Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Emberwood Fall Festival transforms the town fairgrounds into a scene you’d see in a Hallmark movie—one that smells like cinnamon and cider, and depicts everyone in cable knit sweaters drinking from steaming cups as they smile wide and chat with their neighbors.
Nothing has changed in five years.
And yet, everything has.
Once we have our tickets, the six of us step off to the side and get acclimated inside the entrance.
Sebastian unfolds the map that’s given out with admission and divides the fairgrounds down the middle with his finger.
“We’ll take the midway, the tractor pull, and the craft and baking contest buildings.
You take the local vendor booths, the livestock arena, the live band stage, and the fields with apple and pumpkin picking. ”
Asher snorts. “Of all the future planning sessions I spent with school councilors, ‘demon hunting at the fall fair’ was never a blip on my option form.”
I grin. “A little short-sighted, if you ask me.”
Orion and Rowan both chuckle, but Wylder and Sebastian are much too focused to fool around.
“Be careful, everyone.” Sebastian is a serious guy by nature, but tonight he’s even more intense than usual. I suppose after how badly things went for him the last time he braced for a confrontation, it’s understandable.
The hair at the back of my neck prickles as I take in our group. I was used to Asher and I being the only two people in our world, but over the past month, Orion, Rowan, Sebastian, and Wylder have become important to me.
It’s weird, synchronizing the Poppy I was before with the Poppy I am now. It’s not like I’m two separate people, but those two identities are very different.
The me I am now falls somewhere in between.
I hug Orion. “Good luck.”
He gives me a tight squeeze. “Watch your back, Popstar.”
I ease back and raise my fist to knuckle-bump Rowan and Sebastian. “If you run into any trouble, just send up a flare or call us and we’ll come running.”
“That goes both ways.” Sebastian gestures for Rowan and Orion to get moving. “Both groups check in every half hour, starting now.”
I open the app on my phone and set a timer. “Got it.”
When the other group is gone, we strike off. Asher positions himself on my right, and Wylder takes my left.
Emberwood Fall Festival… bring it.
Wow, everything is the same and, at the same time, nothing is. Mom used to drag us here every year, insisting we try every booth, sample every flavor of pie and tart, dance to every fiddle tune.
Lily would beg for face paint, and Violet would pocket sample candy and line up for baked goods, putting her Costco sample skills to use.
Now they’re gone. My sisters. My father. And though my mother is back in my life, it’ll never be the same. Especially when I’m standing here with a demon-tracking compass in my pocket and a mission that feels too big for my shoulders.
But grief doesn’t get to win tonight.
“Ready?” Wylder’s voice cuts through my emotional spiral and brings things back into focus.
I shove the sentiment down where it belongs, and pull the enchanted compass out of my pocket. “Hell yeah, let’s do this.”
I hand the tracker to Wylder, and he regards the face of the brass compass. “Rowan says, when demon energy is nearby, the silver will darken and pull toward the source like iron to a magnet.”
“So we just wander around looking creepy until this thing goes full Mordor?” Asher asks.
Wylder shrugs. “Essentially.”
“Cool, cool. Love a vague plan.”
I loop my arm through Asher’s, anticipation and anxiety surging through my system, urging me to keep moving. “Come on, boys. Let’s blend.”
We merge into the crowd, boots crunching through scattered leaves. The fairground buzzes with life. Sugar-high children shriek near the pumpkin patch. Couples share candied apples, holding out their sticky fingers. The music from a southern rock band drifts over from the stage.
My gaze is drawn toward the lanterns shaped like owls and foxes dangling from tree branches, their glow shifting between orange and gold.
It’s beautiful. Familiar.
But underneath it all, something hums wrong.
I lean to the side to study the compass. Wylder is shielding it with his palm, but I can see the silver face swirling lazily, unbothered. Nothing yet.
“Mulled cider, anyone?” Asher gestures toward a stand draped in a red-and-white checkered cloth.
Wylder looks like he’s about to object, but I’m already moving. “Absolutely.”
The vendor, Mrs. Calloway, used to slip my sisters and me extra cookies at the library bake sales. When she recognizes me as we step up to her booth, she beams. “Poppy Hallowind! Lord, I thought that was you. My, you’re the spitting image of your mama.”
“Hi, Mrs. Calloway.”
“Three hot ciders, please.” Asher slides cash across the counter of her booth.
“So, what’s new with you, dear?”
“Oh, you know. A worrisome case of ley-line instability, a few missing souls, possible demonic corruption. The usual.”
