Page 68 of The Troll’s Summer Flame

“Alban, what’d you get?”

“Sulfur. Brimstone.” Alban slurps his coffee and shakes himself, blinking to clear his bleary eyes.

“Can you scry where the creature who made those marks went?”

“Yep. Not here.”

I suddenly realize how frustrating others must find me when I give such short answers. “I can see that.”

“I mean, it’s not in this realm.” Alban hands me back the coffee cup, then reaches into the pocket of his slouchy sweats with one hand and scratches his chest through his “You can’t scare me, I have twins” shirt with the other. “Scrying crystal winks on and off. Picks up the signal of the being, but then shuts down. Being isn’t here. Either dead or not in the realm. Hell realm, I’d guess.” He gestures to the ground. “Portaled, or somehow breached the energy that keeps Pine Ridge so tempting to non-humans. What we need to do is get the Pine Ridge coven over here to help me out,” Alban stretches, yawns, and tosses the crystal into one of the charred claw marks.

“To do what?”

“We already try to close off Pine Ridge to all evil forces. We ward, we patrol, we have the Night Watch... We have the best cops around.” Alban gives a fist bump to his police officer brother-in-law. “Somehow, this one got in. We can try to block it by creating a protective ward against succubi specifically—but I need more firepower if I’m going to weave the spell just right so that we don’t accidentally send a peaceful incubus like Liam Icarus hurtling into Hell.”

The three of us share a wince. “He’s not a succubus,” I protest, but I’m not sure exactly what the difference is. Liam looks nothing like the picture in Minegold’s book.

“Same type of demon, many forms, and divided into two branches,” Ardy pipes up. He’s a Pooka, or half-Pooka. The point is, he was raised by human and paranormal parents, and he seems to know what he’s talking about. “Like fish.”

“Like fish?” I rub my head, worried that lack of sleep is ruining my ability to function.

“You know how there are thousands of different fish, and all the different species look different, but they’re still all ‘fish’? We need a specific spell. Think of it like we’re trying to prevent a piranha from getting into our realm but leaving all the goldfish, guppies, and minnows in peace.”

“Oh! That makes sense. And this succubus is a piranha?”

“Seems to be. Someone shed blood, accidentally or on purpose, and that’s definitely more in line with a threat than not, not to mention that this one isn’t local. I’ll leave the specifics of the spell to Alban and the magical types. I have to go to the hospital.” Ardy holds up the vial and testing cassette. “There’s a decent wound here, but the blood stains don’t continue past this immediate area. That means we’re looking for a being that was whisked from this dimension almost immediately after being injured—”

“Good luck finding them,” I mutter.

“Or,” Ardy continues with a pointed glare, crossing his arms, “the being that was injured began to heal almost at once. A hardy specimen. Thick-skinned. Heavy.”

“You can tell that from the blood?” I demand, pointing at the little plastic test.

“No, by the path he or she left through the woods. Broken branches and brush. Large feet. Long strides. Almost no blood past the large concentration in the immediate area. The hospital will let me use their lab, and I can run more specific tests to get actual DNA—which won’t matter a hill of beans if the victim has never been arrested or their supernatural DNA profile isn’t in some database. What I’m actually hoping for is someone coming in with an injury that matches this kind of attack. Claw marks. Big slashes.”

“But they started healing right away. And they’re not human. Wouldn’t most monsters who are already on the mend avoid the hospital?”

“Depends on what they know and how freaked out they are,” Alban sighs. “We might never find this victim. The best thing we can do is prevent the succubus from coming back to create any more.”

“Agreed.”

Alban sighs. “I’ll start phoning people. Your backyard is gonna be busy.” He brightens up. “Andrea will get to meet a lot of the ‘paranormal’ community at once.”

And people will be in my house. My space. I have never had a guest until Andrea. I never needed to, never wanted to. “Oh.”

“You’ll be fine.” Ardy pats my shoulder.

Ardy is right. It’s fine—because of Andrea. And Andrea? She sparkles whenever she’s with people, even at four in the morning. Her mind is always sharp and excited about everything new, so she inserts herself in the thick of things—and she stands with me.

Not just next to me, with me, arm or hand in mine, snuggled to my side, telling the world, “This is my person. I am his family.”

It’s a good thing the sun is coming up blazing, because everyone will think I’m blinking from that instead of because my eyes are cursed with that prickly, hot pre-tear feeling.

We watch the coven of four women and Alban working. Tessa Roscommon had to bring her babies with her, and Andrea is holding one while Ian Fenclan, a huge, bearded Orc who recently became a grandfather, holds the other, babbling baby talk.

“You know, being around kids who won’t stop whispering while you’re trying to get everyone ready for the Winter Concert is way different than being around an adorable sleeping baby,” Andrea whispers, stroking the baby’s pale, chubby cheek, admiring his shock of wispy red hair. “I might develop baby fever after this.”

“Good.”