want him to feel comfortable. Ghouls can go on for a long time without nourishment and light, but it’ll still make them grouchy.”
“Meh, we’ve got the food part covered,” Grandma chuckled, nodding at the bag she’d left beneath the table.
“Back to your question,” I said. “They’re preparing several teams of Maras, vampires, incubi, and succubi to head out and start clamping down on the cult camps before they do any real damage. Of course, that’s the desired outcome, but not a guarantee that it’ll work. These are sneaky assholes we’re dealing with.”
“Shouldn’t they have some jinn or dragons on each crew? Just to maximize the results?” Grandma asked, eyeing the pencil case. I could tell that she was nervous, but I wasn’t sure why, since Grandpa had assured us that Herbert wouldn’t cause trouble.
“I think they’ll assign one of either or each to the teams, for sure,” I said. “Why are you staring at the box like that? Is something wrong?”
“What? No. No, not at all. I’m just a little concerned about how Herbert will react when he realizes how long he’s been in there,” Grandma Corrine replied. She looked at Grandpa. “Babe, he doesn’t have a clear notion of time in that box, does he?”
Grandpa shook his head, but he didn’t seem as concerned.
“And how fluent are you in ghoulish?” I chuckled, remembering that these once-fallen Reapers didn’t typically use words but rather hissing sounds and whispered growls to communicate, and that Grandpa Ibrahim had been one of the few who actually spoke their odd language.
He pointed a finger at his temple. “It’s all up here, Kale. It never left. It’s the upside of being a warlock with a ridiculously long lifespan. The brain’s built to keep up with all the information we gather over the centuries.”
“And I still forget to turn the coffeemaker off when I leave the house,” I muttered.
With electricity running through Luceria and the bigger cities of Calliope, where wind and sun power could be safely and properly drawn and amplified through magi-tech, Hunter and I had begun sprucing up our apartment within the castle. The coffeemaker and a few more human-world gadgets had become permanent fixtures in our home, because who the heck doesn’t love a hot cup of joe in the morning?
Grandma Corrine laughed lightly. “Darling, these are little things. Our minds aren’t designed to retain the trivial stuff. Ghoulish language, on the other hand, as simple as your grandfather might make it sound, is more complicated than you’d think. Ibrahim spent days trying to teach me a couple of sentences, and I barely made it to ‘Do as I wish or live in a box forever’ without sounding like I was having a stroke.”
The three of us doubled over before Grandpa Ibrahim brought the fun part of our meeting to an end and whispered the unsealing spell required to open the pencil case. My heart was quick to jump in my throat, anticipating about a dozen possible scenarios—despite Grandpa’s confidence, most of them weren’t positive. I was ready to react.
“Ready?” he asked.
Grandma and I nodded. He lifted the lid, and a grayish mist began to pour out and spill over the table. It looked like liquid smoke, and it captured my attention. Before it reached the marbled floor, however, the fluid mist began to shimmer and disappear.
Grandpa Ibrahim let out a short series of clicks and hisses. It sounded articulated enough to form a message to the entity that was beginning to form. The air rippled across the floor until the invisible mass gathered in one spot. It soon rose into a tall and clunky figure that was gradually becoming visible.
Long limbs with black, seven-inch claws on every lanky finger. Thin, pearly gray skin that stretched a little too much over the bones and the oversized joints and made him seem translucent with the way it reflected the little amount of light that was left in the room. The deformed head and big, cue-ball sized eyes. Their pupils were wide and black, making me feel like he was drilling holes into my brain. A short hiss from Grandpa Ibrahim made Herbert shift focus to him.
“Hi, Herbert,” I mumbled, mostly to myself. Creeped out, I took a couple of steps back. He didn’t seem aggressive, but the look in his strange eyes made me want to put some distance between us. My instincts were on full alert.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Grandpa said, while Grandma watched them both closely. He gave Herbert