“I went over the cliff by mistake or I would be dead, too.” she finished. “I fell all the way to the base of the embankment, but I didn’t break anything. I got up and ran out of the park with the demon still chasing me. There were houses where I thought I could get help. Twice I managed to get inside and twice the demon broke down doors and windows to get at me. I was lucky, John. It almost had me several times. 1n the end, I managed to get on a bus just ahead of it. Even then, it slammed into the bus doors with such force that the glass broke and the metal bent. It was in such a frenzy it didn’t seem to care what it had to do. If the police hadn’t arrived, I think it would have kept coming. It has to be really worried about me to go to such efforts. Maybe it thinks I know something. Maybe I do, but the truth is I haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
She watched the skin grow taut across his face and his eyes lose their focus. as if he was looking at something beyond her. “I wanted to come after you, and then something happened and I couldn’t.” he said softly.
She waited. His eyes came back to her. “The demon has to be someone I know, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “I guess so. Someone you know well, for that matter. Someone at Fresh Start, if you want my further opinion. When Ariel appeared to me after our lunch, she said I should stay away from you, that you were lost, that there was demon stink all oven you. She said it was all over Fresh Start, as well. I was there earlier, and I was physically sick while I was inside the building. It might have been demon stink or it might have been the demon itself. This is all new to me. But it isn’t idle speculation anymore. It’s real. Something is after you.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, thinking it through. “Who was at Fresh Start yesterday morning when you were there?”
She shook her head. “I can’t be sure. Stef. Simon Lawrence, Ray Hapgaod, Carole someone, Della Jerkins, some others. There were a lot of people. I don’t think we can pin it down that way.”
“You’re right, it’s too hard. How about the park? How did the demon manage to track you there? It must have followed you.. “Or intercepted my message.” she finished. “I already thought of that. Who besides Stef and yourself would have known where I was going?”
He hesitated. “I don’t knave. Stef took the message at Fresh Start and gave it to me. I don’t think she would have told anyone else, but she might have. “
Nest took a deep breath, not liking what she was about to say. “So the demon might be Stef.”
The look John Ross gave her was unreadable. “That isn’t possible.” he said quietly.
She didn’t say anything.
Ross looked around, took in the nearby diners.
“Let’s continue this somewhere else.”
She charged the bill to her room, and they went out into the lobby. There was a small library bar on the other side and no one inside. They went in and took a table at the back on the upper level. The bartender, who was working the bar alone, came up and took their order for two iced cappuccinos and left. Surrounded by shelves of books and a cloud of suspicion and doubt, they faced each other anew.
“She saved all those people last night.” Ross insisted. “She risked her life, Nest. A demon wouldn’t do that.”
A demon would do anything that suited its purpose.”
“It isn’t possible,” he said again.
“This demon is a changeling. A very adept changeling.”
Ross shook his head. “I would know. I could be fooled, but not that completely.”
She wasn’t going to change his mind. Besides, she wanted to believe him. “So the demon found out where I was going and what I was doing some other way. What way would that be?”
Ross rubbed his lean jaw with one hand and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. None of this makes much sense. There’s something not right about all of it. If the Void wanted to turn me, why wouldn’t it take a more direct approach? Just suppose for a moment the dream comes to pass, and I do kill Simon Lawrence. That would be a terrible thing, but it wouldn’t persuade me to begin serving the Void. It would probably do just the opposite.”