She nodded slowly. "That's better. Much better. Now I'm seeing you the way you really are. Demon threats are all well and good, but they work best when they are directed toward children and from behind a shield of numbers."
Her words were laced with venom, and hot anger burned through her. Wraith was awake and moving inside, all impatience and dark need, her bitterness fueling his drive to break free and attack. She was tempted. She was close to letting him go, to willing him out of her body and onto the hateful form of the creature in front of her. She wasn't sure how that would end, but it might be worth finding out.
"I made a mistake with you when you came to my house two days ago, Mr. Gask," she said. "I should never have let you leave. I should have put an end to you then and there."
His mouth twisted. "You overestimate yourself, Miss Freemark. You are not as strong as you think."
She smiled anew. "I might say the same for you, Mr. Gask. So now that we know where we stand on matters, why don't we just say good-bye and go our separate ways?"
He considered her silently for a moment, his eyes shifting to Ross and the others, then back again. "Perhaps you should take a closer look at yourself, Miss Freemark, before you expend all of your energy judging others. You are not an ordinary, commonplace member of the human race with which you are so quick to identify. You are an aberration, a freak. You have demon blood in your body and demon lust in your soul. You come from a family that has dabbled more than once in demon magic. You think you are better than us, and that your service to the Word and the human cause will save you. It will not. It will do exactly the opposite. It will destroy you."
He lifted the leather-bound book in front of him. "Your life is a charade. All that you have accomplished is a direct result of your demon lineage. Most of it you have repudiated over the course of time, until now you have nothing. I know your history, Miss Freemark. I made it a point to find out. Your family is dead, your husband left you, and your career is in tatters. Your life is empty and useless. Perhaps you think that by allying yourself with Mr. Ross, you will find the purpose and direction you lack. You will not. Instead, you will continue to discover unpleasant truths about yourself, and in the end your reward for doing so will be a pointless death."
His words were cutting and painful, and there was enough truth in them that she was not immune to their intended effect. But they were the same words she had spoken to herself more than once in the darker moments of her life, when acceptance of harsh truths was all that would save her, and she could hear them again now without flinching. Findo Gask would break down her resolve with fear and doubt, but only if she let him do so.
He smiled without warmth. "Better think on it, Miss Free-mark. Should it come to a test of magics between you and me, you are simply not strong enough to survive."
"Don't bet against me, Mr. Gask," she replied quietly. "It may be that this is a battle you will win, that the magic you wield is more powerful than my own. But you will have to find out the hard way. John Ross and I are agreed. We will not hand over the gypsy morph—not because you say we must or because you threaten us or even if you hurt us. We won't cede you that kind of power over our lives."
Findo Gask did not reply. He simply stood there, as black as ink and carved from stone. The wind gusted suddenly, whipping loose snow across the space that separated them. The demon stood revealed for an instant longer before the blowing snow screened him away.
When the wind died again and the loose snow settled, he was gone.
Some lessons you learn early in life, and some of those lessons are hard ones. Nest learned an important one when she was twelve and in the seventh grade. She had only just the year before experienced the consequences of using magic after Gran had warned her not to do so, and she was still coming to terms with the fact that she would always be different from everyone else. She had taken a book from the school library and forgotten to check it out. When she tried to slip it back in place without telling anyone, she got caught. Miss Welser, who ran the library with iron resolve and an obvious distrust of students in general, found her out, accused her of lying when she tried to explain what had happened, and sentenced her to after-school detention as punishment. Nest had been taught not to challenge the authority exercised by adults, particularly teachers, so she accepted her punishment without complaint. Day after day, week after week, she came in after school to perform whatever service Miss Welser required—shelving, stacking, cataloging, and cleaning, all in long-suffering silence.
But after a month of this, she began to wonder if she hadn't been punished enough for a transgression she didn't really believe she had committed in the first place, and she screwed up her courage sufficiently to ask Miss Welser when she would be released. It was almost March, and spring training for track would begin in another few weeks. Running was Nest's passion then as now; she did not believe she should have to give it up just because Miss Welser didn't believe her about the book. But Miss Welser didn't see it that way. She told Nest she would be on detention for as long as it took, that sneaking and lying were offenses that required severe punishment in order to guarantee they would not happen again.
Nest was miserable, trapped in a situation from which it did not seem she could extricate herself. Everything had begun to revolve around Miss Welser's increasingly insufferable control over her life. If Gran noticed what was happening, she wasn't saying, and Nest wasn't about to tell her. At twelve, she was beginning to learn she had to work most things out for herself.
Finally, with only a week to go before the start of track season, she told her coach, Mr. Thomas, she might not be able to compete. One thing led to another, and she ended up telling him everything. Coach Thomas was a big, barrel-chested man who preached dedication and self-sacrifice to his student athletes. Winning wasn't the only thing, he was fond of saying, but it wasn't chopped liver either.
He seemed perplexed by her attitude. "How long have you been going in after school?" he asked, as if maybe he hadn't heard her correctly. When she told him, he shook his head in disgust and waved her out the door. "Tell Miss Welser that track begins on Monday next and Coach Thomas wants you out here training with everyone else and not in the library shelving books."
Nest did what she was told, thinking she would probably end up being sentenced to the library for life. But Miss Welser never said a word. She just nodded and looked away. Nest finished out the week and never went back. After a while, she realized she should have spoken up sooner, that she should have insisted on a meeting with the principal or her adviser. Miss Welser had kept her coming in because she hadn't stood up for herself. She had given Miss Welser power over her life simply by accepting the premise that she wasn't in a position to do anything about it. It was a mistake she did not make again.
Staring at the space Findo Gask had occupied only moments before, she thought about that incident. If she gave the demon power over her by conceding that she was frightened, she lost any chance of ever being free of him.
Of course, there was a certain amount of risk involved in standing up for yourself, but sometimes it was a risk you had to take.
Ross, Bennett, and the children came up to her, Ross's hands knotted about his rune-scrolled staff as he limped past her a few steps to study carefully the tree-thrown shadows. Far back in the hazy gloom of the conifers, there was a hint of movement. Ross started toward it. He looked so tightly strung that Nest was afraid he would lash out at anything that moved.
"John," she said quietly, drawing his dark gaze back to hers."Let him go."