not betray her. I saw only a well-worn sorrow there. “Here,” she said, handing me a journal bound in marbleized paper. “This is where he wrote about what he found at Old Candler.”
My eyes scanned down the page, taking in bits and pieces of the meticulous script that covered it. “Jilo was wrong in one sense,” Iris said. “She assumed that a collection of minor demons, perhaps even common boo hags, were behind the unpleasantness.” Iris seemed to remember my own unpleasant encounter with a “common” boo hag as soon as the words slipped off her tongue, but it was too late to swallow them. She took the tack of moving on quickly. “But it wasn’t. It was one single entity. A demon called Barron.”
“So this Barron is what Granddad trapped at Candler?”
“It’s all here,” Iris said, taking the journal from me and flipping a few pages, “in your grandfather’s journal. He did a lot of research into this beast before he confronted it. The demon we’re dealing with has quite a pedigree. He was brought to the New World by a slave trader—well, actually, in a slave trader. That’s one superstition with a grain of truth to it. Demons can’t cross running water on their own.”
“Good to know,” I said, meaning it sincerely. “But how did he—it—manage to get into our world in the first place? Isn’t the line supposed to protect us from creatures like him?”
“He was summoned. The line is like a net in more ways than one,” Iris continued. “It protects us from the most intense evil. But if a practitioner of magic—and note that I am not saying a witch—is powerful and determined enough, he can pry open a hole big enough to bring a smaller, less powerful force over the border. Barron was smuggled into our world by Gilles de Rais, an associate of Joan of Arc.”
I can describe what I knew about de Rais in a string of words: aristocrat, war hero, squanderer of one of the greatest financial fortunes of his era, pedophile, and serial killer. I shuddered at the thought of the scores of children he had slaughtered to feed his twisted desires; it was no shock that he’d seek to align himself with a demon. “If Barron was small enough to slip past the line, he should be easy to handle, though, no?”
“Please remember, when we speak of this demon as being small , it doesn’t mean that he’ll be easily managed or dispatched. It means that while he’s a murderer and defiler, he isn’t necessarily capable of ending the world as we know it. Barron’s power has grown during his time in our world. Our goal is to return him to where he originated, but we will not find it easy to send him anywhere he doesn’t want to go. I’m beginning to see why Dad settled for containment versus expulsion. His research led him to the conclusion that it would require the sacrifice of an innocent to even get Barron to appear for the banishing spell.” My hand slid protectively over my stomach. “Precisely,” Iris said.
She returned the journal to the table and went to sit in one of the high wingback chairs. “Enough about this demon for now. How are you doing?” Her body language was textbook perfect. She leaned back comfortably, placed her arms on the chair so that her upper body remained open and her shoulders relaxed. She tilted her head slightly to the right and focused on me. Whether her posture was contrived or sincere, she was showing that she was there for me, present, listening, nonjudgmental.
“I’m fine. I’m good.”
Iris nodded to acknowledge my reflexive response. “It’s only that I sense there’s something you might want to share with me. Unburden yourself, perhaps?” My mind jumped first to my mother, and it took all of my self-control not to parrot Iris’s words right back at her. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that betraying my mother’s confidence to my aunt would bring me harm, but it bothered me more than a little that I couldn’t completely shake the fear—no
My eyes scanned down the page, taking in bits and pieces of the meticulous script that covered it. “Jilo was wrong in one sense,” Iris said. “She assumed that a collection of minor demons, perhaps even common boo hags, were behind the unpleasantness.” Iris seemed to remember my own unpleasant encounter with a “common” boo hag as soon as the words slipped off her tongue, but it was too late to swallow them. She took the tack of moving on quickly. “But it wasn’t. It was one single entity. A demon called Barron.”
“So this Barron is what Granddad trapped at Candler?”
“It’s all here,” Iris said, taking the journal from me and flipping a few pages, “in your grandfather’s journal. He did a lot of research into this beast before he confronted it. The demon we’re dealing with has quite a pedigree. He was brought to the New World by a slave trader—well, actually, in a slave trader. That’s one superstition with a grain of truth to it. Demons can’t cross running water on their own.”
“Good to know,” I said, meaning it sincerely. “But how did he—it—manage to get into our world in the first place? Isn’t the line supposed to protect us from creatures like him?”
“He was summoned. The line is like a net in more ways than one,” Iris continued. “It protects us from the most intense evil. But if a practitioner of magic—and note that I am not saying a witch—is powerful and determined enough, he can pry open a hole big enough to bring a smaller, less powerful force over the border. Barron was smuggled into our world by Gilles de Rais, an associate of Joan of Arc.”
I can describe what I knew about de Rais in a string of words: aristocrat, war hero, squanderer of one of the greatest financial fortunes of his era, pedophile, and serial killer. I shuddered at the thought of the scores of children he had slaughtered to feed his twisted desires; it was no shock that he’d seek to align himself with a demon. “If Barron was small enough to slip past the line, he should be easy to handle, though, no?”
“Please remember, when we speak of this demon as being small , it doesn’t mean that he’ll be easily managed or dispatched. It means that while he’s a murderer and defiler, he isn’t necessarily capable of ending the world as we know it. Barron’s power has grown during his time in our world. Our goal is to return him to where he originated, but we will not find it easy to send him anywhere he doesn’t want to go. I’m beginning to see why Dad settled for containment versus expulsion. His research led him to the conclusion that it would require the sacrifice of an innocent to even get Barron to appear for the banishing spell.” My hand slid protectively over my stomach. “Precisely,” Iris said.
She returned the journal to the table and went to sit in one of the high wingback chairs. “Enough about this demon for now. How are you doing?” Her body language was textbook perfect. She leaned back comfortably, placed her arms on the chair so that her upper body remained open and her shoulders relaxed. She tilted her head slightly to the right and focused on me. Whether her posture was contrived or sincere, she was showing that she was there for me, present, listening, nonjudgmental.
“I’m fine. I’m good.”
Iris nodded to acknowledge my reflexive response. “It’s only that I sense there’s something you might want to share with me. Unburden yourself, perhaps?” My mind jumped first to my mother, and it took all of my self-control not to parrot Iris’s words right back at her. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that betraying my mother’s confidence to my aunt would bring me harm, but it bothered me more than a little that I couldn’t completely shake the fear—no
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