the bench as if weary, knees wide in a classic manspread. “Like a plague or an unending winter. Why are you seeking no-sleep charms if they didn’t tell you?”
He meant Al or Dali, and I gingerly sat down, a careful four feet between us. “Because every single person attacked someone they loved in their sleep, and I’m pretty sure they all have auras similar to mine and Al’s.” And Trent’s. “Baku isn’t an old name for a banshee, is it?”
He shook his head, his elbows on his knees and his focus on the past. “No. A banshee absorbs auras to feed. The baku finds you by your aura, then strips your soul shell by shell.”
“That’s . . . appalling,” I said, horrified.
“You only know the half of it. It’s made of sentient energy, and therefore impossible to destroy. Elves created it, tasked it to eat the soul of whoever they targeted, nibble by nibble, night by night, shell by shell, until its victim killed the one who irritated him the most, usually the one they loved the most. There’s no way to fight it but to stay awake. A veritable death sentence.”
That was what was happening, all right. Nothing he’d said contradicted anything that we had learned. He’d just given our theory a name and source. But I’ve fought sentient energy before.
Still, there had to be a way to control it. Things that destructive were usually contained, not allowed to run rampant. My eyes slid to Hodin, wondering where he’d been trapped until magic went down, freeing him and the baku both. “I need to talk to Al,” I said as I reached for my phone.
“Don’t waste your effort. He’s in seclusion.” Hodin slouched deeper onto the bench.
I pressed my lips together as I recalled my early-morning chat with Dali. “Dali said he’d let him go.”
Hodin took his sunglasses off, tucking them in an inside jacket pocket before closing his eyes against the sun, basking. “Call him. Call Gally,” he said, sounding bitter. “See who answers.”
Unsure, I stared at Al’s icon. I’d gone right to voice mail the last time. Changing my mind, I dug my scrying mirror out of my bag instead. Al wouldn’t dare ignore that.
“He won’t help, even if he could,” Hodin said, that same bound anger in his voice. “Cut your losses and hide,” he mocked. “Wait for someone else to take care of it. Throw a party. That’s the demon creed.”
“Al isn’t like that,” I said.
“Right. And that’s why he dropped a zombie into your grounds yesterday,” he said. Eyes opening, he sat up, scowling when he saw my tiny mirror throwing back the world in a red-tinted haze. “You can’t destroy the baku,” he practically growled. “You can’t even find it. It hides in its host, emerging when he sleeps to do the bidding of its elven master, returning with the wisdom of it’s actions and forcing its host to know its atrocities. At least, it did until it learned rebellion.”
I perked up at the harsh satisfaction in his voice in his last words. Host, he’d said. Master. They were two different things. “You were its host, weren’t you?” I said, sure I was right when he hunched deeper over his knees. “Dali said you belonged to the dewar back when everyone belonged to someone. You taught it freedom.”
“It was killing everything that was me.” Head down over his knees, Hodin spun a ring on his finger. “And they made me suffer worse when they found out I was to blame for its escape. I thought that if I taught the baku how to circumvent its chains it might choose to honor my desires and turn against the elves, but it did not.” Eyes holding a bitter rue, Hodin stared at nothing. “It only formed a pact with them, exchanging its continued volunteered services for the chance of what it really wants.”
“Which is?” I prompted, and Hodin sat up, his expression empty of emotion.
“A body. Whoever has offered to host it is playing a tricky game of chance. The baku chooses to do its host’s bidding, and in return, the baku will slowly eat away at its host’s soul until it becomes so thin that the host can no longer kick the baku out. The baku will then take him over completely, leaving no host, only the baku.”
Crap on toast, no wonder the demons hid from this thing. “I’m calling Al,” I said as I settled my mirror back atop my knee. “You want