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“How many got out?”

“Two of the witches pooled their power with all the demons and managed to portal out. They left their friends behind. The vampires died. I took care of the werewolves before you played Beavis with your lighter again. Their blood tasted funny. It was corrupted. Not Sulfur like demons. It was like spoiled meat. Remember that time Rainer got you that Carrion plant?”

I took care of that plant and kept it alive for ages. Rainer and I were both on jobs. I asked a friend to pick up my mail and water my plant. They did not. All my plants died and when the criminal element realized I wasn’t home, I got robbed. Tonya was not my friend anymore.

The plant smelled like rotting meat and it was weird for a fresh werewolf kill to taste like decay. Something wasn’t right. Two witches and eight demons were better odds than what we were dealing with before, but still not good. And we didn’t know where they ended up.

But that witch mentioned the Yellow King. I’d only heard that name once and never again. I’d asked around and read The King in Yellow, but I’d never heard it again. I was under no grand assumptions that my mother was still alive, but I still wanted answers. She was legacy Flame like my uncle, but it wasn’t a cult. If you didn’t want to do it, you didn’t have to.

My mother taught third grade. My uncle had no idea where she got the ornate dagger she handed me when she hid me under the floorboards. He didn’t even know what it was other than magical. There were no drawings of it in the lore books. We’d managed to figure out the faceted stone on the end of the pommel was moldavite. The blade was made of obsidian and seemed to never dull or need sharpening.

But we still didn’t know where she got it or what it did.

I didn’t play well with others, but I could if lives were in danger. I was pretty much done trying to work with Venatio Daemonum. This job could have gone much differently if they’d just worked with me. Arson was super fun, but not in the suburbs where everyone had cameras. Luckily, there were a few Flame members in the force. They knew me and they knew when I set shit on fire, I had a reason.

I was basically going to ask them if their lore books had anything about a Yellow King and send them on their way. They were pretty useless on this job and would have ended up doggy chow if it weren’t for Pan.

“Did you see the big sexy one try to save me from the werewolves?”

“Yes. He didn’t even go down when I tried to body tackle him. It was annoying.”

“You know you enjoyed that just a little bit.”

“I had to tell him you were a Hellhound to stop him from getting us both bitten and turned into werewolves. If he snitches to his friends, you have my permission to eat all of them.”

“Do they season their priests up north?”

I started singing A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd while Pan howled in the backseat. It was an inside joke, and we were both terrible singers.

I got to Enchanted Coffee before they did because New Orleans was my stomping ground and I knew all the shortcuts. I found a parking spot and was waiting out from when they got there. The witch who ran this place was a beautiful person. During extended power outages after a hurricane, you could come here and charge your electronics and get a free meal if she had power. The entire quarter would riot if these fuckwits laid a hand on her.

I blocked their path when they went to enter and pointed to the outdoor seating.

“Nope. Y’all are giving me your order and sitting in the naughty corner while I bring it out. You don’t know the difference between a good witch and a wicked witch. Even the Satanists don’t actually worship the devil. We’re splitting beignets. What do you want to drink?”

Caleb just wanted black coffee. Solomon was a tea drinker. Saul gave me an order that was so ridiculous, I knew I was going to get shit for it and have to say it wasn’t mine so I could come back here. I would have thought it was adorable the giant liked frou-frou coffee, but he was on my shit list for not listening to me.

I got the orders and brought them outside. Everyone seemed to be on their best behavior.

“Listen, I tried, but y’all are shit at working with people. If you had waited, that would have gone down much differently, but all the demons escaped with two witches and I don’t know where they went, so that’s a problem. I’ve got one question and then you can get the fuck away from me. Do your lore books mention anything about the Yellow King?”

“Listen, Logan, I can admit this went completely sideways, but we were following orders. We go where we are told and eliminate the threat. I’m listening now.”

“You’ve also eliminated some completely innocent people because you don’t understand how they work. Shifters and werewolves just have a virus. If a decent person gets it, they are decent when they turn. If a shitty person gets the virus, they do shitty things.

“Some demons do make deals, but they aren’t seeking people out and manipulating them into selling their souls. They are summoned by people who sought out how and chose to. I believe that’s what you call free will. Others run businesses and help police the supernatural community. Witches aren’t Satanists either. They don’t even acknowledge him. You’ve basically murdered teachers and parents who didn’t do anything wrong except being different from you.”

“I have a book on the Yellow King,” Solomon blurted out.

Way to change the subject, champ.

“How do you know that book and I don’t?” Caleb asked.

“Because it’s a diary. A nun named Sister Agnes Mallory wrote it. Her parents sent her to the convent when she was fifteen after she said she was raped by a supernatural entity. Back then, women were blamed for that and had to marry their rapists. Since there was no one to marry her off to, they sent her to the convent. She kept diaries while she was there, but everyone thought she was barking mad. She called her rapist the Yellow King.

“Her diary was kept with the Esoteric Texts, but never translated. I started, but it’s difficult to translate. It’s written in Old English, but the Kentish dialect. Not a lot of that survived and I’m not as familiar with it. She also writes like she legitimately was mad and there wasn’t treatment for that at the time. What do you know about the Yellow King? That witch said he was going to get you.”

I wanted that diary. I also couldn’t translate it. I could translate plenty of dead languages, but not that one. That was around the time the Church got clued into the existence of the Supernatural. The Church kept a lot of those documents locked up, but the ones that weren’t were already translated into modern English.