Page 111 of The Wolfing Hour

“I didn’t know.” Miles pushed to his feet using the bed as a prop. Meeting his gaze was like staring into a black hole of despair. “I didn’t know what it would be like. My gods, the darkness. The unending darkness.”

Moving stiffly to the nightstand, he pulled a duffel bag from beneath it. The bag held clean sweatpants, a wrinkled white T-shirt, and shower shoes, which he quickly put on, leaving his soiled clothes in a foul-smelling pile on the carpet.

I didn’t blame him for changing. No one could stand smelling like Gnath for long.

“How long had he possessed you?” I asked.

Miles shook his head as if to clear it. “Right after Operative Hartman went missing, I think. I received a call to meet an informant who claimed to have information linking you to Hartman’s disappearance. By the time I realized the informant was a demon, he’d already taken control of me.”

“Buddy, if you believe that’s the first time, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Hades to sell you,” Gnath muttered.

I silenced the demon with a look and turned back to Miles. “Are you sure about the timing?”

“I’m not sure of anything.” He asked in a weak broken voice, “May I leave now?”

“Go.” I’d have Mason track him down later. There were more important matters to deal with.

Miles hugged the duffel to his chest and shuffled out of the room, his rubber shoes slapping the soles of his feet as he walked out and gently closed the door behind him.

I pressed my back to the wall and did a half-circle turn by the room’s particle board dinette set to bring the two remaining creatures in the room in my line of vision. Demon Grandpa was again dressed in the black robes he’d worn at our meeting in Ronan’s bar. The robes were less upsetting than his slacks and windbreaker attire. I was tired of the games.

The gauzy robes, which seemed to move in a microclimate entirely their own, shifted, revealing a pair of abnormally long feet encased in navy and white running shoes. New Balance sneakers.

He’d kept the old man shoes.

I had the weirdest fucking life.

“Bravo.” Gods damn him, he wassmiling. “I am pleased, granddaughter. You are wise and powerful and unafraid. Deadly. Your father would be proud—isproud.”

“My father is dead,” I said.

Sexton nodded. The information wasn’t new, and he likely didn’t understand why I’d mentioned it. Past, present, and future tenses didn’t hold much meaning for his kind.

“Would you like an Agatha Christie denouement? Tell you how I figured it all out, Miss Marple style?” I asked.

He lifted a hand, and one of the dinette chairs flew to him. In between blinks, he’d seated himself and crossed his legs.

“You tipped your hand when you had Demon Betty question the strength of my earth magic. Witch Betty figured it out pretty quickly, but I was too angry to listen when she spoke up.”

“What did she say?”

“She reminded me that you were a demon. That time barely affects you, and you can do what you want. Including getting past my protection spell on the park.” I glanced at Gnath before turning back to Sexton. “You’re clever, but you aren’t human, and you don’t always understand the way we see things.”

“That is correct,” he said. “Humans are both stupidly simple and delightfully complicated.”

His arrogance annoyed me, but reacting to it would get me nowhere. “The timing clinched it. Your visit, Trey’s appearance on Ida’s porch, Rory’s disappearance from Floyd’s house. The latter two happened so close together as to be nearly simultaneous. Trey still believed Rory to be in that basement room when he died.”

He said nothing, simply listened, his robes moving creepily.

“For a being like you, time is an abstract concept. You’re experiencing this conversation with me, the ones you had with my mother, and the life you lived with Rose Chevalier simultaneously. On some level, everyone you’ve ever cared for is alive and dead. You are both crowded and alone in every moment.”

His smile faltered. “You are correct, granddaughter, but understand that I am here as I am there. My attention is yours.”

“Not entirely—it’s not possible.”

“Entirely.”

I sighed. Discussing time with Sexton was like writing a letter in a rainstorm on paper made from cotton candy. “For a human, one who experiences time in line with the hands on a clock or the movements of the sun in the sky, time is meaningful.”