Chapter 23 #2
Inge stands. I expect her to throw me out, or at least politely demand I leave, which is more her style.
Instead, she goes into the other room and returns with a sheet of paper, shoving aside a stack of notepads to make room on the table.
She kneels on the floor and looks up at me.
Here, in her home, with her hair loose and her blouse collar undone, she looks every bit her age.
“When, exactly, did your father release this devil? Also, we need a new name for him, since he’s not the actual devil.
Is he?” She frowns in a puzzled expression so adorable it almost makes me laugh.
“The Watcher,” Maher says, his voice low and flat.
“Yes, good,” Inge agrees, writing it at the top. “When did your father release the Watcher?”
“1890.”
She jabs her finger triumphantly in the air, looking up at Maher. “The starting point. I told you that was it.” She holds out the sheet for me to look at. “I found deaths going back to 1890 that fit our pattern; nothing before that.”
“What about long before that?” I ask. “As in, more than a century.”
Inge narrows her eyes at me. “Are you saying Diavola had the Watcher trapped in a cave for a hundred years?”
I lean back and rest my forearm against my head. “Yes. Diavola is a vrykolakas. A Greek term for something neither living nor dead. She’s not a vampire, though.”
“A revenant,” Inge says, surprising me. How does she know specific terms for supernatural creatures? She continues. “No need to consume blood or flesh.”
I sigh. “Also immune to fire and blades and holy water, as is the thing we’re chasing.”
“Interesting.” Inge taps her chin. “I can’t say for certain before I do the historical research, but there are mass casualty events I can look into.
And stranger things, as well. Like the dancing plague, or a nun in the sixteenth century who began biting the other nuns, then they all started biting each other and no one could make it stop.
There were also the meowing nuns. A lot of nun stories, actually.
” Inge begins writing things down on a new sheet of paper.
I turn to Maher, waiting for him to contradict me or call me a lunatic. I’ve told them a vampire attacked me in München, the killer we’ve been chasing is an undead creature, and that our actual killer is an ageless devil.
Maher shrugs. “I’ve seen things, Anneke. The world is older and stranger than we like to imagine. And honestly, the idea that it’s a monster doing all this? After the horrors we’ve encountered, it’s almost a relief.”
“And you?” I ask Inge. “You’re the smartest of all of us. You’re going to take my word for it?”
Inge gives me the withering expression she’s honed to perfection, her big green eyes and full lips narrowing in unison.
“Magic and the supernatural are simply science we haven’t explained yet.
Besides, you never met my mother.” Without explaining that cryptic tidbit, she bustles out of the room. “Well?” she shouts.
“Well, what?” I shout back.
She leans around the corner, scowling. “Well, come on. We’ve got work to do. This adds a whole new layer of research, and the clock is ticking.”
I hurry after her, Maher behind me. “What do you mean, the clock is ticking?”
Inge leads me into the dining room. I stop short. Joren was right. Not a scrap of the wall is visible behind Inge’s materials. She slaps a large map of Europe covered in dots.
“While you all studied individual crime scenes, I studied larger patterns. The what and the why were your questions, but for the most part you ignored the where and the when. I didn’t. I know where he’ll be next April. Which gives us a year to figure out how to kill him.”
“Before we tell you what Inge’s figured out, you have to swear,” Maher says.
“Swear that you’ll never cut us out again.
We all lost Dávid, and you acted as though you were the only one who carried the weight of it.
Dávid was gone and my best friend abandoned me.
I’m not—I haven’t forgiven you. I understand why you did what you did, but it will take awhile until I’m ready to let you back in.
And we don’t need you as much as you think we do.
Inge and I have been continuing without you, and we’ll keep doing that, unless you promise: you never cut us out, and you never keep things from us. ”
I nod, tears in my eyes seeing the pain on his face. That’s part of why I avoided him. It wasn’t just the shame and guilt. It was seeing my own grief in someone else and not knowing how to share it. Not knowing how to extend comfort when I’m in so much pain myself.
“And I’m a full member of this team, with access to every crime scene and no attempts to protect me or shield me from anything,” Inge says. “I’m not your teenage pet anymore.”
“Inge, you were never—” I start, but her glare is so sharp it cuts me off. I nod again.
“Good. You can hug me now. I missed you, you arrogant idiot.”
I throw my arms around her, and Maher joins us. They’re right. I am an idiot. I should never have given this up, or assumed that grieving together would hurt more than what I did alone.
We hold each other, knowing what daunting darkness lies ahead of us. I feel Dávid in that embrace, the place where he should be.
And, strangely, I feel the place where Diavola would be, too. Whispering in my ear, smiling as the goosebumps raise along my skin wherever her breath touches. What will you do when you catch the devil, Little Fox?