Page 47 of Demon’s Snack

I cover her hand briefly with mine. “Get the note out.”

She nods and slips from the archive.

Alone again, I return to the scroll and unroll it one more time. The Dareth notation waits in the margin, patient as poison.

I copy the relevant lines into my private ledger using shorthand before hiding the book beneath the loose stone behind the third shelf.

When I finally straighten, the archive feels colder than before.

Vaerith is engineering provocations. Corin is not merely contract-touched. My bloodline may have been shaped for stabilization generations before I was born.

And somewhere beyond these walls, the man tied to that impossible pattern is probably pacing himself raw trying not to become the monster everyone keeps trying to force him into.

“Be strategic,” I whisper, though I no longer know whether I am speaking to Corin, myself, or the ancient contract logic waking quietly inside my blood.

Then I extinguish the lamp and leave the archive before the darkness can answer.

7

CORIN

By the time the lesser demons stop pretending they are not following me, I have already counted three of them.

The first keeps to the rooftops with the lazy confidence of something that believes height makes it subtle. It moves under a torn brown cloak, hunched low against the chimney stacks, its limbs too long whenever the wind catches the fabric wrong. The second trails me from across the street, pretending to examine cart wheels, shop signs, puddles, and every other excuse available to a creature with no patience for mortal acting. The third is the worst because it wants me to notice it. It walks twenty paces behind me in plain view, wearing a man’s face like a borrowed glove and smiling whenever I glance back.

The city around us is too loud for the hour, all damp cobbles, shouting vendors, iron-rimmed wheels, and the greasy smoke of supper stalls beginning their evening trade. Rain earlier in the day has left the gutters swollen and mean, carrying scraps of cabbage leaf, old straw, and little twists of spellpaper whose ink has bled into useless streaks. The air tastes like soot, fried lentils, wet wool, and the faint sulfurous tang of infernal residue that no one else seems to notice.

I notice.

My blood notices harder.

“Subtle crowd,” I mutter, keeping my pace even as I pass a stall selling chipped bowls and cracked lamp chimneys. “Really embracing the ancient art of not looking suspicious.”

The demon across the street tilts its head, and for half a second its borrowed face forgets what expression belongs on a human mouth. The smile stretches too far, showing teeth that do not sit correctly in the gums. A woman buying onions beside it shivers and steps away without knowing why.

I do not stop.

That is the part Rhazek would approve of, provided he finished criticizing the rest of my decisions first. Do not react to lesser provocations unless reaction serves an outcome. Do not bare your teeth because a smaller predator wants proof they exist. Do not spend power on carrion unless carrion develops ambition.

The problem is that carrion has developed ambition.

I turn down Brackett Lane, away from the thickest part of the market and toward the old west drainage arcade, because the folded note in my pocket tells me to avoid reflective surfaces and because apparently my life now includes receiving coded warnings from a woman trapped in a dark elf estate. The paper rests against my thigh with every step, stiff and absurdly precious. I have read it six times, though “read” may be generous for the process of staring at bureaucratic nonsense until Isolde’s meaning unfolded beneath it like a blade wrapped in cloth.

Avoid reflective surfaces.

Threat-response correlation confirmed.

Anchor proximity alters surge pattern.

I nearly laughed when I reached that last line, not because it was funny, but because only Isolde could warn a man that she might be the difference between him surviving and devouring the nearest breathing soul in a tone better suited to filing a late tax notice.

The demon behind me chuckles.

The sound skitters along the stones, too dry for the damp air.

I slow near the mouth of a narrow cross-street where the buildings huddle close and the lamps hang unlit. “You boys lost?”

The rooftop one drops lightly to a balcony rail above, its cloak billowing around knees that bend wrong. The one across the street stops pretending to browse and steps into the lane. The smiling one behind me spreads its hands in an exaggerated show of innocence.