Chapter 11
The Magdangal line has always been energy-based. We manipulate force and pressure—contain it, redirect it, compress it until it detonates. We sense energy the way others sense weather.
They all know that already.
“What about it?” Rafael asks.
“When you sense a demon,” I begin carefully, treading lightly, “does it ever feel… different? From time to time?”
“Different how?” my mother asks.
“Textured,” I answer. “Like eddies in the current, but not necessarily stronger or weaker. Not entirely stable.”
My father narrows his eyes. “Is this about the incident ten years ago, Mayari?”
There it is. The memory rushes me at breakneck speed.
The demon in the West Village. My blade going in clean, into his chest. The woman collapsing in silent, open-mouthed agony, just outside my salt circle.
The girl screaming so hard the sound tore through the air like something living.
The way the woman took the screaming girl and ran.
And my magic.
I’d sensed the demon clearly enough. That unmistakable current of supernatural energy had been there, the same signature every Magdangal learns to recognize almost as soon as our magic manifests. But something beneath it had felt wrong, at odds with everything I’d been taught that signature meant.
So wrong that I let the woman and child run. So wrong that I didn’t kill another demon for ten years.
“It was unfortunate,” my mother says evenly, “that the demon you slew had an entanglement.”
Entanglement.
That’s what she calls the child.
“I’m not talking about that,” I lie.
My brothers’ magic stirs with the tension, their energy brushing against mine in familiar currents.
“Demonic energy is demonic energy,” my mother says. “The signature does not change.”
“Agreed,” my father says. “Once I sense it, I know what I’m dealing with.”
I turn to Rafael. “But your forte reads more than that.”
He nods. “The underlying signature is the same. My forte pulls additional information from it. I sense the demon first. Then, if I focus, I can read how long that energy has existed.”
There.
My pulse kicks.
Energy.
His forte doesn’t sense age floating around independently. It reads age from the demon’s existing energy. Information embedded in the signature that the rest of us simply can’t perceive.
“So there can be more information in a demonic signature than just demon,” I say slowly.
Rafael considers that. “Apparently. My forte is proof of that.”
I look down at my hands, thinking about Jonah. About the strange buzzing beneath my skin. The skipping, insistent alarm that appeared around him and disappeared around others.
Because of what he was doing, what he wanted to do, and the energy created because of that.
“What if intent changes the energy?” I hear myself ask.
Raf’s brow furrows. “What?”
“Not that intent is energy.” The idea is forming even as I say it. “But when you decide to strike, your energy changes, right? You gather it. Direct it. Your whole magical field prepares for what you’re about to do.”
“If I’m using magic.”
“But maybe demons do it even when they aren't consciously using theirs,” I mutter. My heart beats faster. Maybe what they intend to do leaves a pattern in the energy they already give off. A shift. A charge. Something most of us can’t perceive.
Rafael’s expression changes.
I press a hand to my sternum at the realization. “Andres? What’s yours like?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing like that. Demon registers as demon. My forte only kicks in when I’m looking for fractures.”
“Leo?”
“Same. I can tell one’s there. Stronger signatures are harder to miss, obviously, but I don’t get anything else from them.”
I look at Gabriel.
He shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Sometimes it changes.”
Everyone looks at him.
“Changes how?”
“I don’t know.” His brow furrows. “Almost like the current skitters for a second. It’s subtle. I always assumed it was interference. Or just me.”
My mother does not like that answer. Neither, apparently, does my heart, because it’s beating considerably faster than it was thirty seconds ago.
“Okay,” I say slowly. Interesting. I note that for later, but now it’s time to switch it up. “What about demons?”
Six pairs of shoulders tense, and the temperature in the room drops ten degrees, as if a demon has just appeared in the kitchen asking for more suka.
“What about them?” Rafael asks carefully.
“Are there variations among them?” I continue. “Not in strength or age but in…” I try to choose my words carefully, “…in nature.”
Silence.
“Demons feed on humans,” my mother says. “That is their nature.”
“Yes,” I agree. “But feed how?”
My father’s eyes narrow.
“Souls and lives,” Leo answers bluntly.
“That’s what we’re taught,” I say. “But what if—hypothetically—there are differences?”
“Differences?” my mother repeats, the word flat.
“Levels,” I clarify. “Like with intent, or perhaps with method. If mine—and maybe Gabriel’s—” I glance over, and he’s shifting uncomfortably, “—magic feels different around certain ones, could that mean demons have differences?”
My mother steps forward. “You are overcomplicating something simple,” she declares. “Corruption is corruption.”
“But what if it isn’t?” I push. “What if some demons don’t consume the entire soul? What if—”
“That is demon propaganda,” Rafael cuts in sharply.
“It’s a serious question,” I snap.
