Page 86 of Cold Curses

A large hairy hand hauled me up and out of the water, and two deep-set eyes blinked at me. It was a humanoid person with a squat nose and a thick neck. He was over six feet tall, with square shoulders and a barrel chest. He’d pulled me onto a platform made of woven driftwood and sticks and water bottles—stuff probably foraged from the river itself. I looked up, found the bottom of the bridge above us.

I sucked in air, pushed sopping hair from my eyes. “George?” I asked when I’d gotten some of my breath back.

“He was my dad. I’m Bjorn.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss. And thanks for helping me up.”

He nodded.

“Did my mother talk to you?”

Bjorn shook his head. Maybe she’d looked for George, hadn’t found him in his old home.

“I think it spit me out because I’m a vampire. Because I didn’t taste the way it expected. I mean, I didn’t taste like demon.”

“Maybe.”

“The creature,” I said. “Does it have a name, if you know?”

“Ambrosia.”

It took me a moment to wrap my mind around that. “Okay,” I said. “We think it was triggered by the demon ward, and we aren’t sure how to calm it down again.”

His stare was steady and unblinking. “Did you talk to it?”

I was going to start screaming. “I tried,” I said. “But it pulled me into the water.”

He watched me for a second. “Yeah.”

Not loquacious, this one.

“So maybe I could try to talk to it now. Do you know how to do that from here?” Because I really didn’t want to go back into the water. Even monster was cold.

Before I could prepare myself, he put two fingers into his mouth and let fly a whistle that had my ears ringing. It sent a visible wave of sound across the water.

And then we waited.

“Do you have any fruit?” he asked.

“Oh, well, no. Not at the moment.” River trolls liked fruit, I belatedly remembered, and it was often used to pay them for services or cooperation. “I can find you some when we’re done here?” There were still grocery stores operating for the humans who hadn’t left.

He shrugged, which I took to mean he wouldn’t object if a fruit basket found its way to his doorstep.

There were rumblings below the water, and then Ambrosia broke the surface. Or its eyes anyway—the rest of its body was still hidden.

Bjorn nudged me with an elbow.

“Hi,” I said, very aware of the sound of my voice. “I’m Elisa. I’m an Ombudsman and we’re trying to get the demons out of Chicago. I’m sorry we accidentally triggered the ward. We’re trying to fix the system, but that didn’t go well.”

It—she? they?—stared at me unblinkingly.

Was I supposed to keep going? Pause for questions? River monster etiquette had not been covered in my cultural para-anthropology class.

“We don’t want you to injure yourself any further.”

Still nothing.

I looked at Bjorn, whose thoughtful gaze stayed on Ambrosia.