“We are the Goddess’s beloved children,” he continued. “In this life, we are protected by the Servi, Her guardians. And in the next, She will welcome our pure, devoted souls. We have pledged our eternal loyalty, and we will be forever protected. Let us thank the Goddess for Her gifts.”

As the cultists bowed their heads, I tilted my face away from my viewport, needing a minute to swallow my stomach back down. Would Ezra’s parents have stood a chance against this kind of rhetoric?

The sect’s leader completed the prayer, and the group began a ritual that involved a lot of chanting in Latin. After that, he led them through a “Knowing of Her Light,” in which all the members stared into their scarlet candle flames as though hypnotized. Some of them whispered or trembled, deeply moved by whatever they felt.

“The Goddess can feel your spirits and She is pleased,” the leader murmured. “Now, through the gracious gift of the Servi, we will bind our souls to Her Light forever.”

He pulled a silver chalice from beneath the lectern and swept into the center of the circle, his scarlet cloak billowing. The demon rose to its full, terrifying height and held out its arm. With its other hand, it dragged a claw across its wrist.

Thick, dark blood dribbled from the slice, and the leader caught the fluid in his chalice.

No. Oh please, no. Let this not be what I thought it was.

He let blood flow into the chalice, filling it nearly to the brim before pulling the cup away. The demon lowered its arm, blood dripping on the floor with loud, wet splats.

The leader turned to the woman kneeling to the left of the lectern. He extended the cup.

“Drink,” he whispered, “and let the Goddess share Her power with you, Her child.”

Without the slightest hesitation, the woman lifted the chalice and took a hearty gulp of the demon’s blood.

I gagged. My heaving stomach tried to erupt and I clamped my hand over my mouth. Beside me, Justin’s breath wheezed through his clenched teeth.

The woman passed the chalice to the next cultist. As he drank, the leader moved to the center of the circle, his deep voice rolling through the room.

“The MPD fears the Goddess’s power. The Servi are too powerful when not bound into slavery, but more than that, they fear this: the gift of Her power, given to you. Let Her Light enter you. Feel your strength, your magic, grow.”

The chalice was halfway around the circle now. I squeezed my eyes shut, desperate to block it all out. Had Ezra done this too? Drunk a demon’s blood while a madman told him he was being gifted with divine power?

“The Goddess is the mother of magic. Her power is ultimate. Through Her, we can reclaim our true birthright.”

This needed to be over. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.

“Auditores, thank you. We will convene again next Tuesday at eight o’clock. Remember—vigilance, for the MPD is always watching. Until then, keep the Goddess in your hearts.”

Opening my eyes, I peered through the gap. The demon had vanished, and all the attendees had blown out their candles, leaving only the candelabra to light the room. The cultists were on their feet, milling silently, then they filed toward the door.

Relief flooded me. The tension in my limbs released—and the faintest creak sounded from the plywood as my weight shifted.

Directly below me, a cultist looked up. My breath locked, my body rigid as a board.

“Did you hear that?” the cultist asked the woman beside him.

She looked up too. “Hear what?”

The urge to recoil was almost too strong, but any movement would trigger more creaking. They couldn’t see me, I told myself. The gap was way too narrow.

With bold, confident steps, the leader strode around his lectern. “Auditor, what troubles you?”

“My apologies, Praetor,” the man said. “I heard a noise in the ceiling.”

I sucked in air through my nose. Silence stretched as the people below listened intently.

“It was probably a mouse,” the leader decided, sounding almost comically mundane after his cult oration. “My cat died last fall, and the mice moved in over the summer. I’ll have to set up more traps.”

“Oh, yeah, I had a mouse problem when I lived in Salem,” the sharp-eared cultist replied, looking away from the ceiling. He resumed his journey toward the door. “They wouldn’t touch cheese, but when we loaded the traps with peanut butter, they …”

As his voice receded, the other cultist and the leader followed. A moment later, the door banged shut. The room was empty, all cultists gone, and I sagged limply against the plywood, gulping down air.

That had been way too close.

Chapter Fourteen

“The cult survived.” I paced the length of the drab living room with jerky steps. “It survived.”

Since we weren’t leaving Portland tonight, we’d needed accommodations. A crap motel room hadn’t appealed to us, so Aaron had popped online, found a short-term rental, and booked it for a few nights. The two-bedroom apartment was on the ground floor of an aging apartment complex, but it was more spacious—and more private—than a hotel.

