Chapter 25
When the shoppers returned, they did so with possibly every tent stake in the state of Arizona. Brandon and Quinn helped them bring in the rest of the bags, and I swear to you, there were at least twenty bags. Maybe a hundred. They kept multiplying like damn crawfish in the rainy season.
I also noted that the air around Lachlan and Seiji had definitely changed. They were more in each other’s space now, hands lingering on shoulders or hips as they maneuvered around each other. Oh, hell yeah, Brandon’s nudges had been on point.
Seiji was a new friend, granted, but I started throwing wishes up to the stars on his behalf. I wished for this potential relationship to work out and for these two people I liked a lot to be happy together. Maybe even become a bonded pair like Brandon and I were. Crazier things had happened.
Shit, I wished I could see meridian lines like Jon could. He’d be able to take one look at them and tell what the odds were. I envied his eyes some days.
I set that matter aside as I helped put everything on the table. There was white cloth here? For some reason? And calligraphy brushes, markers, bottles of red paint—this was seriously looking like an art project gotten off Pinterest.
Quinn looked over the table uneasily before voicing, “I would like to remind everyone that I failed art in school. Repeatedly.”
Seiji put the last bag on the table before assuring him, “There’s many parts to this. I suggest an assembly line. Someone to cut strips, someone to write the boundary word, then another to tie the strips onto the tent stakes.”
Oh, that was what the white cloth and paint were for. I wasn’t sure how he was going to mark the tent stakes since they were just wires, but that made a lot of sense.
Seiji pulled out a marker and quickly wrote out a kanji on a corner of the white cloth. Then he held it up for all to see. “Who has faith they can reliably copy this?”
A few hands went up, more or less the people I expected: Eli, Hannah, Gwyn, Booker, and myself. Davina held up both hands in a warding gesture, shaking her head, clearly not comfortable with the job.
“Why is it in kanji?” Gwyn asked him curiously. “What’s the word?”
“The word is kyōkai. Boundary. And it’s in kanji because it looks cooler.”
A few went pffft, and Quinn said, “It’s an honest answer, if nothing else. I’ll tie. That, I can do.”
We divvied up projects depending on people’s skill levels, and I ended up second seat in the assembly line on one side of the table. Seiji and Gwyn were on the other side from me, I assumed so he could see most of the scribes, as he could see everyone from the middle.
“Brandon, cut me off a piece to practice on,” I requested.
He did so, and I picked up a marker. I had no experience with calligraphy brushes and now seemed a poor time to learn. Messing up a boundary marker came with consequences I couldn’t foresee, so I’d just skip that potential pitfall.
Brandon stood near the head of the table, and he wasn’t cutting the strips so much as notching the cloth with scissors and ripping along the nape of the fabric. A faster method, for sure. Hopefully I could keep up with him as he churned out strips for me.
The first minute or so, people didn’t say much as they settled.
Then Eli, still carefully drawing the kanji, drawled, “So, Seiji, how long have you and Lachlan been dating?”
Without missing a beat, he returned, “Our unofficial first date was four hours ago, thanks for asking. We’ve got an official first date planned once this insanity is over.”
Wow, Lachlan must have confessed the second they got in the car. Never say the man couldn’t move once he had a direction.
Lachlan, for his own part, seemed quite smug.
That little grin playing around the corners of his mouth and the lingering hand he put on Seiji’s shoulder as he passed behind him—oh, that was bragging right there.
Bragging without a word. Seiji’s head turned a little to catch Lachlan from the corner of his eye, a matching smugness on his own face.
There was going to be no living with these two. For weeks, at least, until the giddiness died down a little.
There were a few congratulations going around the table, my own included, because I was happy my friends were dating.
People either stood and worked, sat at the island, or gathered around the table.
Someone got music playing; it was a nice background to our work.
Group projects like this were always fun.
I liked the camaraderie of the moment, the feeling of teamwork.
Maybe I was the weird one, but I liked group projects.
