She was sitting in the passenger’s seat of her mothers Toyota SUV, the door open, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a Styrofoam cup of something hot in her hands. She gave him a weak little smile and he nodded back to her, but kept his distance. He’d spent ten minutes enduring what could politely be called a ‘tirade’ from the girl’s mother for endangering her only child in the night’s events. Curse words had been used.

A lot of them.

He’d been impressed with the woman’s vocabulary, and resigned a few of the more choice ones to memory. He was fairly certain that the only reason she hadn’t attempted to horribly murder him once she’d figured out his role in her daughter being there was that she was a bit scared of what he might do to her if she tried. Still, it hadn’t seemed to detour her from screaming at him and threatening him with a restraining order if he ever went near her baby girl again. The woman (he still didn’t know her name) was standing next to the open door of the vehicle, arms crossed over her chest, the lioness defending her cub.

 

“Too late,” Ardent murmured. Something told him that once the initial shock wore off, Stacey would be out in the long grass again, a journalistic lioness in her own right, seeking out the elusive prey of a new story. 

 

He’d only been marginally ahead of the demoness as she’d burst out of the cellar of the Succubus Club and then through the roof, trailing fire and shattered architecture in her wake. The babes had been tucked one in each arm, wailing their little heads off, and he’d just managed to avoid getting squashed himself as he’d run through the club, dodging falling roof and flaming timber. He searched for and saw Stacey scrambling towards the door, and he’d snatched her in invisible hands and taken to the air, following the same path the creature had taken up and out through the remains of the club roof and into the night, thereby avoiding the pandemonium on the clubs main floor.

 

Once he’d gotten clear he’d stopped and turned, nearly dropping the babes and Stacey in surprise as he saw that the purplish light he was so used to seeing whenever he did this little trick wasn’t present. Instead there was steam rising from his feet, as though he was walking through a stream in shoes made of dry ice. Screams from a falling Stacey (he actually had dropped her in his surprise) had snapped him back to his senses. He snatched her back up and continued on and down to the street, reeling her in on that invisible line so that she was next to him as his smoking sneaks struck asphalt.

 

“Spooky?” she'd panted.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Was that a... was that a real demon?”

 

“It was.”

 

She was crying, but he doubted she knew it. She looked at what he was holding.

“Why do you have babies?”

 

“Oh, these?” he asked, looking around and making sure that Trinity and her friends weren’t anywhere near. He wouldn’t put it past the fanatics to come rushing at them out of the flame-lit rubble, wielding obsidian knives and spouting gibberish. Seeing the coast was clear, and hearing the screams of those still trapped inside, he handed the children to Stacey. “They were going to be used as some sort of sacrifice to the thing that just left. Stupid really, the things people will believe. Listen,” he continued, stepping once more onto the air, “I need to go back in there and see how I can help. You stay here and keep an eye on the kids ok?”

 

“What? Sacrifice?” Stacey asked, her eyes gone huge as she juggled the now whimpering bundles in her arms. “Did you just say sacrifice?”

“Yes, but its gone now and Trinity isn’t anywhere nearby so they should be safe.”

 

Stacey was shaking her head. “Spooky, I don’t know about this. I don’t know anything about kids, and what if that thing comes back, and…” she sniffed and blinked up at him.

 

He regarded her, his expression gentle. “They’re alive because of you Stacey. You were right, and now these kids get to grow up because you brought me here. Just keep them safe a little longer.” Something heavy fell inside the burning club, sending up a shower of sparks. People were staggering out of the entrance, doors thrown wide, smoke pouring out along with the running club goers. “I have to go.”

 

She nodded up at him, smiling weakly. “Ok Spooky. Ok. I got this. And I totally haven’t forgotten that you nearly dropped me back there a second ago, you shit.” And he knew she was going to be ok at that, so he continued on his smoky silent path up into the air, angling towards the hole in the ceiling they’d just exited. The next thirty minutes had been a jumble of fire, smoke, plucking people from under rubble and sweeping through the mess making sure no one had been missed. He hoped that Palmer was all right, but considering the last things he’d heard Nemesis screaming he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope on that one.

 

The police had shown up, as had the fire department, a dozen ambulances (and Stacey’s mom), and things had sort of started getting managed at that point. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Nemesis, as both he and Palmer were no longer where he’d left them. He’d checked, gone into that other place he went when he needed to move through things and moved down through the burning wreckage and into the basement, saw the shattered circle and crumpled alter, buried in timber and stone, but no Palmer and no Nemesis. Hopefully they’d helped each other make it upstairs before the whole thing had come down.

 

And now it was over.

 

“Ardent!”

 

He looked, saw a detective headed his way. Nodded.

“We’ve got some questions for you.”

 

“Yes. Of course.”

 

“You’ll need to make a statement.”

 

“I’ll tell you everything I can, naturally,” he replied. The detective sighed. “There’s a lot of people said you helped them get out.”

 

‘Yes.”

 

Ardent's eyes shifted from light to dark. It was hard to say what color exactly, given the constant flickering of the emergency vehicles lights. “And there’s a lady over there,” he pointed at Stacey’s mom, “says you took her daughter here tonight and put her in harms way.”

 

“Not quite how it happened, but she’s entitled to her opinion of course,” Ardent replied. The detective squinted at him momentarily, and then sniffed, rubbing at his nose with the back of a hand. “Yeah, daughter says much the same thing. Still, I’d stay away from her and the kid if I was you.”

 

Ardent nodded.

 

“Well, come on then. I’ll give you a lift downtown and we can start the paperwork."

**** 

 

The sky was growing lighter by the time he was dropped off outside the library, his clothes reeking of smoke. He thanked the officer who’d driven him and slowly climbed the steps, hands in pockets. He pushed the green button on the keychain alarm that Loretta had given him, then ghosted through the locked doors as usual, and was startled once more – no more purple light!

Instead there was a light tracery of frost where he’d passed through the door. He waved his hand through the solid oak and watched with interest as spidery lines of tiny ice crystals glittered in his wake. Well well well… yet another mystery to try and figure out. He wondered if that other thing had changed as well, so he raised a hand and watched as the air crackled and hissed around it, frost forming instantly on his fingers. Still there. Never to be discussed, and never to be used.

 

“Huh…” he said as he flexed his fingers, the frost falling to the carpeted floor like powdered sugar. He moved through the silent stacks, disturbing no one on his way downstairs to his tiny room. Loretta would of course want a full report when she came in, and he needed to think about what he was going to tell her.

 

He wouldn’t censor it any more than he had to, (the police were somewhat firm on what they were willing to let him say about certain things), and half the fun for her was filling in the gaps anyway. Down the stairs, through the doors, past the humming Pepsi machine and finally he was home. He sighed as he sank into an old recliner Loretta had provided him and began to marshal his thoughts, a silent man in a silent office in a world of shushes and please be quiets.

 

Yes, he was home, and he'd changed again, and that was...well, that was damned annoying.