I pondered what he’d told me about the demon. “Putting an isolation barrier around a whole town is a pretty serious move. They must think the demon is a real threat. Do you think the Virtii stranded us here instead of just killing us because they think we’re strong enough to kill the demon?”
“Apparently, yes. Or that you would weaken the demon enough to make their job of destroying it much easier.”
“So we could kill it and save the townspeople who are still hanging on here?”
My father looked concerned. “Your heroic impulse is most admirable, Jessie, but I think the Virtus Regnum has wagered that you will die in Cuchillo. So I beg you to focus on getting yourselves and your brother out of there. Do you think you can get back to the trap portal you came through? It might be possible to reopen it.”
I shook my head. “Magic mostly doesn’t work here. The demon is casting some kind of suppression spell. And we don’t have fire, either; there’s no internal combustion and so no cars or helicopters. Unless I can find a tame dragon, I have no way to reach the portal, and even if I did, I’m not sure I can overcome the antimagic enough to open it again.”
Shimmer tugged his beard thoughtfully. “Your brother is also quite talented when it comes to portal magic—I fear the demon may have forced him into helping it create the aerial traps. But if you can find him and free him, I’m sure the two of you together could create a new portal to escape the city, isolation barrier or no.”
“Could you let Mother Karen know what’s happening? I don’t want her to think we’re dead or blew her off or something.”
He nodded. “I can get word to her.”
We said our good-byes and I closed the mirror. I sat down on the bed. It was hard to process: I actually had a long-lost older brother. Who, according to his proud papa at least, was brilliant and handsome and talented … and possibly our main hope for getting out of this mess.
I hoped he wasn’t a dick.
chapter
fifteen
A Little Gift from the Welcome Wagon
I opened the red door and suddenly I was back in my flesh body … but I was naked, standing on hot pavement, the sun beating down on my skin, covered in something warm and wet and itchy, the taste of pennies in my mouth—
—and then the death-memories hit me all at once:
The beautiful raven-haired woman with the deep green eyes smiled and whispered, “Come join your wife” and I fell to my knees before her on the carpet of the funeral home and she touched my head and I felt the shock run through me, a tugging and tearing inside me and everything went black—
The naked auburn-haired girl came at me in the parking lot, grinning madly, swinging her black scythelike left hand at me, connecting with my neck, the spray of my blood sparkling like rubies in the sunshine—
I struggled against the dead-eyed men holding me fast as the green-eyed lady came toward me down the church aisle, my prayers dying in my throat as she reached out and touched my forehead—
The naked girl axed me down and fell on my neck, tearing at my flesh with blunt teeth.
I fell forward onto the pavement; there was something in my mouth. I spat it out: the tip of a man’s finger. More twinned death-memories hammered my senses: spiritual death at the touch of the beautiful green-eyed woman followed by brutal physical death at my hand. I began to throw up blood that was surely not mine. I realized I was leaning forward on both hands, not just my good right hand, but my left was a coal-dark claw that scraped crablike against the blacktop.
“Oh God, what happened?” I gasped. My eyes focused on a man lying nearby in a pool of drying blood. His throat had been ripped out, his lower jaw torn away. By me, the death-memory told me. Or by something that had taken up cheerfully homicidal residence in my body while I’d been in the hellement.
“Jessie, is that really you?” Cooper asked.
I nodded, heaved again, but very little came up. The blood coating my mouth and my stomach was absolute torture. My body was trembling with exhaustion; my muscles felt completely spent, as if I’d just sprinted to the finish line of a daylong triathlon. I tried to get