out before her. I flipped to the front cover quickly to see the title. On Other Dimensions and Their Inhabitants by E.J. Edwards. Seriously, where did Gabriel get all these books from? More to the point, who published them? Was there a secret market for educational texts that specialised in the supernatural?
I flipped back to the page Rita had been on, and she tapped her finger down on a small paragraph.
“This bit here explains what the mist is. It’s a kind of physical manifestation of chaos, but not just a manifestation. It’s a parasite too, feeding off sanity. When the mist manages to break out of hell and into other planes where there’s a moral life-force, it infests and drives the plane to self-destruction. In the case of this city, humans are the life-force whose sanity is being drained. It’s likely the mist doesn’t affect the vampires, or you and me, because we’re a mutation. I need to warn Finn about this. He and the majority of Pamphrock’s slayers are human and susceptible to the corruption. It says that once these chaos creatures mix with a foreign atmosphere they multiply, kind of like bacteria in a Petri dish.”
“Ethan mentioned something about that last night. He said he felt like the mist was multiplying.”
“Well, don’t worry too much,” Rita said as she gestured to the book. “In here, we have all the directions for how to kill them. All we need is a mixture of salt, holy water, and vinegar. We spray it at the mist, and it disintegrates.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Holy water?”
“Tangible objects, or even liquid that’s been imbued with religious blessing, can be very powerful when it comes to fighting evil.”
“But holy water doesn’t do anything to vampires, right?”
“No, because vampires aren’t the undead. They’re a separate species,” she explained, echoing something that Ethan had told me when I first found out what he was. “Sure, some of them are bad people, like Whitfield, but they aren’t inherently evil.”
“Are all of the magical families corrupt, or just the ones we’ve happened to come into contact with?”
“God, no, there are some lovely people born to the magical families. You met some of them at my house back before that bastard Michael Ridley burned it to the ground.” She paused to eye me. “And your mother was more than likely born to a magical family. Mum mentioned that she suspects she was a daughter of the Petrovskys.”
“Yeah, I’ve barely had time to look into that with everything that’s been going on.”
“Well, at least you’re not related to an evil sorcerer. Sometimes I …” she trailed off, and I wondered what she’d been about to say. She glanced at me a moment, then continued quietly, “Sometimes I get scared that one day I’ll become like him. That I’ll let the darkness take me over.”
“That won’t happen. I know you. You might enjoy a little bit of mischief now and again, but you could never become like Theodore.”
Rita sat back, a faraway look in her eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like inside my head. Ever since Theodore tried to lure me to him the other day, I’ve been feeling the part of me that comes from him getting stronger. Like it’s growing.”
I frowned because what she said was concerning. “You’re just going to have to try harder to hold on to the part that comes from Noreen then, okay?”
“Okay,” she sighed, and a moment of quiet elapsed. “Come on, there’s vinegar and salt in the kitchen. Let’s find Finn and see if he knows where we can get our hands on some holy water.”
A half an hour later, we were in Finn’s car, driving towards a church he attended in the inner city called St. Peter’s. Finn was a practising Catholic and went to mass most Sundays, something I hadn’t been aware of until now. When he disappeared on Sunday mornings I’d assumed he was going to work.
The traffic was heavy, so Finn turned on the radio to pass the time. A news bulletin came on, and a male announcer’s voice streamed through the speakers.
“There has been a traffic accident involving several vehicles in the city today causing unexpected delays. The area around Renfrew Avenue has been cordoned off so drivers are asked to avoid this route if possible. The accident comes heavy on the heels of a string of violent attacks, which occurred late last night. Like the riot earlier this week, these attacks are thought to be gang-related. The