“But there’s more going on here than you think. There’re other—”
“Yeah, I know. This place is crawling with Gelal and Akhs. You taught me how to recognize their scent, remember?” I looked over his shoulder so I wouldn’t lose sight of Pete and the girl. They were still making their way through the crowd, presumably toward the exit door on the other side of the room that led to the grounds behind the farmhouse. So much for getting a chance to lure Pete to the library.
“Yeah, I do remember,” Talbot said. “And that’s why I should be the one here with you. This is what we do, you and me. We’re the demon hunters.” He opened his trench coat and showed me his long steel sword taped inside. “Daniel is completely untrained.”
“Something tells me Daniel doesn’t need training.”
I pushed Talbot away from me. “Go home.” I marched past him, looking at Pete and his prey as they went out the exit door. The girl was angled so I could see her face for the first time—and despite the curly blonde wig, I recognized her.
Katie Summers.
This must have been the party she’d invited me to. The party her friends from the city—who were presumably the tranced-out dancing devil girls—had heard about.
I swore and tried to go after them, but Talbot caught me by the hand, trying to stop me from getting away.
“Grace, you need me.”
I did not have time for this. “I said go home!” I shouted, and punched him across the jaw with all my might. He let go of my hand and stumbled backward into a dancing girl. The two fell to the ground, tangled with each other. His bottle of whiskey sloshed all over them.
I pushed my way through the gyrating crowd as fast as I could, which didn’t feel fast enough. When I made it to the door, I flung it open and dashed out into the dark farmyard. Even adjusting my eyes to night vision, I couldn’t see Pete or Katie among the hay bales, scarecrows, and other freakish Halloween decorations. The heels of my boots sank into the moist ground as I headed toward the dilapidated barn, and I realized I should be looking for footprints. I scanned the ground and found two sets of prints headed for the wall of cornstalks just beyond the barnyard.
Great, I thought. They’ve gone into the corn maze.
I pulled out my cell phone and typed out a text to Daniel: Corn maze. Pete’s got Katie. I hit the Send button, but the text didn’t go through. Crap! Cell-phone reception had always been spotty in the farmland that stretched between Rose Crest and Apple Valley.
A noise that sounded like either a girl’s laugher or a whimper echoed from somewhere in the maze. I hit Send one more time, then stuck my phone into the pocket of my leather jacket, hoping it would eventually go through. I jogged into the maze. The hay-strewn ground made it impossible to make out footprints, so I had to follow Pete’s smell and the whimper-laugh, which sounded every few seconds, the best I could. I took two rights, two lefts, three more rights, and then rounded another left and almost ran smack into someone wearing tattered, black robes. I jumped back and almost let out a yelp, but then I realized it was just a dummy dressed like the Grim Reaper. A very real spider was busy spinning a web in the curve of the Reaper’s scythe, and some sort of sticky bloodlike substance smeared the dull metal blade.