Aaron, perched on the arm of the sofa with his hands knotted under his chin, watched me pace. “Is the leader acting alone, though? The rest of his cult was wiped out, so he started it up again as their new leader?”

“Or he could be the leader. The one who started it all.” The suggestion rumbled from Blake, who was leaning against the wall opposite Aaron while I paced long lines between them.

Male number three was sitting on the other end of the sofa. Why did all these life or death missions end up so testosterone heavy? Where was Team Estrogen?

I would’ve loved to get rid of the terramage, but as far as he believed, Aaron and I were in the middle of an investigation. From his perspective, we should want his help, and giving him the boot would be the equivalent of pouring suspicion oil on a strange-behavior fire.

“The original leader,” he continued, “is most likely the summoner of the cult—the one who created the demon mages a decade ago. This man is, at the least, a contractor.”

And all summoners were contractors as well, though the reverse wasn’t true.

“We don’t have any answers,” I complained. “We have no way to know if this leader is also the other leader, or whether either leader is a summoner—and oh my god, we’re saying the word ‘leader’ way too much.”

Aaron snorted. “Well, we could call him … what was it? Praetor?”

“Is that a title or a really ugly name?” When he shrugged, I stopped pacing and pulled out my phone. “Let’s find out.”

“Do you really think a cult term will be—”

“Here we go. Praetor. A title from ancient Rome for either an army commander or a magistrate. Huh.”

“Okay then.” Aaron folded his arms. “So, we have one Praetor ‘commander’ in charge of a ‘circle’ of twelve members.”

“Twelve,” Blake muttered.

“Something special about twelve?”

“Some Demonica mythics believe there are twelve demon Houses.”

The term “Houses” rang a bell, but I was drawing a blank on its meaning. “What’s a demon House?”

“Demon breeds, essentially. There are ten documented types of demon, and according to legend, two additional ‘lost’ Houses: the First and the Twelfth.”

What had Ezra said about the number of demon mages in Enright? I was the eleventh. Lexie was supposed to be the twelfth.

Another memory popped: Robin and I arriving at Odin’s Eye to speak to their Demonica expert. When she’d shown the ex-summoner her infernus, he’d nearly spit out his drink in disbelief. Your demon can only be the lost First House. Unless—unless it’s the fabled Twelfth House?

No wonder everyone was so surprised by her demon’s unusual appearance. A lost House. That girl might have more secrets than I did.

I squeezed my temples. “Where was I? Right. The Praetor. The cult …” I turned to Aaron. “We’ve been assuming all along that the cult was centered in Enright. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but … what if it was never just one sect?”

“You think there were multiple sects all along?”

“That could be why a demon mage killed everyone in Enright.” I swallowed a wave of horror at the senseless deaths. “What if they were protecting the rest of the cult?”

Blake swore under his breath. “Like cutting off a diseased limb before the infection can spread.”

“The cultist who was captured,” Aaron muttered. He fixed his stare on the terramage. “He died as well—before he could be questioned about anything more than Enright, I’m assuming? Are the Keys sure he wasn’t deliberately silenced?”

Pulling his phone from his pocket, Blake tapped on the screen. “Yeah, very sure. I’ve seen the security footage. No one entered his cell.”

The Keys of Solomon had cells? Like, their own personal guild dungeon? Gross.

After a minute searching his phone, Blake held the screen up, and Aaron and I moved closer. Justin joined us as Blake hit play on a video. The camera was affixed high on a wall, pointed toward three barred cells, each equipped with a metal cot and toilet. A man was sitting on the middle cell’s cot, his face buried in his hands.

The footage had been sped up, and several Keys members zippily walked to the cell, mouths moving with rapid, soundless words, then left. The cultist didn’t react to any of them until a woman visited him, but he merely stared at her before dropping his face into his hands again.

As the thin, dark-haired lady zoomed off screen, I pursed my lips. I’d honestly thought the Keys of Solomon excluded women. Maybe she was a secretary. The big beefy hunters probably considered paperwork to be beneath them. Sexist losers.

The cultist remained in place for two more hours according to the clock speeding through the minutes in the screen’s corner. Just after midnight, the cultist stood up. He pulled off his t-shirt and began tearing the fabric into strips.