I was also taking advantage of having Seiji right in front of me. “Seiji, how busy are you on an average basis?”
“Depends on the time of year,” he said, eyes glued to his brush as he wrote out the kanji. “Winter? Nothing’s happening. I don’t work when it’s colder than twenty degrees outside, not unless it’s an extreme situation.”
“Fair, man. I don’t freeze outside unless I have to either.”
Brandon snorted. “Only you consider anything below fifty degrees to be freezing.”
I snorted, nose high and lofty. “I have Southern blood, merci.”
He was, of course, delighted his teasing hit the mark. Lord save me with this man.
“I would say from March until end of October, that’s when I’m insane and can’t catch my breath.” Seiji paused and glanced from me to Gwyn. “Scheduling?”
“You’re going to be the hardest person to schedule lessons with,” I said.
“You’re wise to think of it now,” he acknowledged. “Some lessons I can do via Zoom. This lesson, for instance. I can teach her how to do the prep work without being physically present.”
Gwyn paused in her writing to glance up at him. “Do you have, like, a course book? Something I can study?”
“Ah. Yes…?”
“The way you elongated that gives us no faith,” Quinn said, hands flipping as he tied a ribbon onto a stake.
Seiji hemmed and hawed as he admitted, “What I actually have is a very, very old field notebook from my master’s master. I’ve scanned it into a digital version. Frankly, I’m terrified of the original copy going missing and us all being fucked.”
“But it isn’t typed, just scanned?” Gwyn thought on that for a bare quarter of a freckle past a hair. “What if I go through the scans and try to type it all up?”
Child, why would you volunteer to do that?
“Oh, great idea,” Booker said. “Information will stick better in your head that way.”
“It would,” Seiji said. “Booker, you want a copy too?”
“Sure, would love to read it.”
Clearly, I wasn’t geeky enough for this present company. Staring at possibly illegible handwriting for hours at a time and typing up what you think it says? Hard pass.
We kept tying. Writing. Lord have mercy, we were going to be here until midnight.
It did bring up a question. “Seiji, do you think we’re really going to use all of these?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “That’s the problem. I really don’t have any sense of scale for the area, so we might only need half of these. We might need them all. I erred on the side of caution and kept receipts.”
“Gotcha. Then should we try to get all of these done today?”
“Hmm, no, I think about half to start. If we run out, I can always bring the supplies with me. This is something we can do as we go.”
A second thought occurred to me. “Uh, do we have to collect these things after we’re done?”
Seiji hesitated. Hesitated so long it felt like he wasn’t sure how to answer. Then his eyes went up to meet Lachlan’s. “It depends. On what’s down in those mines.”
Lachlan came around to stand just behind his chair, placing a hand on his shoulder.
It was me he addressed and his tone was apologetic.
“Thing is, mate, that might well be a full-fledged demon down there. Not a traditional demon—a soul gone bad—but something else, something older. A remnant of a monster’s soul. ”
Everyone stilled. I questioned sharply, “Now hold on. I thought you didn’t know what was down there, just that it’s evil.”
“Oh, it’s evil.” Lachlan made a face, but his eyes were worried and fixed on Seiji.
Then he looked at Davina, sitting at the head of the table.
“Gone into those mines three times. No trace of bones, scat, or water. No sign this thing was coming up topside, either. There’s also no souls in the mines. The ones we saw the first time? Gone.”
Davina’s face scrunched into a wince and got stuck. “Gestation period?”
“Maybe.”
“Fuck my life.” She collapsed dramatically backward, head barely hanging on by the neck.
I kinda followed this, but it was Brandon who fired off the next question. “What does gestation mean?”
Davina rattled off the answer, head still hanging backward like a demented cryptid’s. “The oldest beasties, they do die and lose their mortal forms, but they can also form up a new one. Takes a long while, generally decades, but if the conditions are right and they’re left alone, they can do it.”
