I curved onto my dead-end street, the car fishtailing. The trees on each side that afforded us privacy from our neighbors pressed in on me. I floored the gas pedal that final millimeter, my body straining forward in my desire to get home.
The gate was open, Ro waiting for me to slow to a stop. The stiffness in his pose wasn’t all from his injuries. He strode past the wards out to the curb, stuck his head into my rolled-down driver’s side window, clasped my face in his hands, and kissed me. Leaning further into the window, he pressed me back against the seat, his hum of relief vibrating down to my toes.
I gripped his wrists, refusing to be let go of.
“You’re giving me gray hairs, Sparky,” he murmured with a shaky laugh, before kissing me again.
I rested my forehead to his.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Better now that I’m back.” I leaned across the car and opened the passenger door. “Get in. I’ll drive us up.”
An oshk materialized out of nowhere, denting the hood right as Ro walked past it.
I jumped out of the car and blew the demon back against the stone fence. While this oshk had the same blobby body as the one at the wreta house, instead of a single human arm, she had a fully defined female face with short blood-colored hair.
Her amorphous body expanded to deflect the impact. The oil slick pattern on her skin momentarily sucked all the light into it, creating the illusion of a massive void that was oddly hypnotic. I tore my eyes away, checking Ro for possible contact and repeat symptoms.
The glint in his eyes and hard set of his jaw was directed at the oshk, not me. He snicked out his blades as the oshk peeled herself off the fence.
I shoved him out of the way and blew a steady stream of electricity at the demon. “Are you kidding me?” I made a mental note to get some kind of long folding switchblade.
“I can’t just stand here.” A muscle ticked in his jaw.
I respected him enough that this had to be his choice, even if getting another hit of secretion wasn’t worth him lending his magic to this battle. “Your choice,” I said.
“Stop being reasonable,” he snapped. But his knives went away.
The oshk curled in on herself, her flesh rising up over the gash I’d caused and sealing it. “Where is he?” Her screech was a broken rasp. “Where is Candyman?”
“We don’t know,” Rohan said.
“You killed Five.” Was that a name and were there four more like her? Her eyes flashed red.
I launched a new offensive, but she ignored my magic like the deadly voltage was a gentle mist, and flew at us.
Rohan pulled me behind the open car door, swinging it outward to collide with the demon. The oshk slammed into the metal hard enough to rattle the hinges and disappeared.
“Bhenchod!” Rohan stormed up the driveway.
I got back in my car, driving past Ro and giving him space.
Drio was home so I dragged him into the library, filling him in on what had just happened.
The front door slammed. Rohan marched in wearing a deadly smile. “Leo needs better intel. Oshks aren’t Unique. Time to have a little chat with her.”
Ro had covered for Leo at every turn since I’d known him. Was the oshk in front of the chapter house really the final straw? Was he just frustrated or was he done keeping her secret? I stepped forward, but Drio gripped my arm, expression bland.
“That’s not Leo’s job.” He waved a hand around the library, deceptively mild, but leaving no doubt whose job it really was. “An urban legend’s got to have documentation somewhere.”
Rohan returned Drio’s impassive smile. “It better.”
The first time I’d met Drio, there’d been a moment when I thought Ro was going to kill him. I’d never seen that again from him and I wasn’t freaked out because I was seeing it again now. What had my palms clammy and my heart galloping was that Drio looked a blink away from methodically dismantling my boyfriend over my best friend.
Drio pulled the laptop close and ran a new search for the female face in the database.
I gripped the top of a chair watching the anger rolling off Rohan meet the implacable front that was Drio. It scraped my already raw nerves to fine wire. I opened a window but the fresh sunny breeze failed to ease the powder keg vibe.
Screw it. I jogged downstairs and rapped on Rabbi Abrams’ door.
“Come in.” His voice was a bit muffled.
I threw open the door. “What’s wrong?”
He crumpled up a Kit Kat wrapper. “Found them.”
I placed a hand over my heart. “Stop at one, please, and no more honey in your tea today.”
“Agreed. Do you have an update?” He waved me at a chair.
“Yeah.”
Give the man his due, he stayed pretty calm while I told him about his illustrious founder. I left out the deal Lilith had proposed because there wasn’t enough money in the world to make me talk sex with the guy. “You think Rabbi Mandelbaum knows this? Or that he’s up to the same thing? Making demon pets to help fight this war?”
“I’ve never heard any of this, and I’ve been around this Brotherhood much longer than he has.” He stroked his white beard. “It is, however, possible. Does Esther have anything to add?”
“She doesn’t know yet. I’ll go see her soon, but first I need your help with something else. Ever heard of an oshk?”
He sat forward with an interested gleam. “No. A demon?”
I gave him a brief run-down, asking if he could think of the best place to search for it since it wasn’t in the database or any of the texts we’d tried. He reached for another Kit Kat from the stash on his desk, leaning back with a grumble when I shook my head at him.
Denied his treats, Rabbi Abrams heaved himself out of his chair and pulled a thin book off his shelf.
I took it from his gnarled hands. “It’s a journal.”
The leather binding was brittle to the touch, the ink on the parchment was faded with time, and many of the pages had come loose. Entries were written in a spidery handwriting in a combination of English, Hebrew, and Russian while the pages were filled with illustrations of demons I’d never heard of, not that that meant anything. I didn’t have as complete an education in demonology as the other Rasha. “Are these Uniques?”
“The Brotherhood doesn’t believe them to exist. According to them, Rabbi Shokovsky made it his life’s work to record the whisperings of madwomen.”
“Witches?” I said.
“The Brotherhood wanted facts, demons that were confirmed in different cultures, not crazed rumors and fanciful tales. He died alone and reviled.” He ran a wrinkled finger along the edge of the page. “You said the oshk was an urban legend told by other demons. Perhaps Shokovsky heard the story.”
I stopped flipping pages at one covered in rough scribbles, all the sketches a variety of the oshk I’d met. “I’d say he did. How’d you get this contraband, Rabbi?”
“He was my great-great-great-grandfather.” Rabbi Abrams winked and tossed me a Kit Kat. “My family doesn’t precisely toe the party line either.”
I skipped into the library, clinging to this small victory like a lifeline. “I have returned triumphant.”
The mood had thawed between Rohan and Drio, but both the men seethed with frustration, open half-drunk beer bottles on the table in front of them.