“Then do it,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
So many hurt. So much destroyed. So much fear and anguish and anger. And, I knew, so much more of that to come. I gripped his shirt with white-knuckled hands and let go of the emotions and the helplessness.
After a moment, when I’d let out all that I’d been holding, I took a haggard breath, wiped my eyes, patted half-heartedly at the tear stains on his shirt.
“It’s dark,” he said. “It’ll wash out.” He sniffed his shoulder. “Although I’m pretty sure Alexei found this shirt in the dirty laundry pile at the NAC gym.”
“Lies,” Alexei said, still nearby, and I decided not to mind that he’d seen me be vulnerable. He was a friend, too.
“So Rose is the demon. How did she do all this?” Connor asked, worried gaze on the chaos.
I moved, and the pain nearly buckled my knees. The hip was going to take some time. “I need to sit,” I told Connor when he reached out a hand to steady me. “I’ll tell you all about it, but I need to sit.”
***
I didn’t bother walking back to the warehouse. Instead, I sent the Ombuds a ping to signal my location, warned them to beware of the panther, then sat on the curb and put my head between my knees while my body righted itself.
Footsteps sounded nearby when Theo, Roger, and Petra came toward us, Gwen behind them, and this time in a suit the color of red wine. Her detective’s shield gleamed gold at her waist.
They were all here. They were all safe. That helped. Because this was going to hurt.
Roger stepped forward and offered me a bottle of blood. “Thought you might need this,” he said, and my heart clenched with appreciation and guilt at the pain I was going to have to inflict. Thatshewould make me inflict.
“Thank you,” I said. “If you’ll just excuse me...” Without waiting for a response, and ignoring the little voice that told me to hide what I was doing, I drank the bottle in a single breath, and felt the power of it immediately as pains began to dull.
“Thank you,” I said again when I’d capped the bottle. “I took a couple of hits, and healing takes a lot of energy.”
“Hits?” Theo said, alarm in his voice, and crouched in front of me.
“I’m okay. Or will be.” The dull aches were already beginning to ease. I looked at Roger. “Do you want me to start at the beginning or get to the important part first?”
He paused and visibly prepared himself. “Hard part first.”
“Rose is the demon Eglantine.”
Silence followed that revelation, and it seemed the city hushed around us, too. Gwen was already pulling out her screen, probably sending instructions for a BOLO.
“You saw her?” Theo asked quietly, breaking that hush.
“Italkedto her,” I said. “We can pick through the details later, but here’s the gooey middle of the brownie: She wanted back into Chicago. Her companions made a move on her sooner than she wanted, and she decided the time was now. She knew the gate was magicked, so she called in her marker with the Ombuds’ office, hoping she’d get muscle to get her through. Which she did.”
I looked at Roger. “I’m sorry for the part we played in this. In making this happen.”
“Not your fault,” he said, voice hard and jaw rigid. Battling many emotions, I guessed. “Keep going.”
“I didn’t get any details about where she’d been since the gate, but she probably took that trail back to the road, either had a vehicle waiting or called another accomplice in the city.”
“Why did she want to come back?”
“She refused to tell me,” I said flatly. “I think she may be looking for something. This sounds ridiculous, but she kept sniffing the air.”
“Like you do?” Petra said.
“Like I— What? I don’t do that.” The lie popped out automatically. I guess I wanted to distinguish myself from her.
“You do when you think there might be coffee, doughnuts, or magic.”
“Quite a list,” I muttered. “But yeah, it was like that. I don’t know what she’s looking for, though. Something around here, or else the ward wouldn’t have been triggered.” I pointed to the warehouse. “That’s your ward.”