“Like a caterpillar creating a cocoon?” Quinn’s expression was alarmed, only his alarm was growing into oh-fuck-no. “Only this one’s underground and it’s just percolating into a glob of evil?”
I fucking hated my life just then. “Next question I don’t actually want an answer to: Seiji, if it’s a demon, can you kill it?”
Seiji gave a sad shake of his head, a wince crinkling up one eye. “Sorry, no. If it’s still in gestating form, maybe? Between Lachlan and me, at least, I think we could do it.”
“Depends on how strong and fully developed it is?” Eli guessed.
Seiji shrugged.
Quinn waggled his phone in the air. “Do we need to tell Sylvia?”
“Likely. We really don’t know for sure, though, which was why we held off on reporting it. I’d like to get some kind of visual.”
Lachlan seemed game to go back in there just for a look-see, but he was also certifiable. I, on the other hand, felt like a call to my boss was likely prudent. Just to give her a heads-up that we might need a demon hunter.
“Circling back to the original question.” Seiji used his hands on the table to illustrate the area.
“We need to mark the boundary no matter how this turns out. So mark it, and if this is something Lachlan, Davina, and I can defeat, we do. If we can’t, I will use the markers to form my own boundary.
Lock the demon down so it can’t escape. It’ll buy time for the right professional to come back in. ”
Booker paused in his writing to ask, “You said before how much you can do depends on how bad the disaster is. So, Seiji, how powerful are you right now?”
Seiji met his eyes and deadass said, “Been tempted to jump off the roof. Pretty sure I can fly like Superman right now.”
I chuckled. He had a dry sense of humor I could fully appreciate. I wasn’t the only one. A few others chuckled too.
Grimacing, he tacked on, “It’s why I’m pretty sure the thing down there is a demon. There’s just so much chaotic energy, it’ll be stranger if it isn’t.”
Looking around the room, Booker asked, “Has anyone googled to see if there’s mythological creatures that might fit?”
Lachlan reminded him, “No scat or bones down there.”
“Fuck, right, so it can’t be any sort of living creature.”
“Aye.”
This kinda made sense but did beg the question—“What about the Slaugh? It didn’t eat like a living creature.”
“But it did need elements of a living creature,” Lachlan reminded me. “It needed to eat. Souls, grant you, but it did eat. It liked being near water. It had patterns, like being nocturnal. This thing, whatever it is, doesn’t do any of that.”
“Shit.” He made a sound argument and I couldn’t counter it. I just really, really didn’t want it to be a demon.
Brandon abruptly got up and headed for the back patio. “I’m making that call to Sylvia now. Lachlan, join me.”
Agreeable, he followed Brandon out.
Gwyn glanced from face to face and asked timidly, “Can no one in this group hunt demons?”
“No, ma petite chère,” I answered wearily. “No, demons are a different breed. Strong as Eli is, she can’t exorcise a demon.”
“Not if it’s fully developed,” Eli said. She did look a bit put out agreeing with me, as if this was a bone she wanted to pick with whoever handed out talents.
“Demon hunters actually have their own division in PAD,” Beau further explained. “They’re rare, and coveted, and about as run off their legs as poor Seiji.”
Seiji apparently thought this example funny but also grimaced in agreement. He was kept pretty busy. Except during winter, by his own choice.
I could see why these two were already planning to lock the area down if this wasn’t something we could handle.
The odds of us being able to just call in a demon hunter were slim.
Hell, we’d probably pushed all of our luck getting Seiji here.
We might not have any luck left the rest of the year.
Fuck me, I thought we’d finally deboarded from the demon train when we dealt with Joey.
I didn’t want to reboard. Not one little bit.
Now, the question I had to ask myself was, did I want them to be able to kill this thing?
I didn’t want precious friends going into those mines hunting something they couldn’t name.
But I also didn’t want to leave a demon behind when there were so, so many innocents who lived near this area.
People who wouldn’t stand a prayer if this thing got loose.
If there was an easy answer here, I didn’t see it.