My heartrate immediately picked up. “Does it know we’re here?”

  I had to remind myself that this was New York. The city that never sleeps. But this place felt anything but New York. Different. Savage. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder, knowing that my familiars were keeping watch for me.

  “We should assume it to be,” Wol said. He bounded over to the top of the car, searching. “Child, you should enter the car and come back when this is over.”

  “I can help,” Abigail said.

  “Not this time, Child,” Wol shook his head. “This is a Hallow game now.”

  She gave me a glance, pleading. But I shook my head. This close to danger, this close to something about to happen, I wasn’t going to argue with my familiar. Abigail understood and entered the car. She opened the window a crack.

  “How long should I wait before coming back?”

  “After the minute hand completes its turn, but not before,” Wol said through half-lidded eyes. He nimbly leapt off the limo, and it drove off.

  We really were alone now.

  “Hwari,” I muttered and the familiar immediately dove into my shadow to see.

  Mother winter sent more snow, picking up in intensity even more so than before and the wind blew them in random directions. The orange streetlamps flickered sporadically in rhythm with a quiet buzzing that droned on in the background. The spirits started to disperse, some fading away while others hurriedly floated elsewhere as if afraid of getting caught out in the snow.

  “Wol, quick summary on demons?” I spoke quietly as if that might make us less noticeable but my gut told me it was too late for that.

  “There is no quick summary on daemons,” Wol said. He sniffed the air, bounded to one end and repeated the motion. He returned to my feet slowly, body low to the ground. “There are as many daemons as there are cultures. They are not like the daevils. They have no rules.”

  “Ok, that’s a start,” I surmised, “Elaborate?”

  “You miss my point, Practitioner. Daemons are daemons. Disease, hurricanes, broken bones, depression, anything to cause suffering but each couldn’t be more different from the last. It’d be best to treat each of them as a separate type of preternatural creature altogether. It’d be hard to pinpoint what it is without seeing it.”

  I looked around. Wol’s tone was having a negative affect on me. “You’re telling me, that there’s no catch-all abjuration circle for demons?”

  He swallowed, ears swiveling. “There are. But most practitioners start with it, and start narrowing it down to specific circles.”

  “Fuck,” I swore. “I can’t back down. I need to bring something back to the Intellect. We need her on our side.”

  Wol nodded in agreement. “Escaping is not an option. Not this close. It will affect your Hallow name and pacts in the future if we avoid this fight. Your practice itself will be weaker if we turn aside from a challenge such as this.”

  The lights down the street started flickering like mad, then when those stabilized, the next ones started flickering. My third eye caught a reflection of something in the warehouse windows down the street. Something hulking. Something grotesque. Something that my mind couldn’t wholly wrap around.

  It had to be at least ten, fifteen feet tall –or long– and kept changing every time I thought I had a pulse on exactly how big it was. It appeared to be walking, then running on all fours, then gliding on wing-like appendages.

  “It’s coming here,” I said, kneeling and opening my pink backpack.

  “I was led to believe the Table would provide back up,” Wol hissed, “They’ve infringed upon their word.”

  I was about to answer when the same something flashed by the next set of windows, closer than before. It made me stop talking, aghast. I went back to work.

  The snow was furious now and the wind began to cut into my skin. It hurt. Everything stung. I used bare hands to clear the snow away from the floor, ignoring the numbing-pain as they became near-frostbitten in seconds. I could hear the daemon now, walking closer. Every footstep another psychic blast to my Third Eye.

  Then the door to the warehouse furthest down the dock slammed open and the surrounding street lamps all shattered.

  “Holy shit,” I swore, still kneeling in the snow.

  Every other dock still had their lights on, albeit flickering here and there. Only the dock path that led straight to the warehouse was submerged in complete darkness. Where the lights touched it, be it streetlamp or the moon beginning to shy herself across the sky, it seemed to be drowned out. Swallowed, so that it created a cave entrance of perfect black without stone or rock.

  “It’s inviting us in,” Wol said.

  I was trembling now, from the cold and definitely not the display of supernatural prowess. That’s what I kept telling myself anyway. I couldn’t afford fear. Not here, not now.

  I could feel it in my guts. This was one of those make it or break it moments. Everything was riding on this. If I succeeded here, I could tell the Intellect Transit I completed her task. Yes, it might not be an eldritch being, but she would have her curiosity satisfied. She’d still owe me one. I knew that’s how the deal worked, she wouldn’t be able to infringe on it.

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  The scales of the trial tomorrow would nudge in my favor.

  Hwari emerged from the snow, smudges of ink on white.

  ‘It lies in wait,’ She rang, ‘It knows.’

  “Knows what?” But I knew the answer.

  ‘That you will enter, Caller,’ She said in that same hollow voice. 'That you must.'

  “Did you see it?”

  ‘Yes.’

  “Tell me what you saw,” I said.

  ‘Only parts of it. It kept itself hidden. It ran. Sprinted. Then lay in hiding, watching. Then he smiled and went into the building.’

  “Did you see signs of it being infected by madness?”

  ‘...Yes. The maws. It had many. Eyes as well.’

