“Who said anything about killing?” Mom lowered the sword to the stomach and used the tip to pluck up her shirt. Then she lowered it within an inch of the girl’s bare skin. “All I need to do is cut a hole big enough to rip you out of there. Skewer you on my sword and you’re trapped.”

The girl closed her eyes. When she reopened them, they were blue again. She looked up at Mom.

“Wha—what? Wh-who are you?” She saw the sword and screamed.

“Nice try,” Mom said.

She lowered the tip until it brushed the girl’s skin. The girl let out a howl of pain and terror as the skin blistered.

“Pl-please,” she sobbed, looking at me. “Don’t let her hurt me.”

I hesitated and my grip loosened. The girl pulled one hand free and I lunged to grab it, but she only clasped my arm, finger shaking as tears streamed down her thin face.

“Please,” she said.” I don’t know what I did wrong, but I’m sorry. I’ll be good. Just don’t let her hurt me anymore.”

“Mom?” I said. “What if—?”

“Cast your spell again, baby.”

I did. The girl squeezed her eyes shut and tried to hold in her shriek as the reveal burned through her.

“Like I said,” Mom muttered. “Nice try, demon.”

She touched the sword to the girl’s stomach. It blistered on contact, a fiery red splotch that made my stomach churn. Yes, blisters, a burn, maybe a cut—it would all heal. I’d think nothing of doing it to an adult. Only this wasn’t an adult, and even if the child couldn’t feel it now, she would once the demon left.

Mom caught my attention and cast a privacy spell, so the demon wouldn’t overhear.

“That’s why they possessed children. I know this isn’t easy, baby. It’s not supposed to be. That’s the point.”

I nodded. My mother dragged the sword tip along the girl’s stomach. No pressure applied, but the skin broke anyway, blood oozing up.

“You hurt the child!” the demon shrieked. “You must not hurt the child!”

“No, I hurt you. And I’m about to hurt you a whole lot more if you don’t—”

“She got away. The necromancer. She did escape us.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Silence. Mom drew the sword back along the shallow cut. The demon writhed, then spat, “She is here. The Tengu can smell her. But we cannot find her. She hides.”

Mom’s exhale of relief was so deep the sword shuddered, making the demon yowl. She raised it off the girl’s skin.

“Okay,” I said. “So we need to find—”

“In a moment,” Mom said. “Jaime’s safe. She’s found a place to hole up. We need to ask a few more questions.”

“But—”

She lowered the sword again. As the demon squirmed, so did I. Yes, we had questions, but the main one had been answered. The rest we could figure out on our own.

“Who sent you?” Mom asked.

“Nobody sent us. We saw opportunity. We acted. The Tengu are not slaves.”

“No, but they are boot-licking toads. You saw an opportunity to grab Jaime. And do what? Who wants her? You were going to turn her over to someone. Who?”

“Mom?”

She lifted a finger from the sword, telling me to wait.

“Mom, they don’t want Jaime. That’s not the opportunity they saw. It’s you. They came for you. Jaime’s just a means to an end.”

Mom turned back to the demon. “Is that right? You saw me materialize and you came for me. You went after Jaime to get me. Who—?”

The demon let out a wail so high pitched it made my ears hurt. Then the girl’s body went slack, head lolling back. Eyes closing.

“Here we go again,” Mom muttered. “Tengu do love drama.”

The girl’s eyelids fluttered. Then they slowly opened. She blinked. Frowned. Looked around at the treetops. Then at the sword.

“What the hell?” the girl said.

She followed the sword up to my mother’s arm, then to my mother, still kneeling on her shoulders.

“What the hell!”

The girl struggled, kicking and hitting and swearing a blue streak. Not exactly the language you’d use if you were trying to impersonate an eleven-year-old. One look at the girl’s ragged clothing, though, and you knew she wasn’t just some random child plucked from the schoolyard. She was a street kid.

This time it was Mom who cast the reveal spell. The girl didn’t flinch, just keep struggling and shouting obscenities.

Mom eased off the girl’s shoulders, lowering her sword and holding the girl by the arm instead. The girl let Mom help her up, then took a swing. Mom lifted her sword and said, “Uh-uh, sweetie.”

“I’m not your sweetie,” the girl snarled. “If you brought me here for some perv, you’ll be sorry. I’ve got friends, you know. They have blades and—”

As she twisted to talk to my mother, she winced. She pulled up her shirt. “What the hell? You cut me! And burned me! You can’t do that. I’ve got rights.”

“Yes, you do,” Mom said, keeping her grip tight on the girl’s arm. “I’m sorry you got hurt. We didn’t mean it. But someone gave you something—drugs or something. You attacked a friend of ours.”

“I didn’t attack any goddamned—”

The girl stopped. She stared down at her blood-speckled shirt. Then she lifted her hands. Her nails were crusted in blood. Her eyes widened and the tough little girl fell away, horror filling her face.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said quickly. “Whoever gave you the drugs is to blame. And our friend is fine. But there are other kids out here. Your friends maybe. They got the same drugs. I’m going to take you someplace safe and—”

The forest erupted as five kids swarmed in, surrounding us. I grabbed the girl and pulled her against me. My fingers flew up in a knockback, but the girl yelped and flung herself away, disrupting my spell.

“Leave me alone,” she said. “These are my—”

One of the kids let out a banshee howl and flew at the girl, his hands curved into claws. I pulled her out of the way just in time and kicked, catching him in the thigh. He crumpled, gnashing his teeth, lips drawn back in a grotesque, inhuman snarl.