“Uh-huh.” Her focus is incredible as she pours from a steaming urn.
Wylder gives me a crazy look, and Asher barks a laugh, but Mrs. Calloway doesn’t even notice. Nothing has changed there. She never listened to the answers to the questions she asked us as kids.
A moment later, she delivers our cider, each cup garnished with a cinnamon stick and a dusting of sugar along the rim of the disposable cup. The first sip burns my tongue in the best way.
It’s sweet, spiced, exactly how I remember.
Asher takes a sip and grins at me. “On a scale of one to pumpkin-spice-overdose, how ‘harvest festival basic’ are we right now? What would our friends in Wichita say?”
I side-eye the cider in his hand. “You’re holding a drink with a cinnamon stick and a sugar rim. They’d laugh their asses off.”
“But it’s so festive.”
“It’s dessert in a cup.”
“And yet you’re still staring at it like you want to make out with it.”
I laugh and take another sip. “It’s fuel for a long night. We’re gathering intel.”
“On cider?”
“On everything.”
Wylder takes his cider without comment, scanning the crowd like he’s searching for hidden threats. Which, to be fair, he probably is.
We drift deeper into the festival, past stalls selling hand-knit scarves, dried lavender, and jars of honey so golden they practically glow. A woman in a velvet cloak reads tarot cards under a canopy of fairy lights. A blacksmith hammers iron into horseshoes, sparks flying like tiny stars.
Everything feels alive. Vibrant. Normal.
But when I let my vision blur just slightly, when I stop trying so hard to see with only my eyes, the festival shifts.
Golden threads shimmer around people, faint and delicate. Their souls are tethered, I realize. Most burn steadily, as warm as candlelight. But some flicker. Dim. Like flames starved of oxygen.
I follow the strands of golden threads and there, hovering near those dimmed souls, is a barely visible, translucent being.
I’m not sure what I expected a demon minion to look like, but these things are barely humanoid. They’re spindly, almost spidery. They’re freaky wrong is what they are.
The hair on my arms stands on ends, and I stop walking.
Asher glances over at me. “P?”
“Just give me a second.”
I focus on one figure near the kettle corn stand.
An older man, gray-haired and stooped, fumbles with his wallet.
His movements are sluggish, his face pale.
And clinging to his back like a second shadow is a thing with too many limbs—tendrils sinking into his shoulders, his spine, drawing something out.
Light. Energy. Life.
My stomach turns.
“Poppy?” Wylder’s voice is low, careful.
“Do you see it?” I whisper.
“No, but I sense it. And it looks like our tracking spell is working.” He tilts the compass toward me, and the silver inside has gone black, swirling toward the kettle corn stand. “How bad is it?”
I take a moment to explain what at first was a shimmering mirage of reality but now has sharpened to clarity.
“And it’s the same demon connected to several people?” he asks.
“Yeah, it’s like the ribbons of a maypole extending out to all the people it either fed or is feeding on, but it’s got itself wrapped around that guy over there and is sucking him dry.”
Wylder frowns. “That complicates things.”
I see his point. Disconnecting a feeding demon without being seen by the locals or targeted by the demons has greater odds of success when it only involves one person. How does that work when it’s attached to a group scattered all over the place?
“What do we do now?” Asher asks.
Wylder slides the compass into the pocket of his black jeans and frowns. “We proceed as planned. We stop it from feeding and then we banish it.”
“If you can’t see it, how can we stop it?”
He casts a sideways glance at me. “You’ll have to do it.”
“Seriously?” Asher hisses. “For weeks, Poppy has been berated and belittled about being incapable and unprepared, and now you want to shove her straight at a demon monster and have her fix the problem herself?”
Wylder gives Asher a patient look, but honestly doesn’t look nearly as dismissive as he usually does. “I never said she’s doing it alone, just that she’ll have to do it. She’s the one with the spirit affinity and, believe it or not, she is capable of handling this.”
Asher scoffs. “You can shove your backhanded epiphany up your ass. I’ve never doubted Poppy. Not once in the five years since your people roofied her and threw her away like your unwanted Wiccan trash.”
The muscle on the side of Wylder’s jaw flexes. “I had nothing to do with that, nor did I even know about it.”
I hold up my hands, knowing that Asher is only pissy because he loves me and he’s afraid for me. “Guys, enough. The longer you argue, the worse the poor guy looks. Wylder, what do I need to do?”
“What do you see?”
“I see a spindly spider creature sucking the life out of an old man with a straw. We need to take it down and send it back to the hell realm or wherever it belongs.”