My father’s voice is softer, more dangerous. “Why are you asking?”
Because a half-demon fed on rot and not essence. Because my slaying of a full demon ten years ago didn’t feel right or clean.
Because something inside me settles with a terrible, undeniable certainty that we are not nearly as discerning as we have always believed—and Jonah is living proof of it.
And beneath that realization, smaller but far more personal, comes the understanding that my magic has never been broken at all.
It has been precise. It has been specific.
It has been trying to tell me the truth for the last ten years—and I am finally beginning to understand that it has a name.
“Because my magic felt different,” I say instead. “With the blond, it was clean. Loud and clear and certain. With the other—”
“The other?”
I pause. “With another demon,” I decide to say lightly. “It started buzzing. Alerting me, almost.”
“That is hesitation,” he fires back.
“No,” I say, holding his gaze. “It wasn’t.”
The silence that follows is dismissive.
I drag a hand down my face. I can feel myself losing ground, and worse, I can feel them closing ranks.
I am not going to win a philosophical argument about the ethical dilemmas that demons may face in this kitchen.
And I have several more questions, but it’s not like I’ll ever ask my brothers if any of them have ever fucked a demon.
“Have you ever heard of Belvedere?” I decide to end with.
The room freezes, a collective stilling of motion and breath.
“Why?”
I look around at the faces of each one of my family members, attempting to gauge what’s happening. “Who’s Belvedere?” I ask.
Everyone looks toward my mother, who clears her throat. “He’s… one of the oldest demons known to New York City.”
“Oh,” Andres says lightly, fighting a grin. “You mean the one Ma’s tried to kill approximately a hundred times?”
“Belvedere’s really strong,” Gabriel adds diplomatically.
“If not the strongest,” says Rafael, with a smile that says he’s enjoying this.
I clap my hands in delight. I love this game. It is deeply pathetic that the rare moments of Magdangal unity occur when we collectively roast our mother, but the validation is intoxicating. “Let me guess,” I continue, barely containing myself. “He’s almost killed you.”
My mother does not answer.
“Oh, once Ma lost an entire arm,” Leo supplies gleefully. “Clean off. Took her weeks to regenerate.”
“It was not weeks,” my mother says tightly.
“It was absolutely weeks,” Andres insists. “Papa had to help her button her shirt.”
My father does not deny this.
I press both hands over my heart. “You lost an arm?”
“It grew back,” my mother says.
“That’s not the point,” I tell her.
“He shattered three of Ma’s ribs that same night,” Gabriel adds helpfully. “And cracked her sternum.”
“Ma coughed blood on the Persian rug,” Raf chimes in. “Papa was furious.”
My father gives him a look.
“It was a Filipino rug,” Raf concedes.
I look back at my mother, who is standing there in dignified silence while her children dismantle her legend.
“And you never killed him?” I ask sweetly.
Her jaw tightens. “He is strategic.”
“Translation,” Leo clarifies, “he’s strong, and he runs.”
“And you’re telling me,” I say slowly, glee building in my chest, “that this ancient, undefeated, arm-severing demon…”
“—who is a scourge on this city, responsible for hundreds of deaths a year—” my mother cuts in sharply.
The glee evaporates.
“—who is responsible for hundreds of…” I echo, and then finally my brain catches up with my mouth.
The kitchen tilts.
The blond demon’s last words slam back into me. Belvedere is coming. Halloween.
“Hundreds?” I repeat faintly. “Ancient, undefeated, and arm-severing.”
Ma pushes back from the island so abruptly that the stool legs scrape against the floor. “We need to prepare for Tribunal,” she says to Papa, already shifting into commander mode at the impending formal “staff meeting” with all five of the city’s slayer families. “They’ll be here in an hour.”
My pulse spikes.
They’re talking now, about logistics, seating, whether the Baptistes will insist on setting ancestral wards and if they’ll bring doubles, whether the Riveras will show up with pastelillos—but their voices blur together.
Hundreds a year. Undefeated against the most powerful demon slayer in the city. And he’s coming to Manhattan. To the kitchen.
To Jonah.
I’m moving before I consciously decide to.
“Where are you going?” Gabriel calls.
“Out,” I throw over my shoulder.
“Mayari—” my mother warns.
But I’m already halfway down the hallway.
Behind me, the Magdangals descend into their usual Tribunal chaos—arguments about territory lines, about whether Ridgewood counts as Brooklyn or Queens, about which borough always shows up late and which one always overcompensates.
The Chen–Moretti marriage is being debated—where does the couple live and slay after their union?
None of it matters.
Belvedere kills hundreds.
And Jonah is there.
I sprint out the front door, down the limestone steps, past Central Park gleaming and serene like nothing terrible has ever happened inside it.
And I run straight toward the soup kitchen.
To Jonah.