“Maybe that’s why it will work when we figure out how to do it,” he said, still looking at my feet. “We know the Order caught it once. Weast is pretty good at cutting off access to a ley line with that amulet.” His head rose, his eyes alight. “How about that? It’s energy, right? The baku has to be connected to the line in some fashion. Cutting that off might give us control.”
I shrugged, not convinced. “The demon I talked to implied the baku gets its energy from the people it feeds on, not the line. I still think it has something to do with auras. That’s what it’s focusing on.” Thinking, I put my feet back on the floor and added some cold smoked squash and grapes to my plate. “You catch a man with what he wants, not what he needs. Maybe we can adapt that spiral curse we used to snare Nina’s soul.”
“Put it into a soul bottle? Mmmm.” Trent leaned deeper into me, and my weight shifted. “I don’t think a spiral curse will work on something that has no soul. I mean, that’s the point.”
He was warm against my side, and my breathing slowed as we both slumped in thought. “I’m sorry about filling our weekend with this,” I whispered, fatigue pulling at me.
Trent set his plate down and tugged me closer. “Don’t go there,” he said as he gave me a light kiss. “We are in this together. Besides, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner you can get some sleep. You’re not much fun when you’re tired and cranky.”
A smile quirked my lips, and I snuggled into him. “I’m not cranky,” I said sourly.
“Yes, you are, and I love you for it,” he said as he eased his warmth against me until I couldn’t tell where I ended. Slowly our breathing synchronized. The two of us were all alone in this big house, and it felt okay.
“There has to be a way,” I said, my thoughts returning to Al in self-imposed seclusion. “The little info you found about the baku said it was the bogeyman for elven children.”
Trent’s arm slipped from around me, and leaning, he tugged an oversize children’s book out from under my legal pad. “Sort of a beneficial spirit,” he said as he dropped the beautifully illustrated book open on our laps and leafed to the right page. “One that eats the nightmares of children so they can go back to sleep.”
Together we looked at the swirling purple and gold hovering over a scared child in his bed, the parents peeking supportively around the door. “Sure, but if you called it for no reason and the nightmare wasn’t scary enough to fill it up, the baku would eat you. I swear, parents can be so cruel sometimes. You think maybe the reality is that the baku was eating the kid’s soul?”
“What an awful, terrifying thought,” Trent said, but his frown said he was considering it. “The kernel of truth in the fairy tale,” he murmured as he closed the book and dropped it on the pile. “Remind me to put this on the locked shelf. I’m not reading this to the girls.”
“No problem. I’ll get you a copy of the girl-empowered fairy tales my mom read me.” I shifted to make room for him as he eased back. “Let’s look at what we do know,” I said as the coffee began to hit me. “Glenn said the baku took refuge during the day in a real presence, one that they couldn’t nail down yet. The, uh, demons said pretty much the same thing,” I said, trying to keep Hodin’s name out of it. “If we could identify the host, we could maybe stop the baku by trapping whoever is dumb enough to be hosting it.” A host that was in danger, if Hodin was to be believed. But I wasn’t sure I cared, if that person was willfully sending the baku out to kill people.
“We need a list of who wants the demons dead.” Again Trent leaned forward, this time for a cookie, and I shifted a few feet down the couch, tired of his up and down. “It’s a pretty long list.”
“Not if you winnow it by who might know about the baku.” Crap on toast, it was probably someone on Trent’s Christmas card list. Sitting almost sideways on the couch, I picked at a cracker. “Who has the baku targeted