  I took out the duct tape from my bag and tore it open. I cut out a strip, cut it in half, then cut those in half. I took the thin strips and started taping them in a criss-cross pattern around my arms. I used the compass to make sure they were at the right angle.

  Then I cut more of the same width strips, but made them longer and started taping them over my backpack.

  “What are you doing?” Wol walked over and asked.

  “The Execution of Euclidean–” Just saying the name brought on another splitting headache and I ground my teeth through it, “–the book, it talks about how to protect yourself against eldritch beings. Things they hate. Things to weaken their influence. It sounds like this daemon is indeed infected by eldritch madness, this should work.” It sounded correct, and I felt confident, but ended up looking at Wol for confirmation anyways.

  “I… believe so. Yes. If the daemon has partaken of something, it also becomes a part of that something.”

  I gestured for Wol to come over.

  “Euclid is a Greek mathematician famous for a book called Euclid’s Elements. In there, he puts Definitions, which creates his Postulates. He made five of them and from them, he extracts theorems which can be proven. What he didn’t know was that he stumbled onto one of the fundamental truths of our universe, like pi, or prime numbers, or the fibonacci sequence..”

  As I spoke, I took paper tape –the kind that didn’t stick too well– and wrapped a bit of it around Wol.

  “If you have two points, you can draw a straight line between them.” I put two pieces of tape on Wol, one on his thigh and the other on his shoulder and then connected them with a third piece of tape. On his ribs, I put more lines, but without points.

  “Two, a straight line can be extended indefinitely. Three, a center and a radius can draw a circle. Hwari, over here. Draw small circles. They have to be perfect,” I said.

  Hwari drew a circle in the air and I traced it with a brush, painting small circles all over my left arm with white paint.

  I went to work on my pink bag again, taping it up at right angles. “Right angles are equal. And the fifth postulate… can be replaced with triangles.”

  As I said that, I took the flashlight and began taping up the lens, covering up the corners. I turned it on and flashed the ground to make sure it was beaming a triangle.

  “Close enough,” I said. My fingers were numb.

  “Protection won’t win against a daemon,” Wol said, looking down at his tape. “And this only covers his eldritch nature. Not against his daemonic nature.”

  “Yeah, well we can’t be perfect.” I looked up at the sky. “Wol, you said preternaturals are stronger at night. Does it have more to do with the physical perception of darkness, or the actual time?”

  “Both. The lunar calendar, the planetary hours, everything. That’s why human calendars mark the summer and winter solstice. Because they matter.”

  “Then we can’t just waste time and hope for a better idea to come to us. We have to move,” I stood up, putting the rest of the things in my bag.

  "Jain. Valstein. She was supposed to send someone for us," Wol said suddenly. "Maybe we should wait."

  It had crossed my mind as well, but I had reached the conclusion before Wol did. "She did probably. But remember how she said it? That he'll help us, but won't engage directly with the nameless? There's so many loopholes she could have exploited in there."

  Wol hissed.

  "Me too," I grimaced. "I asked for someone to watch my back or brief me. I should have said and. Also, he would help us but if he's not engaging with the nameless... who knows when he might show up. For all we know, he might show up to pick up the pieces. Or a week later and hand me antibacterial for cuts from the fight. She was the only one there who was taking advantage of the fact that the spirit of the pact is different than the letter of it."

  "So we are alone in this then," Wol said bitterly.

  "It seems so," I agreed quietly.

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm my frayed nerves. It came all messed up, like I couldn’t get enough oxygen in my lungs. It was freezing and I was sweating, making it even colder. I watched out past the docks, seeing the frozen water. It was so still here. A heavy silence that had a crushing weight to it.

  God, I was afraid.

  No. I was terrified.

  There was something about the dark that scared me on a deeper level than rational thought. I think we all have it. It’s one of the reasons why people don’t like to look at mirrors in the dark. Or close their blinds at night. We know that there’s something out there that defies our common sense. Something that could be looking through the gaps in our curtains, their face pressed against the glass. Or worse, something that watches us through the mirrors in our house.

  We don’t know what they think. We don’t know what they want. All we know is that it raises the hair on our necks, and that it gives us goosebumps. Biological signs from an earlier age when that rudimentary sixth sense was what kept the mundane humans alive. Everyone has it, because those whose ancestors didn’t have it all died.

  We don’t know what they want. We don’t know where they are. We don’t know how they could get to us.

  But every window, every dark under the bed, every closet door opened at night that’s angled just right to reach your foot that’s not covered by the blanket…

  The darkness on the dock reminded me of all of those things.

  I shuddered.

  I grabbed my gravity knife and looked at the Cold Sickness’ brand on my wrist. I made sure the straps on my bookbag were tight and wouldn’t snag against something at an important moment. I kicked the growing pile of snow off my pants and shoes.

  “Any last thing you want to say? Weaknesses?”

  “Fire, it purifies. Light. Other than that… daemons are not my specialty. Your father would know,” Wol said. “The first thing would be making sure it can’t touch us, Jain.”

  “I know,” I said. I flicked the flashlight on, trying to piece through the thick fog-like dark on the dock. “Come on, let’s go.”