park to speak with Boot. Boot was going to tell her something when the demon attacked, something about the demon changing again, only not in the same way.

She backed off, knowing all she could do with that approach was to speculate, that the answers she needed had to be reached from another direction.

She glanced at her watch. Three-thirty. Her plane would begin boarding around four. She looked down at her bag, glanced over at the security check and the people lined up to go through the metal detector, and went back to thinking.

The demon had been present when she had gone to Fresh Start to find John Ross. Her magic, into whatever form it had evolved, had reacted to the demon and made Nest physically sick. The demon had tracked her or followed her or intercepted her message and found her later at Lincoln Park. Which? It had killed Boot, Audrey, and Ariel, and had tried to kill her. And then it had gone back to the city and set fire to Fresh Start. Why?

Her head hurt. Nothing fit. She walked down the concourse with her bag to an SBC stand and ordered a decaf cappuccino. Then she found a different seat and thought about the demon some more.

What was she missing?

Stay away from him, Ariel had warned her of John Ross. He has demon stink all over him. He is already lost.

Seemed right to her, given his refusal to accept the possibility he was in danger, that he might be fooling himself about his vulnerability. But John Ross genuinely seemed to believe that he was a different person, no longer a Knight of the Word, no longer a keeper of the magic. He was shattered by San Sobel, and now he was in love with Stefanie Winslow and committed to the work of Simon Lawrence, and his life was all new.

Like her own was new, she thought suddenly. She had left the past behind as well, back in the park of the Sinnissippi, back with the passing of Gran and Old Bob, back with the end of her childhood.

She thought suddenly of her mother. There was no reason for it, but all of a sudden she was thinking about haw much she missed not having her there while she was growing up. Gran and Old Bob had done the best they could, which was pretty good, but the gap in her life that her mother’s death had left wasn’t something anyone could fill. She wondered if that was how John Ross had felt before Stef had come into his life. He had wandered alone for more than ten years in service to the Word, living with his terrible dreams of the future and the responsibility they forced on him in the present. It was so hard to be without someone who loved you. Everyone was affected by the absence of love. Even her father, who was a demon...

The words froze in mid-sentence, crystallised in her mind, and hung there like shards of ace. She had been trying to think of something earlier, something that spoke to the issue of the demon’s behaviour with Ross, something from her past. Now she knew what it was. It was her father’s behaviour toward Gran years ago.

It was the same. It was exactly the same.

In a moment’s time, everything carne together, all the loose ends, all the answers she had been unable to locate, all the missing clues. She felt her breath catch in her threat as she thought it through, trying it out, seeing if it fit.

She knew who the demon was.

She knew why John Ross could not escape it.

A wave of heat rushed through her, Maybe she had been wrong about the Lady after all. Maybe the Lady knew Nest would see what Ross could not.

But was there still time enough to save him?

She was on her feet, her bag flung aver one shoulder, running for the exit and the taxi stand.





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Chapter Twenty-Two