Page 63 of Insidious Monsters
The specter was gone.
* * *
“I don’t understand,”Devyn said. “She’s not dead but she can manifest outside her body?”
“Yes, it must be part of her New Blood abilities. But she’s weak and she isn’t able to sustain it for long.”
“Makes sense,” Archie said. “Using abilities drains New Bloods.”
Devyn glanced at him but didn’t say anything.
She had to know what he was, but she was keeping quiet about it, probably because she realized he was more use to us outside of the Underbelly than locked away.
“I don’t think the Holy realized what she was doing,” Devyn said. “He’s had her for a month. The rest he ate through. But she must have kept herself alive by denying him her soul.”
“Do you think that’s why she aged?” Archie asked.
I shrugged. “No clue.”
“We don’t have the bodies of the dead mystics, and no ID on our other two survivors, so we can’t be sure,” Devyn added.
Well Miranda didn’t have a tag-along, but the other two survivors might. “Take me to them.”
* * *
Neither of theother two survivors had a tag-along, which left us back where we’d started.
I crouched in front of the male survivor, a small guy with thinning dark hair and a tatty beard. His blue eyes were watery and dim. He looked like he was lost in distant thoughts, trapped in memories. Heck, he might be. He could be trapped in his head for all we knew.
I squeezed his hand. “I wish you could hear me.”
“His tattoo is different,” Archie said.
“It is?” Devyn joined us inside the room.
“Yeah.” Archie pulled a notepad from his pocket and flipped to the image he’d drawn of the other tattoos. “These don’t have the extra lines.”
He was right. The guy’s tattoo was more intricate than the ones on the female mystics. “Could be a gender thing.”
“Milo will be able to look into it,” Devyn said. “In fact, he agreed to meet up with August over the symbols and the inscriptions. I need to text her to let her know. The sooner the better.”
Archie’s stomach growled. “Ah, it’s food time.” He pulled out his mobile. “I’ll order it to be delivered in an hour. We should be home by then. You want some salt-and-pepper chicken wings?”
The last thing I wanted to do was eat. “I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat, Nandi.” Archie rattled off the order.
“He’s right,” Devyn said.
“Nandi, what’s the postcode again?”
I rattled off the letters and digits and he relayed them down the phone. “Yeah, the black castle on the hill.” He rolled his eyes at me as he headed for the door. “No, you’ve delivered before. Yeah, several times. Just send Carl.”
The door closed behind him, leaving me alone with Devyn and the mystic. “Look at him. Look what that monster did to him.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Devyn said. “We will catch him. I promise you that.”
“I just wish I knew what we were dealing with.”
