Carter caught my gaze and his expression softened. “I’m sorry, Menolly, but yes, he is. Varconts make Dredge look like a rookie.”
The silence that followed echoed through the room. I could hear the sounds of everyone breathing, and I knew that my sisters were afraid by the shallow rise and fall of their breath. I had gotten pretty good at reading feelings through breath patterns, and right now I could tell that Smoky and Shade were thinking fast and furious. Trillian was processing. Vanzir and Roz were pissed. And Trytian? Was staring right at me. He shook his head ever so slightly when I met his gaze, and I could see the worry lines crinkling his forehead. Trytian was impulsive, and he was given to an overaggressive ego, so for him to be worried told me that Carter’s impassive explanations were, if anything, on the conservative side.
“So what do we do?” I broke the silence.
“Is there any clue as to who gated them over?” Camille studied the packet of information, as if it could magically tell her who was out there playing with a Demon Gate. “I don’t think we’re going to get lucky and find out that it’s some college kid who accidentally stumbled onto the spell this time.”
“Yeah, this is no Harold Young situation.” I racked my brain, trying to figure out just who Shadow Wing could be using over here. “Van and Jaycee are dead. It can’t be them. Wilbur—he might be able to give us some ideas. He’s a sorcerer.”
Our mountain-man neighbor had bad manners, an even worse attitude, and a penchant for grabbing women’s asses, but he was also a powerful sorcerer. And, even with only one leg, he could stand up to one hell of a nasty opponent. We had a love-hate relationship with him, but he always seemed to come through for us.
“Good idea. We’ll pay him a visit and find out what he knows.”
“We haven’t talked to him or seen Martin for a while.” I grinned then. Martin had become a running joke, though the origins of the ghoul were less than funny. Wilbur had reanimated his brother’s corpse, unable to let him go to cancer, and Martin was like his pet dog. They watched Jeopardy together, they hung out together, and sometimes I wondered if Wilbur ever suspected that Martin’s spirit was watching over him. Delilah had discovered that a couple of months ago.
“So . . . the fact that two of these three look like monsters means that if they start running around the streets of Seattle, somebody is going to notice them. That probably indicates that whoever gated them over has both a way of hiding them and the transportation to fit them. What would fit an eight-foot-long demonic scorpion?” Morio tossed his dossier on the table. “The Shelakig isn’t going to be riding around in the back of a sedan. Or even a van, I think.”
“Flatbed truck is out unless the demon held perfectly still, like some giant figurine for an amusement park or some show or something. Maybe a moving van? One of the shorter ones?” It would be ridiculous, though, to expect to track down every short-bed moving van that had been rented out in the past day or two. And we couldn’t very well stop every truck we saw on the street and commandeer a look into the cargo hold.
“Another question. Can either the Shelakig or the Naedaran shift into human form?” Camille asked.
Carter shook his head. “No, and even if they were given the illusion, the Shelakig’s body is just too massive to fit in that small a space. You can’t mask one of those suckers up as Joe Schmoe and expect the illusion to work. Now, the Naedaran, you could glamour up and have it work until the thing attacked.”
“So the Varcont and the Naedaran can theoretically meander around the streets of Seattle without being noticed, which means trouble.” I thought for another moment. “Trytian, do you have any idea where they might be hiding? Even remote theories?”
He shook his head. “Not yet, but I have feelers out in the Demon Underground. Vanzir, you might head down there and ask around. There are factions there who like you, but who can’t stand me. No harm in covering the same base twice from different angles. Meanwhile, my father is preparing to make a run on Shadow Wing in the next couple of weeks. He’s amassed an army of discontents, and he figures now is as good a time as any to attack, given that the Demon Lord isn’t expecting anybody from inside his own realm to take him on.”
Once again, silence.
Another beat, and then Carter slowly said, “Is he sure this is the time?”